Peter Andrew Barrett - Architectural and Urban Historian, Writer & Curator

Peter Andrew Barrett - Architectural and Urban Historian, Writer & Curator Architectural and Urban Historian, Heritage Consultant, Writer and Exhibition Curator Please stay on topic. I hope that you enjoy the posts.
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Federal BuildingCollins Street, Melbournec1968This is a view of the south side of Collins Street, between King and Spenc...
30/07/2026

Federal Building
Collins Street, Melbourne
c1968

This is a view of the south side of Collins Street, between King and Spencer streets, in the late 1960s. The Federal Building has a broad frontage and was built as an office and warehouse for the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company in 1883.

Designed by the eminent architect, Lloyd Taylor, the building extended a city block in depth to Flinders Lane. It was claimed by the Age, at the time of its construction, to be the largest private building in Australia. Taylor designed the grand façade of the building with large proportions, large areas of fenestration and fine detailing. The entrance columns and piers are vermiculated, that is they are expressed with wavy and irregular lines that look a little like they are worm eaten.

The building was renamed the Federal Building after it was purchased by the adjacent Federal Hotel in 1946. The Federal Hotel, formerly the Federal Coffee Palace, is partially visible at left in the photograph. The hotel intended at that time to redevelop both sites with a new hotel complex, but this was never realised. By the 1960s, the large ornate parapet of the Federal Building had had its ornamentation removed, and its pronounced cornice concealed by steel cladding, diminishing the detailing of the façade.

As seen in this photograph the Federal Building gave this portion of Collins Street a distinct air of sophistication, a degree of urbanity more commonly associated with the Paris End of Collins Street than its western end of mercantile uses, warehousing and shipping concerns. Sadly, both the Federal Building and the Federal Hotel were demolished. For many years the broad site of the Federal Building was a hole in ground, used for car parking for decades. Visible at that time were some of its basement walls that remained along the Collins Street frontage of the site. It remained that way until the existing building on its former site was completed in 2015.

Source of photograph: State Library of Victoria

National Mutual Life Association Building – take a squiz395 Collins Street, MelbourneSituated at the southwest corner of...
27/01/2026

National Mutual Life Association Building – take a squiz
395 Collins Street, Melbourne

Situated at the southwest corner of the intersection of Collins and Queen streets, this building was erected for the former insurance giant, the National Mutual Life Association. It is an example of the first generation of multi-level buildings in Melbourne, which, built in the 1880s and 1890s, dwarfed earlier city office buildings that tended to be of a two-to-three storey scale.

What sets the National Mutual building apart from other early multi-level buildings of the late nineteenth century is that it is designed in a Gothic-style (pointed arches). Whereas, most other of these multi-level buildings used a Classical styling (round-headed arches and/or Italianate detailing).

This building, on its completion in 1893, had a short frontage to Queen Street of only 15 metres. Additions to the building c1913, designed by the architect Gibb and Finlay, extended the Queen Street frontage to 36.5 metres, and in a manner that complemented the design of the original corner portion that was designed by the Adelaide architects, Wright Reed & Beaver. In 1914, one newspaper listed this building’s arched entrance in Collins Street as one of the city's most notable (see photograph).

This building coincides, if not demonstrates, the success and growth of the National Mutual Life Association as a financial institution in the early twentieth century. Other firms let space in the building, attracted by the prestige of the building's owner, and its location at the intersection of Collins and Queen streets at what is traditionally considered the centre of Melbourne’s financial district.

This building’s prestige did not go unnoticed by one of Melbourne’s notorious crime figures, Joseph Leslie (Squizzy) Taylor. In 1926, a police informant tipped off the police that Squizzy Taylor and his men were going to blow open an office safe in the building. Police staked out the building and observed Taylor’s men loitering in Queen Street and the doorway of the National Mutual Building. Taylor waited in his Buick parked in Queen Street. They arrested Taylor and his men and Taylor’s defence was he was in Queen Street to meet two girls. The charges were later dismissed in court.

The National Mutual Life Association moved from this building in the mid 1960s, when it relocated to the purpose-built National Mutual Centre on the site of the former Western Market, further west in Collins Street. National Mutual was delisted after being purchased by the French insurer AXA in the 1990s. The National Mutual Centre has since been demolished, its site redeveloped.

This former building of the National Mutual Life Association at the corner of Collins & Queen streets is a tangible link to this once large insurance company, and is a valuable part of Melbourne's architectural heritage. It also provides a tangible link to a chapter of the life and crimes of Melbourne’s most infamous gangster of the 1920s, Squizzy Taylor.

Photographer (Building): J T Collins
Source of Photograph: State Library of VictoriaDate of Photograph c1965.

Source of Photograph (Squizzy Taylor):
Public Records Office Victoria

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