Manchester Unity Building Melbourne Tartarian Hunters.

Well this building has it all! Read the description below - water coolers, 1000s of light bulb, a kookie order called "Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF)" and even tributes to orphans. This is one hell of a tartarian building and since i couldnt actually access all the goodies - here is a link to a virtual tour :) https://manchesterunitybuilding.com.au/virtual-tour/

But remember #historyisalie !

Melbourne’s iconic Manchester Unity Building represents a rare blend of art, science, culture and commerce. As a magnificent structure, a monument to human endeavour and a hub of personal interaction, it has a special place in the history and fortunes of Melbourne as well as the hearts of its people.

Built in 1932 on the site of Stewart Dawson’s corner (plus the adjoining site), it was the new headquarters of the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), a non-profit friendly society with a strong sense of tradition and the noble motto ‘Friendship, Love and Truth’. The prominent Melbourne architect Marcus Barlow was entrusted with the design and W E Cooper Pty Ltd contracted to build. Barlow had drawn his inspiration from the 1927 Chicago Tribune Building in the United States.

Designed in the modern commercial Gothic style, the Manchester Unity Building was Melbourne’s tallest building when completed. The Melbourne Age described it as a ‘Wonder Building’, with ‘every modern convenience for tenants and their clients’. It was far ahead of its time, in terms of both aesthetic splendour and technological sophistication.

It was built at a total cost of almost £600,000 for land and buildings, was of fireproof concrete-and-steel construction and was faced with 400 tons of mother-of-pearl coloured glazed terracotta (or faience) tiles. Large plate-glass windows on the first floor and ornamental bay windows on the second floor gave distinction to the base of the building, as did balconies on the third floor. More than 10,000 panes of glass made up some 900 windows on the upper floors, with levels 2 to 5 being double glazed.

At ground and mezzanine levels there were 23 shops and 7 kiosks, and the basement contained a ‘beautifully decorated and furnished’ tearoom and café. A sub-basement housed secure vaults in which tenants could store documents, as well as large store rooms.

Throughout the ground-floor arcade, bold designs sand-blasted on a series of black-marble tablets and friezes illustrated aspects of Australian life, the services of the MU Order, virtues and other themes. They were complimented at mezzanine level by plaster relief work, ‘as attractive as any art gallery’.

Levels 2 to 10 provided offices and showrooms suitable for small enterprises. At fifth-floor level a group of stone figures on each corner frontage represented widows and orphans as well as the shield and motto of the Order, the latter being repeated in the mosaic-tiled floor inside the arcade.

The Manchester Unity IOOF had its boardroom, Grand Secretary’s Office, general offices and superintendent’s living quarters on Level 11. The boardroom, described by a Melbourne Herald columnist as ‘the finest office in the Southern Hemisphere’, was fitted out with a custom-built boardroom table and matching chairs.

On Level 12 there was a rooftop garden café with mosaic floor as well as ‘graceful palms, Japanese maples, beautiful flower beds, a fountain and pond’. The crowning glory of the building was its ornamental turreted tower (complete with flagpole), which rose 24 metres above the roof – more than half the 40 metre height of the main building – and was floodlit on Friday and Saturday nights. Three passenger lifts accessed the twelve floors at an unprecedented speed, and all floors were serviced by a goods lift, a mail chute, and a garbage chute feeding into a basement incinerator. An air humidifier ‘washed the air of all impurities and then forced it through ducts communicating with every room’.

In summer the air was cooled by a huge water tank that stayed cold below ground level and on very hot days was further cooled by several tons of ice. In winter the air was heated by oil-fuelled boilers. A diesel-powered engine in the sub-basement – the ‘first constructed wholly in the Commonwealth’ – could supply electricity in case of a power failure.

2500 lamps were originally fitted throughout the building.

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