Grosvenor Chambers

Grosvenor Chambers
Grosvenor Chambers on the right
Grosvenor Chambers Location within Melbourne Grosvenor Chambers Grosvenor Chambers (Australia)
General information
Status	Completed
Location	9 Collins Street, Melbourne
Coordinates	37°48′49″S 144°58′25″E

Grosvenor Chambers, at number 9 Collins Street, Melbourne, contained the first custom-built complex of artists' studios in Australia.

John T. Collins 1977 photograph of 1888 Grosvenor Chambers prior to demolition of its interior. State Library of Victoria

Collins Street, near the corner of Spring Street, showing Grosvenor Chambers at centre soon after construction. Albumen silver photograph 14.0 x 20.0 cm. State Library of Victoria

CB Walker Studio, Grosvenor Chambers, Melbourne, 1888-1899 showing skylights at roof level. Albumen print 23.9 x 19.7 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales

Construction

Architects were Oakden, Addison and Kemp and the building contractor W. Davidson who was then mayor of Richmond. Construction costs were almost £6,000. The building, bearing on its parapet the date 1887, officially opened on 21 April 1888 with a 'smoke concert' attended by the Melbourne art world.

The owner was Charles Stewart Paterson (1843-1917). He, in partnership with his brother James, had a high-end decorating business in Melbourne. Another brother was the painter John Ford Paterson who sometimes exhibited with the Heidelberg School artists.

The upper floor consisted of five well-lit artists' studios with ante-rooms all provided with light from skylights with a southern elevation (to provide the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of a 'north light') and tall windows on to Collins Street; natural lighting designed "on principles laid down by Sir Joshua Reynolds" and by consultation with the first artists to occupy them; Tom Roberts, James C. Waite, Louis Abrahams, and George Walton.

The middle floor had space for a costumier, initially a Mrs Eeles, fabric showroom and workshop.

The ground floor housed the showroom for the Paterson’s decorative arts business and doctors consulting rooms at the rear.

The rear basement atelier was occupied initially by sculptor Percival Ball, constructed so that the downhill slope toward Flinders Lane placed his floor above the level of the lane and created a clearance in the room of 7 metres, thus accomodating large works-in-progress. A wide doorway and window had a fanlight over them was removable to provide an entrance to the Lane over 2m wide, and to the height of the room, for passage of large pieces of sculpture, such as the first he produced there, his William Wallace for the Ballarat Gardens. The front of the basement, a spacious cellar, was lighted with Hayward's patent prismatic pavement lights.

Stained-glass windows over the staircase showing figures symbolising Sculpture, Painting, and Heraldic Work were by Brooks, Robinson, and Co. whose work is also found in the Princess Theatre and who from this date employed most of Melbourne's stained-glass artists including William Frater.

Artist occupants

Many notable artists rented a studio in the building or exhibited their work there, even after its sale in 1939 to investment company A. Gordon Allard and Co. They included, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, Percival Ball, Charles Francis Summers, Clara Southern, Jane Sutherland, Charles Conder, E. Phillips Fox, John Longstaff, Girolamo Nerli, Louis Abrahams, Rose Walker, George Lambert, Ola Cohn, Dora Wilson, Max Meldrum, Mirka Mora and Albert Tucker.

Notable photographers, such as Gordon De Lisle and Wolfgang Sievers, had rooms in the building in the 1950s.

Partial preservation

Artists continued to rent studios there until the mid-1970s, and before a plan for an office tower replacing 5-9 Collins Street was proposed. The National Trust and other stakeholders protested.

Singaporean developer Jack Chia purchased the site in 1980 and proposed a compromise development retaining the Campbell House and a 9m (or one room) depth of the Collins Street terraces including the Grosvenor Chambers in which the studios in the front, and their skylit saw-tooth roof were preserved, with a tower rising behind. Architectural historian, Allan Willingham, who questioned "the architectural fad of facade retention in urban redevelopment" considered Chia's development "one of the few examples in the central business district where an old building has been successfully retained and substantially enhanced."

The tower, known now as 1 Collins Street, was completed in 1984 and in 1985 it won the Victorian Architecture Merit Award for new commercial buildings, the inaugural William Wilkinson Wardell Medal for the best building of the last three years in 1986, and in 2011, the Enduring Architecture Award from the Australian Institute of Architects (Victorian Chapter).