East Melbourne, Hoddle Street 1085, Millhayes

The building application for this site is dated 26 August 1939. The owner of the site was the Victorian Railways, which had owned it since purchasing a number of blocks along Wellington Parade in 1901 in order to create the existing railway line.

An advertisement appeared in The Argus on 24 June 1939 stating: INVESTMENT TENDERS are invited for the LEASE for a TERM OF 30 YEARS of LAND (2 allotments) in Hoddle street, East Melbourne (near Wellington parade) suitable for the erection of APARTMENT HOUSE, FLATS or RESIDENCE. Particulars at Estate Office, Railway Administrative Offices, Spencer street. [The other allotment referred to is 1081 Hoddle Street, across the other side of the cutting.]

Early rate book entries show that the lessee was Arthur Emilio Loyer, a retired hotel-keeper turned investor.

The architect was Stuart Hall, who designed 1081 at the same time, and the builder was Graham Phillips. The purpose stated in the building application was Guest House. Stuart William Hall (1910-1960) practised under his own name for only six years, 1936-1942, judging by tender notices appearing in The Argus. It is likely Hall was one of the many architects whose practices failed due to lack of work during the war. In that time he designed a number of apartment blocks in the Art Deco or Moderne style. Two of the more notable are Del Marie, 4 St Leonards Avenue, St Kilda, and Granada Flats, 637 Orrong Road, Armadale. Coincidentally Hall’s offices at 20 Queen Street, Melbourne were in the same building as those of I G Anderson, who at the time was building the blocks of flats in Garden Avenue, East Melbourne and those behind them, in George Street. It is possible that Hall was influenced by Anderson in his design for Millhayes.

The site is a particularly awkward one with a very narrow frontage broadening slightly towards the rear as it follows the curve of the railway line. The plans for the building could not be found at the Public Records Office but a small sketch plan in the building application file shows the resulting complicated footprint. The purpose of this little plan was to demonstrate to the building surveyor the method by which the builders had tested the load bearing capacity of the concrete floor. They had loaded a strip of floor three feet wide with 23 bags of cement uniformly distributed, which equalled 80 lbs per sq ft, double that required. The deflectometer marked on the plan measured the deflection caused by the weight. [See catalogue reference below]