The land on which Queen Bess Row was built was bought in the original land sales of 1853 by WJT Clarke. In 1895 his son, Joseph Clarke (brother of Sir William Clarke, bart. of Cliveden), is listed as the owner. He died the same year and the property was held by the Clarke Trustees.
However the Notice of Intention to Build gave the name of the owner as a Miss Cornwall. It was for three four storey houses, although it seems the building was not intended to function in this way and the plan was merely a fallback position. The party walls between the houses were designed with archways between them to allow for easy opening up or closing off.
The caption to an illustration in The Building & Engineering Journal, 21 July 1888, describes the building as the East Melbourne Coffee Palace, and this name is also written below the central gable of the building. However it appears that while a coffee palace was the intended usage it was never the reality.
The building, under the management of Miss Henrietta Rebecca Macartney, initially became The East Melbourne Trained Nurses' Home, and by 1890 was also a private hospital. The Argus carried the following advertisement:
'MISS MACARTNEY begs to intimate to the members of the medical profession that she has made all the necessary arrangements for carrying out the HYDROPATHIC TREATMENT of disease. Including steam, hot air, and douche baths at her private hospital, Rubra, Hotham-street, East Melbourne, and has engaged the services of an experienced masseur, who will carry out the doctor’s instructions.'
Advertisements for both the Nurses' Home and the hospital ran until 1894.
On 15 October, 1895 The Argus ran an extensive advertisement for the sale of contents of Rubra, including domestic furniture and hospital equipment. In 1894 Miss Macartney had been sued for negligence. Damages awarded against her were 25 pounds; this plus the bad publicity may have been enough to cause the hospital's closure.
It was also the same year that Joseph Clarke, the building's owner, died. However the house was not immediately sold after Macartney's departure, and was advertised To Let. The inventory amongst Clarke's probate papers describes the building as 'a Brick and Stone building used as a Private Hospital' and valued at 6,000 pounds. Miss Macartney owed rent of 143 pounds and 16s. 8d.
The archways were blocked up in 1896, and the building was converted to apartments with one apartment on each floor of each house. Although not built as apartments the building is regarded as possibly Melbourne's first apartment block.
By the the late 1920s the buildings were known as Rubra Flats (72), Angus McArthur's boarding house (74), and Cregh Flats (76). By 1936 No. 74 was known as Tudor Guest House.
In 1989 the building ceased operating as a 50-room boarding house, home to low-income tenants. Following prolonged feuding between the Ministry of Housing and the Melbourne City Council, and amid much opposition from tenants, would-be tenants and their defendants, the building remained empty for a year. In 1990, it was finally subdivided into three separate houses and sold to individual purchasers.