Melbourne Buildings

Former Michaelis Hallenstein & Co 441-445 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

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This fine four storey building with basement was built as the new offices for Hallenstein & Co, a tanners in 1924 to a Tompkins brothers design and built by FE Shillabeer & Sons.  The company purchased the property from Edwards Dunlop & Co in 1923.  The company had traded in Melbourne since the 1860s.¹²

The building exhibits trademarks of the beaux arts style with its giant order pilaster columns, classical cornice and parapet balustrade, although it has distinctly interwar baroque window spandrels and decorative elements.  The base is banded ashlar in bluestone and render with a prominent entrance featuring an art nouveau style flat arch with scroll corbels.

Identified in the Central Activities District Conservation Study by Graeme Butler in 1984  it was graded C by the City of Melbourne³ and therefore is not held of high heritage significance, however it has a significant contribution to the pre-war legal precinct classical streetscape although interrupted by the Lonsdale Telephone exchange next door.  It was included in the Capital City Zone Heritage Gaps Study 2011.

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