Hello, my name is Dr Kia Pajouhesh. In 2003 my dental Practice Smile Solutions relocated
to Manchester building. At the time none of my team of support staff really envisaged
the journey that was before us. In the years that have followed I have been privileged
to be involved in the refurbishment of some of the most significant heritage listed spaces
in this building. A building that holds a very special place in Melbourne's history.
For me, this has been a journey that started on Level 1 of our building which was restored
to house our general dental practice with 12 beautifully appointed dental suites. AS
our practice grew, refurbishment of the top floor in the tower has enabled us to provide
Melbourne with a specialist center like no other in Australia, where board registered
specialist in virtually every field of dentistry worked in unison with each other in one location.
Finally and most recently, the board room, the grand secretary office, an adjacent space
on level 11 of the building has been pain-stakingly restored under the careful attention of heritage
Victoria and guidance of Rob Mills Architects and Andronas Conservation Architects. These
offices are now utilized by management staff and patient coordinators. The boardroom of
the Manchester Unity Building, for so long neglected and not utilized by its true purpose, is now a meeting place
and conference center for clinicians. As part of Melbourne Open House I am honored in year
to see the thousands of the online applications we receive from people to view these spaces.
This video is footage from our last Melbourne Open House event. I hope you enjoy it.
Part 2 -- Historical Background
Hi Everyone. The groups keep growing a little bit as the day keeps going on I'm not sure
why that is, but if you are holding a red ribbon you should feel very pleased with yourself.
Because we actually had 5-6000 applications to come and view this place, to view the Manchester Unity Building,
and we only picked 300, so 10 groups of 30 or there abouts. But that 300 was picked very
carefully, we actually read every single comment that you guys wrote. So why is the MUB such
an amazing building? Why do people have such an affinity with it? Why do we love it so
much? Because it is right there, smack bang in the middle of Melbourne and for 80 years
it has had so many tenants and various people within it, that have brought so many Melbournians
into it. Hairdressers, chiropractors, jewelers, dentist, doctors have been in this building
by the hundreds. Its not a building that it owned by one company like a BHP or an ANZ
bank. And it's a building that has always brought people into it, not office space where
people just go and work there but people has frequented this building to have things done
here. And for 80 years it has been a building with a lot of passion. I am here to try and
pass on some of that passion of why the people in this building feel the way they do about
this building.
Now back in 1932, when this building was built, we were in the depths of a depression. Now
today, we have GFC but what we here back then it was even much worse than that. So all the
building that were built through to the mid 1920's have all come to a completion and there
were all these extra tradesman that were standing around with very little work and they were
very concerned to put food on their tables at home. So day by day they would come and
line up from the frontier all the way to Flinders Street station looking to work. So the builders
took advantage of that and they were able to have 3 shifts of workers in this building.
An so the building was pretty much constructed from start to finish in 8 months. On the first
of January they started work on new years day and on the 1st September of 1932 they
opened the foyer and first floor for trade. Now in that 8 month period, if a builder fell,
got injured, got sick, got tired, died they would just be taken away and someone else
would replace them because they were working right through the night as well. That escalator
that you see going up the first floor level, was an escalator that was going up to the
Mezzanine level which was filled with beautiful shops, glorious shops -- shops of fine ladies
design, tearooms, hairdressers and gents fashion and tailors. And that section of plaster board
that you see up there was actually open back in 1932 it was a Mezzanine level where there
would be a U shape set of shops all the way around.
So why is there only one escalator what happened to the other escalator? Do we know? They didn't
make one, they thought we have made one escalator, that's enough. It's the first one in Victoria
and we will just leave it as is. So if you get up there, you found your own way back
down. Down the marble star case, was option 1. Down the rear staircase, option 2. And
these three magnificent lifts were option 3. And these three lifts are substantial in
size and beautifully fitted out and very very fast. And they were the first, automated lifts
in Victoria, fully automated lifts in Victoria. Why were these people trying to make such
a statement? Why were they trying to prove to the whole world, we the Manchester Unity Independent
Order of Oddfellows want to save the world that we have this amazing building that we
can build right through the depression. They did it because they wanted to prove to everyone
it is ok for you to leave your money with us. Because they were insurers, they were
health insurers, life insurers and banking. So what they didn't want to happen in the
great depression was for people to get worried and put their money under their pillow instead
of in with them. So during this period they wanted to make this statement. An in fact,
their builders came in 2-3 weeks within time to finish this construction. They were going
to be charged 65 pounds a day if they ran late, but they came in within time and the
building was open on the 1st September for people to go up and enjoy level 1. Now we
are going to go up to level one and we are going to walk down that main corridor, as
they would have done so 80 years ago. 60,000 people in on the first day went up that magic
stairway, we are going to do up that corridor what I want you to remember is as follows.
The shop fronts are still as they were shop fronts. The interiors are still the same size
and dimensions and the glorious windows are still the same. The interior of the shops
are no longer shops, in fact but are dental suites. They are no longer shops because none
of you people in this era want to up a flight of stairs to shop anymore.
So why were they called the odd fellows? They were called the odd fellows because back in
1840 when the IOOF was formed over in the UK. Back in 1840 the orders that were being
formed the organizations that were being formed, the associations that were being formed, were
often formed by a group of a particular vintage or a particular trade. So it would be the
association of carpenters or steel workers. But this group came together in the UK and
they didn't have an affinity to a particular trade, they were open to all trades, both
blue color and white collar. And so they were saying if you want to join our association
you can, you can be part of it, you can invest in us and when you become sick we will make
sure you will be covered. And that's why they were made up of an order of odd-fellows. Lets
go upstairs to level 1.
as well. Back in 1932 it was also a business that was using the boardroom, a business that
This building was a marvel. There were people literally coming here on a week by week basis
out from the suburbs making sure they caught the train in, to come here to see how far
this building has grown because they would be ore that the fact that another floor was
built, "another floor since we had come last week". And so literally there hundreds of
people on a daily basis outside viewing this building going up. And it was the hope, the
hope of change. Now by this stage right now you are probably asking whats the connection
of smile solutions with the building. Smile Solutions is a dental practice. It is the
largest dental practice in the country. It sits quietly in this building and houses across
three floors in this building. The floors that I am about to show you are all premises
of Smile Solutions. And I am a dentist who owns Smile Solutions and am also the owner
of all these spaces that I am about to show you. So in effect the two go hand in hand.
It was the business that came and bought this space, which in turn was able to re-glorify
this space and then moved into various other floors and was able to rejuvenate those floors
as well. Back in 1932 it was also a business that was using the boardroom, a business that
was using the various spaces. So the two go hand in hand. You need the strength of business,
for it to be able to support the beauty of the building and for the building to then
support the business. It has always been that way and will always be that way. And we are
in a very very lucky situation to out our practice which was a very humble practice
only 10 years ago, we were only 3 surgeries strong. Now we are 19 surgeries strong, 40
clinicians. So we are indebted to this building to give us that opportunity to be able to
expand in to the glorious spaces. This floor here was probably the least in tact floor
that I came across. When I moved into this space, and I bought this space, I remember
my mother who walked down this corridor actually cried and left and said my son is probably
going to die in here. Because this floor was an absolute mess. Some of those windows fronts
that you saw in suite 1 and suite 2, those window fronts had been completely removed
and had roller shutters put in. So you not only lost the windows but the marble surrounds,
the bronze, the whole kit and caboodle and we had to come and restore those. A lot of
those cornices that you see had been damaged or removed, a lot of the cornices we then
went and recreated and brought in by sheet in order to reinvent these areas. Right through
the surgeries this whole area from here was open planned right through the very end, they
were not individual shops any more. But what you notice about this corner is that it is
the center of Melbourne. When I moved into this building someone came to me and said
to me "it's the center of Melbourne, it will always be the center of Melbourne". And it
was after I actually bought the space I stood here and released it is the center of Melbourne.
We have got town hall right there, City Square is a 30 m set back that the Western now has
to ensure. That corner is the very corner that all of the ticket-tape parades come through
and pass by and go up Collins St. When the boys came back from the Second World War,
the Olympic games. All the premierships the Collingwood have won have come by through
this corner and have tracked up Collins St. All the demonstrations. Effectively, this
corner holds a very very significant place in people minds and hearts. This corner was
Dawsons before MUB took it over. Dawsons Corner was known as the lovers corner. It was a corner
where lovers would come and meet. To this day every night I leave I see the odd 23 year
old girl on the texts waiting for her partner to come pick her up. One of the reasons is
imagine what you would have actually had as a view up here back in 1932 when you would
the Flinders Street clock or they meet on this corner. The difference is that this corner
has an amazing oarning that surrounds this whole area that gives so much protection to
the people that stand underneath it. This corner has a depth of vision that no other
corner in Melbourne, in my opinion, has. The setback allows these retailer that used to
be here, the setback in that direction and the town hall in that direction, almost sets
an area filled with natural light an area that is a great place to have as a retail
store. The details that we have gone through in terms of the copper leaf signage, to source
an artist to do copper leafing was actually quite difficult at the time, we sourced him
and the poor chap died in 2008, for level 11 we had to source another one we found in
South NSW. These people are hard to come by. Copper leaf and gold leaf artistry is very
very redundant profession .Because now day, the vinyl leaf guys come in and do a very
reasonable job with vinyl. But it will never have the luster of copper leaf, never. That's
why all the suites here and all the signage on level 11 is copper leaf. With that marble
the only quarry we were able to source is in Italy, because it has that almost burgundy
colour running through it and that is very difficult colour to come by this day and age.
We have only used true materials. Everything that you see is either solid bronze or solid
copper. When I bought this space I started work in this space on the 1st of January 2003,
and unbeknown to me at the time I opened the space up as a dental surgery for the first
day of opening on the 1st of September the same year. So we actually took the exact 8
months, to the day, that took this building to be constructed. The areas that's I am showing
are the most heritage significant areas in the building as Allen Levels Conversation
plan depicts. This floor is retail; it was always grand and beautiful. Level 11 I am
going to take you is the original boardroom, the grand secretaries office, magnificent
and beautiful. The rooftop and the tower, very special. Between level 9 and level 2,
that segment in the middle, effectively were originally done as commercial spaces and were
done at a slightly lower level of use of cornices and marbles, lighting ect. The spaces are
amazing, the corridors are very much in tact, the foyers of each floor are very much in
tact. But everyone of the lots owners, which the smaller lots that they may have, are just
as passionate and just as mad as I am about this building.
Part 4 --Foyer Level 12
Three lifts, all beautifully resorted and they brought us all the way to the rooftop.
Now it's not a rooftop anymore. This used to be the archway that would allowe people
to come out of the lifts and walk up to the rooftop terrace. Now I want you to imagine,
when they walked out of these three lifts, the ore they would feel when they saw that
magnificent tower. Now I am going to take you around the corner and give you the same
sensation but instead of coming through the lifts you are going to go round the corner,
through a couple of air conditioners units, and get the same effect. Back in the early
90's however, someone had a bright idea that this whole roof top area is never going top
do well as a restaurant as it did in 1932. All the things that it had up here, the exotic
animals, beautiful greenery flowers and trees, also the exotic birds, an Avery was up here,
its not longer demanded for people of the 90's to come up and have tea adjacent to an
exotic parrot. So because times have changed, they thought we would make it into a space,
we will make it into a building so they built this structure which is about 350 odd square
meters which they made into an apartment which was WoodMarch architects the people who built
Valencia , and they built this space into a luxury apartment. Well, it may have been
luxury, but within a few years it looked a bit dated. So we basically made this space
into a commercial space, it is of no heritage significance so I am not going to take you
through it built it is a commercial space which has all our specialist the orthodontists
and root canal specials and oral surgeons and so on.. that basically work out of these
rooms here. Now we are going to go around the corner, we are going to turn right and
as you come through that doors the first thing I wasn't you to do is to look up to get the
exact same feeling as you would have got when you came out of these lifts.
Part 5 -- Rooftop and Tower Level 12
So we are now on this rooftop terrace which people were able to enjoy back in the 1930's
right through to the 40's when it stopped being a rooftop restaurant and tea rooms.
It is probably a third of the size that it was originally. But as a backdrop it enjoyed
this beautiful tower, this amazing structure. Now this amazing structure was put there,
not as a functional structure as such, it was pretty much internally void. It was put
there as a gesture, as a beacon of light, that would light up the city at night. And
it was internally and externally lit. It was there as a monument of the strength of the
order. Back in the time when they were looking to get approval of the height limit for this
building, they were confined to this height which was no higher than the tip of the town
hall clock. So what they did they said "ok" we will build up to this height and then will
build a steeple or tower past that height so we can making it the tallest building in
Melbourne, so we can advertise it as the tallest building I Melbourne. So they built almost
an extra 6 stories up above the actual building. When you at street level that's how it looks
quite dwarfed. But when you come up here you realize the sheer enormity of the structure.
There is a beautiful spiral staircase, Victorian spiral staircase, that runs from that middle
level all the way to the very tip that takes you to the base of the flagpole. Up until
about 20-25 years go some poor sole would attach himself to the flagpole, climb all
the way to the top of it and paint his way down. Now days we can't have anyone doing
that and that's why the flagpole doesn't look as painted as what it should be. Now lets
imagine what you would have actually had as a view up here back in 1932 when you would
be sitting up here drinking earl gray. Down on the corner there you would have the regent
theatre, which was only built three years ago. Just past that you would have the T and
G building which was also built three years ago. All the way up Collins st on that side
you would have these glorious three, four five story Victorian buildings. Most of which
were resided with surgeons, doctors and dentists. On this side the Athenaeum theatre, built
approximately 80 years earlier and Scotts Church even earlier still. Past that again
glorious building all the way up to Parliament house. In this direction you would have amazing
view of St Pauls cathedral which still remains , past that you would have botanical gardens
and governor house which you can still see beautifully. Right through into the paddocks
of Mt Waverly and Glen Waverly area. In this direction there was very little at all that
would impede your view, you would see all the way down through to the Victorian terraces
of Port Melbourne, south Melbourne and Albert park all the way to the bay right through
you would see down to Frankston and Mt Eliza which had certainly some expansion of population
through there as that's pretty much where everyone wanted to live along the coastline.
IN this direction you would look up again in the distance, paddocks, but you would see
Carlton gardens all the way through to Melbourne University. It was a very very special spot
to come up and drink some tea and have a refined scone, or two or three. Now lets talk about
some funny stories about the building and some serious stories. Who can forget the triple
murders that occurred of three jewelers, back in 1978. Where a brazen attacker decided to
park his car at the front, walk up the stairs get these three people to lie down shoot them
all at the back of the head, take their diamonds and walk away or drive away and never be found.
The Pajama girl mystery, where a girl who worked in the MUB was found and no one knew
who she was, where she was from and what her name was. So the police decided to put her
informal and for 12 or 15 years to have her identified by somebody but no one was ever
able to identify her. And then the incident where two crocodiles were in the basement
of the building which was part of the restaurant that was there, decided to go for a walk to
look for water and they found themselves in the subbasement. And they were there for a
number of days until an electrician who was going down there to work tripped over one
of them. And why were they down in the subbasement? Because this entire building sits on huge
wells of water. Why is there water? Because back in 1932 they wanted to cool this building
down so they would bring enormous chucks of ice, they would cart them in, put them in
these wells and run air across the top of them and cool the entire building through
the reticulation system. They had air-conditioning Flintstone style. They were also able to heat
the building in this manner. This building heritage significance is not purely in its
location and its amazing gothic tower, it is also the mechanical engineering that went
into it, also the electrical and civil engineering that went into it. The letter shoot that runs
all the way down, the bin shoot that existed in the building, the glazed terracotta tiles
that were done in a way that the pollution and water and stains would just wash off it.
Also, the elevators and obviously the escalators that we have already discussed. We are about
to go to the most special part of the building, where the MUB Board of Directors as such would
hold their meetings and where the CEO, which in those days was called the grand secretary,
would have his office. The CEO placed his office on the very corner of the building
on the corner of Collins and Swanston Street and basically at the top of the building with
only the tower above him, almost like the Crown. That CEO's office is still in tact
and has been restored back to its original beauty. When I take you in there I want you
to imagine what has transpired over the years. For 50 years the Manchester Unity held this
building in its own care. It rented the spaces it did not want for itself, which was pretty
much the ground floor right through to level 9. It used level 10 and level 11 for its own
purposes. And eventually it realized it was growing out of it space and it sold the property
in 1985 there abouts for just over $5million. Now think about it, you can't buy a single
corner shop, a single 50m shop now for that amount of money, and that is only 25 years
-- what hindsight can tell you. They sold it to a developer by the name of Chau. He
was an Asian developer who had come along and wanted to redevelop the whole building
and make it like new again. Because during that 50 year period Manchester Unity tenor,
because they were an insurance company and worked on margins they were not able to keep
up the building. This building was done in a way whereby it required a lot of maintenance
and up keep. When you pout in all these mod cons of air conditioner and mechanical and
electrical and civil engineering all this has to either be maintained or reinvented
as the building ages. That wasn't done. In fact the carpet that was in the boardroom
was still the same carpet 52 years on, so as you can imagine it was not in very good
nic anymore. So they decided to sell and move on. They moved on to a building on the corner
of Dorcus street and St Kilda rd. Mr Chau tried to do too much and eventually he realized
"no, this is no good for me, I'm going to sell it" .The developers that then moved in
to start developing this area were the developers that developed level 10 and level 11. And
in order to develop this in the mid 1990's, their attitude was "lets come along and make
apartments out of these and lets paint everything white and do the 1990's white boxes that people
were buying in their droves". So when I take you down stairs I will explain to you how
we have gone back and reinvigorated the space out of being apartments and back to the original
office spaces that would have been there going through the board room right through to the
offices where their subordinates would work.
Part 6 - Management Offices
In timing and sequence, we restored level 1 and it took us 8 months to restore level
1, we then moved on to level 12 which took us 10 months to restore level 12. When we
moved in level 11, level 11 was the greatest challenge as it was obviously the area that
held the greatest craftsmanship. Level 11 took us 15 months and was absolutely a labor
of love. Because what had happened is through the late 80's and early 90's Melbourne City
Council had moved out, they had used the space for some 20 years. Some developers bought
the space and had decided to make them into apartments. Now the apartments that they constructed
were along this main section of Swanston Street and they all faced in this direction. So where
you standing from this wall here to that wall there was a two-bedroom apartment with 2 bathrooms
and a kitchen and an entry door through there. Over here they have created another entry
door which went into another apartment which was the grand secretaries office as a bedroom,
a kitchen had been created of the grand secretaries secretaries office and the boardroom was a
lounge/dining room. So what they had done to make the apartment feel of the 1990's is
they had removed the timber panel pieces that they saw -- because timber was ugly -- or
they had painted over the top of them. So all this area here were painted surfaces.
The cornices were removed and we had to come back and recreate and rejuvenate this whole
area. The grand Secretaries office in its entirety on the back wall had all the timber
stripped and plaster was put over the top. The intention of this building was always
the grandeur of the entry at the front, as you will leave you will see, coming down a
corridor that then opened up to, what we have now recreated, the entrance door which brings
you through into the boardroom .The boardroom in the Grand Secretary office always needed
and always had, feeding off it, the people who worked for the Grand Secretary. Some of
the copper lettering you see at the on the doors are the types of people you would see
here in 1932. Now our IT man is called inspector. And our 4 printers are in the typing room.
And when we go into the kitchen we go into the tearoom. So these words we know are from
the original scripts were the original spaces that were up on this level.
Part 7 -- The Board Room Level 1
So we are now in this amazing room, this beautiful room. And the things I have to mention to
you about this room, and before you leave today, make sure you look at those four original
images on the wall there. The building on the far corner there is the Dawsons building,
which is the building that was effectively knocked down and the Manchester United building
was build on that corner. The room itself has remained quite intact; obviously we have
had to do some restorative work right through. The entire space right through has obviously
had to have all the timber re-French polished which was quite a process. This panel of ceiling
you can see right through here, is a new panel of QLD maple as this whole area had an air-conditioning
duct that was put right through it in in the 1980's. The table is original and was build
by master craftsman onsite at the time. When they built it they build it far too big, look
at the width on this thing, and then they realized no manufacture of Australia could
make a piece of glass that big for it. So this 320kg piece of glass was imported from,
we are not sure, either UK or France, and was brought across by ship and brought onto
Swanston street, in fact onto Collins St, and put through the ceiling before the roof
was put in. This piece of glass saved the room in the late 80's and 90's and the developers
wanted to remove the table and restore this area as more apartment space. But they released
they cannot move it out of the building, and they asked to chop it up, and someone nice
must have said no. The fireplace was always a decorative fireplace; so there is no chimney
above it. We have retained the decorative fireplace but we have added another element
of LED lighting by a group called Lightmoves who are just wonderful. And we have also placed
an ethanol based place fire behind it. So that is depicting, in my symbolism, depicting
the furnace of hell where man fights beast on a day-by-day basis, eternally. And up through
the layers of rock of the earth we then have heaven above. So the room in its entirety
has so many imperfections. The table at one end is 2inches narrower than the table at
the other end. You will notice that although the ceiling roses match each other and are
reasonably symmetrical to each other, and we have the nipple plated chandeliers at either
end at the centre of the ceiling roses, this ceiling rose sits almost dead centre only
one inch to the right where as this chandelier sits a foot to the right -- so they couldn't
get that symmetrical. Even the panels on the wall at the back, there are 4 timber panels
of the left and 5 on the right, separating those two original light fittings that are
on the wall there. So they were not even going to get the table centre to the room. Even
down to the details of three windows there, three windows there and two windows there.
So in fact that bay is much narrower than this bay here. The ceiling cornice here through
age of the building, because some of the water that we getting in the building, had virtually
dropped we had to put it back up and repin it to restore it, but the whole rooftop at
the cost of $1.2 million is now completely sealed. Now that shield, I have to read you
a spiel about what that's all about. "The shield is quarter by the Christen cross in
token that our order is founded upon the principle of the gospel, while the cross its based is
displayed in Latin tongue our motto "Latin" upon the shield I have depicted the hourglass
as typifying depicted time. The cross keys as emblematical of knowledge and security.
The beehive illustrative of industry, thrift and frugality. And the lamb and flag as symbolizing
Christianity and innocence. Upon the centre of the cross is affixed a crusade shield bearing
the rose of England, the Thistle of Scotland, the Shamrock of Ireland and the Leek of Wales
that indicated the close union that exists in the brotherhood throughout the British
dominions." So they British based, they were very Christian and they were very much into
nurturing and friendship and why their motto is "love, truth and friendship". This is considered
to be the most in tact art-deco building in the world. It has been a privilege to be in
this building and to work in this building. We, as a management team and a staff of 85,
we use the spaces that I have shown you today on a daily bases. It is unbelievable to think
someone had the foresight to do something so amazing 80 years ago and for us to have
the opportunity to come in and enjoy it.