Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 2

Media item: article, part 2 of a multi-part series

Date published: 1 July 2011

This page records the media item. The original article is the property of its publisher and is not reproduced here.

This part covers the entrance, foyer and lift lobby. The series index is at Manchester Unity Building — Melbourne Open House, with a duplicate record at MUB Open House: Part 1.

Why the entrance carried the argument

In a commercial building of the 1930s, the entrance did the work that advertising does now.

A prospective tenant, a visiting member, or a patient arriving for a consultation formed their view of the organisation in the first ten seconds, and that view was purchased in stone, metal and glass. The materials were the message: an institution that had spent this much on a doorway was an institution that would still be there in thirty years.

For a friendly society, that argument was the entire product. Manchester Unity sold the promise that it would pay out when a member fell sick. A lobby is a solvency statement. What the society actually did is set out in Party time to mark milestone and Manchester Unity Building.

What a Deco commercial foyer was made of

The palette of the period, and what each material was doing. The style itself is described in Art Deco oasis in the heart of Melbourne and Have a Deco at a Classic.

• Marble and scagliola for wall linings — permanence, and a surface that could be polished rather than painted.
• Terrazzo for floors — marble chips set in cement, ground and polished. Hard-wearing, patternable, and far cheaper than solid stone, which is exactly why it appears in every building of this generation.
• Bronze and chromed metal for doors, grilles, handrails and lift surrounds. Chrome was new and modern; bronze was traditional and expensive. Buildings of this date use both, deliberately. The same materials in portable form are the subject of Manchester Unity Building — Leonard Joel.
• Decorative plasterwork to ceilings, often with concealed lighting coves — electric light was still recent enough to be shown off. The building's exterior lighting came much later: Let there be light for Manchester Unity's brighter future.
• Timber panelling in lifts and lobbies.
• Integral lettering. Building names and floor directories were designed as part of the fabric, in period typefaces, rather than applied as signage.

The geometry is the giveaway. Deco ornament is stepped, chevroned, faceted and repeating — the same motifs at every scale, from the facade down to a lift grille. See Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 5 on the cladding, and Manchester Unity Building — John Gollings on how such detail is recorded.

The lifts

The lift lobby was the second act of the arrival sequence, and in a tall building it mattered more than the door.

Passenger lifts of this era were attended — an operator worked the controls and announced the floors. The lift was a room, not a machine, and it was finished accordingly: panelled, mirrored, and lit.

The lobby had to hold a crowd. Lifts serve floors in sequence, so people wait; the space is sized and finished for waiting, and the indicator dials above the doors were made to be watched. The plant that drives them is covered in Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 4.

And the building also had an escalator, which is a different proposition entirely — continuous, unattended, and able to move a stream of people to the first floor. That combination, lift plus escalator, is what made a first-floor retail level viable. See The new shopping centre opens today and Inside the Manchester Unity Building.

What restoration does to a foyer

Entrance halls are the most heavily altered part of any commercial building, because every change of ownership or tenancy tends to reach the front door first.

The common losses: original lighting replaced, directories removed, terrazzo covered with carpet or tile, panelling painted over, and services run across ceilings. The arcade shopfronts have the same problem — see Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 3.

Restoration therefore involves as much removal as repair — taking off later layers to find what survives beneath, then deciding what to reinstate. Australian practice follows the Burra Charter: retain original fabric in preference to replacing it, make new work identifiable as new rather than disguising it as original, and keep interventions reversible. The sequence is set out in Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 6.

Where the interior is included in a heritage registration, foyer works require a permit. Not every interior of a listed building is protected — the registration says which parts are. See Our City: Manchester Unity Building.

Arrival, from a patient's point of view

A practical note, since this page is about getting into the building.

Smile Solutions is on Level 1, 220 Collins Street. Access is via the building's lifts. See Our Location and Contact Us.

This is a 1932 building on the Victorian Heritage Register, and heritage listing constrains what can be altered — doorway widths, floor levels and lift dimensions were designed to the standards of the period.

If you have specific access requirements — a wheelchair, a mobility aid, a pram, a companion, an assistance animal or an interpreter — phone ahead on 13 13 96, and say what you need rather than what you have. Arrangements that are straightforward with notice are difficult improvised on the day. If the appointment rather than the building is the difficulty, see Dental Anxiety; for a child's first visit, First visit to the dentist.

And allow a few extra minutes. A city building with lifts serving many tenancies runs slower at 9am than the map suggests.

The series

• Manchester Unity Building — Melbourne Open House — series index, and what Open House is
• Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 3 — the arcade and its shopfronts
• Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 4 — the tower floors and the roof
• Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 5 — the faience cladding, close up
• Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 6 — the restoration, in sequence
• Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 7 — the building today, and adaptive reuse
• The complete archive index is Our Media

Common questions

What is actually inside the ground floor lobby?

Heritage Victoria's registration is specific about it. Internally there is extensive use of various Australian marbles as cladding to the walls, and the ground floor lobby ceiling and cornices carry high-relief depictions of Aboriginals, Australian flora and fauna, and of transport, building and primary industries.

The interiors are part of why the place is registered at all. The record finds the building aesthetically significant for its intact interiors, and describes the plaster cornices and ceilings, the marble, and the inlays to the lift cars as showing ‘a high standard of artistic workmanship that is without par for a building of this period’. Source: the Victorian Heritage Database entry for the Manchester Unity Building, place 728, Victorian Heritage Register number H0411.

Are the original lifts still in service?

Partly, and the distinction is worth knowing. The registration records that of the original lifts, two of the three have been converted to automatic operation — so the attended operation described above is gone — but that the inlaid timber and panelled interiors to the lift cars have been retained.

That split is normal in a working heritage building: the visible original fabric survives while the machinery behind it is renewed, because one of the two carries the significance and the other carries the passengers. It is also why a lift ride here is not a period experience even though the car is period fabric.

Why does the corridor detailing look the same on every floor?

Because it was designed as one scheme rather than fitted out floor by floor. The registration records cornice plaster panels in the corridors of all the floors carrying depictions of the friendly society's role in welfare provision — the building stating its own purpose, on every level, in plaster. What the society was actually selling is in Party time to mark milestone.

The lettering was designed in too. Heritage Victoria's permit exemption policy for this place notes that there are many areas of the building with original purpose-built signage and directory cases, which is why signage placement and size are governed by a written signage criteria document for the building rather than left to each tenancy to decide.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. See also Our Location and Our Team.

Every practitioner's registration can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au.

This page records a published article and its date. The architectural material above is general background rather than a summary of the item; statements attributed to the registration are drawn from the Victorian Heritage Database entry for place 728 (VHR H0411), and Heritage Victoria and that database are the authoritative sources. The building is not a claim about clinical care. This is not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Third-party published content is not reproduced.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.