Toorak Telephone Exchange

What is Significant?
The Toorak Telephone Exchange at 268 Williams Road, Toorak is a double-storey Georgian Revival style building with a dignified symmetrical facade, enhanced by fine quality brick detailing. It was designed in 1942 by the Commonwealth Department of the Interior (Works and Services Branch) and constructed in 1944. The exchange was built to ease congestion on existing telephone exchanges in a period when wartime communications were placing extra strain on the system. The Toorak Exchange formed part of a broader plan to automate all of Melbourne's telephone exchanges to meet the demands of post-war population growth.

Elements that contribute to the significance of the place include (but are not limited to):

-The original external form, materials and detailing as originally built.
-The generally high level of integrity to its original design (including the unpainted state of brick and terracotta elements).
-The legibility of the original freestanding double-storey envelope created by the undeveloped front and side setbacks.
-The limited presence of modern signage on and around the building.
-The limited visibility of the modern additions from the public realm.

Modern fabric, including the rear additions and the Telstra sign, do not contribute to the significance the place.

How is it significant?
The Toorak Telephone Exchange is of local historical and architectural significance to the City of Stonnington.

Why is it significant?
Historically, the Toorak Telephone Exchange is significant for its associations with an important phase in the expansion of Melbourne's automatic telephone network that began in the inter-war period and continued through the Second World War (TEH 4.6.2 Establishing telegraph and telephone networks, Criterion A).

The Toorak Telephone Exchange is architecturally significant as a good representative example of the Georgian revival mode (Criterion D). The style was popularly used for residential buildings in the 1930s but also found favour with State and Commonwealth agencies.

The Toorak Telephone Exchange gains additional architectural significance from its complimentary relationship to the precinct of interwar flats on the opposite side of Williams Road (Criterion E).

Group

Postal and Telecommunications

Category

Telephone Exchange