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MOE COURT HOUSE

Other Names

COURT HOUSE , COURTHOUSE , MOE COURTHOUSE , MOE COURTHOUSE AND TYPING POOL , MOE MAGISTRATES COURT

Location

59-61 LLOYD STREET MOE, LATROBE CITY

Level

Registered

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Moe Court Rear of Building Feb
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EXTENT DIAGRAM 2432
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Moe Court Front of Building
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Statement of Significance

What is significant?

The Moe Court House, a Brutalist building of brick and off-form concrete construction designed by Public Works Department architect Alan Yorke in 1977 which officially opened in 1979. The building includes significant interior spaces including three court rooms; judge’s rooms with secure private access; a large public waiting room with Telecom Gold Phone; interview rooms; a typing pool and staff amenities space. Significant internal features include steel-pipe roof trusses; slatted ceilings in the courtrooms and foyer; exposed duct work; metal pipe balustrades in stairwells; dark brown quarry tiled floors; built-in furniture including judges’ benches and witness boxes.

How is it significant?

The Moe Court House is of architectural significance to the State of Victoria. It satisfies the following criterion for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register:

Criterion D

Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural places and objects.

Why is it significant?

The Moe Court House is significant for its importance in demonstrating a large range of the defining characteristics of Brutalist architecture in Victoria. These include its monumental scale and fortress-like character, off-form concrete, jagged roofline, industrial-style glazing and bold sculptural expression of curving elements, angled forms and projecting planes and masses. It also demonstrates less frequently seen characteristics, such as the concrete spouts with rain-chains and a conspicuous external expression of services to a degree uncommonly evident in other similar buildings. Moe Court House is a fine example of a late twentieth-century court house. It was one of the largest court houses to be built in Victoria in the second half of the twentieth century, and likely the largest to have been erected in a regional Victorian centre since the completion of grand complexes at Geelong and Wangaratta in the late 1930s. Comprising three courtrooms, a typing pool and an expansive public waiting area, it demonstrates the centralisation of court administration into large regional hubs from the 1970s. (Criterion D)

Group