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Former Telephone Exchange/Post Office

Other Name Hero Apartments Location 114-120 Russell Street,, MELBOURNE VIC 3000 - Property No B6992 File Number B6992 Level State

Statement of Significance

The former Russell Street Telephone Exchange & Post Office, designed by the Commonwealth Department of Works in 1948 and completed in 1954, is significant at the State level for its architectural and historical values.
Architecturally, the building is unique as a central city multi-storey building displaying the influence of European Modernism, particularly the Amsterdam School and Scandinavian Freestyle Classicism. The interlocking, unadorned rectangular masses executed in cream-brick, the projecting strip windows on the first and second floors (through which the exchange machinery was visible), are typical modernist motifs, while the use of a bas-relief sculpture near the entrance, by S J Hammond and GH Allan, the placement, proportion and framing of the windows, and the massive pink granite columns at the entrance are hallmarks of the Scandinavian influence. The postal hall itself, with its striped floors, marble dado, and smart grill work, is executed in a sumptuous yet restrained modernist style.
Historically, the Exchange is the first large building constructed in the city after World War 11, and is the last to express the solid, masonry architectural traditions typical pre WW11. The first all-glass curtain walled building in the city, 100 Collins Street, was completed the following year, setting a strikingly different trend in modernism followed for the next few years in large city buildings. The building also reputedly contained the first air-conditioned postal hall in Australia.
Classified: 05/07/1999