3-052-435 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition building at Melbourne, Australia, 1880. 'The site, in the Carlton Gardens, is an excellent one, and will show off the structure to advantage, and as, after the great show of next year, the building will be retained as a permanent exhibition building...The design is the work of Messrs. Reed and Barnes...The salient features of the building (which will be the largest Melbourne has yet known) will be, first, a dome higher than the highest spire in the city, flanked by a number of smaller towers of pavilion shape; and, secondly, a variety of ornamental details...On each side are square towers 105 ft. high...The rest of the building is in fine keeping with its main features and with the nature of its design, which may be characterised as Italian Renaissance...The architects are, indeed, well deserving of credit for the fact that they have wholly dispensed with skylights as unsuited to the climate...Thus the courts are lighted through the exterior walls... In this way the sun's glare is excluded, and a capital means of ventilation afforded...The material of the building is brick, stuccoed. The roof will be of iron, or wood and iron.' From "Illustrated London News", 1880.