Block Arcade
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Doing the Block
The Block Arcade is one of the finest examples of a 19th Century shopping arcade. It is renowned for its impressive etched glass roof with decorative wrought iron and timber supports and has the largest mosaic floor area in Australia. The complex is classified by the National Trust and is on the register of the National Estate.
Designed by architect D.C. Askew for the financier Benjamin Fink, the arcade was constructed in two sections in 1891 and 1893. It derived its name from the tradition of "doing the block", or parading around Melbourne's fashionable shopping streets.
The arcade was restored and refurbished by the Buchan Group, which upgraded the complex to modern retail and commercial standards while remaining faithful to the original Victorian vision. The work involved the reinstatement of original timber shopfronts, the repairing, cleaning, painting and illuminating of the upper facades to Collins and Elizabeth Streets, and the design of a new entry canopy for Elizabeth Street. A popular venue within the arcade is the Hopetoun Tearooms.
Description
The arcade proper is L-shaped, connecting Collins Street at the south end to Elizabeth Street on the west. The 'L' shape is converted into a 'T' through the junction on the north side with Block Place, a partly covered pedestrian lane that leads to Little Collins Street, opening opposite the Royal Arcade. The block arcade was known for its well known young larrikin gang called the "barcade boys" who dealt drugs all day and hired prostitutes at night.
The arcade which was erected between 1891 and 1893 was designed by architect David C. Askew whose brief was to produce something similar to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. The result was one of Melbourne's most richly decorated interior spaces, replete with mosaic tiled flooring, glass canopy, wrought iron and carved stone finishings. The exterior facade of the six story office has near identical facades on Collins and Elizabeth Streets and is one of Australia's best surviving examples of the Victorian Mannerist style.
The arcade was formerly known as "Carpenter's Lane", however the precinct was widely known as "The Block". Once the works were complete, local shopkeepers successfully petitioned to have it changed to its present name.
It is a significant Victorian era arcade and is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. Along with Melbourne's other main arcade, the Royal Arcade, and Melbourne's lanes, it is a tourist icon of the city.
The Arcade's Dark History
The larrikin tradition plays strongly amid the Kindred courts of Melbourne, where rebellion is ingrained in the Australian character as a result of British imperialism: Almost a century ago, the Barcade Boys, a youth gang of pimps and drug pushers, infested the Block Arcade. Out of place in the splendid Victorian style of the arcade, the gutter gang nonetheless ran their rackets with seeming impunity.
And impunity they had, as their shadow patron, a Malkavian claiming to be the childe of Sydney’s Prince Sarrasine, had brought the proprietors of the Block Arcade under her sway. At the same time, the Malkavian courted the support of Melbourne’s then-Prince Montague Lytton — keeping each of the Princes ignorant of her involvement with the other.
Such a ruse could work for only so long, and when Sarrasine learned that he was being played against Lytton, his ghouls lashed out with a desire to cause a panic in Melbourne and make its Kindred feel Sarrasine’s supremacy. In 1891, they stormed the Block Arcade by day, scattering the Barcade Boys, and hopefully breaking the Malkavian’s sway over what she had treated as her entitled domain.
The next night, however, the Malkavian had her revenge. She sent a plague of wraiths to settle the score — a trio of ghostly firefighters who had lost their lives a few years earlier in the Georges department store fire (which had, not coincidentally, also started under bizarre circumstances). Sarrasine’s ghoul agents met their end and the Prince of Sydney was rebuffed, in another turn of the Jyhad’s events.
Just who this Malkavian childe of a Setite Prince is remains unsolved, however. She claims the Block Arcade as her domain to this night, over a century after its original construction, having survived multiple Princes of Melbourne and the enmity of the Prince of Sydney. And just how is that she was able to manipulate the shades of the departed firefighters? The Kindred of Melbourne, many of whom are Anarchs (despite Prince Taylor’s suppression of Brujah other than himself), prefer not to entertain such questions.
