This is the beautiful Manchester Unity building, an iconic building in the city where I live.
Usually I look up at this building, but today I had the opportunity to go inside and take a 2nd perspective on it. In just 8 months in the early 1930's, over 3000 workers built what was then the tallest building in Melbourne working 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. It had Victoria's first escalator, the fastest lift, it was called a "wonder" by The Age newspaper... and it is certainly beautiful. But here's what I love about it. It was built at the time of the depression, and yet the owners had a vision that this beautiful structure could become a beacon of hope for the economically depressed city. The building housed both the fancy retail stores, and the seamstresses who created the wares. It was a symbol of equality of opportunity, not just classless but also gender-wise, being the first building to have male and female bathrooms on every floor! I have no doubt there were nay-sayers and cynics at the time, but the owners and architect had faith that they werent just building any old building. As the reliefs in the arcade below are inscribed, the building represented "self-dependence" and "progress". At the time they called it part of the "Recovery Strategy" for the city. Self-dependence and progress as part of a recovery strategy? Sounds about right to me.
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AuthorFiona is a writer, consultant to government and not for profits and former cynic turned yogi. Archives
June 2017
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