APA Building, Melbourne

The APA Building was a skyscraper in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; at 12 storeys and 53m to the tip of its corner spire, it became the Australia's tallest commercial building at the time of its completion in mid 1890 (and remained so for decades) exceeding the previous height record set by of the Federal Coffee Palace. It was later reputed (erroneously) to have been the world's tallest at the time.

Originally known as the Australian Building (and also known as the Australian Property Investment Co or API Building), it was located at 49 Elizabeth Street, on the corner of Flinders Lane in Melbourne, and was notable for the way the Queen Anne style design lent it very vertical proportionals, enhanced by the steep roof, spires and gables of the top floors. In 1912, its height to roof was surpassed by Sydney's 50.25 metre Culwulla Chambers, though still taller when counting its spire. It remained Melbourne's tallest until 1929.

Despite a heritage listing, Heritage Victoria granted a permit to the owners for its demolition in 1980 to make way for a nondescript five storey concrete and glass office building with ground floor retail.

Design and Construction
In the 1880s Melbourne was in the throes of the land boom, fueled by easy credit and steep increases in the price of land, especially in the central city. Built by the Australian Property Investment Co, (or API), the announcement of the construction noted that it was said to be taller than any private building in London at the time, and would stand amongst the tallest in New York City and Chicago. It was reputed to have been originally planned to have fifteen stories (and an 1888 sketch shows an equally large building in the same style next door), but it was built with 12 levels, the 12th one attic space and a caretakers flat. The project was the brainchild of businessman and politician F T Derham, who had paid £65,000 for the site; the API Co then borrowed £400,000 for the construction from the London based Home and Colonial Assets Corporation Ltd.

The API called a limited competition in November 1887, which was won Henry Hardie Kemp. At the time he had just been taken on as a partner, along with another senior architect, at the old established firm of Terry & Oakden, forming Oakden, Addison & Kemp in that year. John Beswicke, who had worked for one of the API directors previously, had also been invited to submit, and was retained as an associate in the project as he had studied tall buildings, and is thought to have provided technical advice. Construction began in 1888, and was completed some time in mid 1890.

The Australian Building was constructed by local builder James Anderson who was a prominent member of The Builders and Contractors Association of Victoria. He built many notable buildings in Melbourne including the Hawthorn Town Hall, which still stands. Most others have been demolished.

The Australian Building was one of about 11 'massive edifices' of 8 to 10 floors built in the city at the height of the boom, of which only two survive. They were made possible by the introduction of an hydraulic power system of pressurised water that could operate the lifts to great heights 'in complete safety'. They did not employ any new structural technologies however, relying on thick walls of load bearing brickwork, and internal structures of cast iron, wrought iron and timber. With the boom soon turning into a crash, these buildings remained the tallest for many years, and in 1916 a new building regulation was passed limiting buildings to 132ft (40m).

A worker was killed by a falling plank during the construction in 1890.

The building inevitably generated its own legends, for instance that three companies went broke sinking the 40m deep cylinders for the hydraulic lift poles, and that not long after completion, the bolt on one of the cylinders broke, sending the fortunately vacant lift speeding downwards. Another from 1945 is that on the day of official inspection, the lift shot up uncontrollably only to bounce back from springs at the top, prompting many of the party to use the stairs on the way down. The main legend is that it was the worlds tallest in 1890, for instance in the 1976 book Melbourne's Yesterdays, but there were a number of towers in New York City and Chicago in that year that exceeded it by at least one or two floors, plus architectural features.

Its great height and dominance in the streetscape led to it being the subject of many photographs and postcards in its first 20 years.

Australian Provincial Assurance Association (APA)
In 1920 the Australian Provincial Assurance Association, a Sydney based insurance company, bought the building as its Melbourne base, and then renamed it the APA Building.

The APA was Australia's tallest building to roof until 1912, when the Culwalla Chambers at 165 feet (50.25m) was completed in Sydney, however the APA's corner spire and pole at 53 metres was still slightly taller.

The APA Building was Melbourne's tallest commercial building for 40 years, until the company decided to move, and purchased and remodelled another nine storey Victorian 'skyscraper' on the southeast corner of Collins and Queen Streets as its new headquarters, adding a very tall tower (largely for show) in 1929, which topped out at 76 m (250 ft). This was also known as the APA Building, and was demolished in the late 1960s.

Some time in the 1950s, the spire, turrets and gables of the top floors of the earlier APA Building were removed, leaving it with a truncated mansard roof.



Demolition and Legacy
By the late 1970s, its historic importance was recognised despite its alteration, and it was classified by the National Trust in 1978. It was also listed by the then Historic Buildings Preservation Council (now Heritage Victoria), but the owners then successfully argued for a demolition permit, on the basis of the large cost of upgrading to meet modern fire regulations. It was demolished in mid 1980, and replaced by a five-story concrete and glass office building with ground floor retail.

The untidy demolition of the APA left a small section of the its banded brick facade attached to the neighbouring former Melbourne Sports Depot building in which the original string courses of the building's second to fifth floors can still be seen including the first of its three original cornices.

Claims to height
The APA Building has been variously claimed to be the tallest (or the third or fourth tallest) in the world in 1889, when in fact it was not complete then and perhaps a distant sixth or seventh or more. Measured drawings held at the State Library of Victoria from 1980 show that it had 11 occupy-able floors, and a 12th attic floor with a caretakers flat, while plans reproduced in a thesis at the University of Melbourne show it had a roof height at the 11th floor at 41.5m, roof height of the top attic floor of 47m, and to top of the spire was 51m. This is lower than, but comparable to a number of buildings in New York City and Chicago, built in that year or earlier.

The tallest in the world in 1889 was in Chicago, soon to be the home of all the world’s tallest buildings, where the tower portion of the Auditorium Building was 17 storeys and 72 m, while the 12-storey Rookery Building, completed in 1888, was 55 m to the roof. In New York, the tallest was the 12-storey Washington Building of 1887, which was 67 m to the roof, plus attic and cupola; the 13-storey New York Times Building by George B Post was 57.3 m to the top of its spire; and the adjacent 11-storey Potter Building completed in 1885 was 50.3 m to the top of the roof, with pinnacles on top of that. The 1885 Hotel Chelsea was 43 m to the top of the 12th storey, with decorative gables adding greater height.

It was only amongst the tallest in the world for 6 to 12 months, as towers in Chicago and New York continued to climb higher. The long demolished New York World Building was completed in 1890, with 13 floors plus a domed tower containing 6 more floors reaching as high as 94 m, and in 1891 the Monadnock Building in Chicago reached 60 m over 16 floors, the tallest load bearing brick office building ever built.