The Tea House, Southbank

Perhaps the largest and tallest building from the 19th century in Southbank is the Robur Tea House in Clarendon Street.

Built between 1887 and 1888, it began life as a six-storey warehouse for Fergus and Mitchell, printers and stationers.  From 1906 the building was occupied by merchants and shipping agents James Service and Co, importers of grocery items from India and the Far East who specialised in Robur Tea, hence the renaming of the building.

The Tea House once housed tea from around the world; it was a favourite beverage, renowned for its refreshing qualities and was stored in tea chests, popular with people moving house.

The building represents an era of revolutionary design and engineering for that time. The architect was Nahum Barnet, responsible for many of Melbourne’s finest buildings, including office blocks, cinemas, and numerous factories and warehouses. The engineer was John Grainger.

The building is constructed of load-bearing red brick and provides six above-ground floors, which are separated by cream brick courses. The largely unadorned walls are amply supplied with windows. The timber floors are supported by cast iron columns and steel beams.

According to Heritage Victoria, the building is a simple box shape with ornamentation confined to a rendered central entrance surround on the east façade, which is reflected by an arched balcony the height of the top two floors.

However, the most notable feature of the building is the solution to the problem of foundations. It was erected on a swampy site and initial advice was that a building of the size proposed was not feasible.

Grainger devised a system of 450 ironbark piles and concrete rafts to support the six-storey structure. It was a remarkable solution, and no directly comparable buildings exist because such difficult foundations were not tackled again until after World War One.

Another innovation was the use of steel beams supporting the floors, one of the earliest uses of such technology in Victoria.

Numerous attempts have been made to update the Tea House, and the latest idea, in 2024, proposes a mixed-use development, comprising a hotel, high-end apartments, and office and retail spaces, which would transform the prominent Clarendon St site that sits close to Crown Casino and the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The Robur Tea Building (H0526) has been included on the Victorian Heritage Register since 1982, with its height and freestanding character making it a Southbank landmark.

This iconic structure is an integral part of our community’s history and identity. It represents an era of revolutionary design and engineering for that time and provides one of the few remaining traces of the industrial establishments that dominated Southbank until the late 20th century. •