31/07/2025
Provident Institute of Victoria
85 Queen Street, Melbourne
This handsome building once stood on the west side of Queen Street, a little north of Collins Street. It housed several financial institutions in its brief and eventful life, and watched its environs develop during the late nineteenth century into the financial hub of the city.
The façade of this building is designed in a Renaissance Revival-style, the composition referencing a palazzo with its rusticated ground floor, detailed piano nobile (middle level), and attic level. The façade has a bold cornice and parapet that tops what is a well-detailed composition of elements of fine proportions. The architect of the Provident Institute of Victoria building is not known, but around the time of its completion two architects, Edward Ramsey and a J Flannagan, occupied the building. Of interest also, is the chimney of the building at right, which has been extended to project past the top of the wall of the Provident Institute building.
Although modest in scale and character, the Provident Institute building retained a landmark quality in this part of Queen Street for several decades. This was not so much because of its architectural character, but through controversy associated with the Provident Institute. Formed in 1855, this firm was a short-lived banking and investment institution, aimed at providing these services to individuals and small investors. The firm was insolvent by the early 1860s, the Argus newspaper describing the venture as ‘nothing more than an organised association for plundering the public’.
In a case of history repeating itself, the Provident Institute of Victoria scandal would occur again, but on a grander scale in the 1890s, when a number of banks and building societies would become insolvent through mismanagement and, in many cases, dishonest business practices aka greed.
In the 1860s the building, in part, was occupied by the Agra and United Services Bank. London-based, this bank had agencies in India, China and what was then called the East Indies (islands off mainland southeast Asia). The opening of the Melbourne branch of the Agra Bank afforded the city’s merchants with money exchange facilities with these lucrative Southeast Asian markets. Later, the building was occupied by Australian Mutual Provident (AMP) and Royal Insurance.
In 1874, the top floor of the building was the scene of a bombing, which killed one man and injured another. A deadly package containing a bottle of nitro glycerine was left by a person(s) unknown outside the door of an office. The force of the explosion blew out the glass of the windows of the upper level into Queen Street.
The Provident Institute of Victoria building was demolished and the site redeveloped around 1900. This building, in its short and tumultuous existence, witnessed this part of Queen Street, around its Collins Street intersection, evolve into Melbourne’s financial centre, defined by larger and grander buildings such as the Bank of Australasia (1876, and later additions), ES&A Bank and Stock Exchange (1887), National Mutual Life Association (1893), all of which remain.
Photographer: Cox & Luckin
Source of photograph: State Library of Victoria
