Urban Change on Bourke Street, Melbourne: Eastern Market, Southern Cross Hotel, SX Towers
- James Lesh
- Jul 1, 2023
- 1 min read
Updated: Mar 17
Destruction, Development and Heritage in Melbourne: SX Towers, Southern Cross Hotel, Eastern Market
The redevelopment of historic environments that are valued by the community is a notable and ongoing process in cities. This urban destruction is transformational, resulting in the recreation, remediation, and recalibration of material fabric and cultural meanings. As with conservation, the destruction of existing places produces social, cultural, and economic gains and losses. This chapter explores an extensively contextualised site in the settler-colonial city of Melbourne, Australia which has been fundamentally transformed through destruction and redevelopment three times in the last century. The Eastern Market (1847–1960) made way for the Southern Cross Hotel (1961–2003), which was then replaced with the SX Towers (2005–). During their lives, each of these places held a prominent place in the cultural, architectural, historical, social, and economic life of Melbourne. Yet none have achieved sufficient cultural value to reach a heritage threshold for being conserved before – in the case of the market and hotel – more modern and more economically productive uses for the land emerged. Adopting a historical approach, this chapter demonstrates that destruction is bound to cities, places, and heritage and that it is a pervasive feature of urban economy, culture, and society.
James Lesh and David Nichols, “Destruction, development and heritage in Melbourne: SX Towers, Southern Cross Hotel, Eastern Market” In Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction, eds. Antonio Gonzalez Zarandonam, Emma Cunliffe, Melathi Saldin. Routledge (2023): 372–383.
