Job Warehouse - Crossley’s Building, Corner Liverpool Street and Bourke Street, C.1983

Job Warehouse - Crossley’s Building

Corner Liverpool Street and Bourke Street, C.1983

Job Warehouse is one of only a handful of surviving buildings in central Melbourne dating from before the gold rushes. Constructed in 1848-49 as a two-storey row of brick shops stretching from Crossley Street to Liverpool Street.

Part of the building was initially occupied by well-known butcher William Crossley as a shop, slaughter-yard and residence. The Crossleys trained many of Melbourne’s leading butchers in the 1880s. Distinguished landscape painter Eugene von Guerard, one of Australia’s leading colonial artists who helped establish the Victorian Society of Fine Arts, also lived next on the premises at number 56 in 1857/58.

For most of my recent life it was a fabric warehouse, owned by an old gentleman who was rarely seen. Crammed with bolts of materials, it never appeared open for business.