Major revamp puts the groove back into heritage Melbourne hotel
Melburnians, and visitors to their city for that matter, might have been surprised to learn that a rather unremarkable building – at least to the lay eye – at 186 Exhibition Street in the theatre district had a heritage listing.
Retro umbrellas by the rooftop pool.
The home of Rydges Melbourne and the now defunct venue, Bobby McGee’s, it was the sort of wallpaper place you walked by without notice.
That was before it was boarded up and work began.
EVT, the owner of the Rydges chain, was more than aware of the value of the 1970s-built edifice and decided to maximise its potential with an extensive redo.
The 23-storey former Bryson Centre on the corner of Little Bourke Street was built between 1970 and 1972 as part of a mid-century high-rise boom that differentiated the architectural, business and cultural make-up of pre- and post-World War II Melbourne.
The stylish revamped Rydges lobby.
It included office space, a 600-seat cinema, restaurants, function spaces, and the 292-room Hotel Melbourne taking up the top 13 floors. There was a pool on the rooftop.
Tenants came and went, most notably the change from Hotel Melbourne to Rydges Melbourne. But in 2019, the Heritage Council of Victoria noted that due to its original curtain-walled form remaining “highly intact” above street level, it was “a fine example of a Post-War Modernist multi-storey building”. And so it was heritage listed.
Rooftop terrace: the designers chose Australian muted tones of eucalyptus green and rusty ochre.
For builders on the job which Schiavello described as being “among the biggest hotel refurbishments in the Southern Hemisphere”, there were challenges aplenty but says EVT’s director of design, Dean Duckworth, there were also opportunities.
“The building’s exterior has a beautiful rhythm and a repetitive nature, it has a tapestry of textures with pre-cast concrete, face brickwork, glazing,” he says. “The building is robust, yet it also has a softness. Challenges were not the heritage nature of the building but rather the layers of history and life that the building has had over the last 50 years. For example, the Bobby McGee’s nightclub which was previously a 600-seat cinema, has now been converted into an impressive ballroom space with soaring ceilings of nearly seven metres.”
King Deluxe corner room: tech is top-notch across all 370 rooms.
The hotel has 370 rooms across three accommodation styles, including 25 in the Apartment category that feature a kitchenette, laundry, and separate lounge/dining spaces. The tech is top-notch.
Unsurprising for its location, the hotel’s conference and event facilities have been expanded and upgraded.
And also in keeping with its location, there’s the new Bossley Bar & Restaurant on the ground floor that plays to Rydges’ new marketing slogan, “refreshingly local”, and focuses on Victorian ingredients.
In reimagining the property to what is now the new Rydges flagship, designers look to have taken the 1970s ball and run with it, installing lots of brown and earthy textures.
EVT says its design team in collaboration with interior designers Luchetti Krelle created interiors that were “influenced by natural Australian muted tones of eucalyptus green and rusty ochre”, not the 1970s, as one might presume – not that there would have been anything wrong with that, as the heritage council would no doubt agree.
From $255 a night. See rydges.com
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