Lording over the corner of buzzing Elizabeth and Little Collins streets like a faded actor from a forgotten play—its windows the hollowed eyes of a spectre, its weathered facade aged like wrinkles— sits this grand old dame: the City of Melbourne Building. But this isn't just an old structure; it's a towering, former monument to a city that once swaggered under the weight of gold rush riches.
Melbourne in the 1850s was a city teeming with fortune seekers, a swirl of dreams and desperation intertwined in the streets and laneways of this growing city. The population exploded, and with it came a construction frenzy. Shops popped up like mushrooms after rain, fed by the gold coursing through the city's veins. Bricks and lumber weren't just materials; they were the lifeblood of a boomtown morphing into a metropolis.
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