Look just ahead for a bold cream-brick building with a tall, decorated central tower and lots of vertical lines-its dramatic entrance faces you right where the trees part.
Welcome to the Chemistry Building, where the whiff of experiments past seems to linger in the air a little longer than usual-don’t worry, that’s probably just the history! Back in 1938, when jazz was on the radio and hats were a must, Percy Edgar Everett designed this modernist, gothic marvel for Melbourne University. While most of campus was expanding fast, this place was built to look like something straight out of a wizarding school-Harry Potter has nothing on these bold towers and intricate brickwork! The genius behind the inside story was Professor Ernst Johannes Hartung, a chemist who wanted everything just right for research, so he rolled up his sleeves and designed much of the interior himself. Imagine bustling corridors filled with the clink of glassware and the rumble of excitement as Chemistry’s greatest minds got to work. The Masson Theatre here once had giant rolling blackboards so tall you’d half expect them to topple over-maybe they rolled away when no one was looking! Nowadays, slick renovations have brought the labs firmly into the 21st century, but bits of that original inter-war character remain. So take a moment: you’re standing at a place where science and style truly collided-with a bit of drama thrown in for good measure.
