The record
The conversion census
Every building in the Heritage Melbourne catalogue that began life as something else — and what it is now.
Of the 82 buildings recorded in the Heritage Melbourne catalogue, at least 36 began life as something other than homes. A bank's head office, rag-trade warehouses, an automatic telephone exchange, the railways' administration building, a police headquarters — the central city's most distinctive apartments occupy buildings that were working long before anyone lived in them.
The census lists the 31 whose records are source-verified: what each was built as, who designed it, and when it became homes. Every name links to the building’s full record — the history, the sourced facts, and any apartments currently on the market inside it. The rest join as their records are completed.
| Building | Built | Architect | Built as | Homes since | The short version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flinders House | 1870 | Charles Webb | warehouse | — | Charles Webb's 1870 warehouse for clothing manufacturers Banks Brothers, Bell & Co; later refurbished into apartments. |
| Currie and Richards Warehouse | — | — | tinware factory and warehouse | — | A 19th-century tinware factory and warehouse for Alfred Shaw & Co; its upper floors are now apartments. |
| Former Bank of Australasia | 1876 | Reed & Barnes | bank head office | — | Reed & Barnes's 1876 head office for the Bank of Australasia; now apartments known as Treasury on Collins. |
| Merigold on Collins | 1884 | Robert Haddon (1912 remodelling) | warehouse and office | — | Two 1884 Collins Street warehouses, refaced and raised by Robert Haddon in 1912; later converted to apartments. |
| Leicester House | 1886 | — | warehouse | — | An 1886 Gothic-style Victorian warehouse off Bligh Place; now holds 20 private residences. |
| 365 Little Bourke Street | 1887 | Twentyman & Askew | store and warehouse | — | Twentyman & Askew's 1887 store and warehouse for hardware merchant Thomas Warburton; now six apartments above a shop. |
| Indigo Loft Apartments | 1889 | Public Works Department of Victoria | police offices | 2004 | An 1889 police-offices wing on Mackenzie Street, built by the Public Works Department; converted to apartments in 2004. |
| Mutual Building | 1891 | Reed, Smart & Tappin | department store | 2006 | Reed, Smart & Tappin's 1891 Mutual Store, Melbourne's first department store; converted to apartments in 2006. |
| Grand Central Apartments | 1893 | Victorian Railways Department Engineering Office | railway administration offices | — | The Victorian Railways' 1893 head office on Spencer Street; became apartments and a hotel in the 1990s. |
| Rocke Tompsitt | 1908 | F. M. White and Son | warehouse and offices | 2000 | F. M. White & Son's 1908 warehouse and offices for druggists Rocke, Tompsitt & Co; converted to apartments in 2000. |
| Dover's Building | 1910 | Hugh Ralston Crawford | warehouse and cigarette factory | — | Hugh Ralston Crawford's 1910 warehouse and cigarette factory for tobacco firm Sniders & Abrahams; apartments since the 1990s. |
| Manchester House | 1912 | Bates, Peebles & Smart | rag-trade warehouse and showroom | — | Bates, Peebles & Smart's 1912 rag-trade warehouse and showroom for G & R Wills; apartments above the office floors. |
| Clyde House | 1915 | Nahum Barnet | office building | — | Nahum Barnet's 1915 Collins Street office building; later subdivided into apartments. |
| Shocko House | 1920 | — | commercial building with ground-floor retail | 1998 | A 1920 Edwardian building with street-level retail on Little Collins Street; upper floors converted to 16 apartments in 1998. |
| Herald Sun Building | 1921 | HW & FB Tomkins | newspaper headquarters | — | HW & FB Tomkins's 1921 headquarters for the Herald & Weekly Times; later converted to apartments. |
| Henty House | 1924 | W & R Butler | office building | 1996 | W & R Butler's 1924 office building for merchants James Henty & Co; converted to apartments in 1996. |
| Temple Court | 1924 | Grainger, Little, Barlow & Hawkins | office building | 2001 | Grainger, Little, Barlow & Hawkins's 1924 office building on Collins Street; converted to apartments in 2001. |
| 1 Exhibition | 1925 | H. Croxton Davey | office and retail building | 1993 | H. Croxton Davey's 1925 commercial building for the Victorian Cricket Association; apartments since 1993. |
| Cavendish House | 1927 | A & K Henderson | warehouse | 1994 | A & K Henderson's 1927 warehouse for softgoods firm Debenham's; converted to apartments in 1994. |
| Masonic Club | 1927 | Joseph Plottel | members' club over shops and offices | — | Joseph Plottel's 1927 Masonic Club building, with clubrooms above shops and offices; converted to apartments in the 1990s. |
| Sargood House | 1929 | Godfrey & Spowers | warehouse | 1998 | Godfrey & Spowers's 1929 Flinders Lane warehouse for Sargood Gardiner; Wood Marsh converted the upper floors to apartments in 1998. |
| The Georges Apartments | 1929 | — | department store | — | The 1929 flagship store of the Georges department store; a 1990s rebuild turned it into apartments, retail and offices. |
| Ashdowne House | 1940 | — | office building with ground-floor retail | — | A 1940 Neo-Georgian office building with ground-floor retail; converted to 14 apartments in the late 1990s. |
| Former Russell Street Police Headquarters | 1943 | Percy Everett | police headquarters | 2004 | Percy Everett's 1943 Victoria Police headquarters on Russell Street; converted to apartments in 2004. |
| Hero Apartments | 1954 | Commonwealth Department of Works | automatic telephone exchange and postal building | 2001 | The 1954 Russell Street automatic telephone exchange and postal building; Nonda Katsalidis converted it to apartments in 2001. |
| Centro | 1968 | Bogle & Banfield & Associates | office building | 1994 | Bogle & Banfield's 1968 office block, Gypsum House; converted to apartments in 1994. |
| 172 William Street | — | — | office building | — | A William Street office building withdrawn from the leasing market and converted to apartments in the late 1990s. |
| 349 Flinders Lane | — | — | warehouse and store | 1998 | A 19th-century Flinders Lane warehouse and store; converted to apartments above ground-floor retail in 1998. |
| Sackville House | — | — | warehouse | — | A six-storey interwar Flinders Lane warehouse used by clothing firm John Sackville; later converted to apartments by John Wardle. |
| The Philadelphia | — | — | office building | 2001 | A 1970s Spring Street office building whose frame was reused and extended into a residential tower, completed in 2001. |
| Victoria Hall | — | — | friendly-society lodge hall | 2001 | The former Independent Order of Oddfellows hall on Russell Street; converted to apartments in 2001. |
Method
The census covers the Heritage Melbourne building catalogue — Melbourne CBD, postcode 3000 — as at 17 July 2026. A building qualifies when its original use and its conversion to homes are both documented; where a date or architect could not be confirmed, the entry shows a dash rather than a guess. Facts are drawn from the Victorian Heritage Database, State Library Victoria collections, Trove, Public Record Office Victoria, and each building’s own sourced record on its profile page.
The census is maintained: new catalogue buildings are added as their records are verified, and corrections are welcome via the contact page.