Majorca Building, Commercial building in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Australia

The Majorca Building is an eight-story commercial structure on Flinders Lane in Melbourne, completed in 1930 and featuring a deep blue and buff-colored faience exterior with fish and shell decorative motifs. The design incorporates Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco elements, with retail spaces below and residential apartments above following its 1993 conversion.

The Majorca Building Co. was formed in 1927 by Alfred and George Nicholas, who made their fortune from Aspro and had already commissioned Norris for the nearby Nicholas Building in 1926. Construction ran from 1928 to 1930, and when the building neared completion in August 1929 it was hailed as an important change in the beauty of Melbourne's architecture. In 1993 the offices and shops were converted into apartments.

The building's name references Spanish architectural traditions, and its detailed tilework shows how Melbourne welcomed international design influences during the 1930s. Walking past it, you notice how the decorative fish and shell patterns catch light differently at various times of day, adding movement to what is essentially a shopfront.

The building stands at 258-260 Flinders Lane, at the corner of Centre Place, and closes the view north along Degraves Street. Both laneways connect Flinders Street station to Collins Street, so the spot is busy with pedestrians. A ground-floor shop opens to the street; the upper floors are private apartments, visible only from outside.

The vivid blue faience exterior was originally a technical experiment in glazed tilework, a technique still uncommon for large buildings in Australia during the 1930s. This choice made the structure an early adopter of glazed terracotta for durability and color retention.