Baldwin Spencer Building, Victorian Heritage Register building at University of Melbourne, Australia
The Baldwin Spencer Building, also called Building 113, is a Gothic Revival teaching facility at 152-292 Grattan Street on the University of Melbourne's Parkville Campus. Its rough-hewn freestone walls, buttresses and conical-roofed turret with spiral stair follow designs by Reed Henderson and Smart. Inside, the 1888 tiered lecture theatre with wooden seating and desks survives, along with a library ceiling of panelled timber, chamfered beams and cast-iron columns.
Built in 1887–1888 as the Biology Building, it was designed by Reed Henderson and Smart from drawings submitted by Walter Baldwin Spencer, the university's first professor of biology. In 1920 the School of Biology became the School of Zoology and the building took Spencer's name. It was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register on 24 June 1992.
The building reflects how science was taught in the late 1800s, with its large lecture theater designed for groups of students to gather and study together. The tall windows and spatial layout show the importance given to observation and collaborative learning in those times.
The building stands at 152-292 Grattan Street on the Parkville campus, near the paved and grassed area now called Union Lawn. It now houses a student service centre and lounges on the ground floor, with individual and group study spaces above. The 1888 lecture theatre was kept in the 2011 Woods Bagot redevelopment.
The structure preserves many original interior elements from the 1880s, including its staircases unchanged from when the building first opened. Behind the main structure lay a greenhouse with animal compounds that once served the hands-on teaching and research needs of early biology students.
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