National Australia Bank, Heritage bank building in Brisbane, Australia.
The National Australia Bank at 180 Queen Street is a seven-storey building with a steel frame, reinforced concrete floors and roof, and brick walls faced with sandstone. Its Classical Revival facade is divided into five vertical bays; the three central bays have giant order pilasters rising from above the ground floor to the cornice, and the upper openings are semicircular arches with balconies. The sandstone came from Yangan, Queensland, and the granite plinth from Uralla, New South Wales.
Built in 1929–1930, the bank replaced an 1891 Royal Bank of Queensland building on the site. The Royal Bank merged in 1917 with the Bank of North Queensland to form the Bank of Queensland, which the National Bank of Australasia absorbed in 1922. Melbourne architects A & K Henderson designed the new bank with local firm Atkinson, Powell & Conrad; G A Stronach was contractor, with technical advice from Thomas Walker Pearce. It opened on 6 May 1930 and served as the National Bank's Queensland head office until 1948.
The building was among the first bank structures in Brisbane to dedicate a full banking section and lounge exclusively for women customers. These spaces reflected how banks of that era sought to attract and serve female patrons with special consideration.
The building stands at 180 Queen Street, its main facade facing the street between the adjoining Finney Isles & Co Building and neighbouring commercial premises. The ground floor is now occupied by Louis Vuitton, so the banking chamber, marble-lined vestibule and lift lobby are seen only by shoppers and staff. The Yangan sandstone and Uralla granite front, the Doric columns and the bronze entrance doors can be examined from the public footpath.
The bronze entrance doors were exceptionally detailed and crafted with high-quality workmanship when originally installed. The building featured separate elevator systems to serve different groups of occupants, a practical separation that reveals how social organization shaped the building's inner workings.
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