Southern Cross Hotel

The Southern Cross Hotel was a hotel in Melbourne, Australia. It opened in 1962 as Australia's first modern 'International' hotel, heralding the arrival of American-style glamour, the jet-set and international tourism. It occupied a large site on Bourke Street in central Melbourne, formerly occupied by the grand Eastern Market, and was the premier hotel in the city into the early 1980s. The Southern Cross was the preferred hotel for celebrities in this period, most famously the Beatles in 1964, and the ballroom was the preferred location for locally and nationally important events.Closed in 1995 and partly demolished, the hotel tower remained standing and vacant until its demolition in 2003.HistoryThe half a city block site was occupied by the grand 1879 Eastern Market, and was owned by the City of Melbourne. Never having been successful as a food market, the structure had instead been the home of a variety of shops and entertainments, and by the 1950s it was seen as tawdry and outdated, and the Council began discussing what to do with the site.In the 1950s, US based hotels such as Hilton and the Pan Am owned InterContinental created the first international hotel chains, bringing US-style modernity to cities around the world. With the increasing use of faster jet planes, the concept of international travel as a glamorous activity for both tourism and business purposes developed through the late 50s and early 60s.In 1956, a vice president of Pan Am visited Melbourne to explore the prospect of opening an hotel, and began negotiations with the Council over the Eastern Market site. A deal was eventually arranged in which a local consortium in partnership with InterContinental would build the hotel, leasing the land from the Council for 99 years, while InterContinental would provide management. In 1960, the Los Angeles architects Welton Becket & Associates, in partnership withlocal architects Leslie M. Perrot & Partners, were chosen, and demolition of the market commenced that year.