drawings

The People’s Palace was originally built as one of several temperance hotels in Australia and New Zealand by the Salvation Army, a Christian church and charitable organisation, to provide comfortable accommodation where alcohol was prohibited. The Salvation Army bought the Brisbane site, at the corner of Ann and Edward Streets in 1908, and assigned its in-house architect, Colonel Saunders, to design the hotel. When completed in 1911 the People's Palace was a substantial brick building. The building included three floors, basement, a prominent corner tower, and balconies overlooking the two streets. Three additional floors were added year or two later. The Salvation Army maintained operation into the 1970's when it leased the premises to a commercial hotel operator. Around 1985 the church adapted parts of the building to serve as offices for its social services. In 1996 the church sold the People's Palace building to the present owner, which is currently being leased and operated as a backpacker hostel. Source: kirk.studio/news/kirk-designs-new-life-into-brisbane-cbds...

I believe this building stood on the block bounded by Clark, Adams, Dearborn, and Jackson and was the first of three large US post offices to stand on this location. This building opened in 1879 and was razed in 1896 to make way for the Chicago Federal Building designed by Henry Ives Cobb, which was in turn destroyed in the 1960s to make way for the Mies van der Rohe federal complex on the site today. The HABS history of the Chicago PO can be found here: lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage For information on the Cobb building, see susanbarsy.com/2012/09/28/photo-friday/ and this entry on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Federal_Building

The Melbourne Cup was introduced in 1861 by the Victorian Turf Club to trump the success of Victorian Jockey Club races such as the Two Thousand Guineas. As a handicap race, the Melbourne Cup introduced a level of speculation that the club hoped would attract more entries and therefore higher prize money. The two competing organisations disbanded in 1864, before merging to form the Victorian Racing Club, which has controlled racing in Victoria and the Melbourne Cup ever since. Although the Melbourne Cup today is well-known in Australia for being run on the first Tuesday in November, this hasn’t always been the case. The 1866 Melbourne Cup race was run on a Thursday, and in 1867 the Cup was run in October. It wasn’t until 1875 that the race was run on the first Tuesday of November. Although the three-handled loving cup is widely recognised as the traditional cup design, this has only been the case since 1919. Before then the cups came in a variety of styles, with each year having a completely original design. Some years no trophy was presented at all. In fact, for the first few decades of the race, it was more common for no trophy to be awarded. Source: www.nma.gov.au/explore/collection/highlights/1866-melbour...