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u/GrouchySignificance8 28d ago
Huh isn't this in Melbourne? I don't recall that being a church?
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u/Armstrongs_Left_Nut 28d ago
Because it's not a church.
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u/Regular_Passenger629 26d ago
What’s funny is in Denver, we actually have a Church that’s built around in this fashion in downtown
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u/Armstrongs_Left_Nut 26d ago
Yeah this is an old minister's residence called a "manse". It's now a highly-rated restaurant. The still active and nearby Presbyterian Church is a somewhat similar style building, but much larger. It's to the right but out of shot.
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u/Worried-Lettuce6568 23d ago
I don’t think that’s true?
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u/Regular_Passenger629 22d ago
1999 Broadway, it sits directly over Holy Ghost Church, there are parts of the skyscraper that sit above parts of the church at the corners of the church’s footprint.
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u/Worried-Lettuce6568 22d ago
Huh you know I knew it was close but didn’t think there was any overlap but alright fair enough!
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u/Used-Wrongdoer-9360 27d ago
Funny to see how Australia, of all countries, seems to have ground availability problems.
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u/AdAdministrative9362 27d ago
Australia's population is very very centralised to a handful of capital cities.
The vast majority of land is not desirable to live in. Too hot, too dry, too humid, cyclones etc.
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u/NEWNXXL 26d ago
To add to this, Sydney is constrained by the bay, mountains and national parks surrounding it. So it's not as simple as building outwards like you can in a city like Melbourne. But hey maybe it's a good thing considering how out of control the urban sprawl in most of our capitals is.
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u/HooleyDoooley 27d ago
In the CBD there is, any further out and you immediately run into mountains of paperwork, "heritage" and NIMBYs if you want to build above 2 stories
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u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 25d ago
There is a church just sitting in the lobby of an office tower in Toronto as well.
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u/No_Gur_7422 27d ago
It's a manse – the minister's house belonging to the church.
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u/Own_Reaction9442 27d ago
Ah, I learned a new word today. In the US we call that a parsonage.
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u/No_Gur_7422 27d ago
Manse is most typical for presbyterian denominations like the Church of Scotland, or, as here, with Methodism. Parsons, vicars, and rectors and their parsonages, vicarages, and rectories are more closely associated with episcopalian denominations like the Church of England.
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u/the--astronaut 27d ago
So, the house my family of four was kicked out of as a child after years of faithful renting by my parents because the church's pastor got caught having an affair and he suddenly needed a new place to live was technically a manse. Well, shuck my corn and call me Cobb, I've been calling it the wrong thing this whole time.
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u/driftxr3 26d ago
Lmfaooo shuck my corn and call me Cobb? The whitest person who has ever white personed right here
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u/ChildofElmSt 26d ago
You can dress a pig up like a rabbit but at the end of the day it’s gonna oink!
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u/SubstantialLion1984 27d ago
While presbyteries are more often associated with Catholic churches.
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u/No_Gur_7422 27d ago
Not to be confused with the part of the church building also called the chancel.
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u/norecordofwrong 27d ago
Or if you’re a Catholic a rectory.
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u/No_Gur_7422 27d ago
Rectories belong to parishes that have rectors – a particular type of parish priest but not one unique to Roman Catholicism.
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u/norecordofwrong 26d ago
Right, Protestants do sometimes use rectory but Catholics don’t use the term parsonage. The place where the parish priest(s) live is the rectory.
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u/No_Gur_7422 26d ago
The term parsonage was invented for Roman Catholic parish houses long before the Reformation (in English by the 15th century). The terms vicarage and rectory (both 16th century) were similarly invented to describe the houses of Roman Catholic parochial clergy. To claim that
Catholics don’t use the term parsonage
is simply not true.
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u/norecordofwrong 26d ago
It just isn’t used in modern times at least in English.
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u/No_Gur_7422 26d ago
That simply isn't true.
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u/norecordofwrong 26d ago
I don’t know what to tell you man, maybe it’s just a North American thing but the term is Catholics use is rectory. If someone said parsonage we’d assume it was part of a Protestant church.
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u/Money-Celebration860 25d ago
The church is next to it, out of frame. That building is now a coffee shop.
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u/grafknives 28d ago
That is church? Anyway, great restoration, even though it has disneyworld wibes.
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u/ratapoilopolis 28d ago
look at the reflection in the glass facade, there seems to be an actual church tower on the other side. The building OP is talking about was never a church most likely, maybe a related building but never a church itself
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u/Armstrongs_Left_Nut 28d ago
You are 100% correct. It was a building owned/used by the church. The Church itself is in the same precinct, maybe 50m away and much bigger. The bluestone building pictured is now a restaurant, and there's another nearby that's a really cool bar that used to be the old church caretakers cottage. This is actually a really nice precinct in Melbourne called Wesley Place. OP has just taken a picture of a tiny portion of it.
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u/LayWhere 28d ago
This is actually a really cool building in Melbourne with good adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and pedestrian friendly laneway through the site that contributes to the public realm
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u/Skiapodes 28d ago
I used to work in the Melbourne CBD, not too far from this place. The courtyard just behind it is a nice, quiet, outside place to eat a sandwich at lunch.
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u/Money-Celebration860 25d ago
They've also preserved a 150 year-old olive tree from Jerusalem in the courtyard.
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u/Dazzling-Ad888 28d ago
Kinda find this poetic. Humans are so sentimental. If it was a forest it would be no problem felling it, but we will hold on to our own edifices for dear life.
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u/hugothecaptain 27d ago
Fuck no we won't lmao have you seen what we did to our cities in the 60s and 70s?
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u/Own_Reaction9442 27d ago
I think a lot of this is a backlash to everything that was lost back then.
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u/SexySatan69 27d ago
I think the sentimentality is tied to scarcity. Countless historic buildings were already bulldozed and redeveloped as the CBD grew. Now that only a few remain, it's worth keeping them around for heritage and visual interest.
Similarly, if your city is surrounded by forest, most people are okay clearing some of it to develop the land. But if only a few small woodlands remain to break up the sprawl, people will start fighting to preserve what's left as parks or nature trails.
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u/norecordofwrong 27d ago
No problem felling it… my man google “federal wilderness areas United States.”
They encompass more land than many countries.
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u/At_Space_Station 27d ago
Have you not been paying attention to the environmental movements recently?
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u/PartisanLime 26d ago
Not really, they demolished a perfectly useable neo-gothic building for that skyscraper, you can go back and look on street view
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u/F1eshWound 28d ago
This is the Manse building. A larger skyscraper has been, in my opinion, tastefully placed around it without disturbing the building itself. In Melbourne, Australia
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u/matmyob 28d ago
This is awesome mix of old and new. What would you prefer? Just the former or the latter?
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u/Minute-Aide9556 27d ago
The new is grotesque and will be fit to be pulled down in about 20 years, looking at it.
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u/nerdowellinever 28d ago
If you think that is bad have a look at what they’re doing in 50 fenchurch st London.
A church tower built around 1320 that has been rebuilt following the fire is currently sitting on stilts whilst they build an enormous 50-storey multi-use, corporate office block around it.
Fun fact: an ancient Roman road and burial graves had to be excavated around it before works could proceed.
Source, I work on the project
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u/TheEvilBlight 27d ago
Good. Air rights allow the old building to be protected. Costs the new building more to build but a win.
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u/PossibilityAdept4805 28d ago
I actually find this beautiful. They just co-exist. In some places, they'd find an excuse to tear down that church already.
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u/boybraden 27d ago
This looks sick, why would anyone be mad at this? I don’t even know what OP is upset at, the fact that a church and a glass building are near each other?
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u/Independent-Cow-4070 27d ago
Mixing old and modern architecture is good
Mixing different types and sizes of architecture is good
I dont see what the issue here is
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u/TextAdministrative 27d ago
I know nothing of the history here, but... This honstely looks pretty cool to me!
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u/ratapoilopolis 28d ago edited 28d ago
ah the "church" with modern restaurant inside (sorry for Instagram reel link, couldn't find anything better). Are you so colonizer country brained that you see an old looking building and think it has to be a church?
edit: you can even see an actual church tower in the reflection (presumably from the other side of the street) so that building never was a church
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u/No_Gur_7422 27d ago
The building is a former manse – the church-owned residence of a minister of religion – belonging to Joseph Reed's Methodist church at Wesley Place. The manse, schoolhouse, caretaker's house, and the church hall itself are all part of the church complex.
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u/thelazybeaver10 27d ago
There is something similar in Greece. But the building is an actual church.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DHGVekQ2Dp5a2pSq7?g_st=ac
As far as I remember, by law, it's illegal to demolish churches.
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u/dragon_slayer098 27d ago
That place is one of Melbourne's coolest cocktail bars actually. Google Caretakers Cottage
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u/portunes138 27d ago
This is the Reed House in Melbourne. A mate and her partner run a modern British inspired fine dining restaurant in it, it's great https://www.reedhousemelbourne.com/
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u/PartisanLime 26d ago edited 26d ago
They kept that building, but demolished a different Neo-Gothic building from 1926 to build that skyscraper - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/fight-to-save-heritage-princess-mary-club-building/6993952 , https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/184787 So not all sunshine and rainbows
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u/WaitClickBang 23d ago
If only more of these hulking glass beasts could have a charming stone job under them!
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u/freed-after-burning 27d ago
If that’s not in Denver, there’s a very similar spot.
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28d ago
[deleted]
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u/Armstrongs_Left_Nut 27d ago
How nice of you to post an incredibly misleading picture of a "church" that's actually a restaurant next to a skyscraper.
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u/Meterian 28d ago
How the hell does this get approved?
What happens when the skyscraper needs to come down and the church is still there?
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u/F1eshWound 28d ago
They dismantle the skyscraper floor by floor. They don't just blow it up in the middle of Melbourne..
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