The Block Arcade

This guide to the Block Arcade in Melbourne opens with a 1889 fire that gutted Georges Emporium on Collins Street, and the property speculator, Benjamin Fink, who bought the smoking ruins within months. You'll hear about Fink's gold fortune, his bet on an L-shaped arcade modeled on Milan's grand galleries, and the mosaic-tiled ritual of doing the block that he wanted this stretch of Collins Street to become. It traces the arcade's opening in 1893, at a moment Melbourne's economy was already turning.