Historic former Salvos building in Melbourne now a classy hotel

The hotel

Lanson Place Parliament Gardens, Melbourne

We see what you did there… the transformed Lanson Place Parliament Gardens.

Check-in

Thank God for the Salvos. And thank God, too, for Lanson Place, the Hong Kong-based hotel and serviced apartment brand, for its hand in repurposing the historic Salvation Army printing works building that’s become the group’s latest outpost and its first in Australia. Positioned in East Melbourne on the absolute edge of the Melbourne CBD, this five-star 137-room boutique-style bolthole is as far a rallying cry from the Salvos’ People’s Palace temperance hotels of yore as possible.

The look

The lobby with its ceiling/light installation.

From Albert Street opposite Parliament Gardens, you can’t miss the red-brick, early-19th-century Salvation Army structure with the modern addition of Denton Corker Marshall’s reflective glass tower, sensitively set back from its senior. Inside, amid the contemporary deep-blue and panda-white marble, there’s more than a little facadism at play in this first Australian project by London-based design firm Conran & Partners, offering few reminders of the printing works’ former life.

The hotel is adorned with no less than 300 commissioned artworks, the most conspicuous being a bold 40-metre lobby ceiling/light installation. Inspired by the Antipodes’ melaleuca paperbark tree, its sculptural effects make it appear to be shedding its papyrus layers, an abstract link to the building’s printing press role.

The room

Room with a view.

With an eye to the business traveller, Lanson Place’s properties are a mixture of conventional hotel rooms and serviced apartments, with your reviewer scoring one of the latter lodgings. My smartly furnished, well-equipped one-bedroom suite includes a kitchen and laundry amenities. But the showstopper is the superb day and night view of the city skyline, public gardens and significant civic buildings, including the neighbouring Roman Catholic St Patrick’s Cathedral, consecrated at the end of the 19th century. Really, who needs a bridge and an opera house?

Food + drink

Chronicle 502 Bar and Dining.

The hotel’s lobby is dominated by Chronicle 502 Bar and Dining, a relaxed eating and drinking hole, but, this being Melbourne, there’s stiff competition from the plethora of surrounding restaurants, bars and cafes. Chinatown, running along Little Bourke Street, begins near the hotel with Melbourne’s legendary Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar and Grossi Florentino restaurant a stroll away. Since your reviewer visited, Chris Lucas, the Melbourne culinary impresario, has opened his $45 million Batard restaurant complex at the top end of a seen-better-days Bourke Street.

Out + about

Lanson Place is perfectly placed right on the border of East Melbourne and stately Spring Street from which Collins and Bourke run. Straight across (mind the trams) from Parliament Gardens, is the mid-19th-century Princess Theatre where – each to their own – Tina, The Tina Turner Musical runs until early March. Take advantage of the free CBD trams for visits to other corners of the city such as the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Its latest blockbuster exhibition, Kusama, featuring the outlandish and inspired works of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, is on until April 21.

The verdict

The old Salvos printing plant soldiers on, but in an entirely new guise as Lanson Place, which has transformed a charming heritage pile into a genuinely smart and superbly situated addition to Melbourne’s five-star hotel stock.

Essentials

From $297 a night (conditions apply) for a king room. 502 Albert Street, East Melbourne, Vic. Phone [phone]. See lansonplace.com

Our rating out of five

★★★★½

Highlight

It’s more a pleasant discovery than an actual highlight, but there’s a bonus 20-metre-long heated lap pool squeezed into the first floor.

Lowlight

The hotel’s main laneway entrance off busy Nicholson Street is gritty, though not in a good way, no thanks to the rear of one of the hotel’s high-rise neighbours.

The writer stayed as a guest of the hotel.