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Gas and Fuel Buildings

This pair of 1960s office buildings on Flinders Street was publicly derided as the ugliest structure in Melbourne. The Princes Gate towers, tenanted by the Gas and Fuel Corporation, designed by architects Les Perrott & Associates, were completed in 1967, the only result of grander plans for a sweeping modernist redevelopment of the Jolimont railway yards. Overshadowing St Paul's Cathedral and dominating the vista of the city from the south, it was their position rather than their bland brown brick cladding that was their gravest fault. General public acclamation greeted their demolition in 1997.

Rohan Storey