Curiosities

• During Princess Diana's visit to Hamer Hall in 1993 a private bathroom was built in the Cadbury-Schweppes Lounge to accommodate her needs. Guests at interval drinks can now use these facilities - giving a new meaning to a 'royal flush!'.
• St Kilda born architect Sir Roy Grounds spent two years during the Great Depression building film sets for RKO and MGM. Back in Melbourne, during the war Grounds had a stint as a pig-farmer.
• The Victorian Arts Centre Act was passed on 6 April 1972 marking the official birth of the Arts Centre.
• During the excavation of Snowden Gardens, the site on which Hamer Hall now sits, builders found old bottles, clay pipes, roller skates and the wooden remains thought to be from the old Princes Bridge. The site was once Melbourne's rubbish tip.
• Theatre Designer John Truscott, winner of two Academy Awards, returned to Melbourne to work out of the (now demolished) YMCA site to create his lustrous interiors of the Theatres Building and Melbourne Concert Hall. The stone like finishes on the wall of the concert hall took eighteen months to complete and were all hand painted.

Interior of Hamer Hall

Image: the Arts Centre's Performing Arts Collection