Old Quad

In 1844, nine years before the University of Melbourne was established, the merchant and politician William Westgarth found himself lost in the scrub north of Melbourne while riding home late one night. Drawn to the light of campfires that were burning along a creek, he encountered a group of Wurundjeri people. The Old Quad was built on that site, in 1854, and is now the oldest building on campus. Built in Tudor Gothic style, the building was originally considered by those such as Westgarth to be “bringing light” to a “primitive colony”. As campus historian James Waghorne points out, “He missed the irony that on this occasion it was the Wurundjeri people who provided the light and who obligingly pointed the hapless Westgarth down the hill towards his home.”

This site is also credited as an important site in the birth of the Labour movement, when Stonemasons walked off the job in 1856 and marched to Parliament House on Spring Street. Coincidentally, Labour Day is not a University holiday.

Originally built to house professors, the Old Quad was also home to the Princess Ida Club, founded in 1888 by the first generation of female students at the University of Melbourne. The club was established as a way to “promote the common interests of, and to form a bond of union between the present and past women students”. The clubhouse motto was, “let no man enter upon pain of death.”

The Princess Ida Parlour 1897

Today the Old Quad is home to the Robert Menzies Institute and has a gallery space that is often open for exhibitions.

To learn more, visit https://about.unimelb.edu.au/old-quad