Hotel Windsor (Melbourne)

The Waiter's Restaurant is an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, described as a "Melbourne institution". Founded in 1947 as the Italian Waiter's Club, it was initially a place for waiters (mainly of Italian and Spanish heritage) to have a meal, a drink and play cards after their work - in breach of the very strict liquor licensing laws in place at the time. As such it became popular with other late night workers such as reporters and policemen.The restaurant is located up a "steep flight of stairs [leading to] a plain white door" suggesting "a no-frills massage parlour rather than a no-frills Italian food joint".In 1978, the restaurant was the venue of a siege when Amos Atkinson, armed with two shotguns, held 30 people hostage and demanded the release of Melbourne underworld figure Mark "Chopper" Read, his criminal associate. After shots were fired the siege was lifted when Atkinson's mother, in her dressing gown, arrived at the restaurant to act as go-between. Atkinson's mother hit him over the head with her handbag and told him to stop being so stupid. Atkinson then surrendered.

Spring Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Australia. It runs roughly north-south and is the easternmost street in the original 1837 Hoddle Grid.Spring Street is famous as the traditional seat of the Government of Victoria, as well as being central to many of the state's major cultural institutions. The street's name is frequently used as a metonym to refer to the state's bureaucracy. Spring Street is also notable for its impressive Victorian architecture, including Melbourne Parliament House, the Old Treasury Building, the Windsor Hotel (also known as Duchess of Spring Street) and the Princess Theatre. The street is thought to be named after Baron Thomas Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne. An alternative theory is that the name is due to the golden wattle trees in full bloom during Richard Bourke's visit.

Parliament railway station is an underground railway station in Melbourne, Australia. It is one of the five stations (and one of the three underground) on the City Loop, which encircles the Melbourne CBD. In 2017/2018 it was the fourth busiest station on Melbourne's metropolitan network, with 10.19 million passenger movements.The station services Melbourne's government district, and is underneath Parliament House and the intersection of Bourke and Spring Streets, at the eastern end of the CBD, and is currently the world's southernmost underground railway station, but will be surpassed by Anzac station when the Metro Tunnel opens in 2025.

The Palace Theatre (also known as The Palace) was an entertainment venue located in Melbourne, Australia. First built for live theatre in 1912, it was also used as a cinema and for live music. It was demolished except for its facade in 2020 after much community opposition, to be replaced by a hotel.

The Parliament of Victoria is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of Victoria that follows a Westminster-derived parliamentary system. It consists of the Queen, represented by the Governor of Victoria, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. It has a fused executive drawn from members of both chambers. The parliament meets at Parliament House in the state capital Melbourne. The current Parliament was elected on 24 November 2018, sworn in on 19 December 2018 and is the 59th parliament in Victoria.The two Houses of Parliament have 128 members in total, 88 in the Legislative Assembly (lower house) and 40 in the Legislative Council (upper house). Victoria has compulsory voting and uses instant-runoff voting in single-member seats for the Legislative Assembly, and single transferable vote in multi-member seats for the proportionally represented Legislative Council. The council is described as a house of review. Majorities in the Legislative Council are rare, so the government of the day must negotiate with other parties to pass much of its legislative agenda. All members serve four-year terms. The parliament's functions and processes have evolved over time, undergoing significant changes as Victoria changed from an independent colony to a state within the federated Australia.The Parliament may make laws for any matter within Victoria, subject to the Victorian Constitution. Its power is further limited by the ability for the federal government to override it in some circumstances, subject to the Australian Constitution. Similarly, the Supreme Court of Victoria provides judicial oversight of Parliament and is vested with equal power. The parliament is also vested with other powers, such as the means to investigate matters, conduct research and summon witnesses.Government is formed by the party or parties who command confidence and supply within the Assembly. The leader of the governing party or parties is the Premier, the most senior elected member of Victoria's executive government. Victorians do not directly elect the Premier, and the leader of the majority party is appointed Premier by the Governor. Daniel Andrews has been the Premier since the Labor Party victory in the 2014 election.

Parliament House is the meeting place of the Parliament of Victoria, one of the parliaments of the Australian states and territories. Located on Spring Street on the edge of the Hoddle Grid, the grand colonnaded front dominates the vista up Bourke Street. Construction began in 1855, and the first stage was officially opened the following year, with various sections completed over the following decades; it has never been completed, and the planned dome is one of the most well known unbuilt features of Melbourne. Between 1901 and 1927, it served as the meeting place of the Parliament of Australia, during the period when Melbourne was the temporary national capital. The building is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

The Princess Theatre, originally Princess's Theatre, is a 1452-seat theatre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Established in 1854 and rebuilt in 1886 to a design by noted Melbourne architect William Pitt, it is the oldest surviving entertainment site on mainland Australia. Built in an elaborate Second Empire style, it reflects the opulence of the "Marvellous Melbourne" boom period, and had a number of innovative features, including state of the art electric stage lighting and the world's first sliding ceiling, which was rolled back on warm nights to give the effect of an open-air theatre. Located on Spring Street in Melbourne's East End Theatre District, it is listed by the National Trust of Australia and is on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Alcaston House, located on the corner of Melbourne's Collins and Spring St, rises seven levels over a basement, and is one Melbourne's first mixed-use Art Deco buildings. It was designed by the firm of architects, A. and K. Henderson and erected by T Donald and Co. in 1929-30. The Renaissance Revival complex was erected for the trustees of Dr EM James, whose home previously occupied the land. Located at 2 Collins St, Melbourne; it is amongst is an early example of multi-storey residential accommodation in the city at a time when the post-war preference for flat living in Europe and the USA was becoming manifest in Australia. The art deco building is directly opposite the Old Treasury Building and Victoria's Parliament Building.

Pellegrini's Espresso Bar is a café on Bourke Street in Melbourne, Australia, described as "one of Melbourne's most iconic destinations, in a city that prides itself on coffee and fine food". The café was established in 1954 by Leo and Vildo Pellegrini - brothers and migrants from Italy. The brothers had worked at Florentino's, a popular Italian restaurant on Bourke Street before establishing their own coffee bar nearby. The bar is claimed to be the first in Melbourne to use an espresso machine, although many cafés in the Italian-Australian neighbourhood of Lygon Street in Carlton acquired machines at around the same time.The café, originally tiny, expanded in 1958 and the heritage-listed neon sign at one stage pointed to a rear area on Crossley Street that is now closed. The café was originally patronised primarily by the Italian migrant community but soon became a popular spot for "theatre people, intellectuals and, eventually, tourists".Pellegrini's was sold to Nino Pangrazio and Sisto Malaspina in 1974, also Italian migrants. The new owners worked with the Pellegrini brothers for three months in the transition, to ensure that quality would be maintained. Pangrazio and Malaspina claim that little has changed in that time with the decor, the menu and the cooking style remaining the same. People said it would never be the same without the Pellegrini family running the place, but we had the same mindset as them. We just continued the way they had been. In 2014, Pellegrini's was inducted into the Good Café Guide Hall of Fame. The café is listed by the National Trust of Australia.Co-owner of the café, Sisto Malaspina, was murdered during the 2018 Melbourne stabbing attack, which prompted a significant outpouring of grief, with mourners leaving flowers and signing a tribute book to Malaspina. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who described Sisto Malaspina as a "Victorian icon", announced that Malaspina's family had accepted his offer of a state funeral. The City of Melbourne also confirmed it was considering suggestions to rename Crossley Street, which corners Pellegrini's in honour of Malaspina, telling The Age that "In the coming weeks, the City of Melbourne will consider a range of measures to recognise the life of Sisto Malaspina." A memorial table was installed on Bourke Street, outside the café, in his honour in 2020. It features the words "Sisto of Pelligrini's" and his portrait, alongside a plaque that reads, in part, ""The outpouring of grief that followed Sisto Malaspina's death during a terror-related incident in Bourke Street would have surprised Sisto more than anyone else. Yet the response made sense: Sisto loved Melbourne - and Melbourne loved him back." In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Sisto's son, David, and wife, Vicki, bought out Nino Pangrazio. David currently manages the café.

The Melbourne Club is a private social club established in 1838 and located at 36 Collins Street, Melbourne. The club is a symbol of Australia's British social heritage and was established at a gathering of 23 gentlemen on Saturday, 17 December 1838, and initially used John Pascoe Fawkner's hotel on the corner of Collins Street and Market Street. The Melbourne Club moved to new purpose-built premises at the eastern end of Collins Street, designed by Leonard Terry in Renaissance Revival style, in 1859. A dining room wing with a bay window was added at the western end in 1885, designed by Terry and Oakden. It includes, among other rooms, a library, main dining room, private dining room, breakfast room, billiard rooms, lawn room and bedrooms. The building is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.At the rear of the Club building is a private courtyard garden, maintained by arborist-horticulturalist John Fordham, which is also listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, and is the location of garden parties and private functions. The garden contains the largest plane tree in Victoria, according to the National Trust's Register of Significant Trees. The Melbourne Club does not allow female membership. The female-only Lyceum Club, located directly behind in Ridgway Place, enjoys views of the trees of the Melbourne Club's gardens.

East Melbourne was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria from 1859 to 1927. It was defined in the 1858 Electoral Act as: Commencing at that point on the north bank of the River Yarra Yarra intersected by a line passing through the centre of Elizabeth-street; thence north-westerly by a line passing through the centre of Elizabeth-street to Victoria-street; thence east by a line passing through the centre of Victoria-street and Victoria-parade to Gisborne-street; thence southward by the eastern side of Gisborne-street and a line bearing south to the River Yarra Yarra; and thence westerly by the north bank of the River Yarra Yarra to the commencing point.Initially the district was created with two members, this was reduced to one member from the Assembly elections of 1904.

The Southern Cross Hotel was a hotel in Melbourne, Australia. It opened in 1962 as Australia's first modern 'International' hotel, heralding the arrival of American-style glamour, the jet-set and international tourism. It occupied a large site on Bourke Street in central Melbourne, formerly occupied by the grand Eastern Market, and was the premier hotel in the city into the early 1980s. The Southern Cross was the preferred hotel for celebrities in this period, most famously The Beatles in 1964, and the ballroom was the preferred location for locally and nationally important events. Closed in 1995 and partly demolished, the hotel tower remained standing and vacant until its demolition in 2003.