11 Nov Parmelia House, 191 St Georges Terrace: Once Perth’s Tallest Building

Walk Past WA No. 3 · Concrete hoods and roofline fins, corner of St Georges Terrace & Mill Street, Perth

Look up at the corner of St Georges Terrace and Mill Street. Every window has its own angled concrete hood, hundreds of them, shading the glass from the WA sun floor after floor. Along the roofline, a row of pointed concrete fins crowns the tower.

Once the top of Perth

Easy to walk past, but for three years, from 1970 to 1973, this was the tallest building in Perth.

Hamersley House and the Parmelia Hotel

Built as Hamersley House and designed by Oldham Boas & Ednie-Brown, the practice behind the neighbouring Parmelia Hotel, Perth’s first truly international hotel. A lower-level arcade still links the two buildings.

A windbreak by Cedric Price

In the 1980s, the famous British architect Cedric Price drew up plans for a garden and fountain at the entrance, designed as a windbreak. Anyone who has walked the Terrace on a windy afternoon will understand why. His drawings now sit in an archive in Montreal.

Today it’s Parmelia House, still a working office tower, quietly holding a chapter of Perth’s skyline story.

Did you know this was once Perth’s tallest building?

Walk Past WA is a weekly series on the Western Australian buildings most of us walk past without noticing. One building each week, photographed by architect and photographer Boris Poznovia. This is No. 3.

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Follow the series on Instagram at @architecturephotography_wa.