Riverside Centre is a heritage-listed office building at 123 Eagle Street, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Harry Seidler, and was built in 1986. Completed in 1986, it contains 40 storeys and rises above ground. The building is owned by GPT. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 December 2023.
The base of the building fronts the Brisbane River with a CityCat wharf, has many cafes and restaurants. The Riverwalk, which links the central business district to suburbs both up and down the Brisbane river was built between the water and the public space surrounding the skyscraper.
The open plaza and steps at the tower base is a recommended viewing point for the Riverfire celebrations. It formerly held the Brisbane Stock exchange. Norman Carlberg was the sculptor who collaborated with Seidler on works for the Riverside project.
The site was initially a cemetery. It was later occupied by low level buildings attached to wharves.
Riparian Plaza, the second major building in Brisbane designed by Seidler, was completed in 2005 and is located near the Riverside Centre. One One One Eagle Street is located between the two buildings.
History Completed in 1986, Riverside Centre was designed as development company Lend Lease's principal project for the 1980s. It was built during a boom in office tower construction in Brisbane, including the emerging heart of the financial district between Queen and Edward streets. Designed by internationally renowned architect Harry Seidler in 1983, the $200-plus million development included a 40-storey office tower, a plaza providing open-air public space with access to the Brisbane River, and entertainment, food and transport facilities. Riverside Centre became home of the Brisbane Stock Exchange, with a purpose-built bourse on the lower office levels. It also became a popular centre for recreation, as Brisbane's social focus was increasingly oriented towards the outdoors and the river.
Growth of the Brisbane Central Business District Part of the traditional lands of the Turrbal and Yuggerah people, the colonial occupation of Brisbane began with the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement (1824), before the area was opened for free settlement in 1842. Established on the site of the former penal colony, Brisbane then was encircled by two reaches of the Brisbane River, and was declared a port of entry in 1846. It became the capital of the colony of Queensland in 1859, and was proclaimed a city in 1902.
The expansion of the colonial economy and related shipping activity from the 1840s shaped the need for buildings in Brisbane to house office-based work, banking, and insurance.Graham De Gruchy, Architecture in Brisbane, Brisbane: Boolarong Publications with Kookaburra Books, 1988, p.88. Brisbane developed as Queensland's commercial and financial centre and its major port, hosting the headquarters for the colony's principal businesses, financial institutions, shipping companies and government. Its buildings were erected largely in economic boom periods in the central business district (CBD) in the 1860s, the 1880s and the 1920s. These were clustered into precincts, with most of the government buildings erected along George Street, the retail and financial district stretching down Queen Street, and a shipping, wharf, and warehouse precinct along the Town Reach, the riverfront between the Botanic Gardens and the Kangaroo Point bend. Surviving wharf and warehouse buildings in this precinct include AUSN House (Naldham House) (1870s), the Port Office (1880), the Brisbane Customs House (1889), Naval Offices (1901), and Smellie & Co's warehouses (1888, 1887 and 1896).John R Cole, Shaping a City: Greater Brisbane 1925-1985, Eagle Farm: William Brooks Queensland, 1984, pp.238-239Queensland Government, Plan of Municipal & Birkbeck's Wharves, 1896, Cat. No. B3 266Plan of Eagle Street Wharves, 1896, Cat. No. B3 267Plan of AUSN Company's Wharves, 1896, Cat. No. B3 268
In the early 1920s, most of the Brisbane central business district's buildings reached only one or two storeys (including residences), with warehouses up to three and four storeys, and a small number of commercial buildings extending up to eight storeys (such as Perry House, built in 1910).Graham De Gruchy, Architecture in Brisbane, Brisbane: Boolarong Publications with Kookaburra Books, 1988, p.88 The 1920s boom brought taller buildings, but in 1926, building heights were restricted to a maximum of , or eleven storeys. The maximum height could only be achieved for buildings of fireproof construction, in streets wider than ; otherwise lower limits applied. Churches, chapels, ornamental towers, domes, and decorative architectural features could exceed that limit."Height of buildings", Daily Mail, Tuesday 15 June 1926, p.16. Accordingly, financial buildings along Queen Street were erected up to ten storeys during the 1920s and 1930s, but most of the CBD's buildings were lower, including the six-storey Finney Isles store (1936), seven-storey National Mutual Life Association Building (1926), seven-storey National Bank of Australasia (1930), and ten-storey Colonial Mutual Life Building (1931). By the time construction work was halted for the outbreak of World War II, the Brisbane City Hall clock tower was the tallest structure in the CBD, being high.Vivien Harris, "From town to metropolis: Contemporary visions of Brisbane", in Fisher and Shaw (eds), Brisbane: People, Places and Progress, Brisbane History Group Paper No. 14, Brisbane: Brisbane History Group, 1995, pp.132-147, at p.134Graham De Gruchy, Architecture in Brisbane, Brisbane: Boolarong Publications with Kookaburra Books, 1988, pp.88-89'278ft tower', Brisbane Courier, Friday 13 July 1928, p.21.
The rise of the office tower The second half of the twentieth century brought considerable change to the Brisbane CBD. Brisbane's population climbed to half a million in the late 1940s, overtaking Adelaide as Australia's third largest city.Susan Marsden, Urban heritage: the rise and postwar development of Australia's capital city centres, Canberra: Australian Council of National Trusts and the Australian Heritage Commission, 2000, p.34John R Cole, Shaping a City: Greater Brisbane 1925-1985, Eagle Farm: William Brooks Queensland, 1984, p.159. The CBD's first postwar office building, an eleven-storey curtain wall modern office block for MLC, was completed in 1956, though a credit squeeze limited further construction for the next several years. Between 1950 and 1965 few office highrise buildings were constructed in Brisbane. These included: Mutual Life & Citizens (MLC) Insurance Building, the first curtain-wall high-rise building in Queensland (Bates Smart & McCutcheon, in association with Conrad Gargett, 1956), Friendly Society Building (1957), and Taxation Building (1961). These all stood below the height limit.John Macarthur, Deborah Van Der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Andrew Wilson (eds), Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945-1975, London: Artifice books on architecture, c.2015, p.172Susan Stewart and Jennifer Taylor, "The Building and the City", in Jennifer Taylor and Susan Stewart, Tall Buildings: Australian Business Going up: 1945-1970, Sydney: Fine Art Publishing Pty Ltd in conjunction with Architecture Media Pty Ltd, 2001, pp.93-111, at p.108. Shopping centres were built in the suburbs and shipping facilities moved further downstream towards the river mouth, leaving the CBD's traditional retail and wharfing precincts in decline.John R Cole, Shaping a City: Greater Brisbane 1925-1985, Eagle Farm: William Brooks Queensland, 1984, p.238 The shift of the wharves occurred in port cities worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century, as small inner-city wharves could no longer accommodate larger ships nor containerisation facilities. In Brisbane, additionally, the Kangaroo Point bend was too difficult for large ships to handle. Port facilities were relocated downstream from the 1940s, and ultimately the Port of Brisbane was built near the mouth of the river.Glen Lewis, A History of the Ports of Queensland: A Study in Economic Nationalism, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1973, pp.247-251 However, Queensland's mining and property industries boomed in the 1960s and 1980s, encouraging investment into the state. This, accompanied by governmental encouragement of private enterprise, favourable development policies and the removal of building height restrictions under Brisbane's first Town Plan in 1965, increased business in Brisbane's CBD.John R Cole, Shaping a City: Greater Brisbane 1925-1985, Eagle Farm: William Brooks Queensland, 1984, p.222GF de Gruchy, A study of change in the built environment with special reference to urban and architectural design in Brisbane's central business district core and core periphery: A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Queensland, April 1977, Vol. 1, pp.161-162.Susan Marsden, Urban heritage: the rise and postwar development of Australia's capital city centres, Canberra: Australian Council of National Trusts and the Australian Heritage Commission, 2000, p.47John Wanna and Janice Caulfield, "Brisbane: A City in Transition" in Janice Caulfield and John Wanna (eds), Power and Politics in the City: Brisbane in Transition, South Melbourne: Macmillan Education Australia Pty Ltd, 1995, p.40. High-rise offices were constructed across the CBD to meet demand from Queensland's growing tertiary industries, particularly finance (including banking, insurance and assurance, and merchant banking); government; and to serve as state headquarters for Queensland's agricultural, pastoral and mining companies. This private development was accompanied by a city-wide council-led program to modernise Brisbane, by providing or upgrading public facilities, roads, sewerage systems, and undertaking beautification projects:John R Cole, Shaping a City: Greater Brisbane 1925-1985, Eagle Farm: William Brooks Queensland, 1984, pp.239-240City of Brisbane Town Plan, Queensland Government Gazette, Vol. 220 No. 73, 21 December 1965, pp.1777-1846Graham De Gruchy, University of Queensland Thesis, 'A study of change in the built environment with special reference to urban and architectural design in Brisbane's central business district core and core periphery', 1977, pp.160-62, 173-74, 263-65Graham De Gruchy, Architecture in Brisbane, Bowen Hills, Qld: Boolarong Publications with Kookaburra Books, 1988, p. 90Ross Fitzgerald, Lyndon Megarrity and David Symonds, Made in Queensland: A new history, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009, pp.146-147Jennifer Taylor, Tall Buildings: Australian Business Going Up, 1945-1970, Sydney, NSW: Craftsman House, 2001, p.24Arthur Smout and Vic Anderson, 1824-1974: Brisbane Sesqui-Centenary Official Souvenir Book, Brisbane: Courier-Mail Printing Service, 1974, pp.76-77.