Sniders & Abrahams Building, Melbourne
Sniders and Abrahams were a cigar and cigarette manufacturing business founded in Melbourne in 1870. In 1908 the business decided to construct a new fire and burglar proof factory at 7 Drewery Lane, Melbourne to house 900 women to make, by hand, cigarettes for the company.
Engineer/Architect Hugh Ralston Crawford was engaged to design and construct the building. The building was originally to be a conventional reinforced concrete beam and slab building using square twist reinforcement. In 1909 Crawford became the Australian representative for the Turner Mushroom System of Reinforced Concrete and the design was changed to this flat slab form of construction.
The Turner Mushroom System was developed by Claude Allen Porter Turner and first utilised for the construction of the Johnson-Bovey building in Minneapolis, USA, in 1905-06. The main feature of the system was the substantial shear head at the columns with a diameter of approximately half of the span.
Turner developed the system due to his principal design concern was the ability of concrete to resist shear forces. A patent for the system was filed in 1907 and was granted in 1911. Between 1906 and 1909 Turner designed more than 30 buildings in the USA using his Turner Mushroom System of flat slab construction.
When completed in 1910, the Sniders and Abrahams building was claimed to be the first wholly reinforced concrete building in Melbourne and was the first building constructed in Australia using the Turner Mushroom System.
A second-floor slab was load tested to prove its adequacy as the building code of the day did not include reinforced concrete flat slabs. The Turner Mushroom System was recognised in the buildings codes in Australia in 1917.
In 1938 Crawford designed the addition of two storeys using the Turner Mushroom System. Crawford designed numerous other buildings using the Turner Mushroom System including automatic telephone exchanges, office buildings, warehouses and banks.
7 Drewery Lane is now used as residential apartments and is the third oldest building still existing in the world, that was constructed using the Turner Mushroom System.
Engineering Heritage Recognition Program
| Marker Type | Engineering Heritage Marker (EHM) |
| Award Date | October 2019 |
| Heritage Significance | First wholly reinforced concrete building in Melbourne. Used teh Turner Mushroom System of reinforced concrete. |
| Nomination Document | Available here. |
| Ceremony Booklet Ceremony Report |
Not available |
| Plaque/Interpretation Panel | Not available. |
