The cast iron urinal in Victoria Square is modelled after an original in Queensberry Street, North Melbourne. It is one of more than forty, most with two stalls, erected by the Melbourne City Council between 1903 and 1918. The structures employed a prefabricated system which enabled the urinals to be assembled on site or dismantled and relocated if required.
The original cast iron urinals were made using a prefabricated system of interlocking cast iron panels and posts. The 600 mm square cast iron panels slotted between 70 mm diameter cast iron columns, fixed at the base to bluestone footings. At the centre of each cast iron panel is an eight-point star enclosing a smaller star, the whole bordered by a key pattern. The North Melbourne urinal is the only surviving one with four stalls, all of the others having only two.
The model is made from an internet photo manipulated in Photoshop and printed on 250 gr. Paper. The roofing is a small plastic rectangle of HO corrugated ‘iron’. At the moment the urinal is placed in Victoria Square covering a couple of too visible joints in the pavement.
