National Mutual building (former), Queen St

One of the advantages of a Queen St frontage is that many of the city's ceremonial pieces take place right outside. So it is with today's building, the former National Mutual building. It is situated near the GPO and next to the former CML building, both of which we have already seen in these pages. In the first photo from yesteryear, a large crowd is crammed into Queen St to watch an American fleet march in 1941 - the awning of the National Mutual building is in the background.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #106194)

And an earlier photograph from the Brisbane Courier of 1933 shows the busy Queen St traffic of the day - the National Mutual building is the one with the second awning from the bottom.
(Photograph: Brisbane Courier)

The land on which the building stands was purchased by National Mutual in 1883, and on it they built their first Queensland headquarters. That building was demolished to allow for the construction of the new seven-storey offices in 1926. The architects were Gibbs, Finlay and Morsby and the builder J Green.

(Photo: © 2011 the foto fanatic)

National Mutual occupied the building until 1981, when they moved to a new tower built in Edward St during the height of the battle between National Mutual and AMP for dominance of the Australian life insurance market. National Mutual subsequently demutualised and was picked up by Axa from Europe, but they have recently sold out to, ironically, AMP.

This building became the office of Custom Credit, but more recently was bought by Queensland based mega-sized bancassurance company Suncorp.

Click here for a Google Map.

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