Coops Shot Tower
A preserved historic building in the heart of Melbourne. Shot towers were built for the production of shot balls by free falling lumps of molten lead, which was then caught in a water basin. The shot was used for projectiles in firearms. The Coops Shot Tower is located in the heart of the Melbourne CBD. Make sure you visit the small but interesting museum on the mezzanine floor which tells the history of the tower and reveals the entranceway to the top of the tower, which is accessible by internal staircase (327steps).
Completed by the Coops family in 1890 to a height of 50 metres, this historic romanesque tower was saved from demolition in 1973 and incorporated into the massive Melbourne Central complex underneath an 84 metre high conical glass roof. Suspended from the dome is a hot-air balloon and a fob-watch that entertains shoppers on the hour with traditional Australian folk-songs.
Location: Melbourne Central, Lonsdale Street and La Trobe Sts, Melbourne.
The Coop's Shot Tower inside Melbourne Central is one of the most photographed buildings in Melbourne. It was the tallest building in Melbourne's CBD until the mid-1940s, and has become one of the city's most enduring landmarks. But it's also one of the most significant buildings in Australia s industrial history. The Coop's Shot Tower is one of only three 19th century shot towers remaining in Australia - the oldest (and the only one you can climb) is in Taroona, Hobart; the tallest is just five kilometres away in Clifton Hill. Thanks to the shopping centre built around it during the 1980s, the Coop's Shot Tower is the best preserved. Inside the second floor of the tower, Melbourne Central's Shot Tower Museum has the low-down on the history of shot manufacture.
Shot is made from lead, and is much favoured by small game hunters. All the lead used at the Coop's Shot Tower came from Port Pirie in South Australia, where it was mined from the ground and carted by train to Melbourne. A typically price-volatile metal, lead was sometimes bought in bulk and stockpiled on the first floor of the buildings that you can see flanking the tower.
Historic photograph: Thomas O.G. Mahood, photographer, 1920. Source: State Library of Victoria.
On a shot-making day, the shot maker would load the pig iron (in the form of lead bars) into a bucket on the second floor. He'd then take the 300-odd stairs to the top of the tower, where he would use a pulley to haul the lead to the top. There, he d fire up a gas ring vat and melt the lead, which boils at a reasonably low 118 degrees Celsius. Then he would ladle the molten lead into a colander and the lead would fall 132 feet into a vat of water on the second floor. By the time it hit the water, the molten lead would have cooled into spheres of lead shot, which were then shovelled into rolling machine dryers (each punched with holes for auto-sizing) on its way to being packed into bags, ready for despatch and use in shotguns, on scales, in pin ball machines and puzzle games and even as ships ballast.
Some 25 million individual shot pellets could be produced every hour, but the Coop family didn't just make shot here. They made all manner of lead products from old-fashioned weights to nails and solder, as well as the stair grips for Melbourne's trams and all of the lead pipe that was used to encase the city's first electricity system. The Coops were a busy family and their plumbing supplies business and shot tower was a family-run business from the day James Coop the elder stepped off the boat in 1855. At the time, Melbourne was gripped by gold fever. The population had ballooned from 30,000 to 130,000 in just five years. James Coop, however, was no fool for gold he had come to supply the burgeoning colony with that most essential of needs: plumbing.
Initially operating from a little shop on Collins Street adjacent to the Regent Theatre, James Coop's business grew quickly and by 1868 he moved to larger premises on Knox Place in the city's manufacturing precinct. The network of lanes that once snaked between Swanston and Elizabeth, Lonsdale and La Trobe streets was home to ironmongers, clothiers, cigar makers, hoteliers, tailors, jewellers, confectioners, furniture makers, coach builders and much more besides. This was the working heart of the city at the time, and the Coops were right at the centre of it.
By the 1880s, James's son Walter was running the show with his own son, also named Walter. The rich gold deposits and the mass immigration that the gold rush inspired had made Melbourne one of the richest cities in the British Empire. The Coops continued to expand their business, this time into shot manufacture. In 1889-90, up went Walter Coop's shot tower. The castellated red-brick building eventually topped out at 50 metres several metres above the city's height limit. The shot tower was the tallest building in Melbourne, but it was no mere monument. By 1894, the Coops were producing six tonnes of shot per week there. The same year, the family acquired the Clifton Hill shot tower when its operator went out of business. This made Coop s the largest manufacturer of shot in the southern hemisphere, supplying businesses across Australia and south east Asia.
In 1919, Walter II's sister Ellen assumed control of the business. She was a remarkable woman: there weren't many women running businesses at the time let alone in heavy industry. In an incredibly rare instance, she was also awarded custody of her son following divorce from her husband. She ran the business for 20 years, her life cut short when she fell off the back of a tram on Gertrude Street while commuting between the family's two shot towers. In 1939, James Coop the younger took over the business following his mother s death. But, as we know, World War II changed the whole world. Metals prices remained ever-volatile while plastic emerged as a cheaper, cleaner and more reliable competitor for many lead products. Lead was out of fashion: arsenic a crucial though toxic part of lead manufacturing could kill you! The Coops shut the city tower in 1961 and, finally, the Clifton Hill tower in 1976.
Text: Melbourne Central
