Designed by architects Twentyman & Askew, the Block is one of Melbourne's most richly decorated interior spaces, replete with mosaic tiled flooring, glass canopy supported in cast and wrought iron, and tall, elaborate timber shop fronts.

The Block Arcade's six-storey external façades on both Collins and Elizabeth streets are some of Australia's best surviving examples of Victorian architecture in the Mannerist style.

Collins Street is to the Southern city what Bond Street and the Row are to London, and the Boulevards to Paris... Carriages were bowling smoothly along, their occupants smiling and bowing as they recognized their friends on the side walk... Portly merchants, forgetting Flinders Lane and incoming ships, walked beside pretty daughters; and the representatives of swelldom were stalking along in their customary apparel of curly brimmed hats, high collars and immaculate suits.

Financier and landboomer Benjamin Fink was a director of the company, and by 1888 had plans to relocate the store and create an L-shaped arcade in the area, and began buying up properties.

The fire occurred at the height of the land boom of the 1880s, when Melbourne grew enormously and many large and elaborate hotels shops and office blocks rose in the city.

The fire allowed the City Property & Co Pty Ltd (principal shareholder Benjamin Fink) to proceed with plans to create a sumptuous arcade on this central site, hiring architects Twentyman & Askew to design it, announced in January 1890,[8] with the name 'The Block' revealed soon after.

Originally known as Carpenters Lane, the City Property Co successfully petitioned to roof it, creating a covered access from the Block Arcade to Little Collins Street.

[27] In the shop to the left of the Collins Street entrance, the Block Arcade also housed the first Kodak store in Melbourne, the camera company from Rochester, New York.

Kodak allowed the average person to take photographs and promoted the arts of photography to the general public, and the store sold parts, cameras, and equipment to both amateurs and professionals.