The foundation stone of a new, grander Town Hall was laid on 29 November 1867 by the visiting Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, after the demolition of the first.

[5][6] The current town hall officially opened on 11 August 1870 with a lavish ball, which was personally funded by the Lord Mayor Samuel Amess.

[10] An early cinema event Soldiers of the Cross premiered at the Melbourne Town Hall on 13 September 1900 to an audience of about four thousand people.

[11] In 1913, the city hired a hall keeper in his 30s named James "Jimmy" Dewar, a Scottish immigrant and Black Watch veteran from Dundee.

[15] On 1 February 1925, a fire destroyed a large part of the town hall, including the main auditorium and pipe organ valued then at £15,000.

[16] It was rebuilt and enlarged, extending east over the site previously occupied by the Victoria Coffee Palace, an early temperance hotel frequented by Melbourne's power brokers.

[16] Waller, who had been given a free hand in devising the artworks explained that the figures were not intended to be allegorical, but to create rhythm, and that line-work was used because a skin of paint would interfere with the panels' sound-absorbing quality.

The actual painting on the series of 7 metre high by 4m wide wall sections from Waller's half-scale cartoons produced in his Darebin studio was undertaken by H. Oliver and Sons under the artist's supervision.