[2][3] Arthur James Arnot designed and managed Spencer Street power station from 1894 to 1901 for the Melbourne City council.

[4][5] The first power plant, later known as A station, consisted of 24 General Electric direct current (DC) generators installed in four groups of six.

Each group was belt driven by a 300HP Austral Otis horizontal compound slow speed steam engine.

The terminal voltage was 3 kV DC and the electricity was used for street lights, trams, lifts and city buildings.

[6] In 1907 the first turbines were installed, with two 750 kW British Westinghouse Parsons 4.4 kV single-phase machines added.

An original cast iron water tank was relocated here to serve the remaining lifts on the system, which finally closed down in the 1967.

Steam was supplied by more water-tube boilers that were fitted with pulverized fuel equipment for burning coal, but for pollution reasons they were only oil fired.

A new office section was added to the station on the Lonsdale Street side which included a tall chimney in 1950s, all built in bare reinforced concrete.

[13] The chimney started being dismantled in September 2007 and the site was fully cleared by April 2008,[14] with the exception of the Edwardian office building an economiser hall around the corner of Spencer and Little Bourke Streets, and the hydraulic power water tank, which had been added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2007.

[9] In that year the site was sold to Far East Consortium, and plans for a four tower development with 2500 apartments were approved in 2010.