[1] The Windsor is situated on Bourke Hill in the Parliament Precinct on Spring Street, and is a Melbourne landmark of high Victorian architecture.

The original hotel was built by shipping magnate George Nipper and designed by Charles Webb in a broadly Renaissance Revival style and was completed in 1884, and named "The Grand".

Notable features of the expanded hotel included the ballroom, the impressive main staircase, the distinctive twin mansard roofed towers in the Second Empire style, and the stone sculpture, attributed to John Simpson Mackennal, over the main entrance with male female figures known as 'Peace and Plenty' reclining over the English and Australian coat of arms.

In a bid to regain market share, the Windsor expanded, purchasing the four-storey White Hart Hotel on the Bourke Street corner.

A 1974 proposal for a 38-storey tower on the corner of Spring and Bourke Street was opposed by the state government and the National Trust, a green ban being placed by the Victorian Builders Labourers Federation helped ensure the building's survival.

Oberoi undertook a major restoration of the hotel in 1983 costing US$6.6 million, reinstating the decorative 19th century colour schemes to the lobby, stairhall, and especially the Grand Dining Room, where huge brass chandeliers were reproduced from photographs.

The cricketer's bar, afternoon tea in the grand dining room, and the top-hatted doorman all resumed their status as Melbourne institutions.

The John Cain II state government sold the hotel to the Oberoi Group giving the company freehold possession in 1990.

A thin curtain wall tower designed by Denton Corker Marshall was proposed be built replacing the 1880s rear wing, on Windsor Place.

The National Trust of Australia (Victoria), opposed to the development,[11][12][13] concerned that the proposed tower would dominate the front heritage wing of the hotel, and would breach established height controls for the Bourke Hill precinct initially put in place to protect vistas towards Parliament House and low-rise nature of the area.

[23] After this, the owner sought another extension to the original planning permit, which the Minister refused, and upheld by VCAT in August 2014, meaning work must commence by 10 January 2015.

[28][29] Notable guests at the Windsor have included Margaret Thatcher, George VI of the United Kingdom and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (as Duke and Duchess of York), Meryl Streep, Anthony Hopkins, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Basil Rathbone, Lauren Bacall, Douglas Fairbanks, Byron Sharp, Claudette Colbert, Robert Helpmann, Rudolph Nureyev, Dame Nellie Melba, Dame Joan Sutherland, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Michael Dukakis, Muhammad Ali, Barry Humphries, Don Bradman and the Australia national cricket team as well as Australian prime ministers Sir Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard.