Nahum Barnet

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Nahum Barnet (born 16 August 1855, Melbourne, Australia - 1 September 1931) was a Jewish architect working in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia during the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

Barnet was born in the Melbourne Hospital on Swanston Street 1855, son of a Polish-born pawnbroker, jeweller and tobacconist.

He produced a number of significant buildings including Her Majesty's Theatre (1886), Austral Building (1891), St Kilda Synagogue re-development (1903-04), the former Empire Building (1905) on Flinders Street, the former Auditorium (1912), 280-282 Bourke Street and Alston's Corner (1913) and Georges Department Store (1913) all on Collins Street and the Wertheim Piano Factory in inner suburban Richmond, Melbourne Synagogue (1929) in South Yarra and later a Heinz factory and now the studios for television station GTV-9.

The popular claim that there was not a street in Melbourne where a Barnet building could not be found was first coined by Isaac Selby and reiterated in Barnet's obituary in The Argus. Popular culture holds that when challenged with the street Brunton Avenue, the reply was that Barnet had designed the small cabman's shelter in 1903.^[1]

He died in St Kilda, 1 September 1931.