Beehive

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The Beehive Building, also known as the Sandhurst Mining Exchange, is a building on Pall Mall in Bendigo, a regional city in the Australian state of Victoria. The buildings modern day successor is the Bendigo Stock Exchange. The building was designed by noted architect Charles Webb and contains the former Bendigo Mining Exchange. The Beehive building is an important part of Bendigo's Pall Mall street-scape, which one of the most notable Victorian period street-scapes remaining in Victoria. The Greater Bendigo Council is currently exploring options to return the building to its former glory.HistoryThe original Beehive store dates from the 1850s and was established to service Bendigo's booming gold rush economy. The original Beehive was replaced by a single storey building, which itself was replaced by a two storey building in 1864. The original two storey building was similar to the current building in many respects and the first floor contained offices of share brokers that handled the speculative financing of the mining ventures in the Bendigo district.In August 1871 the Beehive caught fire and was extensively damaged. The present building was completed in 1872, only nine months after construction commenced. The façade and front portion of the Beehive building is three storeys but the majority of the rest of the building is only two.Accommodation for share brokers was again provided for on the first floor in a structure reminiscent of an arcade surrounding a long central well with balconies. Share trading would take place along these balconies, with traders on the ground floor, sometimes overflowing onto the street. In the 1880s a busy day on the exchange could see 2,000 stock traders working in the building and up to 5,000 share holders would gather to monitor their stocks.