Once it was the tallest building in Melbourne — all 50 metres of it. Even as late as the mid-1950s it stood six metres higher than the then city building limits.

In its heyday, the Coop-family shot tower in Knox Place could produce some 700 tonnes of tiny lead shot a year, enough to provide gun toters with 20 million cartridges. The factory, built 110 years ago, also produced a diverse range of lead products — nails, washers, sheeting, tubes, pipes, even the lead weights for the milk inspector's hydrometer, and solder for the leadlighters and plumbers of the booming Victorian city.

Today it stands tall in Melbourne Central shopping precinct.