site to Gill Street and Bow Street, a block back from the main road in Deane Street. This places it in the heart of Charters Towers' conservation area, a mixture of buildings from the late Victorian and Federation periods, including the former DS General Store at 18 Gill Street, of c. 1900, possibly Charters Towers' best-known building, just opposite (now a Target store). The first form of the Post Office was as a symmetrical verandahed building facing Gill Street, with a cast-iron double-storey verandah, deep latticework friezes and a hipped roof clad in corrugated galvanised iron. In the manner of Queensland stump houses, the upper verandah was centred compositionally with a pediment, and balustraded with cast iron lacework. The three chimneys were stuccoed Italianate in detail, with large moulded caps. The central structure at the roof top is a lantern. The symmetrical front is then backed by a long spine of smaller rooms linked by an L-shaped verandah. The apartment windows on the first floor were French full-height paired doors, and the lower windows were broad double hung sashes. The building was, arguably, indistinguishable from any number of pub designs, such as those at nearby Ravenswood. The 1892-1898 alterations made this elevation asymmetrical, replacing the original central door with an elongated porch area to the right side, and a large corner tower. These changes reflect aspects of the (then) new Baroque Revivalism just appearing in Britain. It is not clear from the drawings whether the original front door had an arched top, but it gained one in these alterations, having a large thermal fanlight over a broad three-part setting of door and flanking hall windows. Next to that came the new porch, treated as a two-stepped breakfront with stuccoed flanking piers and paired Corinthian columns at the centre bay. This arrangement framed a central door and two tall flanking casements on the ground floor, with 1:2 "Norman Shaw" light divisions; on the upper floor an arched central window with paired casement was set between two tall flanking windows with glazed roundels overhead, resembling a Serlian arch or transformed triumphal arch. The central window is also fronted by a waisted balustrade framing a balconette. The vigour of this breakfront largely submerged the former elevation, which was masked further by the replacement of its cast iron columns with a set of astylar pilasters backed by piers, and topped with scroll consoles supporting