It's now the home of a McDonald's, Hungry Jack's and other fast food outlets but archeologists are licking their lips at the prospect of what lies beneath.
The Swanston Street shopping strip opposite Flinders Street Station was first developed just two years after Melbourne was founded and could hold secrets from the city's earliest European settlers.
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Artefacts discovered at gold rush pub
Archaeologist uncover more than a quarter of a million artefacts right in the middle of Melbourne.
A series of major archaeological digs will take place there and across Melbourne when buildings are demolished for the city's Metro Rail project.
At least nine Melbourne locations will be excavated in search of buried relics.
Parks will also be combed for Aboriginal stone artefacts and trees examined for scars providing evidence that they were once cut to make boomerangs or canoes.
The Swanston Street shopping strip was first established in 1837 and was home to small businesses.
The building now occupied by Hungry Jack's was variously a wholesale grocer, solicitor's office, butcher and bookstore named "Pownceby Books" – all before the start of the 20th century.
There was also a "chocolate depot" in the area.
Heritage Victoria's principal archaeologist Jeremy Smith is hopeful that, still buried under this strip of shops, are items discarded or lost in the first few years of the city's European settlement.
"It is pretty rare to find anything pre-gold [rush] in Melbourne. But these sites have the potential for that," Mr Smith said.
"It's almost the holy grail of what we are looking for."
In this era before garbage trucks, the city's residents tended to discard their rubbish in the backyard, in a latrine or even stuff it under the floorboards – leaving behind potentially tens of thousands of items for future generations to discover.
Digs will also take place near RMIT University at the corner of Swanston and La Trobe streets and the site of another Hungry Jack's, where heavier industry was based.
In the late 1880s it was home to people building and importing horsedrawn carriages, and historical photos from 1880 show lines of buggies parked along the centre of Swanston Street.
Meanwhile, an area near Melbourne Grammar School alongside St Kilda Road will also be excavated for evidence of the city's old cable tram network.
It is expected that most of the artefacts will be found close to the surface but a 'stop work' protocol has been developed for unexpected discoveries.
There are telecommunications tunnels under the CBD and, since 1929, at least one skeleton has been uncovered around St Kilda Road, where the new Domain Station will be constructed.
It is also possible the Melbourne Metro Tunnel works will expose historical remnants from the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung people.
Dr Gary Presland, an archaeologist who wrote a book about the Aboriginal people that lived around Port Phillip Bay and in central Victoria, said the men would have sat and worked sharpening their tools and making stone points for their spears.
"What is created is what archaeologist would call debitage - just waste flakes. They don't get used as artefacts," Dr Presland said.
"But they can give an indication of how far people were moving to get the stones."
He said trees older than 180 years old could also have scars showing that bark or a piece of trunk had been taken to make temporary houses, a shield, a boomerang or a canoe.