Melbourne History: Where to find city’s oldest landmarks
MELBOURNE, a city steeped in history, celebrates its 180th birthday today. From hotels and restaurants to churches the city has some amazing old buildings. Take a trip back in time.
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WHAT’S new? We’re always seeking it, chasing it, embracing it. But in our headlong rush to be in the moment, we shouldn’t overlook the old. Especially in Melbourne.
The story of this sprawling city has been one of constant change, unified by a desire to be better. So, on Melbourne Day, let’s celebrate some of our oldest things.
OLDEST THOROUGHFARE: SWANSTON ST
IT is Melbourne’s spine, lending a backbone to the CBD, but for all the Moomba parades and Anzac marches that have travelled between St Paul’s Cathedral and the State Library of Victoria, Swanston St has rarely been loved.
Surveying Melbourne’s oldest thoroughfare, author and historian Robyn Annear (Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne) says, “There’s never been anything flash about it. In the ’70s, when I was a teenager, I remember the street was rough as guts. Probably always was.’’
Named after Captain Charles Swanston, a prominent member of the founding Port Phillip Association, Swanston St was laid out in 1837.
Annear reports this “muddy, rutted thoroughfare’’ vied with Elizabeth St for supremacy until Princes Bridge was built over the Yarra in the late 1840s.
By the late 19th century, Swanston St pavements were flanked by significant buildings such as St Paul’s, Melbourne Public Library, Melbourne Museum and the National Gallery.
Flinders St railway station opened in 1910. “That’s when it really established itself as the city’s main traffic-carrying corridor,’’ Annear says.
The Art Deco-styled Manchester Unity building went up between the wars but a decade after The Beatles waved to adoring fans from the Melbourne Town Hall balcony in 1964, Swanston St’s glory days were well and truly over.
In 2015, there are signs of a comeback, with pedestrians finding hidden gems in the Nicholas Building (cnr Flinders Lane) and Curtin House (near Lonsdale St). The Town Hall itself has never been busier, its warren of rooms hosting stand-up routines during the annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
OLDEST HOTEL LICENCE: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
WHEN it was granted a licence in 1853, Melbourne’s first hotel, The Duke of Wellington Hotel, would have been serving very basic anglo fare. Damper with your ale, sir?
These days, the one-time tap room on the corner of Russell and Flinders streets is as smart as they come with a spacious downstairs bar and a swish upstairs dining room named the Dutchess.
Between times, The Duke — named after the man who led Napoleon to his Waterloo — has had some colourful licensees. Gold digger Louis John Michel presided in the 1860s and ’70s. A century later, chunky Tigers ruckman Brian “The Whale” Roberts urged drinkers at The Duke to “Have an ale with the Whale”.
In charge since 2013, The Open Door Pub Company has given the hotel a 21st century makeover which should last, well — another 162 years. SP
OLDEST RESTAURANT: LEO’S SPAGHETTI BAR, ST KILDA
TWO years older than the Cuckoo at Olinda and eight years ahead of Vlado’s in Richmond, Leo’s Spaghetti Bar in St Kilda could well be Melbourne’s oldest continuously running restaurant.
It opened on November 23, 1956, the day after Melbourne’s Olympic Games began.
And 59 years on, Leo’s is still in Fitzroy St serving unpretentious ‘specialita Italiane’ fare. This is a place where you can settle into a banquette and order garlic cheese bread with a seafood cocktail or spaghetti cotoletta - lightly crumbed veal schnitzel with a side of spaghetti bolognaise.
Prices have risen since we hosted the Olympics but Leo’s - all mission brown and burnt orange - is an appealing throwback to the fabulous fifties when “coffee espresso” was considered exotic.
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OLDEST CINEMA: THE WESTGARTH
THE Zeccola family has been making an exhibition of itself for decades and among the many cinemas managed by the family’s Palace Films group, the Westgarth Theatre stands out for sheer longevity and style.
Dating back to 1921, it’s regarded as Melbourne’s “oldest operating purpose-built cinema’’. And thanks to painstaking restoration, which protected its Art Deco styling, the Westgarth is now a picture of good health.
“There’s nothing quite like it,’’ Palace chief Benjamin Zeccola says.
Any plans to mark its 100th anniversary?
“We like the idea of charging ticket prices as they were when it first opened. That was about 25c.’’
OLDEST MEMBER OF MELBOURNE’S OLDEST FOOTY CLUB
HE has seen triumph and heartbreak, big wins and awful losses, but Harold Deering has never wavered in his support for the Melbourne Football Club.
At 97, he’s the oldest member of the oldest club in the league. And everyone else in the Deering family is expected to barrack for the Dees as well.
‘Yes, we all do and we’re very proud of that,’’ says daughter Marg Pettigrove.
Mr Deering has been a Melbourne member for more than 60 years, so he’s seen a lot of the Demon greats in action, from Don Cordner and Ron Barassi to Hassa Mann, Robbie Flower and Jim Stynes. In fact, when he attends home games at the ‘G’ — not so often these days — his preferred seat is on the second tier in front of the Jim Stynes Room.
The MFC was founded on July 10, 1858 and is one of eight foundation VFL/AFL clubs with Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong and St Kilda.
In Saturday’s Weekend magazine, we celebrate Melbourne Day and the city’s 180th anniversary.
MELBOURNE’S FIRST NEWSPAPER: THE MELBOURNE ADVERTISER
IF you wanted to know what was happening in Melbourne in the late 1830s, you read all about it in The Melbourne Advertiser.
This “miserable rag” (Garry Owen’s description of it) was handwritten by John Pascoe Fawkner — the colony lacked a printing press — and folded after just 17 editions. An early one dated January 13, 1838, is held by the State Library of Victoria (Australia’s oldest public library).
FIRST CHURCH: ST JAMES’ CATHEDRAL
BUILDING Melbourne’s first church was a highly ambitious project in 1839. But by the time the gold rush hit in the 1850s, St James’ was regarded as an embarrassment.
St James’ Old Cathedral’s Reverend Matthew Williams says even its defenders at the time admitted it was not beautiful but still pleaded for it to be saved.
“Money had arrived, along with marvellous Melbourne and there were brand-new buildings everywhere, coffee palaces, and fussy Gothic architecture was in fashion,” Rev. Williams says.
“We now see it’s beautiful.”
The Georgian cathedral turned 175 last November and now sits on the corner of King and Batman streets in West Melbourne, but was originally at the corner of William and Little Collins streets. It was modelled on St James’ in King St, Sydney, but the Melbourne beauty is made of Yarra stone with bluestone foundations.
The original pew boxes, made of Australian cedar, hold about 350 people.
“You can’t be pompous in this building. You have to be simple or you are fighting the building,” Rev. William says.
FIRST PUBLIC SCULPTURE: BURKE AND WILLS SCULPTURE
IN 1865 the streets of Melbourne were free of quirky, entertaining public art. The town was still evolving into a city when one of the few accomplished sculptors in Melbourne at the time, Charles Summers, won a competition to be selected as the sculptor to create Melbourne’s first public sculpture.
About 10,000 people gathered when Summers’ masterpiece of explorers Robert Burke and William Wills was unveiled, according to writer and curator of Australian Sculpture Ken Scarlett.
“The people at the time saw Burke and Wills as heroic figures and he presented them as such,” Scarlett says.
“The fact that there was such a vast number of people who turned up for the unveiling indicates how important it was and it still is because it is part of our history. It should be treasured as one of our great memorials.”
The 3.6m bronze sculpture of the explorers has been moved four times since it originally stood in the middle of the intersection of Collins and Russell streets and its present home is in the City Square on Swanston St.
OLDEST TREE
TREES, like many ladies, do not easily reveal their age. But it is a fairly safe bet that the oldest tree in Melbourne will be a river red gum.
Royal Botanic Gardens director Professor Timothy Entwistle says any Melbourne backyard could house the oldest tree, though he suspects few would be as old as the gnarly lions head river red gum that still thrives by the gardens’ ornamental lake.
“There are hundreds of river red gums in Melbourne along the Yarra River and it’s hard to tell which are the oldest until they’re cut down, unfortunately, but we know a lot were there before European settlement,” Prof. Entwistle says.
“We believe ours is even older than that, at 400 years but even that is debatable. It could be older or it could be younger.”
Another river red gum, near the Albert Park Lake, believed to be 300 to 500 years old and some in northern Victoria would be 700 to 900 years old.
Of course, our much-loved Separation Tree, where a plaque was placed to commemorate the separation of Victoria from NSW in 1850 in the Royal Botanic Gardens, is also believed to be 400 years old but it has died after two ringbarking attacks. CL
OLDEST HOUSE
A PLAQUE at the property of 300 Queen St declares it to be the oldest house in Melbourne. It could well be.
It was built in 1848 as a residence for John Thomas Smith. He was the mayor of Melbourne seven times and owned a large number of hotels in the city, according to State Library of Victoria senior librarian Tim Hogan.
“He was a very wealthy man who had the equivalent of
$2 million when he died,” Hogan says. “This house held Melbourne’s first fancy dress ball and would have been a very social house while John Smith lived there.”
As probably the oldest-surviving house in Melbourne, its Georgian architecture is one of the last remaining examples of the elegant style. It originally only had two levels but the third storey was added in 1858.
It stopped being a house in the early 1900s but had a variety of uses during the 20th century. It was a lodging house, a gold treasury, an office for the mental health authority and it is presently a think tank for the Mitchell Institute.
“It’s recently been restored again and is looking in great shape.” CL
OLDEST PUBLIC GARDENS
THE Fitzroy Gardens are not Melbourne’s largest public gardens but they are our oldest.
Melbourne councillor Arron Wood, who also chairs the environment portfolio, describes the gardens as being filled with charm.
“It’s partly because they have been around for so long but it’s also the great attractions it holds from the boulevards of heritage trees to Captain Cook’s Cottage and the fairy and scar trees,” Wood says.
“How lucky we were to have a governor like Charles La Trobe, who left us this great legacy, which puts us on a world scale of having such fine public gardens. But that blessing also comes with a degree of responsibility to care for them.”
Melbourne City Council has just spent $13.9 million on the redevelopment of the Fitzroy Gardens so there is a new 80-seat cafe, a new visitors’ centre, a 500-litre underwater stormwater tank to supply 60 per cent of the gardens’ water needs and in 4500sq m of new garden area there are 150 new shrubs, 45 new trees and 500 new ground-cover plants.
The Fitzroy Gardens were established in 1848 by governor La Trobe and we are lucky to still have this 26ha of tranquil garden in our busy urban environment.
OLDEST WATER TROUGH: LANSDOWNE ST, EAST MELBOURNE
WHEN Melbourne man George Bills died in 1927, he left his entire estate (which included the estate of his wife, Annis, who had already died) to go towards building horse water troughs. He left £70,000 towards the project and his name is inscribed on the back of all the troughs that were built with his money. More than 300 water troughs were built in Victoria and New South Wales, many near railway stations, all because of the animal lovers.
OLDEST HITCHING POST: TREASURY GARDENS, NEAR THE SPRING ST AND WELLINGTON PDE CORNER
THE single stone columns were dotted around the city outside hotels and private houses. Some were more decorative, made from iron and depicting horses, but most were simple stone with an iron ring at the top where reins were threaded. The hitching at the Treasury Gardens used to be outside a private home in Spring St.
OLDEST FOUNTAIN: RIVER GOD
BUILT in 1862 by Charles Summers, the concrete fountain has always been in the Fitzroy Gardens where it remains. Originally it was opposite Gipps St corner but was placed in storage in 1956 until it was renovated in 1996 and moved to a new position opposite Eades St. Passersby used to drink from the fountain with drinking cups provided.
OLDEST STREET LAMP: COLLINS ST, BETWEEN SWANSTON AND ELIZABETH STREETS
MELBOURNE’S earliest lighting came from oil lamps slung over trees but certain shopkeepers began to install gas lamps in 1848. Gas was not available for street lighting until 1857. The first electric lamp was displayed outside the Victorian Electric Light Company’s Swanston St premises in 1881.
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