Splendour in store

A WHO’S Who of Melbourne society enjoyed a black-tie dinner at Myer’s fllagship store to celebrate the reopening of the magnificent Mural Hall.

SHOPPING in a department store was once an experience filled with grandeur.

As well as merchandise, department stores used to be filled with lavish restaurants fit for a queen (David Jones hosted a State banquet for Queen Elizabeth II in the restaurant of Sydney’s Elizabeth Street store in 1954), art galleries, grand pianos, theatres and indoor fountains. But as shopping habits have changed department stores have had to squeeze every last dollar out of available floorspace and most of these trimmings have gone the way of the haberdashery department.

Which makes it even more surprising that Myer’s ballroom in its flagship Bourke Street Melbourne store –known as the Mural Hall – has survived. The Elizabeth Street David Jones +restaurant, which had double-height arched windows, was converted into two floors (one for selling and one for offices) decades ago. The Mural Hall on the sixth floor of the Bourke Street store, however, has survived countless refrubishments to the store over the years, the most recent of which was a $300 million overhaul that was completed earlier this year.

At the unveiling of the newly renovated Bourke Street store, Myer CEO Bernie Brookes said that it had been designed with women in mind as women make up more than 70 per cent of its customers. In trumpeting the store’s new female-focused credentials he told one newspaper: “It has very nice toilet facilities, a big women’s room
for breastfeeding and to bring children, and lots of places to sit down and have a break.”

The store also has a champagne bar, two floors dedicated to women’s clothing and accessories, a perfume gallery, a lot more natural light through a new central atrium and several dining venues across its nine levels of shopping. At the Bourke Street end of the sixth floor – via the TV and audio department – is the newly restored Mural Hall, which recently reopened after a four-year restoration project.

The Mural Hall is one of the best Art Deco interiors in Melbourne and takes its name from the 10 murals by artist Mervyn Napier Waller that line its walls. The murals were commissioned by Myer founder Sidney Myer and were completed in 1935 shortly after his death. Napier Waller’s murals were painted in his studio in Ivanhoe and conceived as a tribute to women’s achievments in literature, the arts, sport, travel and, of course, fashion. Sidney Myer was a canny retailer and knew how to cater to his customers’ tastes. You can discover more about these murals in an interactive feature on Myer’s website.

In its heyday the Mural Hall was a restaurant where shoppers could stop for a spot of lunch or take tea and be seen. It was also used for charity galas, exhibitions, concerts and fashion parades. But in recent years department stores have not known what to do with these non-selling spaces. To make matters slightly more complicated, the Mural Hall is classified by the National Trust, which says it was “designed as an elegant restaurant in line with the leading London and American stores of the day. It is a consciously decorative scheme, the last surviving period room of its kind, and one of the most impressive, with few parallels anywhere in the world.”

So to demolish it and return the space to selling merchandise would have been unthinkable.

Enter Melbourne-based catering and events company The Big Group owned by Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh. It worked with the National Trust and Myer on the restoration of the Mural Hall and has taken a 10-year lease on the space and will use it primarily as a function space. The venue can accommodate 1000 guests standing or 500 seated and, according to Bruce Keebaugh, is expected to be popular with brides-to-be. As the store now trades until 9pm every day, brides have the added convenience of being able to swing by the cosmetics counters for a quick touch-up and guests can pop into the electricals department for a gift-wrapped toaster.

To celebrate the opening of the newly restored Mural Hall The Big Group held a black-tie dinner for 200 people. Two long tables ran the length of the hall,  decorated with bursting vases of flowers, candles and an array of eclectic tablewear sourced specifically for the event. The guest list included a who’s who of Melbourne society with surnames such as Besen, Baillieu, Hains, Gandel, Lew and of course several members of the Myer family.

The menu, according to Bruce Keebaugh, was based on a dinner held in the Mural Hall in 1935 to celebrate the return to Melbourne of Mr and Mrs Norman Myer after seven years overseas and included such delicacies as paupiette of whiting Florentine with sauce Hollandaise; followed by filet mignon dauphine; sorbet romaine and poulet roti au lard. To finish it off was a dessert of bombe Alhambra, which was carried down to the tables from the two curved balconies at the end of the room by a team of chefs. 

But despite the lavish food, the flowing Laurent Perrier champagne and the entertainment that included a sort of after-dinner lecture by art expert Justin Miller on the significance of Waller’s murals, it was the room that stole the show. From its three giant chandeliers and its elegant and simple proportions through to the unique murals that line the walls, it truly is one of the architectural treasures of Melbourne.