Alfred Shaw & Co. also Harvey, Shaw & Co's warehouse, later Canberra House also Benjamin House, 358-360 Little Collins Street, Melbourne
Butler, Graeme1985
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Total copies: 1
Title:
Alfred Shaw & Co. also Harvey, Shaw & Co's warehouse, later Canberra House also Benjamin House, 358-360 Little Collins Street, Melbourne
Creator:
Date of work:
1985
Reference number:
BIF-CITY 105959
Level of description:
Item from Collection: Heritage Collection (HC)
Type of materials:
Graphic materialsTextual material
Part of:
Series: Central City (BIF-CITY)
Access restrictions:
UnrestrictedOpen access.
Use restrictions:
UnrestrictedPlease contact City of Melbourne Libraries about obtaining permission to reproduce images.
General notes:
RESEARCH ADDED BY GRAEME BUTLER 2022:__________________________________________________Period: Inter-War renovationDATE: 1869 pre? 1871, 1929 major change;DATE: 1869 pre? 1871, 1929 major change;ASSOCIATIONS: Alfred Shaw & Co, later Harvey, Shaw & Co 1871; J. G. Guest 1929;DESIGNER: Hamilton, R B 1929;BUILDER: George Cornwell, 1871.LOVELL CHEN 2017. GUILDFORD & HARDWARE LANEWAYS PRECINCT - PRECINCT CITATIONStatement of SignificanceWhat is SignificantThe commercial building (former warehouse) at 358-360 Little Collins Street, incorporates building components from pre-1869, 1871 and 1929. The latter works are most evident in the current building form and expression, including the five-storey height, Moderne-style façade, and large windows to the east elevation above ground floor level. The earlier building is principally evidenced in the bluestone ground floor wall to the east elevation. The façade to Little Collins Street incorporates a balconette at first floor level, and wide but shallow pilasters softened by surface modelling and horizontal banding, which overlay the frame and rise through the upper storeys to a low parapet. The upper section of the façade has a gestural string course incorporating ovoid mouldings and a stylised suggestion of dentilation. The parapet is stepped at its ends, with fluting to its central section. This suite of decorative devices is repeated at a cantilevering ground floor verandah; spandrel incorporate further decorative panels. The remnant bluestone east wall, constructed before 1869, comprises rock-faced bluestone laid in random courses, and original openings and fenestration at ground floor level.How is it SignificantThe commercial building at 358-360 Little Collins Street, is of aesthetic/architectural significance to the City of Melbourne.Why is it SignificantThe commercial building at 358-360 Little Collins Street, incorporating building components from pre-1869, 1871 and 1929, is of local aesthetic/architectural significance. Although an evolved building, it is substantially intact to its 1929 form and expression, including the Moderne-style façade and detailing. The building is also a dominant historical form in this area of Little Collins Street. The design of the 1929 building was influenced by innovations coming out of Chicago through late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws on the then new form of fireproof building in which steel frames supported the upper levels, eliminating the need for thick, load-bearing brick walls; and an applique of understated classical or Art Deco detailing applied to the exterior. The building is typical of this form of fashionable ornamentation on a Chicagoan frame, as it emerged in Australia in the 1920s, with in this case a simple frame of reinforced concrete enlivened by a shallow applique of abstracted detailing to produce an understated, sculptural result. The earlier bluestone fabric to the east elevation, while not a prominent feature of the building as viewed from Little Collins Street, nevertheless contributes to an understanding of the evolved form and history of the building, and adds texture to the side wall to Gills Alley. Surviving bluestone sections of buildings, such as this, also provide important evidence in the central city context of early building practice and stonemasonry in particular. (Criterion E)RecommendationRecommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay of the Melbourne Planning Scheme..GRAEME BUTLER 1985 MELBOURNE CENTRAL ACTIVITIES DISTRICT CONSERVATION STUDYBUILDING IDENTIFICATION FORM__________________________________________________VICTORIAN HERITAGE INVENTORYH7822-1598https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/9513First land sale Allotment 13 Block 13 purchased by Horatio Cooper. 1839 - building on site. 1877 and 1888 - three storey building, A Shaw & Co, Ironmongers. 1905 - three storey building, Harvey Shaw & Co, Ironmongers.__________________________________________________LEWIS, M- AUSTRALIAN ARCHITECTURE INDEX: Record76795 Shaw, A & Co Melbourne VIC Warehouses Cornwell, George 1871 04 12 437276826, MCC registration no 4372 [Burchett Index]. Fee 4.0.0 store Hufton, Shaw & Co Melbourne VIC Warehouses Lockington, Harry 1875 05 5 6335_____________________________________________________LOVELL CHEN 2017. GUILDFORD & HARDWARE LANEWAYS PRECINCT - PRECINCT CITATIONDATE OF CONSTRUCTION Pre-1869, 1871, 1929PREVIOUS GRADING CBUILDER George Cornwell, 1871 ARCHITECT UnknownHistoryFigure 1 Subject building, south elevation (at left), and east elevation showing earlier bluestone ground floor wall (at right)The property at 358-360 Little Collins Street comprises a five-storey building, which was originally constructed as a two-storey bluestone warehouse at an unknown date, but pre-1869, before being altered and extended in 1871, and again in 1929. It was occupied by Alfred Shaw & Co, later Harvey, Shaw & Co, from 1869 to the late-1920s. The building abuts Gills Alley on its east side.Alfred Shaw & Co, ironmongers, was established by Alfred Shaw in the early 1850s in Queensberry Street, Melbourne before moving to Elizabeth Street in c. 1855.Figure 2 and Figure 3).1 In 1868, the firm moved to 42 Little Collins Street West before relocating again the following year to the subject site, and occupying a two-storey bluestone warehouse at 13 Little Collins Street West (the numbering of Little Collins Street was later changed).2 In 1871-2, the premises was expanded by the firm and the original bluestone building was incorporated into part of the ground floor of a new three-storey building (3 This building was constructed by builder George Cornwell and had ‘a frontage of 40ft to Little Collins-street and a depth of 127ft, containing a cellar, ground floor and upper flats, each floor being occupied by all the various articles of a complete wholesale hardware business’.4In 1889, Alfred Shaw & Co merged with Hughes & Harvey, another well-established tinsmith and ironmonger, to become Harvey, Shaw & Co.Figure 4).5 The company continued to operate from the subject premises until 1928 when the property was acquired by furniture company, JG Guest.6 In the same year an application was made to the City of Melbourne for alterations and additions to the existing warehouse to a value of £14,979. The works were completed in 1929-30; the value of the building also increased from NAV £1,500 in 1929 to £3,950.7 The alterations comprised the construction of two additional floors to the 1870s building and the remodelling of the Little Collins Street façade with a Moderne-style treatment (8 Windows to the east elevation on the adjoining laneway (Gills Alley), above ground floor level, were also altered, and generally made larger.9The modified building accommodated not only JG Guest’s furniture company, but also the Bjelke Petersen School of Physical Culture which was founded in Hobart in 1892.10 Arrangements were made prior to the building’s modification to ensure that ‘every part of the school [was] right up to date’ and it became the headquarters of the school in Melbourne.Upon its opening in 1929, the School of Physical Culture comprised a number of features:Turkish baths are installed and convenient to them are fresh, white enamelled dressing cubicles which guarantee privacy for clients.Then there is a wonderfully attractive lounge room, luxuriously carpeted, and with comfortable green cane chairs and lounges and with chintz cushions……The spacious gymnasiums make larger and better physical culture classes possible. Classes may also be held on the roof, where provision has also been made for sun-bathing. Here, too, is the only squash racquet court open to the public in Melbourne.11The Bjelke-Peterson School remained at 358-360 Little Collins until 1953 when it transferred to Denmark Street in Kew.12 JG Guest occupied the premises until the 1970s when the family jewellery business, Benjamin’s Jewellery, bought the building.13Figure 2 New warehouse for Alfred Shaw and Co, Little Collins Street, 1871. Note stone wall associated with earlier warehouse building (indicated)Source: State Library of VictoriaFigure 3 Detail of Dove insurance plan, map 43, c.1875 showing the plan of the 1871 three-storey buildingSource: State Library of VictoriaFigure 4 Detail of Mahlstedt fire insurance plan, Map 14, 1948 showing the building after alterationsSource: State Library of Victoria.NOTES:1 Sands and McDougall directory, 1850-55.2 Sands and McDougall directory, various; City of Melbourne rate books, Volume 11: 1871, Lonsdale Ward, rate no. 364, VPRS 5708/P9 Public Record Office Victoria.3 City of Melbourne rate books, Volume 10: 1872, Lonsdale Ward, rate no. 368, VPRS 5708/P9 Public Record Office Victoria.4 Alexander Sutherland, Victoria and its Metropolis: Past and Present, Volume IIB, Melbourne, 1888, p.575; Miles Lewis Australian Architectural Index, notice of intention to build, MCC registration no. 4372, 12 April 1871, record no. 76826, accessed via http://www.mileslewis.net/australian-architectural.html, 20 May 2016.5 ‘Alfred Henry Shaw’, accessed via http://www.beresford.org.au/history/gen/tree/19.htm, 20 May 2016.6 City of Melbourne rate books, Volume 65: 1929, Lonsdale Ward, rate no. 272, VPRS 5708/P9 Public Record Office Victoria.7 City of Melbourne rate books, Volume 65: 1929, Lonsdale Ward, rate no. 272, Volume 66: 1930, rate no. 269, VPRS 5708/P9 Public Record Office Victoria; City of Melbourne Building Application Index, 358-360 Little Collins Street, BA10604, 21 May 1928, copy held by Lovell Chen.8 City of Melbourne rate books, Volume 67: 1931, Lonsdale Ward, rate no. 271, VPRS 5708/P9 Public Record Office Victoria.9 City of Melbourne Building Application Index, 358-360 Little Collins Street, BA10604, 21 May 1928, copy held by Lovell Chen.10 ‘The BJP Physie History’, accessed via http://physicalculture.com.au/history/, 20 May 2016.11 Table Talk, 7 March 1929, p.76.12 Argus, 11 April 1953, p.3.13 Sands and McDougall directory, various.14 Richard Apperly et al, Identifying Australian Architecture, Sydney, 1998. p. 180.15 Lewis et al, Melbourne: The City’s History and Its Development, Melbourne, 1994.16 http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/796/download-report17 http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/183557/download-report18 http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/1399/download-report19 http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/125909/download-report20 http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/1078
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1254524
| Type | Reference No. | Extent | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original | 105959 | 1 JPEG : 400 KB ; A4 | Single Item (May not be issued, may not be reproduced) |