Robyn Annear is a Melbourne writer and historian. A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, takes the unusual step of looking at the buildings of Melbourne’s architectural Belle Epoque from the demolisher’s perspective. Starting his business in 1892, Jim Whelan, the son of Irish immigrants, created a thriving family business through war and depression, dismembering Melbourne’s great past brick by brick.
Buildings Too Grand to Last
The catalogue of grand and majestic buildings that went under the wrecker’s hammer is astonishing. Looking through the photos in this well illustrated book, it’s hard to fathom how buildings of such breathtaking beauty as the Colonial Mutual Life Building in Collins Street were ever destroyed. Even buildings that showed wear and tear and a lack of utility, like the impressive yet decrepit Fish Market on Flinders Street, leaves the reader wondering as to why they went. (Some sites, post demolition, remained vacant with no one knowing what to do with them for years.)
The answer, of course, was money. Money, and an absence of legislation to preserve these significant buildings. It simply wasn’t possible to keep a small cottage house in the middle of the city when the land values were skyrocketing. The reason the Colonial Mutual Life Building had to go was because it was so grand.
As the author explains:
“But what sealed the building’s fate were its proportions: once considered noble, they were now condemned as a ‘terrible waste of space’. In 1959, the CML Building’s first floor was on a level with the third floor of one of its modern neighbours. With high ceilings, thick-set walls, and cavernous lobbies and hallways, it squandered a prime city block for less floorspace than would fill a building a fraction its size.”
Party Time at the Eastern Market
While A City Lost and Found concentrates on the fate of beautiful buildings under the demolisher’s hammer, it also does a wonderful job at evoking the people who used these buildings. Annear has a genuine fascination with the popular culture of the time, and describes with relish some of the shady and low-rent goings on at Melbourne’s Eastern Market, which was located at Exhibition and Bourke Streets. Annear colourfully describes the Eastern Market as ‘…the party girl, the one who’d do anything for a laugh’.
Annear describes one character from the Eastern Market.
“Jim Crilly, showman extraordinaire, found no end of ways to simultaneously fleece and amuse the penny paying public. Those tempted to ‘Walk in and see a man eating shark!’ would find, behind the curtain, a man seated at a table eating a fillet of flake.”
The Grandest Bookshop in the World
The chapter discussing the famous Cole’s Book Arcade is especially wonderful. E.W Cole, who started his career selling pies from a barrow, launched his famous book arcade in 1883, in Bourke Street. With more ideas than he could keep up with (he was also a keen writer of pamphlets), Cole expanded into lollies and toys. Eventually he would even have live caged monkeys to entertain the arcade’s browsers. His description of his book arcade as ‘The Grandest Book Shop is the World’ seems hard to dispute.
Lost Melbourne Re-Imagined
Alas, that wonderful era would eventually come to an end. And in would move Whelan the Wreckers to pull down Cole’s Book Arcade. While A City Lost and Found seems to accept progress and change as inevitable, it's hard not to feel a sadness that such a city is lost forever.
Robyn Annear’s chief charm with this book is to breathe life back into these annihilated buildings, appealing to the reader’s imagination with her energetic and witty style, allowing a brief if fleeting visit back to a beautiful yet forever lost Melbourne.
Published by Black Inc. Books, 2005.
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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