Category: Arcade Shops

on by
Brisbane Arcade, Queen Street Entrance, 2023. Photographer: Nicole Davis

This year the wonderful Brisbane Arcade celebrates the 100th anniversary of its opening!

In February 1924 Brisbane’s Daily Mail celebrated the progress of the city through the many new buildings constructed over the previous 12 months. Only five years after the end of World War I, the enthusiasm for improvement, demolition of the old city and construction of the new was felt throughout Australia.

In Brisbane, this included the new Brisbane Arcade ‘of brick, with modern shops and plate-glass windows, this is considered equal to the best Sydney and Melbourne arcades, … [which] cost close upon £70,000’ (5 February 1924, 11).

A similar refrain to stories written for seventy years about arcades in Australia – comparing them to those in Britain, Europe and the United States and equating them with urban progress – is to be found in the stories surrounding this new example:

The arcade, leading from Queen to Adelaide streets, is an attractive addition to the city’s architecture. Arcades are a feature of most large American, Continental and English cities—the one now in the course of construction may one day become the Burlington of Brisbane.

Daily Standard, 3 January 1924, 7.
Daily Mail, 5 February 1924, 11

The Brisbane Arcade has delighted generations of Brisbane residents and visitors throughout the years. I remember walking through as a young child, thinking what a magical place it seemed to me – particularly the Darrell Lea chocolate shop!

As a teenager, it became a regular thoroughfare as I made my way to meet friends at the Hungry Jacks on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets (the regular meeting spot for generations of Brisbane kids). When I started my first job – Bookworld in the Myer Centre – at the age of 16, it again became my route to and from Central Station. It always seemed quite glam and very expensive at that time in my life but still endlessly fascinating.

Being originally an ancient historian, I sadly didn’t pay much attention to Brisbane’s heritage buildings until a few years after I moved to Sydney and morphed into a museum professional working in Australian history and heritage. It once again became a site that I visited and wandered, now taking more scholarly notice of its architecture and stories.

My PhD thesis on Australian arcades was originally planned to look at those built into the 1920s, including this wonderful arcade, the Johnston Arcade in Terang, Victoria, and the many examples built in regional towns in the early twentieth century. But the sheer proliferation of arcades built in this period meant I had to restrict my study to the five decades from 1853 (the first arcade built in Australia) to 1901 (the year of Federation).

Despite having to move away from this period, I still wanted to hear more about the stories of this building, which has always been a special place for me. This year I’m able to do that, as a Griffith University Harry Gentle Resource Centre Visiting Fellow. After a bit of a hiccupy start to the research a couple of months ago, I’m back in Brisbane beginning the project in earnest.

Group of women modelling fashions from Paul’s millinery, Brisbane Arcade, at race day fashions at Ascot races, Brisbane, 1935. Photograph: The Queenslander, 6 June 1935. State Library Queensland, Neg: 191045

The work focuses on women business owners who occupied shops in the nineteenth-century Queensland arcades, focusing on businesses present from the 1870s to 1920s. I’m hoping to uncover the histories of these women: where they came from, how they financed their businesses, what motivated them to open their own establishment, what the experience was like for them, where they got their stock from, the networks they leveraged to do all of this, what happened to them after they left the arcades and, generally, to bring their stories to a broad audience.

At the end of the research, there’ll be a public talk, a website, a journal article, and a couple of conference presentations, all talking about these women. It will also contribute to a chapter in the book I’m writing based on my PhD thesis.

Brisbane Arcade was in fact built nearly 50 years after the city’s first example, the Royal Exhibition Arcade, down the road on Queen Street, and its successor, the 1885 Grand, straddling the corner of Queen and Edward streets (Tattersalls Arcade today sits on its footprint). Also earlier in Far North Queensland were the Royal Arcade in Charters Towers, built in 1888, and the 1901 arcade built as part of the Townsville Municipal Council buildings in 1901. For more on these earlier arcades, you can see my discussion of them in some earlier blog posts.

While I’m technically not researching the 1920s arcades, I likely will research the Brisbane Arcade for the project because I’d really like to compare both the usage and representation of this arcade with its nineteenth-century predecessors. We’ve already seen above in the list of store owners, many more shops aimed at women customers than those earlier examples. I also suspect when I look at the percentages, there will be a greater number of women owners as well. Many of those discussed above were at least run by women and there is a high likelihood many were owned by them as well.

With the 100th Anniversary celebrations, this week seemed an auspicious time to start on my research, and I’ve done a little on the Brisbane Arcade over the past few days, looking at newspapers and other sources.

Like a number of earlier examples, the Brisbane Arcade had a woman owner: Mary Emilia Mayne and her brother, Dr James Mayne, commissioned architect Richard Gailey Jr to design the building, with construction beginning in 1923. The Maynes were significant benefactors in Brisbane, helping to establish the University of Queensland Medical School at Herston and, in 1926, the land at St Lucia, where the main university campus is still located today. On their deaths, in 1940 and 1939 respectively, they left the proceeds of their estates in trust for the medical school, including the income from the arcade.

Mary Emilia Mayne, 1890 [1870s?]. University of Queensland Archives, S908 p541

Nearly two months after that first article in the Daily Mail, the same newspaper informed their reader about some of the businesses about to open there (30 March 1924, 6). These included a wide variety of women’s clothes and accessories shops such as the Arcadia Shoe Salon; Myrtle Power Salon, selling frocks and table linens; Luxor Shoe Store; Miss Morrie McLoughlin, who sold frocks and gowns; Dulcie Decor’s frocks and wraps; Frank Brennan and Miss Brennan, tailoring and ready-to-wear for women; Jenny Salon, run by Esme Davis [or Davies], high-class costumier; SB Heiser, fine jewellery; Searl’s, ‘well-known Sydney florists’; The Women’s Exchange, with knickknacks and lingerie; and Britton and Williams Cutlery Co.

Unlike the arcades of the nineteenth-century, which aimed at a diversity of businesses to attract both women and men, the Brisbane Arcade seems to have focused quite closely on shops that would attract women clientele.

There is a distinct divide in the March article between the relatively feminine boutiques and the seemingly more masculine real estate agents and brokers and so forth. This may have reflected the changing idea of who a shopper was expected to be, or who the advertising and retail industries were targeting as their audiences, and the emphasis on shopping as a woman-centric pastime.

Staff behind the counter at George E Adams’s cake shop, Brisbane Arcade, c1938. Photographer unknown. State Library Queensland

Looking at the Wise’s Directory for 1924-5 demonstrates that this article gives a good overview of the tenants, but mainly those on the ground floor. There were several other businesses there also, including refreshment rooms: Mrs Edge’s White Swan Café and a restaurant run by the Misses Alford and Watts.

On the first floor this continued with more dressmakers and similar businesses aimed at women, as well as the workrooms of some of the stores on the ground floor such as those of Jenny Salon and Brennan & Co. However, there were quite a few others that would have attracted male visitors.

These included a number of agents, also listed in the newspaper article, on this level (accessed via the balcony that runs along the entire outline of the void). This included AJ Hoye, estate agent; DB McCullough, real estate; John McCormack, house, land and business agent; and Allsop and Taylor, real estate. Also to be found upstairs were Cranfield’s Sports Depot, the Committee of Direction of Fruit Marketing, the Queensland Lawn Tennis Association, the Financial Aid Co and a number of (likely men’s) tailors on the first and second floors.

It seems then that there was an apparent spatial divide along gender lines in the building, at least initially. The ground floor was largely aimed at women clientele or more ‘feminine’ pursuits and interests, while the upstairs tenancies were those more traditionally associated with males or a mixed clientele. This is not to say that men didn’t accompany their female relatives to downstairs stores or food outlets, but that the division of interests by gender was apparent.

Of relevance to my current research project, one noticeable difference between nineteenth-century arcades and the Brisbane Arcade appears to be the real shift in gender balance of those running businesses. Here we see an overwhelming majority are run by women, unusual for the arcades of the previous century, particularly those in Brisbane. We do see women-run businesses to varying degrees in those earlier arcades, but they are by no means in the majority and, in Brisbane, there are in fact far more men listed as tenants.

Brisbane Arcade, interior, 2024. Photographer: Nicole Davis

I’m looking forward to exploring more about these changes over time, and when, where and why differences might occur, including looking through newspapers and perhaps business records of shops or business associations, when I can find them.

For the next fortnight, I’m working in the State Library of Queensland and the Queensland State Archives to start to unpack the stories of the Queensland arcades and their businesswomen and I’m very excited to bring you along with me on this research journey. I’ll be posting on my Instagram a bit along the way, so please join me!

Meanwhile, there is loads of stuff happening to celebrate the Brisbane Arcade’s 100th birthday. They have a great range of historical stories about the building on their website, including visitors’ memories of the arcade over the years. This Friday, 19 April, will see a special celebration on the Queen Street Mall, outside the building, with a radio broadcast, special gifts, entertainment, cake (!) and more during the day to celebrate the occasion.

You’ll definitely see me there and, while Darrell Lea is sadly gone, I’ll be stopping by their successor, the Noosa Chocolate Factory. Yum!

Brisbane Arcade Centenary history display, Queen Street Mall, 2024. Photographer: Nicole Davis

on by

In October last year, along with other members of the Melbourne History Workshop (MHW), I presented at a public seminar, ‘Untimely Ends: Using Inquests for Family and Local History‘, at Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), which focused on a specific collection of documents at PROV. We looked at the broader details of information you can find in these Inquests (Series VPRS 24) and how to use them in historical research. You can find more information on the MHW website, including the PowerPoint of the talk, which is full of useful material.

For my specific section, I talked about some research that I have been doing on Fong Fat, the Chinese owner of several Fancy Goods stores: two on Swanston Street and one in the Eastern Arcade in the 1860s and 1870s (although not all at the same time). The inquests research revealed more about his story but, more significantly, gave some greater detail about the women in his family: his daughter, Ah Chow; his first wife, Chinese-born Quinti; and his second wife, English immigrant Catherine Downey, formerly the family’s housekeeper and shop assistant.

In the last post on Fong Fat, I wrote about English-born New Zealander Charles Rooking Carter‘s comment on the shopping opportunities in the city of Melbourne in 1869:

he could find only one handsome Chinese shop in all Melbourne, and that was kept by ‘celestial’ individual rejoicing in the name of Fong Fat. He indeed, had an excellent display of Chinese fancy goods, in the way of carved ivory work, ebony work, porcelain baskets — besides tea and tobacco.

Carter, Victoria: The British ‘El Dorado‘ (1870)

Fong Fat’s shop, at 96 Swanston Street, near Little Bourke, was joined by another at 48 Bourke Street, in 1871 and then by another, in 1872, in the new and prestigious Eastern Arcade on Bourke Street. It was this shop that led me to Fong Fat and his story. In my research work on nineteenth-century Australian shopping arcades I came across advertisements for the wares that Fong Fat sold in the arcade, including imported Chinese homewares, bric-a-brac, fireworks, tea, and tobacco.

Advertisement for Fong Fat’s Eastern Arcade store, Herald, 20 December 1872, 4

While we imagine arcades in this period, and indeed Melbourne itself, as rather heterogenous and white, Chinese, Indian, Afghani and other non-European shops appeared in them to satisfy the taste for, to European eyes, exotic products from these regions. These shops and the stories of their proprietors demonstrate that Australia and its urban centres were more cosmopolitan that we often imagine.

The image we often have of the Chinese in Australia is of goldfields immigrants, sojourners that return or intend to return to China after making their money, who send their profits home, and whose Chinese wives that are left behind with the extended family. But, as scholars of the Chinese-Australian experience such as Sophie Loy-Wilson and Kate Bagnall, have explored, the story is far more complex. Many also decided to remain in Australia, becoming an integral part of Australian urban and regional life.

Fong Fat’s life is a one of those that little different to the Chinese sojourner trope, as is that of his family. Born in Canton around 1820, he came to Australia about 1857, presumably for gold, and established himself as a shopkeeper. He died in Stawell in 1884 after having married English-born widow Catherine Downey in 1872. This aspect of his story is really interesting, although not so highly unusual for Chinese-Australian men of the period; quite high numbers began relationships and had children with non-Chinese women. What intrigued me even more though was the story of his first family.

As I searched through Trove, as you do, for newspaper reports on him, I found some intriguing articles about two inquests in which he gave evidence. The first was that of four-month-old Ah Chow, the child of Fong Fat, who died in 1865 of inflammation of the lungs. The second, was that of his Chinese wife Quinti whose death, five years later, was caused by a stroke, and the newspapers claimed was probably the first inquest on a Chinese woman in the Australian colonies. These stories really intrigued me because our general story is that almost no Chinese women were present in Australia during this period. The Victorian census records indicate that there were eight Chinese women in 1861 (although 7% of the total population was China born), which grew to 31 in 1871. But there were a very very small number, of which Quinti was one .

Report on the inquest of Ah Chow, The Age, 10 July 1865, 4
Report on the inquest of Quinti, The Age, 17 May 1870, 3. The report mentions Catherine Downey, who was soon to become Fong Fat’s second wife

Interested in finding more, I obtained the inquest records (now almost all digitised!) from PROV, which told us a little more about the findings of the coroner, although the majority of the information was really quite well reported in the newspapers. But the inquests help to personalise this much more as we read the words of Fong Fat’s testimony for both his little daughter’s and wife’s deaths (the second was given through a translator). Like many testimonies, they seem dry, but we can imagine the probable distress of the father and husband at these events. Of Ah Chow’s death he stated:

The deceased female infant Ah Chow was my child. She was 28 days old. She was healthy up to the day before yesterday. She was in bed with her mother when I went home at 12 o’clock at night. My wife was crying. I saw blood coming from the child’s mouth. I went for a doctor but he was not at home. The child was alive then but lived only two hours.

Inquest deposition of Fong Fat in the death of his daughter Ah Chow. Public Records Office Victoria, VPRS 24 P0000 Unit 167, 4

The inquests are also interesting as they not only have testimonies from Fong Fat but also non-Chinese associates. This includes, in the inquest of Quinti, their housekeeper and shop assistant in Fong Fat’s store, Catherine Downey. Name sound familiar? Yes, this is the English-born widow that he married in 1871 and was his wife until her death fifteen years later!

I approach the history of urban Australia often in through the avenues of family history such as this. Using the personal stories of individual personalities to tell bigger histories and revealing larger events, such as the goldrush and its aftermath, Chinese migration to Australia, and the history of the city. Someone like Fong Fat, making his way in a city we often envisage as European and the presence of his Chinese wife and child, gives a different complexion to our imagination of Australia during the period.

Once I had found the inquests, I sourced as many other documents as I could to build a picture of these people and their lives – more newspaper reports, including advertising for the shops, stories about a court case Fong Fat’s second wife brought against someone, records of Catherine’s burial in the Melbourne General Cemetery and the gold that is the death certificates of Ah Chow and Quinti, which told us a little about them. Quinti, we find was born in Canton in around 1846 and had come to Victoria in around 1864 or 5, presumably to be a wife to Fong Fat. She quickly bore her only child, Ah Chow, in the colony, only to lose her, and then to die herself five years later.

The inquests themselves are only suggestive of what life would be like for Chinese women in Australia. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of detail in these particular ones but … in many other inquests we would receive a wealth of other detail about individuals. The death certificates reveal a little more, but they add to the story we are building. Importantly to me they also disrupt the idea that Chinese women were not present in Australia at all and the trope of the single sojourner Chinese man.

I think they also put a human slant on the often racialised and sensationalised newspaper reports about the Chinese community in the colonial city.  Together with all these other documents, the inquests provide another window into the lives of Fong Fat, Quinti and their baby daughter, as well as his second wife, and show how these types of records can provide more detailed information and illuminate the stories of Australian families.

on by

I could find only one handsome Chinese shop in all Melbourne, and that was kept by a ‘celestial’ individual rejoicing in the name of Fong Fat. He indeed, had an excellent display of Chinese fancy goods, in the way of carved ivory work, ebony work, porcelain baskets — besides tea and tobacco. (Carter 1870, 54).

Eastern Arcade
View of the Eastern Arcade, Bourke Street, Melbourne, 1877. Photographer: NJ Caire. State Library Victoria, H84.3/11.

In 1873, four businesses in the Eastern Arcade, Bourke Street, Melbourne, were listed as fancy goods dealers. Popular in arcades and in locations on the city streets, fancy goods stores had a wide variety of products for the home and personal use.

One of these was occupied by Chinese merchant and importer, Fong Fat, whose store occupied two shopfronts – numbers 11 and 13 – but his fancy goods were a little different to many of the products to be found in similar stores in colonial Melbourne and, indeed, in the Eastern Arcade.

Fong Fat was already well-established in the city as a fancy goods dealer, having run such a business at 98 Swanston Street since July 1868 (Herald, 18 July 1868, 1), before opening this second branch in the ostensibly prestigious location of the Eastern Arcade, in December 1872 (Argus, 18 December 1872, 2).

Screen Shot 2018-11-01 at 7.56.22 pm
Advertisement for Fong Fat’s Fancy Goods at 98 Swanston Street, Herald, 18 July 1868, 1.

In his stores, he carried Chinese (and some Japanese) products, including manufactured goods, such as carved ivory and ebony ware, porcelain crockery, silk and cotton, dress trimmings, fans, workboxes, tea caddies firecrackers, baskets, slippers, bamboo blinds and fishing rods, Japanese toothpowder, and Chinese crackers, but also consumables such as tea, tobacco, coffee, sugar, and spices.

Advertising indicates that he utilised connections in mainland China to import these treasures himself, for ‘All kinds of Chinese fancy goods [were] imported by Fong Fat direct from Canton … [including] chinaware, direct from the celebrated house of Messrs. Bow Hing and Co.’ for his Swanston Street store (Herald, 18 July 1868, 1). Later ‘he obtained all the newest novelties in China goods expressly for’ his new store in the arcade in 1872 (Argus, 18 December 1872, 2).

We gain an idea of what some of these goods may have looked like by taking a glance some of the imported Chinese items in the collection of Museums Victoria, including an ivory fan box, a silk and ivory fan, and a carved bone fan. Although these objects are of a slightly later date (1880), they perhaps represent some of what customers might be able to buy in Fong Fat’s shops.

Fan – Carved Bone, China, c1880. Museums Victoria, HT 22652. https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/1453444
Fan – Silk & Ivory, China, Late Qing Dynasty, c1880. Museums Victoria, HT 22651.

 

563289-small
Fan Box – Ivory, Carved Village Scenes, China, late Qing Dynasty, c1880. Museums Victoria, HT 22577.

The presence of a Chinese shopkeeper in a shopping arcade, a space that is perhaps imagined as a white, elite zone of occupation and leisure, may seem unusual, but such goods fed the desire for ‘Oriental’ and exotic goods in demand in Britain and Europe. But they were also desired, and available, in regional and metropolitan Australia during the latter half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth (e.g., Loy-Wilson 2014, 2017).

We can see from newspaper advertising that a surprising number of shops and businesses in the Australian arcades captured the Orientalist desires of the consumer in the settler colonial landscape. These included importers of Japanese and Chinese silks, furniture and other wares, Indian and Chinese tea shops, Oriental Bazaars, Turkish baths, and more. Many, but not all, were owned and run by non-British or European Australians like Fong Fat.

Fong Fat only lasted a year in the Eastern Arcade, vacating when his lease ran out at the end of 1873. The last we hear of him, as a fancy goods seller at least, is at his Swanston Street store in December 1874.

download
Swanston Street, 1872. Photographer unknown. State Library Victoria, H96.160/1721. Fong Fat’s store was four doors down from the Star Hotel, and is possibly that indicated with the arrow.

Who was Fong Fat and what happened to him after this last mention? Is he the man of the same name running a Chinese lottery and gambling den in Little Collins Street in 1875 (Weekly Times, 10 July 1875, 11)? Is he the Fong Fat who was fined for creating noxious gas in 1876 from his opium refinery? (PROV, VPRS 3181/PO/660/473)? Is he the Fong Fatee that appears with his wife on the Melbourne stage in the 1880s? Do we see him donating fruit and tea to the hospital fete committee in Hay, New South Wales, in 1893?

I’m asking these and other questions during the next few weeks, as I try to piece his story together. I have found some interesting information about his personal life already, gleaned from court records, newspapers, inquests, and other documents that I’ve been scouring. In Part Two of this post I’ll talk more about Font Fat’s Chinese wife, Quinti, and their daughter, Ah Chow, as well as his shop assistant, who was later his wife, Catherine Downey.

Select Bibliography

Public Record Office Victoria, VPRS 3181 [Melbourne City Council] Town Clerk’s Files, Series I

Charles Rooking Carter, Victoria, the British ‘El Dorado’: Or: Melbourne in 1869 (London: Edward Stanford, 1870)

Sophie Loy-Wilson, ‘Rural Geographies and Chinese Empires: Chinese Shopkeepers and Shop-Life in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 45.3 (2014): 407–424.

Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China (London & New York: Routledge, 2017)

Allom Lovell & Associates, The Royal Arcade: Conservation Management Plan (Melbourne: Allom Lovell &​ Associates, 1995)

Barbara Salisbury, The Strand Arcade: A History (Marrickville: Southwood Press, 1990)

on by

Queens Arcade Melbourne
Queen’s Arcade, Melbourne, Interior. St Gill, 1856. State Library Victoria

I know I’ve been very very quiet lately! I actually have lots of prepped posts but have been super busy over the last six months madly writing my thesis plus conference papers plus journal articles (this is good!). Today I’m writing Chapter Two and came across just the best advertisement for the Queen’s Arcade, placed in the newspaper in its opening days in October 1853.

Nineteenth-century newspaper advertisements were often entertaining and appealed to the reader through a variety of methods, including in this case … rhyme. It shows that the arcade’s owners, a consortium of well-off middle-class Melbourne businessmen, aimed provide a the wide variety and mix of tenants and produce for the consumer who visited.

Much like today’s modern shopping mall, everything shoppers desired could be found at the arcade – clothing and accessories, fabrics jewellery, musical wares, art materials, luxury consumables and onsite refreshment rooms. This gave them (ideally) no cause to go elsewhere, and the diversity and variety available seemed to place the new novelty of the arcade in an ideal position to become the centre of shopping and social life in Melbourne.

THE QUEEN’S ARCADE.

THE Belles and Beaux of Melbourne’s Town to aid,
What can be better than the Queen’s Arcade for
A pleasant lounge in summer’s sultry days,
Well shelter’d from old Sol’s o’powering rays;
And when the hot winds drive dust helter skelter
What place than this more cool and fit for shelter?
When the wet season makes our town a swamp.
The Queen’s Arcade is dry and free from damp;
And here the Melbourne belles may walk at ease,
And choose what rare commodities they please.
I’ll run them over with your kind permission
First, we’ve G. Goldsmith’s Bonnet Exhibition,
To suit complexions whether dark or fair;
Jewels and ornaments, both rich and rare;
Scents of all kinds, exquisite and recherche,
With papier mache, too, and gutta percha;
Drapery, hosiery, splendid silks, and satin,
With books in English, French, German, and Latin.
“Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,”
And fewer bosoms. Here you’ll find the best
Quadrilles by Jullien, D’Albert’s waltzes fast,
The Arcade Polka, Winterbottoms’s last,
Bijouterie and articles of dress
On your attention, ladies, let me press,
That everything for widow, wife, or maid,
Is to be met with in the Queen’s Arcade;
And if the ladies’ smiles we only win,
Of course the gentlemen will soon drop In,
And they will find that them we’ve not forgot,
Havannahs and cheroots, a splendid lot,
With meerschaums, cutties, snuffs of every kind,
In short, all tastes will here be pleased; you’ll find
Rings, watches, pins, and studs in rich array.
Coats, trousers, vests of patterns neat or gay,
Canes, riding whips, and boots of patent leather,
With Mackintoshes to resist the weather.
To sum up all, an Universal Mart,
We mean to be a Gallery of Art,
And every exertion will be made
To please the public, in the Queen’s Arcade.
Refreshments of the best and choicest kind.
Will also be provided; you will find
Confectionery, pastry, jellies, ice,
Crackers, bon-bons, and everything that’s nice;
And taste it once, you’ll say such lemonade
You never drank but in the Queen’s Arcade.

The Banner, Melbourne, 7 October 1853 (via Trove)

Save

on by

I’m doing a LOT of travelling as part of my research for my thesis. Recently, I did a trip to Queensland to look at the history of the nineteenth century arcades there. It was a fruitful journey that answered a number of questions that couldn’t be resolved through online research.

It allowed me to visit the sites & understand their location and placement within the cityscape of both the nineteenth century & today, and I also collected reams of information, images, plans, maps, directories, council records and other resources that will assist with my research.

Additionally I was able to gain valuable information through direct contact with the staff of the archives and libraries there that yielded some revelations. Some of the information was contextual and this was vital. Despite growing up in Brisbane, I knew comparatively little about its history compared to Sydney & Melbourne, as that has been  where my history and heritage work has focused up until recently.

There were four arcades constructed in Queensland prior to 1901 – while I say nineteenth-century a lot,  my study actually extends to 1901, in order for me to consider one of these specific Queensland sites, constructed in the year of Federation and on the cusp of the new century that brought great changes to the Australian urban landscape.

Two were constructed in Brisbane and both were the brainwave of enterprising businessman Henry Morwitch, who lived a truly international life throughout the British Empire and beyond. Born in Poland, he migrated to England, then Victoria, followed by New Zealand, back over to Brisbane (with a sojourn in Gympie), then to Sydney and, at the end of his life, returning to Britain. His two arcades were built on the busiest commercial street in Brisbane, Queen Street, in close proximity to each other.

These were the Royal Exhibition Arcade, constructed in 1877 and demolished in the years around World War I, and the Grand Arcade (fronting Queen and Edward Streets), built in 1885 and demolished in parts between the mid 1920s to late 1930s.

Picture1.png
Grand Arcade (front right) & Royal Exhibition Arcade (fourth building from rh corner), both featuring wrought iron verandahs, Queen Street, Brisbane, c1908, State Library Queensland.

Both sites are now taken up by commercial buildings featuring similar tenants, although certainly on a different scale. The Royal Exhibition Arcade was on the site of Macarthur Central, a large, recently constructed, shopping centre with diverse shops and eateries. As for the Grand, the Tattersall’s Arcade, part of the Tattersall’s Club buildings constructed between World Wars I and II, sits on the exact footprint of the Grand Arcade.

Macarthur Central, 255 Queen Street Brisbane. Site of the Royal Exhibition Arcade. Nicole Davis, 2014. Macarthur Central, site of the Royal Exhibition Arcade & several other buildings, 255 Queen Street Brisbane. Site of the Royal Exhibition Arcade. Nicole Davis, 2014.

Southeast corner of Queen & Edward streets. The Grand Arcade wrapped around the large corner block. © Nicole Davis, 2014.
Tattersalls Arcade, Edward Street, site of the Grand Arcade. © Nicole Davis, 2014.
Tattersalls Club & Arcade, Queen Street, site of the Grand Arcade. © Nicole Davis, 2014.

The other two arcades that were built in Queensland were in seemingly unlikely locations, but at the time of their construction represented the progress and modernity of two regional towns that were booming, both economically and in terms of population.

The first was constructed in Charters Towers, nearly 1400 km from Brisbane, in the mining country of Far North Queensland. In 1888 the town was a city with a rapidly expanding population, drawn by rich lure of its gold discoveries and usurping the land of its traditional owners. By 1899 it had a population of 25,000 and was one of the biggest cities in the Australian colonies.

Entrepreneurs in Charters Towers used the gold wealth to create a European-style city, commissioning architects, often from the cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, to design buildings in the manner of the high boom metropolises far to the south. One of these was the Royal Arcade, today known as the Stock Exchange Arcade, constructed in 1888 for businessman Alexander Malcolm and designed by Sydney architect Mark Cooper Day. It was never completely finished due to Malcolm becoming insolvent, and today the back remains open to the land and laneway at the rear. It’s the only remaining arcade from the nineteenth century in Queensland and both it and the town, with its mining history and several heritage sites, are fantastic spots to visit.

Screen Shot 2018-11-01 at 1.26.52 pm
Charters Towers Stock Exchange building (former Royal Arcade), c1890. Photographer unknown. State Library Queensland

The last site I visited was in Townsville, 140 km east of Charters Towers on the coast. It’s a quite expansive city of 170,000 people. In 1901, the year of Federation, the Earl of Hopetoun, first Governor-General of Australia, opened the large municipal civic buildings constructed on Flinders Street. The structure, which took up a significant section of the block, included a Town Hall, a theatre, a licensed hotel, a market and a shopping arcade.

Unfortunately, not much survives in records nor in the collective memory about this arcade and before I arrived I doubted that it even was a real arcade in the sense that I was defining them. But I found some tantalising evidence in the Townsville City Library that did confirm it was an ‘authentic’ shopping arcade. This photocopy of a cross-section came from the original plans, which certainly existed in the 1990s, but now appear to be lost.

Town Hall, Flinders Street, Townsville, 1914. Photographer: W.J. Laurie. City Libraries Townsville, 315258. The Arcade entrance is below the tower.
Arcade building and premises of Brownhill, Kirk and Company, Market Reserve Building, Flinders Street, 1913. Photographer unknown. City Libraries Townsville, 323846.

This amazing collection of buildings, built during a period of intense change for Australia, were unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1978 and today, the current municipal buildings, a typical example of 1980s civic architecture, stand in its place.

Despite the fact that the majority of these arcades no longer exists, seeing the sites on which they stood (and still stand, in the case of the Royal Arcade), allowed me to better understand their placement within the urban environment that no amount of looking at images or maps can provide. I also feel much more illuminated as to their place within the history of the cities in which they were built and the overarching historical narrative of those places.

The experience of road tripping to Charters Towers in particularly was fascinating as the bitumen road from tropical seaside Townsville took me to the dry almost outback of western Queensland and allowed me to understand the true feat of what was constructed in this now small town in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

I’m currently collating all the material and information gathered and this will figure in a longer case study of specific arcades that will contribute to my thesis.

This trip was made possibly by a Graduate Research Arts Travel Scholarship from the University of Melbourne. Lastly, a big shout out to those who assisted so much in my research on this whirlwind two week trip:

Brisbane City Archives

State Library of Queensland

Trisha Fielding and all the staff at Townsville City Libraries (Trisha, a historian, also has a fantastic North Queensland history blog in which she discusses the Town Hall buildings)

James Cook University Special Collections

Charters Towers & Dalrymple Archives Group, especially archivist and curator, Michael Brumby, who was excessively generous with his time and resources, and was willing to have great long chats about history with me.

Charters Towers Library

National Trust Queensland volunteers at the Stock Exchange Arcade and Zara Clark Museum in Charters Towers and the Hou Wang Temple in Atherton

The Stock Exchange Arcade Gallery (which allowed me to see the upstairs of the Royal Arcade)

And to the Royal Hotel and the Stock Exchange Arcade Cafe in Charters Towers, for giving me a luxurious place to lay my head and excellent coffee to fortify me!