Princess Mary Club- Melbourne Lonsdale St 118-122 b1926-39 1986
Central Activities District Conservation Study - Graeme Butler, 1985: .
`Denominational charitable bodies, such as the Methodist Home Mission Department (1875 - ), evolved in parallel with Victoria's increasing urbanisation as the 19th century advanced. Many were created just to serve the central city. The Central Methodist Mission commenced at Wesley Church in the depression of 1893, under Rev A R Edgar, specifically to combat the urban evils, resulting from unemployment, alcohol, gambling and opium, found in the streets of Melbourne. The mission took charge of the South Yarra refuge for fallen women in 1895, a similar institution at Fairfield and other institutions helping homeless men and boys, inebriates and drug addicts. The Princess Mary Club was built as a preventative adjunct to this work, providing a "home away from home" for country girls working in the city. The Rev. Dr S J Hoban was the instigator of the project which cost around 35,000 pounds when complete. Alec S Eggleston was the architect and J S G Wright the builder. A S & R A Eggleston also designed an additional floor set back from Lonsdale Street, in 1939, as envisaged in the original scheme. The builder was E A Watts and the contract signed January 1940. An unusual aspect of the original four level reinforced concrete building was the extensive motor show room occupying the ground level, Lonsdale Street frontage and entered through wide Gothic style doors. Behind the show room was a large garage and car wash: the combinations of dedicatedly ecclesiastical architecture and pragmatic commercial sense showing a truly novel approach to charitable works. The hostel itself occupied a comparatively minute and totally separate part of the ground floor, as an entrance hall, but the first floor was proposed as vastly different. An extensive lounge, with leaded domes set into the ceiling, panelled dado's and mouldings, a dining hall and private dining room, matron and sisters' quarters and offices all followed the promise of the exterior. Set around an internal light well, the.
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The building is, externally, executed in a Modern Tudor in an apparent attempt to blend with the old Gothic revival complex adjoining. To achieve this, Tudor hood moulds, oriel and lancet windows, top casement sashes, quatrefoils, and basket-arched doorways were contrived in cement. Retail was focused at the main entry points, both commercial (Lonsdale Street) and ecclesiastical, (facing the Church), whilst upper levels were relatively austere, with implied rather than actual detail. Internally, the entrance lobby retains some of its dark wood panelling and an old lift car, but little remains of the motor car retailing carried out by W T Cottman in the 1930s as, for that matter, the Central Mission Carpark which was presumably at the rear, as 124 Lonsdale Street. In their place, there are now small retail shops and, towards the rear of the building, kitchens and common rooms now occupy the car wash. At first level, the balcony and leaded light doors, which face Lonsdale Street, survive from the earlier lounge area and the dome now sits incongruously over a false ceiling, not above the first floor but above ground level, at a point which was evidently at the rear of the car showrooms..
Statement of Significance.
Part of the continuing development of the site for inner city Mission purposes, a successful and surprising integration of two now contradictory uses with a third existing use on the site and, generally a component essay in Modern (or neo) Tudor and a satisfaction of the need for a contextual design.
Princess Mary Club- Melbourne Lonsdale St 118-122 b1926-39 1986
Central Activities District Conservation Study - Graeme Butler, 1985: .
`Denominational charitable bodies, such as the Methodist Home Mission Department (1875 - ), evolved in parallel with Victoria's increasing urbanisation as the 19th century advanced. Many were created just to serve the central city. The Central Methodist Mission commenced at Wesley Church in the depression of 1893, under Rev A R Edgar, specifically to combat the urban evils, resulting from unemployment, alcohol, gambling and opium, found in the streets of Melbourne. The mission took charge of the South Yarra refuge for fallen women in 1895, a similar institution at Fairfield and other institutions helping homeless men and boys, inebriates and drug addicts. The Princess Mary Club was built as a preventative adjunct to this work, providing a "home away from home" for country girls working in the city. The Rev. Dr S J Hoban was the instigator of the project which cost around 35,000 pounds when complete. Alec S Eggleston was the architect and J S G Wright the builder. A S & R A Eggleston also designed an additional floor set back from Lonsdale Street, in 1939, as envisaged in the original scheme. The builder was E A Watts and the contract signed January 1940. An unusual aspect of the original four level reinforced concrete building was the extensive motor show room occupying the ground level, Lonsdale Street frontage and entered through wide Gothic style doors. Behind the show room was a large garage and car wash: the combinations of dedicatedly ecclesiastical architecture and pragmatic commercial sense showing a truly novel approach to charitable works. The hostel itself occupied a comparatively minute and totally separate part of the ground floor, as an entrance hall, but the first floor was proposed as vastly different. An extensive lounge, with leaded domes set into the ceiling, panelled dado's and mouldings, a dining hall and private dining room, matron and sisters' quarters and offices all followed the promise of the exterior. Set around an internal light well, the.
.
The building is, externally, executed in a Modern Tudor in an apparent attempt to blend with the old Gothic revival complex adjoining. To achieve this, Tudor hood moulds, oriel and lancet windows, top casement sashes, quatrefoils, and basket-arched doorways were contrived in cement. Retail was focused at the main entry points, both commercial (Lonsdale Street) and ecclesiastical, (facing the Church), whilst upper levels were relatively austere, with implied rather than actual detail. Internally, the entrance lobby retains some of its dark wood panelling and an old lift car, but little remains of the motor car retailing carried out by W T Cottman in the 1930s as, for that matter, the Central Mission Carpark which was presumably at the rear, as 124 Lonsdale Street. In their place, there are now small retail shops and, towards the rear of the building, kitchens and common rooms now occupy the car wash. At first level, the balcony and leaded light doors, which face Lonsdale Street, survive from the earlier lounge area and the dome now sits incongruously over a false ceiling, not above the first floor but above ground level, at a point which was evidently at the rear of the car showrooms..
Statement of Significance.
Part of the continuing development of the site for inner city Mission purposes, a successful and surprising integration of two now contradictory uses with a third existing use on the site and, generally a component essay in Modern (or neo) Tudor and a satisfaction of the need for a contextual design.