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Michell Wool Scourers and Merchants Adams Street Hindmarsh.
George Michell and his family came to South Australia from Cornwall in 1866 and by 1870 they were settled on the banks of the Wakefield River at Undalya near Woolshed Flat. He started a wool buying, washing and skin business. The washed wool in vats filled from the Wakefield River was then shipped to England for the textile mills. In the late 1890s Michells moved their business to Hindmarsh which had been a centre of wool washing and scouring since the 1860s. The River Torrens provided flowing water for the businesses along River Street and Adam Street. The cleaning of skins and tanneries were also located here. The first two fellmongering businesses were Taylor’s and Peacock’s operating by 1865. Burnell’s wool fellmongers started soon after in Adam Street and built an arched window classical style factory of two storeys with wooden and tin structures attached. This was taken over by the Apollo soap factory in 1881 and then it became Burfords Soap and candle works in 1887. In 1903 Michells moved their works into Adam Street where they purchased Peaock’s fellmongery works. This was destroyed by fire in 1907 and Michells built a new factory at that time. Further along Adam Street they had the two storey Michell’s tannery works on the corner of Adam and River Street. It is now demolished but their 1907 factory remains with is brick work, cast iron curved veranda supports for the loading bays etc. Michells sold these works in 1945. They moved all their operations to Salisbury in the early 1970s.
There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern
Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy
afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel
the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they’ll be
charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot
and in buses and all well-dressed thru workingman Frisco of
Walkup ?? truck drivers and even the poor grime-bemarked Third
Street of lost bums even Negros so hopeless and long left East
and meanings of responsibility and try that now all they do is
stand there spitting in the broken glass sometimes fifty in one
afternoon against one wall at Third and Howard and here’s all
these Millbrae and San Carlos neat-necktied producers and
commuters of America and Steel civilization rushing by with San
Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough
time to be disdainful, they’ve got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all
the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the
railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above
the following hotshot freight trains--it’s all in California, it’s all a
sea, I swim out of it in afternoons of sun hot meditation in my
jeans with head on handkerchief on brakeman’s lantern or (if not
working) on book, I look up at blue sky of perfect lostpurity and
feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me and I* have
insane conversations with Negroes in second*-story windows
above and everything is pouring in, the switching moves of
boxcars in that little alley which is so much like the alleys of
Lowell and I hear far off in the sense of coming night that engine
calling our mountains.
Jack Kerouac-October in the Railroad Earth
On 12 Februrary 1974, a friend and I visited the Bay Area for a first ride on BART as well as a trip on the SP commutes. We were planning to go over Christmas break, taking the Coast Starlight from Davis to Richmond, riding BART, then going to the SP's 3rd and Townsend Street station to catch a commute, pulled by an H-24-66, to San Jose and the Starlight back to Davis and home.
This was the very end of 3rd and Townsend, the station SP had built for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition as a temporary structure that somehow held on for almost 60 years, through wars and streamlined Daylights and Larks and dieselization and Amtrak ending long distance passenger service into SF, and now, here it was, with a couple of SDP45s supplementing the F-Ms and Geeps that had been the commute power since the day I was born when diesels took over the commutes from the last of SP's steam.
Within a year or so, the F-Ms were gone and a new station was built south of 4th Street, which Caltrain still uses and is now over 40 years old itself, as old as 3rd and Townsend was when Kerouac and Neal Cassady were working for SP and they and their fellow Beats were having poetry readings in North Beach.
In 1974, there were flagmen who would block 4th Street to traffic when a train was due to leave or arrive at the station during the day. They would come out with their STOP signs from their little cabins and hold up cars for a few seconds until the train cleared, then go back to doing whatever they had been doing.
When rush hour approached and some of the trains extended beyond 4th Street, they would extend a chain across 4th Street and open up 5th Street a block south and flag that for the evening commute parade. 130, the first train that Kerouac mentions in Railroad Earth left at 514 and ran non stop down to what we now call Silicon Valley, before making its stops. In 1974, it was one of the first trains to have an SDP45 and ran with 9 gallery cars, which extended over 4th Street, as did some of the other trains. SP dispatched trains at 3 minute intervals at the rush hour, and my 1958 Official Guide shows the same train numbers and times as prevailed at rush hour in 1974.
Today, Caltrain runs a different service, reflecting that many people are commuting south in the morning and north in the afternoon as Santa Clara County has turned from a bedroom community to an economic powerhouse. The whole neighborhood has changed with former SP yards and freight houses now apartments and condos, and the Giants' 3 Com Park a few blocks north. Streetcars again serve the station with Muni's E, N and T lines.
... to find one of the Stanley Brothers' plaques!
This attractive little pub - originally named the "Jubilee Tavern", and today just "The Jubilee" - is in the Norwich suburb of Thorpe Hamlet, at the corner of St Leonards and Florence Roads, where it's been serving since the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, 1887.
Amongst the many products released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, these plaques were made by Nuneaton brickmakers, the Stanley Brothers - and, a decade later, they repeated the design with minor modifications, to mark her Diamond Jubilee.
Norfolk may well have others but all those I've identified thus far date from the first event - with one at the roof apex of the Sue Ryder shop on Norwich Street in Fakenham, and another on Church Street in Wymondham, and a fourth in Nelson Road Central, Great Yarmouth.
........................................
If interested, these plaques are well-documented online, with this - from 2012 - perhaps a good place to start....
www.lincolnshirelife.co.uk/posts/view/a-small-tribute-to-...
... and Flickr has a group with photos...
There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern
Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy
afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel
the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they’ll be
charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot
and in buses and all well-dressed thru workingman Frisco of
Walkup ?? truck drivers and even the poor grime-bemarked Third
Street of lost bums even Negros so hopeless and long left East
and meanings of responsibility and try that now all they do is
stand there spitting in the broken glass sometimes fifty in one
afternoon against one wall at Third and Howard and here’s all
these Millbrae and San Carlos neat-necktied producers and
commuters of America and Steel civilization rushing by with San
Francisco Chronicles and green Call-Bulletins not even enough
time to be disdainful, they’ve got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all
the way up to 146 till the time of evening supper in homes of the
railroad earth when high in the sky the magic stars ride above
the following hotshot freight trains--it’s all in California, it’s all a
sea, I swim out of it in afternoons of sun hot meditation in my
jeans with head on handkerchief on brakeman’s lantern or (if not
working) on book, I look up at blue sky of perfect lostpurity and
feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me and I* have
insane conversations with Negroes in second*-story windows
above and everything is pouring in, the switching moves of
boxcars in that little alley which is so much like the alleys of
Lowell and I hear far off in the sense of coming night that engine
calling our mountains.
Jack Kerouac-October in the Railroad Earth
On 12 Februrary 1974, a friend and I visited the Bay Area for a first ride on BART as well as a trip on the SP commutes. We were planning to go over Christmas break, taking the Coast Starlight from Davis to Richmond, riding BART, then going to the SP's 3rd and Townsend Street station to catch a commute, pulled by an H-24-66, to San Jose and the Starlight back to Davis and home.
This was the very end of 3rd and Townsend, the station SP had built for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition as a temporary structure that somehow held on for almost 60 years, through wars and streamlined Daylights and Larks and dieselization and Amtrak ending long distance passenger service into SF, and now, here it was, with a couple of SDP45s supplementing the F-Ms and Geeps that had been the commute power since the day I was born when diesels took over the commutes from the last of SP's steam.
Within a year or so, the F-Ms were gone and a new station was built south of 4th Street, which Caltrain still uses and is now over 40 years old itself, as old as 3rd and Townsend was when Kerouac and Neal Cassady were working for SP and they and their fellow Beats were having poetry readings in North Beach.
In 1974, there were flagmen who would block 4th Street to traffic when a train was due to leave or arrive at the station during the day. They would come out with their STOP signs from their little cabins and hold up cars for a few seconds until the train cleared, then go back to doing whatever they had been doing.
When rush hour approached and some of the trains extended beyond 4th Street, they would extend a chain across 4th Street and open up 5th Street a block south and flag that for the evening commute parade. 130, the first train that Kerouac mentions in Railroad Earth left at 514 and ran non stop down to what we now call Silicon Valley, before making its stops. In 1974, it was one of the first trains to have an SDP45 and ran with 9 gallery cars, which extended over 4th Street, as did some of the other trains. SP dispatched trains at 3 minute intervals at the rush hour, and my 1958 Official Guide shows the same train numbers and times as prevailed at rush hour in 1974.
Today, Caltrain runs a different service, reflecting that many people are commuting south in the morning and north in the afternoon as Santa Clara County has turned from a bedroom community to an economic powerhouse. The whole neighborhood has changed with former SP yards and freight houses now apartments and condos, and the Giants' 3 Com Park a few blocks north. Streetcars again serve the station with Muni's E, N and T lines.
Lower Church Lane as seen from the higher end near to St Andrew's church.
Several of the 16th Century cottages along here are Grade II listed.
In the 17th century, many of the houses were "Dutch Billys" [redbrick, gabled-fronted houses, familiar to anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands] but by the middle of the 19th century the street was full of small shops, including many family operated groceries shops as well as a number of dairies. Unfortunately by 1900 the street was effectively a slum as most houses had become multi-occupancy tenements.
By the middle of the 20th century Francis Street had become more commercial and industrial and acted as a base for many manufacturers of furniture, beds, cabinets, sheet metal products and shirts.
In the late 1990s the antiques trade began relocating to Francis Street from the city quays and up until recently the street had [maybe still has] the highest concentration of antique dealers in Ireland.
A major redevelopment of Francis Street is due to begin sometime this year [2019] with the appointment by Dublin city Council of a contractor to oversee detailed design and construction. The refurbishment includes replacing existing pavements with wider pavements in quality stone, creating new raised table areas to mark key landmarks along the street, adding new lighting and street furniture, and planting trees and landscaping the street.
The junctions at either end of Francis Street will also be improved, while the high quality paving will also extend down Hanover Lane.
Except for football, nothing defines Alabama like Summer. Hot, sweltering, humid, and oppressive. Kudos would echo out across the land to the day laborers that toil in the sum for a wage, if everyone else wasn't enclosed in their own air conditioned terrariums.
Marcus loved the summer. Loved it. He saw it as a time to see the world in a bright warm embrace. An invitation to the Florida beach, bar-b-que in the shade. Nothing could be better. But, today he had to get to a class. Sadie would already be there, and he had to make sure that he go the seat next to her.
The Noel Lothian Hall was opened in 2005 to accommodate botanical and horticultural exhibitions, displays, workshop and seminars.
The Hall is dedicated to Noel Lothian, Director of the Botanic Gardens, Adelaide from 1948 to 1980.
This Hall is part of the heritage listed Tram Barn A, the only remaining of 4 original tram barns built on this site in 1918 to service Adelaide’s extensive network of tram lines.
The Board of the MTT met for the first time on 4th February 1907.
Within two years, the first route of the electric tram system, to Kensington opened on 9th March 1909. By the end of 1909, electric trams were working the inner lines to North Adelaide, Walkerville, Payneham, Maylands, Marryatville, Parkside, Unley and Hyde Park - and at the same time, the MTT continued to operate the remaining horse trams routes, which it had taken over, retiring each horse tram service as the electric routes became operational.
Following the short lived appointment of J J Bodley, who had been manager of the Adelaide and Suburban Tramway Company (the largest of the horse tram companies) Mr W G T Goodman (later Sir William Goodman) then Chief Electrical Engineer was appointed General Manager, a position he held until his retirement in 1950 at age 78.
The Adelaide tramway system was designed, built and then managed for over 40 years by Sir William Goodman.
Born at Ramsgate, UK in 1872 he worked in Tasmania, New South Wales and as an electrical engineer for the Dunedin N Z Corporation before joining the Municipal Tramways Trust.
In the space of the first two years Mr Goodman and his staff had in place:
• 70 trams (of an initial order of 100) to start with.
• A very large car shed to put them in.
• A workshop to maintain them.
• A headquarters to run them from.
• A special phone system to know where they were.
• 10 miles of old horse tram tracks removed and replaced,
• Bridges strengthened.
• A 600v DC electrical distribution system.
• 55 miles of overhead wires.
• A power station planned and contract shipping to bring a steady supply of coal from NSW. (Until the power station was completed in 1910, power was supplied by the Adelaide Electric Supply Co to the MTT’s battery house and converter station at the corner of Pirie Street. and East Terrace.)
On opening day at 2.30pm, a procession of fourteen tramcars (carrying seven hundred passengers) led by tram No 1 left Hackney Depot travelling to Gurrs Road, Kensington. As the Premier, Mr T Price was very ill, Mrs Price officially drove the leading tram under Mr Goodman’s guidance. The procession returned to King William Street and then reversed direction to return to Hackney Depot for afternoon tea.
Refs: Heritage of the City of Adelaide: An Illustrated Guide 1996.
This Arts and Crafts style complex of flats may be found in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood.
Built in Arts and Crafts style, the flats have a mixture of exposed red brick and stuccoed brick walls which was a typical element of the movement, as are the half timbered gables and the wooden fretwork up under the eaves. The patterns set into the brickwork, particularly those around the bulls-eye window are especially fine, and a tribute to the craftsman that created them.
After the Great War (1914 - 1918), higher costs of living and the "servant problem" made living in the grand mansions and villas built in the Victorian and Edwardian eras a far less practical and attractive option for both those looking for new housing, and those who lived in big houses. It was around this time, in answer to these problems, that flats and apartments began to replace some larger houses, and became fashionable to live in.
Flats like these would have suited those of comfortable means who could afford to live in Elwood, and dispense with the difficulties of keeping a large retinue of staff. With its simple style, it mirrored the prevailing uncluttered lines of architecture that came out of England after the war.
This is a former gun and rifle makers - gun shop and workshop on Carrs Lane.
When I got these shots, there was a bus stod in front of the building.
These are from the same side of the building close up (while waiting for the bus to move out of the way).
It is a Grade II listed building.
Sculptures on the Powell's Gun Shop.
Gun shop, workshops and living accomodation [now offices] of 1861, designed by Charles Edge [f.1827-1867].
MATERIALS: Red brick with diapered patterns in black brick and painted stone dressings.
PLAN: The street frontage is three storeys with attic and the rear, L-shaped workshop range has five floors.
EXTERIOR: The street front is rendered to the ground floor and first floor levels. The ground floor has three doorways at centre, right and left and between them are set shop windows. All of the openings have four-centred arches with deeply-incised hood moulds and label stops. The lower part of the shop windows are of C20 plate glass with modern fascia boards above, but the upper portions of the windows retain their two-light tracery and the surrounds are untouched. The left doorway has been converted to form a shop window and that to right leads to the staircase of the office chambers on the upper floors above the shops. The five first floor windows alternate between single and double-lights and have moulded surrounds and arched tympana beneath the black and red brick voussoirs. The piers between the windows have been encased in wooden panels. The four second floor windows are paired and have projecting figureheads to their tympana. Those to the third floor are sashes. A heavy cornice supports two gabled dormers with crow-stepped profile and polychromatic voussoirs to the relieving arches. The rear L-shaped workshop wing is of diapered brickwork with large windows above the work benches.
INTERIOR: The former central corridor which led to the rear courtyard has been incorporated and now forms a central arcaded colonnade, entered by the central door, to either side of which the shop interior can be reached. This has been largely re-fitted with replacement panelling to the walls and a suspended ceiling to the rear room at right. The offices are approached by an open-well staircase with stick balusters and shaped tread-ends. These upper floors retain their plan form relatively unaltered with two principal front rooms to each, although fireplaces have been removed. The architects drawings show these marked as drawing room etc. to first floor with bedrooms to the upper floors. The workshop wing at the back has ranges of large windows facing east and south and below these are work benches. There is a small forge to one room at first floor level.
HISTORY: The gun making industry in Birmingham was started in the C17 and expanded steadily through to the start of the C20. Firearms for the East India company and for slave traders were made in large numbers and guns for the army were a staple of the industry and led to the founding of the Government Viewing Room in 1798 and one of the two Proof Houses in the country for authorising guns. Powell's trace their history to the partnership between William Powell and Joseph Simmons established in 1802 and were amongst the most prominent of the C19 gun makers. William Powell was elected Chairman of the Guardians of the Proof House where he also engaged Charles Edge to design the Proof Hole [proofing shed]. The firm made guns for the Napoleonic wars and for the American Civil War. They patented a number of inventions, including, in 1864, the Powell Snap Action and in 1866 a half-cocking mechanism.From 1861 William Powell gave his address as Carrs Lane, which implies that the acomodation was for his use. Gun-makers" did not usually manufacture the individual parts of their guns. Pieces were made by independent specialist sub-contractors. Some of these worked within the gun quarter and Showell's Dictionary lists some fifty specialists. Assembly was done by "fabricators" or "setters-up" and the finished product was then sold by the "maker". It seems from the juxtaposition of shop and workshop at Carrs Lane that Powell's assembled the guns themselves and then sold them through the shop, enabling them to better monitor the quality of the finished product.
SOURCES: Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell, Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham (1885); Andy Foster, Birmingham, Pevsner Architectural Guides (2005).
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This building was designed in 1860 by the noted Birmingham architect, Charles Edge, whose other listed buildings include the extension to Birmingham Town Hall [Grade I]. It houses a gun shop and associated workshops as well as accomodation [now office chambers] on the upper floors. The building has a good street front in a continental Gothic style which is little-altered, and a shop interior and accomodation which retain the essentials of their plan form. The juxtaposition of gun shop and associated workshops, where the parts made elsewhere were assembled, or "set-up" is rare and the degree of intactness in the workshop wing, with work benches and hearth still in situ, is remarkable. The building provides telling evidence of the specialist gun trade which was once such a vital part of Birmingham's industry in the C19.
Powell's Gun Shop - Heritage Gateway
Powell's Gun Shop dates from 1860 - 61, a late work of Charles Edge in Italian Gothic. Four storeys and dormers, rendered below red brick with blue brick patterns above, stone dressings. The ground floor originally two shops with a central rear access, has four-centred arches. Above the window arrangement narrows on each suceeding floor, creating upward movement. Many sculpted heads. The first floor projections are recent. At the rear a narrow five-storey contemporary workshop wing.
From "Pevsner Architectural Guides: Birmingham" by Andy Foster
The iconic red brick and crumbling facades of Venice are caused by lagoon saltwater soaking into porous brick and evaporating, leaving expanding salt crystals that fracture the masonry, a process worsened by high humidity, pollution, and acqua alta high tides.
As part of the restaurant's preparations for serving lunch, this waiter was changing the outdoor menu from that of the night before. Wasn't it nice that he lent me his profile, just as I was going by in a car?
I like all the layers here, from inside the car to inside the restaurant, beyond the gloriously warm light of the lamps, as well as the reflections.
(The light, bokeh-like dots were caused by tiny raindrops that had dried on the car window.)
Midtown West, Manhattan
New York, NY USA
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For the group six word story.
The Zollern Colliery
A castle of labour
At first sight palatial redbrick facades and artistically adorned gables on buildings dotted around a grassy square are more reminiscent of an aristocratic residence than a coal mine. This was exactly one of the ideas behind the architecture.
Today the “mansion of labour” in the west of Dortmund is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and impressive testimonies to Germany’s industrial history. The engine house with its famous Jugendstil (art nouveau) doorway is already an icon. But the museum’s outstanding industrial architecture is only one of many different attractive facets. The various sections of the exhibition will take you into a world of harsh working conditions, and the stories of the men and women who worked in coalmining during the 20th century will bring this vividly to life.
In the 17th century, many of the houses were "Dutch Billys" [redbrick, gabled-fronted houses, familiar to anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands] but by the middle of the 19th century the street was full of small shops, including many family operated groceries shops as well as a number of dairies. Unfortunately by 1900 the street was effectively a slum as most houses had become multi-occupancy tenements.
By the middle of the 20th century Francis Street had become more commercial and industrial and acted as a base for many manufacturers of furniture, beds, cabinets, sheet metal products and shirts.
In the late 1990s the antiques trade began relocating to Francis Street from the city quays and up until recently the street had [maybe still has] the highest concentration of antique dealers in Ireland.
A major redevelopment of Francis Street is due to begin sometime this year [2019] with the appointment by Dublin city Council of a contractor to oversee detailed design and construction. The refurbishment includes replacing existing pavements with wider pavements in quality stone, creating new raised table areas to mark key landmarks along the street, adding new lighting and street furniture, and planting trees and landscaping the street.
The junctions at either end of Francis Street will also be improved, while the high quality paving will also extend down Hanover Lane.
An aura of the Victorian past in Saltburn's terraced redbrick streets; only the amazing number of charity and second-hand clothing shops (and the car) tell you this is the 20teens (or whatever the decade is called).
Strong sun up there, hence lens flare.
Merrion Square is a Georgian square on the southside of Dublin city centre. It was laid out after 1762 and was largely complete by the beginning of the 19th century. It is considered one of Dublin's finest surviving squares. Three sides are lined with Georgian redbrick townhouses; the West side abuts the grounds of Leinster House, Government Buildings, the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery. The central railed-off garden is now a public park.
The park in the square was until recently officially named "Archbishop Ryan Park", after Dermot Ryan, the Catholic archbishop who transferred ownership to the city. The square was leased to the Archdiocese of Dublin by the Pembroke Estate in 1930 to permit the building of a Cathedral on the site to replace to the pro-Cathedral. Despite efforts over the next 20 years to advance the project, no progress was made and the site was transferred to the city of Dublin in 1974. Now managed by Dublin City Council, it contains a statue of Oscar Wilde, who resided in No. 1, Merrion Square from 1855 to 1876, many other sculptures and a collection of old Dublin lamp standards. In 2009, Dermot Ryan was criticised in the Murphy Report; in January 2010, Dublin City Council sought public views on renaming the Park. In September 2010, the City Council voted to rename the park as Merrion Square Park even though many wanted to name it after Oscar Wilde.
Until 1972 the British Embassy was based at No 39; however following the Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland a crowd of over 20,000 people converged on the site in protest and the building was burnt to the ground.
Natives of Dublin city are very fond of their public statues, and sometimes give them amusing and/or rude nicknames. Please note that some of these nicknames would be considered offensive in many parts of the world; in Ireland, insults are considered the norm between friends and an Irish person is quite capable of applying an offensive epithet to someone they are extremely fond of. This statue has a number of nicknames including "The Quare In The Square" and "The Fag On The Crag"
This is probably Dublin's best statue and it is my favorite. It is located inside the park of Merrion Square, and can only really be seen from inside the park, so you'll have to arrive before closing time, which varies between 9:30pm in midsummer and 4:30pm in midwinter.
This statue of Wilde is impressive. The great man reclines on a rock and is positioned so that he is looking at the last house on the north side of Merrion Square, the house where he once lived. The statue is made from stone of different colours - for example, Wilde's jacket is green stone with red stone cuffs. Also part of the sculpture are two stone pillars which are covered in quotations from Wilde. One has a bronze figure of a pregnant naked woman kneeling on the top, while the other has a bronze male torso. My understanding is that they indicate Wilde's ambiguous sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He was famous for always being elegantly turned out, wearing a green carnation in his buttonhole, and always ready with a witty riposte for any situation. His most famous literary works are his plays The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedy of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
In the 17th century, many of the houses were "Dutch Billys" [redbrick, gabled-fronted houses, familiar to anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands] but by the middle of the 19th century the street was full of small shops, including many family operated groceries shops as well as a number of dairies. Unfortunately by 1900 the street was effectively a slum as most houses had become multi-occupancy tenements.
By the middle of the 20th century Francis Street had become more commercial and industrial and acted as a base for many manufacturers of furniture, beds, cabinets, sheet metal products and shirts.
In the late 1990s the antiques trade began relocating to Francis Street from the city quays and up until recently the street had [maybe still has] the highest concentration of antique dealers in Ireland.
A major redevelopment of Francis Street is due to begin sometime this year [2019] with the appointment by Dublin city Council of a contractor to oversee detailed design and construction. The refurbishment includes replacing existing pavements with wider pavements in quality stone, creating new raised table areas to mark key landmarks along the street, adding new lighting and street furniture, and planting trees and landscaping the street.
The junctions at either end of Francis Street will also be improved, while the high quality paving will also extend down Hanover Lane.
The Noel Lothian Hall was opened in 2005 to accommodate botanical and horticultural exhibitions, displays, workshop and seminars.
The Hall is dedicated to Noel Lothian, Director of the Botanic Gardens, Adelaide from 1948 to 1980.
This Hall is part of the heritage listed Tram Barn A, the only remaining of 4 original tram barns built on this site in 1918 to service Adelaide’s extensive network of tram lines.
The Board of the MTT met for the first time on 4th February 1907.
Within two years, the first route of the electric tram system, to Kensington opened on 9th March 1909. By the end of 1909, electric trams were working the inner lines to North Adelaide, Walkerville, Payneham, Maylands, Marryatville, Parkside, Unley and Hyde Park - and at the same time, the MTT continued to operate the remaining horse trams routes, which it had taken over, retiring each horse tram service as the electric routes became operational.
Following the short lived appointment of J J Bodley, who had been manager of the Adelaide and Suburban Tramway Company (the largest of the horse tram companies) Mr W G T Goodman (later Sir William Goodman) then Chief Electrical Engineer was appointed General Manager, a position he held until his retirement in 1950 at age 78.
The Adelaide tramway system was designed, built and then managed for over 40 years by Sir William Goodman.
Born at Ramsgate, UK in 1872 he worked in Tasmania, New South Wales and as an electrical engineer for the Dunedin N Z Corporation before joining the Municipal Tramways Trust.
In the space of the first two years Mr Goodman and his staff had in place:
• 70 trams (of an initial order of 100) to start with.
• A very large car shed to put them in.
• A workshop to maintain them.
• A headquarters to run them from.
• A special phone system to know where they were.
• 10 miles of old horse tram tracks removed and replaced,
• Bridges strengthened.
• A 600v DC electrical distribution system.
• 55 miles of overhead wires.
• A power station planned and contract shipping to bring a steady supply of coal from NSW. (Until the power station was completed in 1910, power was supplied by the Adelaide Electric Supply Co to the MTT’s battery house and converter station at the corner of Pirie Street. and East Terrace.)
On opening day at 2.30pm, a procession of fourteen tramcars (carrying seven hundred passengers) led by tram No 1 left Hackney Depot travelling to Gurrs Road, Kensington. As the Premier, Mr T Price was very ill, Mrs Price officially drove the leading tram under Mr Goodman’s guidance. The procession returned to King William Street and then reversed direction to return to Hackney Depot for afternoon tea.
Refs: Heritage of the City of Adelaide: An Illustrated Guide 1996.
The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church, which stands on busy Chapel Street in St Kilda East, is a well known and loved local landmark, not least of all because of its strikingly tall (33.5 metre or 110 foot) banded bell tower which can be spotted from far away. In the Nineteenth Century when it was built, it would have been even more striking for its great height and domineering presence. Designed by architect Albert Purchas, the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is often referred to as his ecclesiastical tour-de-force, and it is most certainly one of his most dramatic and memorable churches.
The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was constructed on a plot of land reserved in Chapel Street for the Presbyterian Church of Victoria in 1866. Initially services were held in a small hall whilst fundraising efforts advanced the erection of a church. The architect Albert Purchas was commissioned to design the church and the foundation stone for the western portion of the nave was finally laid in April 1877 by Sir James McCulloch. The first service was held in the church on the 1st of October 1877. The first clergyman of the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was the Reverend John Laurence Rentoul (father to world renown and much loved Australian children's book illustrator Ida Rentoul Outhwaite). However, the swelling Presbyterian congregation of St Kilda and its surrounding districts quickly outgrew the initial Saint George's Presbyterian Church building, so Albert Purchas was obliged to re-design and enlarge the church to allow a doubling in capacity. Robert S. Ekins was the contractor and his tender was £3000.00. It is this imposing church building, reopened in 1880, that we see today. The "Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil" noted that the total length of the building was 118 feet and 6 inches (36 metres), by 40 foot (12 metres) wide and that the striking octagonal tower to the north-west was 110ft 6 in high. It perhaps reflected better the wealth and aspirations of the congregation.
The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is constructed on bluestone foundations and is built in an ornate polychromatic Gothic Revival style in the tradition of English designers like William Butterfield and John L. Pearson. Built of red brick building, it is decorated in contrasting cream bricks and Waurn Ponds freestone dressings. It features a slate roof with prominent roof vents, iron ridge cresting and fleche at the intersection of the nave and transepts. The front facade of the church is dominated by the slender, banded octagonal tower topped by a narrow spire. The entrance features a double arched portal portico. The facade also features a dominant triangular epitrochoidal (curved triangular form) rose window. The church, like its bluestone neighbour All Saints Church of England, is built to a T-shaped plan, with an aisleless nave, broad transepts and internal walls of cream brick, relieved with coloured brickwork. The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was one of the first major church design in Melbourne in which polychrome brickwork was lavishly employed both externally and internally.
The inside of the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is equally as grand as the exterior, with ornamental Gothic Revival polychromatic brickwork, a lofty vaulted ceiling, deal and kauri pine joinery and pulpit and reredos of Keene's cement. The building originally contained a complete set of Victorian stained glass windows by well known and successful Melbourne manufacturers Ferguson and Urie, all of which remain intact today except for one of the non-figurative windows which was replaced by a memorial window to Samuel Lyons McKenzie, the congregation’s beloved minister, who served from 1930 to 1948, in 1949. The earliest of the Ferguson and Urie windows are non-figurative windows which feature the distinctive diaper pattern and floral motifs of Fergus and Urie's work, and are often argued to be amongst the finest of their non-figurative designs. The large triple window in the chancel was presented by Lady McCulloch in memory of the ‘loved and dead’. Another, in memory of John Kane Smyth, the Vice-Consul for the United States of America in Melbourne, has the American Stars and Stripes on the top ventilator above it. An organ by Thomas C. Lewis of London, one of the leading 19th century English organ builders, was installed in the south transept in 1882. It was designed to blend with its architectural setting, with pipework styled to avoid the obstruction of windows. The action of this organ was altered in 1935, but the pipework, and the original sound, have been retained.
Over the years many spiritual and social activities were instituted at Saint George’s, Presbyterian Church some of short duration such as the Ladies’ Reading Club which operated between 1888 and 1893. There were segregated Bible classes for young men and women, the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, formed in 1892, a cricket club and a floral guild. Guilds teaching physical culture for girls, boys and young men began in 1904. They were entirely financed by John Maclellan and the idea extended to other denominations throughout Victoria. John Maclellan died in 1936 and the guilds ceased at Saint George’s Presbyterian church through lack of funds although in 1977 the members of the girls’ guild were still holding bi-annual reunions and raising money for charity. Sadly, the Presbyterian congregations may have been large in the Nineteenth Century, but by St George's Presbyterian Church's 110th centenary, its doors had already closed during the week due to dwindling numbers and an ageing congregation as a result of the general decline in church attendances after the Second World War exacerbated by the changing nature of St Kilda and the decrease in numbers of residents living in the vicinity of the church. So it stood, forlorn and empty and seemingly nothing more than a relic of a glorious but bygone religious past. However in 1990, Saint Michael's Grammar School across the road leased the Victorian Heritage listed building during weekdays, and it was eventually sold to them in 2015. It now forms part of the school's performing-arts complex, and it has a wonderful new lease of life.
St George's Presbyterian Church is sometimes hired out for performances, and I had the pleasure of receiving an invitation to hear Handel's Messiah performed there in 2009. The ecclesiastical acoustics made the performance all the more magnificent. I remember as I sat on one of the original (hard) kauri pine pews, I looked around me and admired the stained glass and ornamental brickwork. I tried without success over several subsequent years to gain access to the church's interior, settling for photographs of the exterior instead, but it wasn't until 2018 that I was fortunate enough to gain entry to photograph the church's interior. The former St George's Presbyterian Church was opened up to the public for one Sunday morning only as part of Open House Melbourne in July 2018. It was a fantastic morning, and I am very grateful to the staff who manned the church for the day and watched bemused as I photographed the stained glass extensively and in such detail.
Albert Purchas, born in 1825 in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, Wales, was a prominent Nineteenth Century architect who achieved great success for himself in Melbourne. Born to parents Robert Whittlesey Purchas and Marianne Guyon, he migrated to Australia in 1851 to establish himself in the then quickly expanding city of Melbourne, where he set up a small architect's firm in Little Collins Street. He also offered surveying services. His first major building was constructing the mansion "Berkeley Hall" in St Kilda on Princes Street in 1854. The house still exists today. Two years after migrating, Albert designed the layout of the Melbourne General Cemetery in Carlton. It was the first "garden cemetery" in Victoria, and his curvilinear design is still in existence, unaltered, today. In 1854, Albert married Eliza Anne Sawyer (1825 - 1869) in St Kilda. The couple had ten children over their marriage, including a son, Robert, who followed in his father's footsteps as an architect. Albert's brother-in-law, Charles Sawyer joined him in the partnership of Purchas and Sawyer, which existed from 1856 until 1862 in Queens Street. The firm produced more than 140 houses, churches, offices and cemetery buildings including: the nave and transepts of Christ Church St Kilda between 1854 and 1857, "Glenara Homestead"in Bulla in 1857, the Melbourne Savings Bank on the corner of Flinders Lane and Market Street (now demolished) between 1857 and 1858, the Geelong branch of the Bank of Australasia in Malop Street between 1859 and 1860, and Beck's Imperial Hotel in Castlemaine in 1861. When the firm broke up, Albert returned to Little Collins Street, and the best known building he designed during this period was Saintt. George's Presbyterian Church in St Kilda East between 1877 and 1880. The church's tall polychomatic brick bell tower is still a local landmark, even in the times of high rise architecture and development, and Saintt, George's itself is said to be one of his most striking church designs. Socially, Albert was vice president of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects for many years, before becoming president in 1887. He was also an inventor and philanthropist. Albert died in 1909 at his home in Kew, a wealthy widower and much loved father.
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