| 1880s as a decade |
| 1880s as a decade Building boom from previous decade continues Boom Style Houses in the area controlled by the Building Act, as well as Carlton and Parkville, continued to be built of brick, with a shift from polychrome brick to ruled render in the 1880s. Terraces were common in the denser areas like Carlton. In Kensington, however, most new houses were freestanding weatherboard cottages, though the cladding of the front walls was often milled to resemble more prestigious ashlar. Houses of this era are readily identifiable as ‘Victorian’ by the general public. Freestanding houses had hipped roofs, chimneys had crisp mouldings at the top executed in render, and almost all houses had a front verandah supported by slender columns and decorated with cast-iron frieze and brackets. Terraced houses and commercial buildings concentrated ornament on parapets replete with balustrades, classical pediments and heavily modelled cast-cement detailing. Grander houses, such as Wardlow in Parkville, often boasted an Italianate tower for instant landmark quality. The height of this development is known as the Boom Style. SOURCE Context Pty Ltd 2012, Thematic History: A History of the City of Melbourne’s Urban Environment, prepared for the City of Melbourne. 1880s as a decade – tall and ornate commercial buildings in cbd The 1880s saw the extensive development of central Melbourne as tall and ornate commercial buildings rose up along the principal streets, each vying for dominance and admiration. Heights were nonetheless restricted much beyond 40 metres, dictated mainly by fire regulations. SOURCE Context Pty Ltd 2012, Thematic History: A History of the City of Melbourne’s Urban Environment, prepared for the City of Melbourne. The 1880s property boom…made its mark on commercial design in the central city, with a new, bold generation of architects. Boom Style commercial buildings, such as William Pitt’s Windsor Hotel and the Block Arcade, were characterised by increasingly rich decoration, Mannerist exaggeration of elements like keystones and segmental pediments, and the use of multiple classical trabeated and arcuated schemes overlaid one atop the other, until flat wall space was diminished to a bare minimum. While Renaissance and Italianate influences are most closely associated with Melbourne’s Boom Style, a similar treatment of materials and facades was used for Gothic Revival buildings such as William Pitt’s Melbourne Stock Exchange and Rialto Building (both on Collins Street). Another variant was influenced by the English Gothic Revivalists, Augustus Pugin and John Ruskin, who called for a return to an ‘honest’ style by use of medieval design principles. Their influence is seen in William Wardell’s ES&A (now ANZ) Bank and English architect William Butterfield’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Alongside the property investment boom, and stylistic boldness of Melbourne’s architects, the introduction of the hydraulic lift in 1887, which drew on a water supply from Dights Falls, allowed them to take office buildings to new heights. The brick-clad Australia Building of 1888, situated on the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders Lane (now demolished), epitomised this development. -SOURCE Context Pty Ltd 2012, Thematic History: A History of the City of Melbourne’s Urban Environment, prepared for the City of Melbourne. |
| 1880s New Princes Bridge Proposal, Melb city council trying to get other councils to contribute to proposed costs etc mention of the reef at The Falls: Sir. Deakin remarked that the Government was defraying ‘the whole cost in connection with the removal of the reef at the Falls, which work was wholly for the benefit of the low-lying lands of Emerald Hill and Melbourne. They were willing and anxious that Melbourne should be properly decorated, and on that account were prepared to increase their contribution to the cost of the bridge, which would be the widest in the world, and one of the handsomest, if the councils interested would do the same. SOURCE Record (Emerald Hill, Vic. : 1881 – 1954), Friday 22 June 1883, page 2 THE NEW PRINCESS BRIDGE. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/120728236?searchTerm=the%20new%20princes%20bridge# |
| Supreme and County Court Building Opens 1884 new building at the corner of William and Lonsdale Streets. It was the largest and most expensive project in nineteenth century Australia, and marred by controversies, scandal, and budget blowouts. The building opened in 1884 and was occupied by the Supreme and County Courts. By this time, the number of judges had increased to five, with a sixth judge appointed in 1886. OUR HISTORY 19th century https://www.supremecourt.vic.gov.au/about-the-court/our-history see image::: The new Supreme Court building (circa 1884) (source: State Library of Victoria) |
[understanding causes of the building boom:] specific legislation re building societies:
‘The land mania of the 1880s took on two main forms. The first was based on a plethora of building societies, whose optimistic officials believed every family in the colony could simultaneously build their own house, keep up the payments through good times and the bad, and support an army of investors who were being paid high rates of interest for the use of their money. The second form of mania was the deeply-held belief that it was impossible to lose money by ‘investing’ in land – a belief which persists to the present day. Soundly run building colonies were a great asset to the growing colony, so long as they kept to their original purpose. Unfortunately, when the Victorian Parliament copied the English building society statutes in 1876, the colonial legislators added a clause which proved disasterous. Victorian building societies were permitted ‘to buy and sell or mortgage freehold or leasehold estate’ The Premier Building Association, the Federal Building Society, and other leading institutions took advantage of this exceptional power. Their directors used the large deposits which had been paid into the societies to compete frantically for the the best real estate. Not only did they add impetus to an already serious inflation of values; they also converted the building societies into little more than speculative operations, using public money which had been subscribed for quite different purposes. At the same time, many of the socieities’ directors were conducting a vast sweep of speculative dealings in their own account.
SOURCE pp12-13 The Land Boomers by Michael Cannon Melbourne University Press 1966
Melbourne Hospital in the city and hospitals generally in 1880s see p.10 The Land Boomers by Michael Cannon Melbourne University Press 1966
| 1880 |
| 1880 NED KELLY TRIAL The most famous trial during this period, that of bushranger Ned Kelly, took place in 1880 in the La Trobe Street courthouse building – before the new courthouse was completed. OUR HISTORY 19th century https://www.supremecourt.vic.gov.au/about-the-court/our-history |
| First telephone exchange 1880 In 1880, Melbourne became host to the first telephone exchange in Australia. When it began, the subscribers filled only one page, but by 1887 a dozen women were answering a total of 8000 calls every day. The earliest subscribers were mostly wealthy – banks, solicitors, insurance companies, auctioneers, printers, importers, brokers, and merchants. The new invention was to have far-reaching implications for the shape of the city. Taller buildings appeared, made possible by easy communication between floors. Most striking was the forest of poles and wires that spread along the city streets. But the army of errand boys and letter carriers who had scurried between city offices disappeared — rendered obsolete by the new invention. https://museumsvictoria.com.au /melbournemuseum/resources/marvellous-melbourne/ look up etymology of call girls |
| 1884 Establishment of the Stock Exchange of Melbourne in 1884, Australia’s largest, and the erection of its splendid building at 380 Collins Street in 1891, represented the culmination of a long struggle to assert the metropolis’ supremacy over rival exchanges in Bendigo and Ballarat, and the resolution of differences among its quarrelsome brokers. Trading in shares in Melbourne dates from the 1850s. The first unsuccessful attempts to form a stock exchange took place in 1857 and 1858. A Melbourne Brokers’ Association made further attempts to start an exchange in the 1860s. They achieved partial success with the establishment of the Melbourne Stock Exchange in 1865. This organisation was reconstituted twice in the 1880s before it was overtaken, and later absorbed, by the new Stock Exchange of Melbourne in 1884. The ascendancy of Melbourne’s stock exchange over its colonial rivals by the 1880s owed much to the needs of the goldmining industry for new capital. That industry educated both sharebrokers and their clients in the issue of scrip, including underwriting, making a market and risk-taking. This experience and expertise was readily transferable to the silver, lead and zinc mines that were developed at Broken Hill and in northern Tasmania in the 1880s. Brokers also dealt in shares issued by banks, shipping companies, gas works, brewers and the like, and in securities placed by governments. A regular market developed that attracted many of the wealthier investors in the colony. By the 1880s the exchange dealt with securities of firms whose operations lay outside the colony of Victoria. Melbourne’s stock exchange was the most important conduit for the influx of British capital that poured into the colony in the 1880s. This inflow gave rise to a speculative boom that lifted the market value of all securities from £32.5 million in 1884 to £80 million in 1889. SOURCE ‘Banking and Finances’ https://www.emelbourne.net.au /biogs/EM00155b.htm |
| 1885 |
tram system – see p44 of the land boomers.
| economy: ‘The boom continued to gather strength. In 1885 the harvest was prolific, the price of wool was high, the railways made a profit for the first time in the colony’s history, and optimism reigned supreme. A few warning voices were raised overseas, but heard as from afar. In 1885 the London ‘Standard’ pointed out that advances by Australian banks to their clients had increased from £92 million to £100 million. ‘We should be terrified at “progress” of that sort in the old country for fear that the bulk of the debts may never be paid’, said the journal. ‘But the Australians boast of it. For them the greater the debt the greater the progress.’ SOURCE p15 The Land Boomers by Michael Cannon Melbourne University Press 1966 |
| 1886 |
| Coranderrk Mission downsizes: kicks out anyone 35 or under of mixed race 1886 Coranderrk Mission is a self-sufficient village in 1870s. In 1886 a government Act forced any individual of “mixed descent” under the age of 35 to move out of Coranderrk, thus ageing the population significantly. This, and the termination of government funding resulted in the closure of Coranderrk in 1924. Most of the residents were moved to Lake Tyers Mission https://museumsvictoria.com.au /melbournemuseum/resources/marvellous-melbourne/ |
| 1887 |
| 1888 |
| land speculation: ‘Once again the banks, dismayed by the wildly fluctuating values, began calling in overdrafts. Unfortunately, some of the leading banks had encouraged speculation when money was plentiful, and ruthlessly suppressed it when the inevitable reaction set in…the land promotions began looking elsewhere for easy finance. Thus the years 1888, 1889 and 1890, and even 1890, saw the formation of most of the disasterous land companies, and so-called ‘land banks’. Under the loose banking and company laws of the time, they were able to take savings deposits, issue shares, float loans, discount promissory notes and other commercial paper, and in general perform all the functions of an established bank. source; the land boomers p16 |
| 1889 |
HEATWAVE
By 1880, the Argus claimed the of consumption cordial, ginger beer and aerated waters had become ‘seemingly enormous’ in Victoria. A heatwave in the summer of 1889-90, which ‘rendered the gasping inhabitants unfit for anything but drinking’, saw shops and hotels run out of soft drink and cordial supplies. The industry mainly comprised of smaller factories distributing in their local area, with 167 factories in Victoria in 1893.
source https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/4555
FORMER CORDIAL FACTORY 8 – 12 SPRING STREET AND 14-16 ARGYLE STREET FITZROY, YARRA CITY
images of melb:
Great photos. digitised online, there must also be a part one.
Reminiscence of a visit to Victoria, Australia August 1889. Part II / John Steel Jnr. Steel, John, 1870?-1896, photographer.
burrows & co 