Visited
28 July, 2012
There are a couple of words that Australians
use rarely, but which are solidly American.
The words are “carpetbagger” and “huckster”.
Carpetbagger is a wholly American word,
originating from the United States in the late 1860s, the years immediately
following the Civil War. The American
South was in ruins, and was invaded by profiteers from the North seeking to
make their fortunes during the period of reconstruction. These opportunists travelled light, typically
carrying their effects in small suitcases made of carpet – hence carpetbaggers,
a less than complimentary term.
Carpetbaggers, while expressing solicitude, seek to make money from the
misfortunes of others.
As to huckster: the Americans have
taken the word over from old English, and adapted it for their own purposes. Originally nothing more than a peddler,
huckster today in its simplest form is someone who works in advertising. But at its most pejorative, it is one who
uses aggressive and questionable methods of selling. The 1947 movie, The Hucksters, had Clark Gable [integrity, white hat] battling the
powers of advertising [unscrupulous, black hats]. Hucksterism was on show. Not attractive.
These two words came to mind as we
breakfasted at the Vibe Savoy Hotel on the corner of Spencer and Little Collins
Streets. I have been to the Savoy a
number of times, often as a guest of the Government of Nauru, and most memorably in 1987 on the occasion of the grand re-opening after a reported $46
million refurbishment. The hotel was
then owned by Nauruan interests.
Poor, sad, Nauru is a victim of colonial
and commercial imperialism; but it is also the victim of mismanagement by its
leaders – it once had the lot, and now has nothing.
Nauru is such a tiny place, 21 square
kilometres only; and with fewer than 10000 people has the second smallest
population of any state (after the Vatican).
The island was settled by Micronesian and Polynesian peoples more than
3000 years ago, and its remoteness from other Pacific islands has led to a
distinctive Nauruan people and language.
First contacts with European seafarers date from the late 1700s. Nauru was annexed by Germany in 1888, the
same year that the Christian missionaries arrived. The island was “captured” by Australian
troops in 1914, and after the end of the Great War, it became a territory
mandated by the League of Nations to the joint administration of Australia, New
Zealand and the United Kingdom; and later there was a similar United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence on 31 January,
1968.
Phosphate was discovered on Nauru in
1900, and the huge deposits have since been the mainstay of the Nauruan
economy, although the extraction of those deposits has seen the fracturing of
traditional life. Much of the centre of
the island, once a hillock with its highest point 71 metres, is now a “lunar
landscape” – jagged coral pinnacles from between which the phosphate has been
removed; once vegetation-covered tribal land, now uninhabitable, with the
entire populace relocated to the coastal fringe.
The wealth from the phosphate accrued
first to German interests, then to the British Phosphate Commission, and then –
from 1968 – to the Nauru Phosphate Commission and the people of Nauru.
Where do the carpetbaggers and the
hucksters come in? Well, at one time in
the 1980s there was a Nauru national investment fund reportedly valued at $1.3
billion; today that fund may be as little as $100 million, all lost through
unwise investment. Acquisition of
property in Melbourne (and Sydney) proved to be a particular disaster. Take the Southern Cross Hotel, the site of the
Carlton brewery, the site on the corner of Spencer and Bourke Streets, then
take insufficient resources to turn them into successful property developments,
and you have inevitable sale off at a loss.
And then you have the eventual sale of the successful property
investments (Downtowner Motel in Carlton, Nauru House, and the Savoy) to cover
debt. It was the seductive tales of the
real estate carpetbaggers and hucksters, coupled with the naivety and hubris of
Nauruan leaders, that produced this mess.
The Nauruan people are the sufferers.
One Melbourne property consultant was reported to have said that he was
probably the only estate agent in the World who had sent a country broke!
Anyway, this woeful story was in my thoughts
over breakfast at the Vibe Savoy. The
breakfast, by the way, was average to poor.
It was the usual hotel buffet, but very small-scale, and suffered simply
from the lack of takers. I don’t know
the hotel’s occupancy rate, but would guess that there is currently a problem. A shame, really, because the building is
handsome, the rooms first rate, and the location fine.
The Savoy in Melbourne has a long
history; there has been a hotel on the Spencer Street site since 1866 when
Charles Alexander built and named Alexander’s Family Hotel. Thus it remained until 1923, when renamed the
Sunshine Hotel. James Richardson,
prominent hotelier, acquired the property in 1926, demolished and rebuilt, and
revived the Hotel Alexander name. The
Federal Hotels group became the new owners in 1954, and the hotel was renamed
the Savoy Plaza. Then a curious twist: in
1974 the Victorian Government took over the building, and used it for some
years as the training college for prospective members of the police force. The Nauruans’ massive 1987 makeover restored
it as a hotel, now named the Savoy Park Plaza. Finally, the new ownership from
2004, and the present name Vibe Savoy.
The hotel building was strongly
influenced by the American architectural fashions of 1926. Although there were art deco touches in the
guest rooms it was said to have been built in the style of a 16th
century Italian townhouse. Originally
entered from Spencer Street up a wide staircase to the first floor, the Nauruan
remodelling inserted a ground floor entrance foyer and facilities off Little
Collins Street. The architectural styles
and touches all came together successfully, and the Savoy remains one of the
most elegant buildings in the city.
If “change” equals “vibrancy” then the three-block
stretch of Spencer Street between Lonsdale and Flinders Streets must be the
most vibrant in the Melbourne CBD. The eastern side has a bunch of new hotels
(contributing, no doubt, to falling occupancy at the Vibe Savoy); the former
GPO has been converted to apartments, with a spacious restaurant in the ground
floor; there are a couple of high-rise residentials; and the former
headquarters of The Age is a major project under construction.
The old Sir Charles Hotham Hotel, on
the corner of Flinders Street is, sadly, no longer vibrant. Although not so long ago a backpackers’
hostel, today it is unoccupied, and its owners are clearly aiming to demolish
it by neglect………several upstairs windows are open, and exposing the interior to
the elements. In time there will be an
order to demolish and that will be that.
The 1912 building, in the Queen Anne style, has clearly “seen better
days”, but it doesn’t deserve such an undignified fate. Indeed, although it has never received the
official recognition of a National Trust or a Heritage listing, it is an
important building in the history of Melbourne architecture. It was designed by William Pitt, one of
Melbourne’s great architects, architect of The Rialto, the Olderfleet building,
St. Kilda Town Hall, the Bryant & May factory in Richmond, the Princess’
Theatre, and many others. A number of
Pitt buildings have been destroyed, including the Federal Coffee Palace, later
the Federal Hotel (on the corner of Collins and King Streets) and it would be a
shame to lose another.
I shall now confess to a memory
lapse. Back in the 1960s I used to
attend to the income tax affairs of the Sir Charles Hotham’s owner. Fifty years on I cannot recall his name! It will doubtless come to me after this blog
is posted. He was a large shambling man,
already in his 80s, and he lived a reclusive life alone in a remote corner of
the hotel. This is no doubt an
exaggeration, but I recall his principal passion as the search for
authentication of an “old master” he possessed.
I don’t remember whether he’d inherited the painting, or whether he had
bought it years before, but he’d become obsessed with the thought that it was
old, and that it was valuable. He had
had no luck in his search for validation and vindication, and was happy to
share his dilemma with me. The painting
certainly looked old, and grimy; but the people at the National Gallery had
apparently passed up the opportunity to claim discovery of an unknown
masterpiece.
Mr. X said his painting was named The Cenci. I find now that The Cenci is the name of a play by Percy Shelley, based on the doings of a Roman family circa 1599. The play was never performed in Shelley’s lifetime, because incest and parricide were not at the time considered nice. But Mr X’s painting and Shelley’s play might have been set in the same era. Who knows? And who knows what happened to the painting after M. X’s death. I certainly don’t. I do know that the descent of the Sir Charles Hotham into oblivion has been inexorable. It went from licenced hotel to private hotel to backpackers. It flirted with cheap entertainment, including sandwich lunches accompanied by female strippers, the performers slipping back into their bank employee uniforms before returning to their desks. There weren’t many opportunities for resurrection after that. As our walk past highlighted, the Sir Charles Hotham needs a saviour with lots of money, and needs it quickly.
Mr. X said his painting was named The Cenci. I find now that The Cenci is the name of a play by Percy Shelley, based on the doings of a Roman family circa 1599. The play was never performed in Shelley’s lifetime, because incest and parricide were not at the time considered nice. But Mr X’s painting and Shelley’s play might have been set in the same era. Who knows? And who knows what happened to the painting after M. X’s death. I certainly don’t. I do know that the descent of the Sir Charles Hotham into oblivion has been inexorable. It went from licenced hotel to private hotel to backpackers. It flirted with cheap entertainment, including sandwich lunches accompanied by female strippers, the performers slipping back into their bank employee uniforms before returning to their desks. There weren’t many opportunities for resurrection after that. As our walk past highlighted, the Sir Charles Hotham needs a saviour with lots of money, and needs it quickly.
The western side of Spencer Street has
changed even more so than the eastern; but one of the most significant changes
shows the least evidence of it. I’m
referring to the former Victorian Railways administration building on the
south-west corner of Spencer and Flinders Streets. To describe this building as monumental is no
exaggeration. It was built in the late
1880s, and under Railways ownership had a couple of major later additions - additions of extra floors, but totally sympathetic to the basic form and
appearance of the building. But as of
1985 the Railways personnel had been re-located, and the Government had
earmarked the building for sale as a surplus public building. Sale was effected, but the building
languished in private hands, until it was reopened in 1998 as The Grand Hotel
(117 apartment suites) and three floors of privately-owned Grand Central
Apartments. A splendid outcome.
A couple of blocks further north, adjacent
to the old Spencer Street railway station (specifically alongside the platform
where the interstate trains arrived) there used to be an extensive ground-level
car park. Now, since the latest
re-modelling of the station and its emergence as Southern Cross, the parking
space has been relegated to a multi-storey privately run operation quite a
distance from the station. In between
the station and the car park there is the bus depot, with lots of food and
other shopping on the street frontage. All
this is pedestrian and boring, and the contrast with the beautiful Savoy
building and the sturdy former GPO building across the street is stark.
Then there is the Southern Cross
station building itself. Winner of
awards for its design, it gets no award from me. The undulating roofline is little more than a
gimmick; and, as the storms of 18-months ago proved, it wasn’t even soundly
engineered. The station building is not
there for the benefit of the trains; it’s there to make the whole experience of
departure and arrival as efficient and as trouble-free as possible. The edifice may indeed be all this, but
there’s something else: it should be an amenable environment. In this regard, in my view, Southern Cross is
a failure – for one thing alone: it
doesn’t protect the public from the Melbourne winds.
Obviously it’s not possible to protect
the platforms from the wind and the cold, but by purposely leaving the building
open at the Spencer Street side the architects have intentionally created a
massive wind tunnel. I can see the
stylistic charm of the high roofline over the streetscape and the open space
below – a very grand aperture – but in inclement weather there is no protection
whatever: either the elements lashing in from Spencer Street, or the bleak wind
rushing through from the platforms and out to Spencer Street. Very innovative, and very stupid.
One final and more positive note,
although it’s a good news bad news story.
The previous station building, when Spencer Street, housed a large
mural, painted by Harold Freedman (with a couple of assistants) and installed
in 1978. It was titled History of Transport, and was more than
36 metres long and 7 metres high. I
always regarded it as pretty awful, with its depictions of multiple modes of
transport, not just railways. Akin to
the public art of (say) Diego Rivera in Mexico, there was plenty of colour and
movement, and little subtlety.
Nevertheless, such works should never be intentionally destroyed in the
name of progress. There was no place for
the History of Transport mural in the
new Southern Cross complex, but it was preserved, first in storage for three
years, then re-erected on the wall of the nearby Direct Factory Outlet
premises. An ignominious resting place
perhaps, but a victory for the right thing, which even public authorities can
sometimes do.
Gary Andrews
