SATURDAY BREAKFAST #11 - CHURCH STREET, RICHMOND (NEAR BRIDGE ROAD CORNER)

Visited 17 December, 2011

Why choose to explore Church Street when Bridge Road is by far the more important and vibrant thoroughfare of the two intersecting streets?

The answer has more than a touch of the George Mallory rejoinder on being asked why he wished to climb Everest:  “Because it’s there”.  Couple this defiant attitude with the fact that we’ve already explored the whole of Bridge Road, and the explanation becomes as plain as vanilla. 

This was going to be a bit of a nostalgia binge for me.  I spent my growing up years (from seven to twenty-one) about 200 metres – although they were yards in those days – to the east along Bridge Road, living above my parents’ businesses, a cake shop and a delicatessen.  On this very intersection was the ES&A Bank (now ANZ), where I frequently brought the daily takings

We started our walk on the south-west corner, heading south as far as Berry Street, then north along the eastern side of Church Street as far as Highett Street, returning finally to the intersection – with breakfast along the way. 

At the starting point is a large clothing store selling “samples & seconds”, down-market, and nothing like the business it once was.  It used to be “Alexander’s”, and its fame and clientele extended way beyond Richmond.  The founder and proprietor, Ben Alexander, was a larger-than-life figure - patron and life member of the Richmond Football Club, and supporter of all things local; an ever-present figure in the store, even when wheelchair-bound in later life.  The magic died with him, and the store is named Alexander’s no more.   But high above Bridge Road is an Alexander’s advertising placard that nobody has bothered to remove……………………..take it as a reminder of the good times of the past, or take it as a symbol that all things pass in time.

To the south of the former Alexander’s is a dreary group of businesses; while on the other side of Church Street the streetscape is little better.   A couple of places have low lintels, and a step-down into the shop premises with floor levels lower than the pavement.  Very odd.  One of them, a total shambles, calls itself the Richmond Sewing Centre and offers clothing alterations and an array of similar services.  It couldn’t possibly have sufficient business to support the nine or so sewing machines set up and apparently operational.  A bit of a mystery.  Perhaps they hold sewing classes, and the machines are there for customer use. 

There’s a terrace house, once the family home of a school friend, now converted to The Old Barber Shop coffee shop; and there’s an actual barber shop, imaginatively named The Barber of Seville. 

On the south-east corner of Bridge Road, evidenced by the cellar trapdoor set into the footpath, is The Vine Hotel.  The hotel now calls itself a “gaming lounge and café bar”.  Oddly, there are no beer advertisements on the exterior.

Across the way from The Vine, on the north-east corner, is the solid and attractive terrace of two-storey single-user premises that stretches for some distance along Bridge Road.  I wonder that it has survived Whelan the Wrecker, but perhaps these days it comprises a bunch of strata-title owners and is somewhat immune from the ultimate indignity of demolition.  Further along Church Street is McDonald’s.  Obviously I have no 1950s memory of Maccas, nostalgic or otherwise, but I can’t recall what used to stand on the spot either.   I do, however, recall the previous occupant of the site of the police station next door.   This was the location of the Picton Hopkins factory.  Picton Hopkins was and is a specialist manufacturer of plaster products – cornices, ceiling roses, mouldings etc.  The business has been operated by the same family since 1857, an amazingly long continuity.  The business moved from Richmond to Preston some years ago, but in the 1950s it was a landmark Richmond business and employer.  It’s possible that the Picton Hopkins building occupied the present sites of both the police station and McDonald’s.

While the present police station is of recent vintage (commissioned in February 2004) I do have some 1950s memories of policing at Richmond.  The former Richmond police station still stands, abandoned and sealed up, around the corner in Bridge Road next to the Richmond City Hall.  It’s a free-standing two-storey brick building, with a small bluestone lock-up at the rear.  The main structure is in polychrome brickwork, and that brickwork plus the architectural detail is identical to the original sections of the City Hall visible along the side and rear (the hall gained a new façade with art deco motifs in the 1930s, leaving the original bits hidden from Bridge Road).  The old Town Hall was built in the 1890s, and I’m sure the old police station is of identical vintage.

The location of the former police station is almost opposite our old shops, and the coppers were committed pie and sandwich eaters.  So we saw a lot of the constabulary and of the plain-clothes detectives stationed at Richmond.  These were not the difficult times of the 1920s when the gangs – known as “pushes” - terrorized the streets, and when their violence was matched by police violence.  Nevertheless, there was still plenty of criminality and violence in Richmond in the 1950s, and the police were well known for their direct policing.  Many a miscreant was treated to the summary justice of a knuckle sandwich in a back lane of Richmond.  As regular luncheon patrons, the detectives were “friends”.  Friends can be asked to fix things, and such it was.  I remember one detective, Keith Platfuss, who was regarded as a tough man; and only recently I saw his name in connection with some matter later in his career, and he was still tough.  I know that the association with detective Platfuss and his colleagues gave my father a sense of security that he wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Citizens Park (in my day known as Richmond Oval) is on the corner of Church Street and Highett Street.  It’s an oval with a scrap of adjacent recreational space, and is a resource much used by today’s Richmond populace.  There are playground facilities for youngsters; and the curious rockeries and unkempt lantana and broom of 50 years ago are gone, as is the sports pavilion where Grandpa Andrews used to play cribbage upstairs with his cronies.

There’s not much of note over the road on the west side of Church Street until you get to Bridge Road – where there’s the bank on the corner, and the shopping centre tucked in behind.  Over 50 years the principal changes in the bank have been twofold – to the banking corporation, and to the premises.  It’s now an ANZ bank, the ES&A identity having disappeared in the merger of 1970.  And the former building, of classic ES&A design, was replaced years back…………hopefully the building is functional because it certainly isn’t attractive.  It is sited well back from the Bridge Road frontage, further than would be required by the town planning order over the strip of Bridge Road between Church Street and Punt Road.  This piece of town planning was intended to relieve the obvious bottle-neck caused by the narrowness of the strip, and ultimately to open out the road to the same width as Bridge Road on the flat.  It must be 50 years ago when this measure introduced the rule that all new buildings on the north side of Bridge Road must be set back a significant distance from the present street line.  The rule has no in-built time frame, and it has no applicability to individual sites unless and until there’s a plan to modify or to re-build.  The result is the broken-tooth effect we have today, with the buildings of the most recent 50 years being set back, and the older buildings having a quiet snigger on their larger allotments.  Is this long-term planning at its best or at its worst?  The reality is that times have changed, and the need to widen the street is less pressing.  Now we have clearway provisions; now the flat section of Bridge Road – courtesy of a dedicated tram lane – has itself been reduced to one vehicle lane only; and now the 40 kph zoning has reduced traffic speed much more than the narrow tarmac ever did. 

And so to the shopping centre, Richmond Plaza.  L-shaped with access from both Church Street and Bridge Road, small and pokey as the minuscule site size dictates, with a Coles supermarket and not much else.  The big news, posted on several frontages, is that a major re-development is due to commence early in 2012.  The present sad real estate will be demolished, and superseded by an edifice with from three to twelve storeys, offices, shops (including a supermarket), a gym, and up to 333 dwellings.  Some re-development!  Pity help the small shopkeepers – either the closure (and temporary re-location for many months) will break them, or the size of the rents in the new centre will do it.

On the corner of the Church Street entrance to the shopping centre we found Café Pronto, and breakfasted there.  The staff members were amiable.  The toast under the good bacon and scrambled eggs was dark rye, and buttered.  But the sausages were a mistake.  The fat seeping from the chorizo into the toast would have made the most dedicated grease freak blanch.  Why is it so hard to figure that much of the fat can be released by a few pricks to the skin, and that the application of a paper towel to the corpse of a sausage will improve its appearance and palatability no end?  Have I become a grumpy old bugger?  Don’t answer that. 

Gary Andrews