Reaching high in the city
THE recent reopening of the National Hotel in Moorabool St prompted us to seize on today’s main photo showing Moorabool St looking towards the bay taken in about 1940.
The National Hotel features prominently on the right of the photo, at a time when it was also known as Cullen’s. The hotel then had a veranda over its main Moorabool St entrance.
Kerley’s auction room can be seen three doors to the North of the hotel. Kerley’s facade is topped off by stone baubles, and we would love to hear from students of architecture as to their proper name.
The T&G Building is still moderately new, as is the brick Bank of New South Wales building immediately opposite.
A tram can be seen level with the T&G Building.
Our second photo is a view of Moorabool St looking north from the bandstand on top of Bright and Hitchcock’s building taken in the 1920s. That bandstand can be seen in our third photo, taken in 1979.
The Bull and Owen chemist shop opposite was on the southwest corner of the Solomon Building, which is dated 1912. The Solomon Building was the first encroachment of shops on Geelong’s Market Square, and attracted some opposition when it was first mooted.
Amid the sparse traffic, a tram can be seen heading up Moorabool St, possibly heading to Newtown or Geelong West.
Meanwhile, we got some feedback from last week’s column which showed members of the Geelong Norton Motorcycle club lined up in Moorabool St in 1930 outside the local Norton dealership.
Reader Paul Bourke contacted us to say the Ted Bourke who was on the extreme left of the group was his grandfather. He said his own father, Owen Bourke, died only a few weeks ago but had seen a damaged copy of the same photo in recent times.
We directed Mr Bourke to Kerley’s auction room to get a digital copy of the same photo. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com