Victoria takes a stand
GEELONG’S Little Malop St Mall has been in the news again with the latest plan to clean up the area, including the removal of seating and the public toilets.
There was a time when the city block bounded by Moorabool, Malop, Yarra and Little Malop streets, referred to as Market Square, had been set aside as a vacant site which became a bog in winter and was seen as an eyesore.
The first improvement was the installation of a prefabricated clock tower, the foundation stone for which was set in place in 1856.
Other structures followed, including a market building fronting Little Malop St, roughly opposite what became Union St.
The grandest of all was the Exhibition Building, facing Moorabool St, which was opened in 1879 for the staging of an industrial and juvenile exhibition.
The exhibition had been planned for 1880, but was brought forward to December of the previous year in order to beat an exhibition planned to open in Melbourne in 1880.
Following the exhibition, Geelong was left with a large auditorium that lent itself to be used as a live theatre.
Among the acts to appear at the then Exhibition Theatre was Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.
By that time the open area in front of the Exhibition Theatre was starting to attract its share of open-air stalls.
Presumably these struck opposition from permanent shopkeepers and were soon banned.
But such opposition did not stop the Exhibition Theatre becoming a retail outlet.
In the meantime Geelong had been saddened by the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. The monarch had reigned over the British Empire since 1837, a year before Geelong had been declared a town.
Soon after her death a movement was started to have a statue of the queen erected in Geelong. Competitive designs were invited to be submitted, and one by Clement Nash was declared the winner and a contract to supply a bronze statue was awarded to Nash, who arranged for a clay model to be made in Melbourne.
A plaster cast was then sent to a bronze foundry in England. The finished statue did not arrive in Geelong until early 1904, by which time a site had been chosen in front of the Exhibition Building.
The former theatre had by then become a retail outlet for Suttons music store, selling such things as organs and pianos. Suttons was to return to almost the same spot many years later on the corner of Little Malop and Jacob streets.
Queen Victoria only lasted eight years in Market Square before being relegated to the entrance of Eastern Park to make way for the Solomon building, which remains today as the Moorabool St frontage to Market Square Shopping Centre. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com