16 January 2018:

The Herald’s Instagram account, @heraldsunphoto_retro, is all great Melbourne stuff from the 30s-60s; I’d heard about the Payne’s Bon Marche department store in Bourke Street but never seen a photo or knew where it was exactly. This photo is Christmas 1955, and I worked out it’s where the 1969 Hoyts Cinema Centre is now, and there’s two matching bays beyond the photo to the right that are still there, with an extra floor. Then I found an earlier pic without those four bays from @unilibrary, and the information that it was originally built in 1909, and designed by Tompkins & Tompkins, a more classical design direction from them having just done Dimmeys. Don’t know who did the extension or when. Le Bon Marche is a department store in Paris, reputedly the oldest in the world, beginning in 1838 (though the building is 1869).

• Uncategorized