September 2026
I met up with a friend a while ago at a cafe which was inside Bed Bath’n Table in Burwood Road Hawthorn, which thought was a very strange idea but then I walked in ! It was inside the huge steel truss arched roof of a bottling plant built in 1955 for Fowlers Vacola ! I’d heard about it some time ago, and that it was going to be but then wasn’t heritage listed, and my goodness it should be. The cafe is at the back on a mezzanine lit by huge north facing window windows, with great views out over the space.
It was designed by Harry Norris at the end of a very long career in his late 60s, or possibly by someone in the office. The original facade was almost Art Deco, now it’s just a window, showing off the arch, sort of.
Some commenters have been told it was originally a hanger at Essendon Airport – and the pair of hangers 104 + 105, built for the Olympics in 1956 use exactly the same trusses, but there wasn’t a third one. So either Norris came up with it first or they both used some proprietary design.
