City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYthe main shopping centre for the district with three grocers, two ironmongers a watchmaker,draper and a bank. High Street’s status as Darebin’s main commercial and retail centre wasconfirmed during the boom of the late 1880s and early 1890s. In these years William Wallisbuilt ten two storey shops in High Street, two banks - the National and the London Chartered- constructed elaborate buildings, and the cable tram began bringing in shoppers. Theeconomic collapse halted development until the turn of the century, when new shops beganappearing again. Hattam’s opened a large drapery store, and shops began spreading down thehill towards Westgarth. By 1927 over five hundred shops lined High Street, stretching in analmost unbroken line the length of Northcote. By this time another separate centre haddeveloped at the Thornbury end of High Street – this was served by Thornbury RailwayStation and the electric tram service along Plenty road.High Street’s main competitor at this time was Smith Street in Collingwood, but despite somelocal pretensions, it never achieved the fame of that centre or of Chapel Street in Prahran. In1926, the Northcote Traders Association was formed. It ran free buses from West and EastPreston, Fairfield and Reservoir. However, by this time improved train and tram servicesenabled shoppers to be lured further afield to city shops. After the Second World War HighStreet was showing signs of decline. In an attempt to modernise, the old shop verandas andtheir supporting posts were removed, part of a Melbourne-wide phenomenon in the 1950s.Although in decline, High Street remained a regional shopping centre, bringing shoppers fromas far as Heidelberg, until the opening of Northland in 1966. The gentrification of Northcotein recent years has brought new life to High Street, where specialty shops and cafés havebecome the main businesses (Lemon 1983: 44-5, 50-52, 79, 111, 142, 198-200, 253-4;darebin-libraries.vic.gov.au/encyclopedia).PrestonPreston’s shopping districts were more fragmented. According to Carroll & Rule (1985:105)Preston in the first decade of the twentieth century did not a have ‘centre’. With a scatteredrural population and no tram services to bring people into a central retailing district until the1920s, early shops clustered around three main locations - Wood’s store in High Streetextending to Regent Street; the junction of Plenty Road and High Street, and largest groupwhich extended south from the corner of Bell Street along Plenty Road, where Marshall’s storehad the post office for South Preston.In the 1920s the massive growth in population and the improvements to transport services sawthe development of new local centres to serve the emerging new suburbs. By the 1930s, thenew electric tram services encouraged the development of a ribbon of shops along Plenty Road,mainly on the west side, extending to the Tyler Street tram terminus, while small centres alsoemerged along Gilbert Road. There was also a small produce market on the corner of MillerStreet, which was accessible via the East Preston tram. Along the Whittlesea Railway newcentres developed close to stations at Regent, in High Street just to the north of the site of theold Wood’s store, and at Reservoir extending east and west of the Station along EdwardesStreet and Broadway. (Carroll & Rule, 1985:128; Jones, 1994:56).Meanwhile, small groups of shops formed at intervals along High Street, between Bell Streetand the Town Hall gradually joining up, and by the 1930s Preston’s main commercial centrehad become concentrated along each side of High Street close to the civic precinct at theGower Street intersection. The opening of the Preston Market on the old Braithwaite tannerysite nearby in 1970 further enhanced the appeal of this centre for shoppers.NorthlandIn 1966, Melbourne’s second large drive-in shopping centre opened in Preston. Six years earlierChadstone had been established by retailing giant, Myer, and was a great success in thesouthern suburbs. Northland, also a Myer project, was an improvement on Chadstone, as allthe shops opened off an indoor mall, and it had more parking space. Although Northland wasadvertised as being in proximity to several railway stations and tram routes, it was not within57