Former A G Healing Factory, Kensington

Location: 201 -223 Racecourse Road, Kensington

Status: PROTECTED - HO1172

Date: 1943-44

Two industrial gems bookend the more industrial section of Racecourse Road between City Link and the main shopping strip on the Kensington side of the road (we'll look at the other in January). If you can look past the violent abomination that is the building's current paint scheme, the former A G Healing factory at 201-203 is a relatively plain and unadorned but classic example of the Streamline Moderne form.

A G Healing was founded in 1896 by Alfred George Healing, who started out producing bicycles by hand from his back shed. By 1912, Healing had 50 employees and was producing 25,000 bicycles a year. Their racing versions were used by Australian cycling champions all the way until the 1960s. Healing himself was an innovator and inventor. After World War II - about the time Soichiro Honda was building the first motorised bicycle in Japan - Healing was doing the same in Melbourne. And an example of one of his early motorbikes can be found today at the Scienceworks Museum in Spotswood.

In 1933, Healing began importing radio receivers, but soon moved to production of their own radios with the introduction of tariffs to imported goods. During WWII, the building was given over to the wartime manufacturing effort, in contravention of the Melbourne City Council by-law which had set aside this site for residential use.

Healing experienced solid growth as the domestic economy expanded rapidly in the years following the end of the second world war. By 1956, the company had diversified to the manufacture of television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines. The firm produced a bewildering array of disparate good, everything from spanners (they were the main domestic competitor to Sidchrome tools) to locomotives and similar heavy equipment.

Former A G Healing Head Office,
167-173 Franklin Street, Melbourne

Although it had been responsible for production of several iconic Australian brands of bicycles and motorcycles throughout the years, in 1959 the company sold its bicycle division to focus on domestic appliances, and took over heavy engineering firm A. E. Goodwin in 1961. By 1969, the company appeared to have lost its focus, and went into receivership, posting a loss of almost $24 million that year, before finally folding in 1975.

Healing's Racecourse Road site was primarily used for manufacturing operations, and the company maintained a separate headquarters at 167-173 Franklin Street, City. Built in 1928, it remained the principal site of their operations until the company folded. Today it houses a backpackers, and it too is heritage protected, under HO1154.

The Raccourse Road factory was built by Thompson & Chalmers in 1943-4, and was designed by architects Sydney Smith Ogg & Serpel.

The building's parapeted form is most obvious from the rear of the property. It occupies its own free-standing block and is a dominant visual presence on the Racecourse Road streetscape. The most obvious and compelling Streamline Modern element is the building's curved corner entrance, but it also features Streamline style lintels and sill members for window strips along Racecourse Road, as well as a cantilevering canopy over the entry.

The flagpole over the entrance today sits unadorned. Other interesting features include metal-framed multi-pane glazing with hopper sashes and sawtooth fibre cement sheet "Super six" corrugated profile roofing, although this is not visible from the building's exterior. Source: City of Melbourne Kensington Heritage Review.

See here for more information on Healing Cycles.

Stay tuned for our next post, looking at another, much older iconic Kensington industrial gem. We'll see if I'm able to pump that out as a Christmas gift.

HERITAGE ALERT: Help Save Burton's Carriage Workshop

Friends, Melbourne NEEDS YOUR HELP.

The gorgeous former Burton's Carriage Workshop on La Trobe St is under threat. To be replaced by ... well literally nothing. A 'laneway' that's essentially thinly-disgiused car park access for ANOTHER apartment tower.

"Not industrial", you say? "Not on your life". That's what an industrial building looked like in 1868, "industrial" really only became its own form with the advent of Modernism.

Please SIGN THE PETITION HERE
 

 

 

Burton's Carriage Workshop dates to 1868 and is of a truly unique decorative form. However it was left unprotected when Council decided to ignore the advice of its own heritage experts in allowing the demolition of it's twin buildings at 40 La Trobe st for an apartment tower and ignoring calls to protect the rest of the streetscape.

We need the Lord Mayor to hear loud and clear that the people of Melbourne, his electors OPPOSE THIS DECISION.

Please SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Please SHARE this TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA and let all your friends know to do likewise. Council needs to hear the loud unequivocal voice of the people. Can you lend your voice?

Burton's Carriage Workshop and its Edwardian neighbour, also slated for demolition

Former Simmie & Co. Warehouse, Kensington

Location: 62-74 Rankins Rd, Kensington

Status: UNPROTECTED

Period: Post-war industrial

Style: Sawtooth-style brick warehouse. Red brick main structure with mottled cream brick facade on red brick footing. Extensive yard area fenced with oversized corrugated iron.

Condition: Main structure in tact and original, including external conductor heads and guttering, metal-framed frosted windows (some have minor glass breakage) while other conventional wooden framed sliding windows in the office area are also original. Grillwork may be a later addition. Some evidence of minor external signage having been removed, former painted signage still visible but heavily faded, external deco-style affixed lettering in tact although somewhat degraded. Terracotta tiling borders the main entrance, where the aluminium door appears not to be original. Rail-mounted block and tackle equipment visible from the rear of the property may not be original. Minimal contemporary external signage does not significantly impact the property's heritage aspect.

Present usage: In keeping with original, the building is today a functioning warehouse, owned by Ortho Chemicals and used for the storage and manufacture of dyes, and other related surfactants.

Heritage Surveys: The site was included in the 2013 Kensington Heritage Review conducted by Graeme Butler, and was recommended for inclusion at a D grading, however according to the current Melbourne Planning Scheme, this was never adopted. In fact the vast majority of Butler's recommendations from the survey appear not to have been adopted. This has left a large stylistically contiguous section of Kensington around Rankins Rd. with no uniform heritage overlay, while much lower value areas of Flemington/Kensington do attract one.

Neighbourhood Context: This is a rather surprising building to find nestled within what are today the almost wholly residential back streets of Kensington, especially given the site remains in industrial use.

The area immediately north of here was formerly known as Bailey's Paddock, and was subdivided in 1888. This side of Rankins Rd immediately north of the property was formerly a retail strip of mostly two-storey Victorian shops, but these and other much larger warehouses in the vicinity have all been converted to residential use in recent years.

The building occupies a full block of Rankins Road, and as the largest structure in the area by some way contributes significantly to the Rankins Road streetscape.

History: Simmie and Co. were local builders. They were in fact responsible for construction of another notable neighbourhood post-war gem - the Kensington RSL Building on the opposite side at 25 Rankins, one block back towards Racecourse.

 

Kensington RSL, built Simmie & Co., 1966

'Jock' E. Simmie appears to have been the firm's founder, starting out as J. E. Simmie and Co,  and the firm is recorded in the 1920s and 30s as having an impressive nationwide order book, comprising "large construction jobs in Canberra, including buildings in Civic Centre and the Australian War Memorial" (Australian Dictionary of Biography).

In 1934, the firm was headquartered in Smith Street, Kensington. As the present building sits at the corner of Rankins and Smith, it seems likely the present building occupies either the entirety or a subdivision of the earlier site.

In 1947, with later-to-become Sir Louis Pyke (a former apprentice risen quickly through the ranks) Simmie became founding co-director of Pyke-Simmie Pty Ltd. The firm initially built mass-produced, imported prefabricated houses for Victorian Electricity Commission workers, but later extended to general industrial contracting. In 1956, Pyke left to start up on his own competitor firm. It would therefore seem likely construction of the present structure coincided with either of these dates, 1947 or 1956.

Simmie itself is an unusual name, with only a handful of extant Simmies to be found in the phonebook. It is a Scots name, thought to derive from 'MacKimmie'. Jock Simmie would not be the first Scottish immigrant to have made a name in the antipodean building trades, by dint of assumption.

Features:
The degree of mottling in the facade is one of the building's most impressive features, with the frontage to Rankin Street the most significant aspect.

Fencing the property's extensive yard area is a large corrugated iron fence which appears to be  contemporaneous with the main building. It is highly unusual to see such a large and in tact corrugated fence anywhere in Melbourne today, although this was once of course the de rigeur mode, particularly for industrial sites, but also for cheaper residential fencing.

The railed block and tackle structure is also highly visible from the rear of the building, obviating the site's industrial heritage and providing a rather interesting, if not entirely aesthetic point of visual interest.

The red brick footing on the facade is one of the building's more interesting and unique aspects, creating and interesting transition zone from the footpath along the length of the facade.

Welcome to "Industrial Melbourne"

Hello, halloo, and thanks for stopping by.

I've created this blog by way of contributing to the appreciation of Melbourne's fast-disappearing post-war industrial heritage.

Over the months I'll be going round town building up a database of industrial sites both large and small-scale, both heritage listed and otherwise.

It will be an eclectic journey. I have no intention of creating a Top Ten of the best sites. Instead we'll look at the various shades and hues industrial heritage can take, the good, the bad, and the sometimes ugly.

Along the way we'll encounter a series of themes surrounding inadequacies within the current Victorian heritage regime.

I'm an active member of Melbourne Heritage Action, and combine my interest in building and their history with a keen advocacy for improved recognition and retention of Melbourne's heritage, and improved structures to allow this.

This blog will also be a vehicle for suggesting improvements to the Victorian Heritage regime, as the cases we examine shall illuminate. I look forward to some meaty debate around heritage and urban issues more broadly.

Yours in bloggage,
Adam Ford.
(not the poet)