84 Glenferrie Road Malvern – on the corner of Glenferrie and Wattletree Roads – was built in 1914 and into 1915. In the Sands & Macdougall director of Victoria of 1915, it lists the address as still being built.
The building was designed by Harry Gibbs, one of the leading architects of Melbourne, and the senior partner in the firm of H. B. Gibbs and Finlay.
Harry Gibbs’s death in 1918 at age 59 was warmly acknowledged in an obituary.
“He was a son of the late Mr. Richard Gibbs and was educated at Wesley College. After years his architectural ability and his eye for artistic effect was very pronounced and many prominent buildings in Melbourne and the suburbs were planned and carried out by his firm. The last of note from an artistic point of view in this district, we believe, being the Empire Cafe on the St. Kilda Esplanade which he designed for the Prahran and Malvern Tramway Trust and which is certainly an adornment to that popular spot. He was the architect for the National Bank and the English, Scottish and Australian Bank, and some years since designed and supervised the erection of the ” Prahran Telegraph ” printing offices.”
Harry Gibbs’s firm’s reach extended beyond the eastern suburbs. Home/Building magazine noted in December 1911:
“To plans by Architects H. G. Gibbs & Finlay, extensive brick stores, factory, and stables are to be erected in Little Collins street East by Master Builder J. S. G. Wright.”
Records show 84 Glenferrie Road was built as a bank and has remained a bank branch since it opened around 1914. The words ‘The National Bank’ appear on the building and remain to this day.
Valuation Field Cards for the suburb of Malvern stretching from 1931 to 1994 show the building housed The National Bank of Australia. Its most recent life has been home for the National Australia Bank (known as NAB).
The building sits in the heart of Malvern’s early commercial strips. A local Heritage Survey notes the 1893 Australian Handbook (as cited in Victorian Places) described Malvern as ‘an elevated residential suburb’, served by a line of omnibuses from Prahran, with many leading merchants and professional men living in the area in pleasantly situated ‘dwellings of a superior class’.
The entry noted that a number of notable mansions had been built by this date, and that the market gardens and orchards were ‘steadily being reduced, and cut up into building allotments, on which [were] being erected many handsome villas and business establishments’.
It said: “The municipality saw rapid development and urbanisation from 1900 and it was declared a Borough and then a Town in 1901. In 1911 the municipality was declared a City, with a residential population of 16,000.
“The major stages of development in the Glenferrie Road area can be seen today in the architecture of the buildings. From the boom years of the 1880s through to the inter-war years, the periods of development and prosperity are reflected in the architectural styles.”
It went on: “The importance placed by the early residents and traders in this commercial area can be seen in many of the ornate buildings erected prior to the turn of the century. This trend continued into the Federation era with many buildings featuring elaborate details. In some cases earlier buildings have been replaced, but Glenferrie Road, Station Street, Claremont Avenue and east end of High Street remain substantially intact.
“The area is of metropolitan significance as one of the major strip shopping centres to have retained its role into the late twentieth century, and for the quality and integrity of its Victorian, Federation and Interwar building stock, which contribute substantially to its historic character.”
The building at 84 Glenferrie Road is described as “a two-part, Italianate composition in which bold penetrations and rusticated surfaces at the ground floor yield to a more subdued approach above”.
By the 1890s both Glenferrie Road and High Street, as well as Station Street and Claremont Avenue near Malvern Station, were well established commercial centres, containing a variety of retail premises.
An extensive tram network was developed in the area from 1909, including a route along Glenferrie Road, from Dandenong Road to the High Street intersection, then west along High Street to Armidale Railway Station. This provided further impetus for development of the Glenferrie Road/High Street commercial centre and any remaining vacant land on the main roads was filled over the next few years.
The survey noted that buildings from this period include the former National Bank at 84 Glenferrie Road (1914).
As a result of the growth in the area, Malvern was proclaimed a City in 1911.
The precinct continued to develop in the Interwar period, at which time Glenferrie Road became known for its banks, real estate agents and theatres.
Harry Gibb’s obituary noted his prominence as an architect as well as his active civic life.
“IN MEMORIAM. The Late Harry Browse Gibbs. Councillor Harry Browse Gibbs, who passed away at his residence, “Dittisham,” Orrong road, East St. Kilda, on Thursday, 4th… was one of the leading architects of Melbourne and the senior partner in the firm of H. B. Gibbs and Finlay.
“As a resident of St. Kilda, he took a warm interest in its progress, and fifteen years since was asked to come forward as a candidate for a seat in the council as one of the representatives of the North Ward in opposition to the retiring representative, Cr. T. G. Allen, and a largely signed requisition to that effect was presented to Mr. Gibbs. At that time St. Kilda, as a municipality, was financially dead, or slumbering might be the more appropriate term, but it was proposed to expend from £18,000 to £20,000 on the completion of the town hall. Mr. Gibbs came forward as a ” reform ” candidate in opposition to this proposal and won the seat by 644 votes to 271 for Cr. Allen, since when he has sat continuously as one of its representatives. Two years later he was elected Mayor and held that position also in the following term (1905-6-7).
It was during his mayoralty that the Government issued an Order in Council authorising the formation of the Foreshore Trust, representing the Board of Land and Works and the St. Kilda council for the improvement of the foreshore, the committee comprising Mr. R. G. McCutcheon, Captain A. Currie, Mr. C. Catini, Mr. F. Wimpole, Crs. H. F. Barnet, G. H. Billson and Edward O’Donnell, and the mayor. Cr. H. A. Gibbs, as chairman, with Mr. H. O. Allen, as secretary. The work of the Trust has been so fully set forth in these columns that it only remains to be said that Cr. Gibbs, as chairman, took the keenest interest in the progress of those improvements which are now nearing completion. Of recent years also he was a representative from the St. Kilda council on the Metropolitan Board of Works, a position for which his professional ability eminently fitted him, and he was likewise a member of the board of management of the Alfred Hospital. The bluff and kindly personality of the deceased gentleman made him at all times very popular, and his record stands for much excellent municipal work, attempted and done.
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John Gardiner
European settlers began moving into the Malvern region in the late 1830s, soon after the settlement around Port Phillip Bay.
Pastoralist John Gardiner, (1798-1878) was a pioneer of the suburb of Malvern. Indeed Malvern was first named Gardiner, and Gardiners Creek, Malvern’s northern boundary, is one of several local landmarks which bear his name. They include John Gardiner Secondary College and John Gardiner Reserve (a park in Booroondara). A street in Booroondara is named Gardiner Road.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography says:
“In 1837 he sailed with wife and daughter to Port Phillip in the Regia, built a house at Gardiner’s Creek, bought at Melbourne’s first land sale, a corner lot at Elizabeth and Little Collins Streets for £22, and established a cattle station of 15,000 acres (6070 ha) at Mooroolbark, where he was joined by his brother David and his cousin William Fletcher.
“In the same year he became the first president of a new Temperance Society, and his home was used for a meeting which formed a committee to build Melbourne’s first Independent Church.”
In 1839 Gardiner presided at the formation and became a director of the Melbourne Fire and Marine Insurance Co. and a local director of the Melbourne branch of the Union Bank. He later resigned from the Union Bank, was appointed manager of the Port Phillip Bank, sold his Gardiner’s Creek property and built a home in Bourke Street, Melbourne.
“In March 1841 he was sent to London where he tried without success to raise fresh capital for the Port Phillip Bank and served on the committee for political separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales.
“In September 1842 he returned to find Melbourne in financial crisis; he left the bank and lived at Mooroolbark.
In ‘The History of Malvern: From Its Settlement to a City’, published in 1935, John Butler Cooper writes:
“The first overlanding trip with cattle from New South Wales to Port Phillip [now Victoria] was made in the year 1835 by John Gardiner, Joseph Hawdon, Captain Hepburn and party. The journey occupied a period of three weeks and five days. Gardiner had been settled in Van Diemen’s Land for some 12 or 14 years. He was by profession a banker, associated with the Van Diemen’s Bank and afterwards at Port Phillip with the Port Phillip bank of which he was manager.”
He was also a farmer and “a superb bushman”.
Cooper writes:
“Hearing reports of the rich pastoral country unoccupied at Port Phillip he decided, when on a visit to Sydney, to buy cattle, drive them overland and start a cattle station at Port Phillip.”
Choosing a location, he decided to set up the station at Malvern through which ran a creek which would one day bear his name.
He writes: “Gardiner’s Creek station was situated on what is now a part of Malvern.”
The Australian Dictionary of Biography tell us that John Gardiner was born on 5 July 1798 in Dublin, the second son of John Gardiner, a property owner of independent means, and his wife Martha, née Fletcher.
It notes: “At Colp, County Meath, on 9 September 1819 he married Mary Eagle; in October 1822, accompanied by his wife, her parents and their three sons, he sailed for Van Diemen’s Land in the Andromeda. He arrived in Hobart Town in May 1823 and a month later was granted 800 acres (324 ha) of land near Ross.
“Next year he accepted employment with the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land. His only child, Anna Maria, was born in Hobart in July 1827. During March 1828 he left the bank to become a successful country store-keeper in the Macquarie River district.
“In March 1834 he rented 5250 acres (2125 ha) of land at Lovely Banks and ran sheep.
Twelve months later the farm was sold and Gardiner, losing his tenancy, sailed for Sydney. He looked for land about Yass but was discouraged by the severe drought.”
In 1836 Gardiner returned to Van Diemen’s Land, arrived at the Port Phillip settlement and then headed to Sydney “where he left his wife and daughter”.
Gardiner bought 300 cattle from Joseph Hawdon and together with and John Hepburn drove them overland to Gardiner’s Creek, near Melbourne, with a further 100 head of cattle belonging to Hawdon.
This trip earned Gardiner the nickname “The Overlander”.
In his book Bush Life in Australia’, published in 1848’ Henry Haygarth defines the term ‘overlander’”
“Among the most remarkable characters to be met in Australia are the ‘Overlanders’, men who make long expeditions from one part of the country to another with stock, either for the purpose of seeking a good market or of forming new stations in a land of greater promise than that which they originally occupied.”
They have, Haygarth wrote, “an air of wild adventure which throws a powerful charm over the occupation of the overlander”.
Gardiner, certainly included in this description, had been settled in Tasmania for many years where he was officially connected with the Van Diemens Land Bank, visited Port Phillip in early 1836 and was so impressed that he immediately left for Sydney to bring his New South Wales herds south to these promising new lands.
In 1937 L.J. Wilmoth wrote an unpublished manuscript called ‘John Gardiner, Pioneer and Overlander’.
He writes:
“The name of John Gardiner is still remembered in Melbourne as the first Overlander from New South Wales and his memory is retained in the name of Gardiner’s Creek, the first tributary flowing into the Yarra River on the south bank.
“Gardiner placed his home on a beautiful hill in the vicinity of a creek, now bearing his name.
“The exact site of the Gardiner homestead has been the subject of a friendly discussion arising out of the Hawthorn City Council, acting under the advice of the Historical Society of Victoria, in placing a memorial cairn on the Glenferrie Riad frontage of the Scotch College grounds opposite the Western end of Gardiner Road.”
The cairn purports to mark the site of the first house in the district rather than a memorial to John Gardiner.
As noted by L.J. Wilmoth, the cairns reads:
“On this hill John Gardiner built the first house in the district. Crossing the Yarra at Dight’s Falls with a herd of cattle which he had driven from New South Wales he settled here on the South bank of the river in December 1836 and in the same month began the building of his house.”
Wilmoth notes: “The site of the first homestead is of outstanding interest to us as it was the first building erected in that locality. As far as can be ascertained it occupied a site now occupied by the grounds of the Scotch College at Hawthorn.”
The cottage was “a small weatherboard structure of no great pretensions but for the time and considering the age of the settlement it seems to have been considered a very comfortable and excellent home.”
Writing on the history of Malvern, Di Foster notes that Glenferrie Road, first surveyed in 1854, was originally named Sir Henry’s Road after the Governor Sir Henry Barkly. In 1857 it was renamed Barkly Road and in 1872 changed to Glenferry Road after the Kooyong mansion ‘Glen Ferry’, owned by Peter Ferry. Toorak Road, first known as Gardiner Creek Road, was named after ‘Toorak House’, the former Governor’s residence.
Foster writes: “The name Malvern seems to have first appeared in 1853 when English barrister Charles Bruce Graeme Skinner built a hotel at the corner of two bush tracks, now known as Malvern and Glenferrie Roads. He named the hotel ‘Malvern Hill Hotel’ after the Malvern Hills, the birthplace of his forebears in England. [A later version of the Malvern Hotel is still standing on this site.]”
In 1856 the Gardiner Road District was proclaimed, with boundaries set as Kooyong Road, Gardiners Creek, Warrigal Road and Dandenong Road.
Foster writes: “In 1871 the district became a Shire and seven years later the name of Gardiner was changed to Malvern.”
Gardiner left a huge mark on the area. In 1856 Gardiner Road District was proclaimed and in 1878 Name of ‘Gardiner’ changed to ‘Malvern’. In 1901 Malvern was declared a Town and in 1911 Malvern proclaimed a City.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes:
“After the return of prosperity he sold Mooroolbark and other assets in 1853 and, with his brother David and William Fletcher, returned to England, where he retired to Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. In March 1863 his wife, who had stayed in Melbourne with her daughter, died. Three months later Gardiner married his cousin Sarah Fletcher (1812-1918) of Maryport, Cumberland.”
John Gardiner did not return to his hometown of Dublin but rather to England. He died on 16 November 1878 at age 80.
