SITE OF FORMER MONGERS WEST AUST STORES

Statement of Significance

Site of former Mongers West Australian Stores is significant as evidence of the place being a commercial site since the early twentieth century. It represents the expansion of Fremantle in the gold boom period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the changing needs of the community and commerce in the Fremantle area.

Physical Description

DEMOLISHED

History

Rate books list a house on this site from 1880, sometimes noted as ‘Mignon House’, and continue to list a residence up to 1901-02. However, plans show the site as vacant until at least 1902. Rate books for 1903-04 list the owners and occupants as Mongers West Australian Stores Ltd, merchants, and note that a new office and warehouse has been built, along with cellars and sheds. From 1905-06 the pace is owned and occupied by Burns & Philps & Co, merchants, who continue to own and occupy the place into the 1950s. A 1916 plan shows a large, square-footprint stone building on the corner of Newman and William Streets, with a galvanised iron building half its size attached to the north. The rear of the stone building includes a loading platform, accessed by an L-shaped driveway from William Street. Two other galvanised iron buildings fill the remainder of the rear of the lot, one of which faces William Street and has brick walls to both this and its west elevation. One file note in the Fremantle Local Studies collection indicates this place was demolished in 1971 and another that is was demolished in 1963. Woolworths opened a new store on lots 538 and 539 in 1972, with all former buildings on the site demolished by this time. In 1989, the ‘Queensgate’ development of shops, offices and cinemas replaced the 1972 building. Photographs from c.1974-75 show Newman Street as a wide two-lane one-way through road. On the east side of the street a multistorey Myers building fills half the block, and the remainder is a single-storey Woolworths grocery store. On the west side of the street, the north end is a carpark and the south end is taken up with the multistorey council offices and library building. Photographs from 1983 show the northern end of Newman Street being a carpark outside Myers at the Queen Street end, and a children’s playground built across what was formerly a through-street. The carpark on the west side of the street has become a park and paved mall area. The grocery store is now occupied by Coles New World. Photographs show the transport of a ’39 year old’ palm tree from a residence in Mosman Park to the ‘southern end’ of Newman Street in 1984, to feature in the Newman Court Mall. Photographs from October 1988 show the construction of the four commercial and office buildings at the eastern corner of William and Newman Streets. At this time a roadway still traverses approximately half the length of the former Newman Street, becoming a carpark at its northern end (near the centre of the block). Photographs from July 1990 show the street dug up for the creation of a mall.

Uses

Creation Date

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