Paddy's Market to Luxury Hotel

Frankly, it must be admitted, Melbourne's old Eastern Market was hideous. The dreary Victorian pile spread across several prime acres at the corner of Bourke and Exhibition Streets. It was so hideous that some of us loved it dearly. For one thing it housed a fine, old-fashioned licensed grocer, one of Melbourne's few remaining second-hand book shops and an excellent ironmonger.

Nor was this ironmonger's shop one of these horrid self-service affairs. There were behind the counter kindly fellows, who listened with great patience as you tried to explain your needs in the way of coping saws, half-inch chisels, and pots of enamel for the bathroom ceiling.

Alas, the market and its old-fashioned shops have gone forever to be replaced by the great Southern Cross Hotel, which throws open its doors on August 24. But, dear reader, before l describe the glories of this new hotel, could we dally for a little over the past glories of the Eastern Market?

Back in the eighteen-sixties it was an open area known as Paddy's Market. It was a most convenient place for the buying of produce for political speeches, for brawls or whatever. Indeed in July, 1864, there was a superb brand between the congregations of four rival preachers. But Melbourne, then, was even more cocksure than it is today. After the gold rush, it was bigger than Sydney and it liked to consider itself the greatest city in the southern hemisphere. Paddy's Market wasn't good enough for such a metropolis, and seeing that there was a world-wide craze for covered markets, the new market came to us, in 1879, for the princely sum of £30,000.

The market was opened on Monday, December 22, 1879, by His Excellency the Governor, the Marquess of Normanby, K.C.M.G. Personally, I am hoping that the directors of the new Southern Cross have taken note of this opening, for, in 1879, it was a beauty.

There was a band. There was a special anthem composed for the occasion, and more than 1000 people sat down to lunch. The reporter of the Melbourne Herald for December 23 wrote caustically that there were eleven speeches and a great deal of self-congratulation. But, he went on:

"Tables were laid for lunch in a vast central transept, above which stretched a roof, massive, solid as the continent and yet so cunningly devised that the perfect symmetry reduced the girders to spiders' webs and the roof to a mere nothingness."

The thousand guests sat down to lunch. The Argus reported that the caterer, Mr. Clements, gave general satisfaction. The Herald said ample justice was done to the viands.

The speech of the Chief Secretary, Mr. Berry, was received with "some cheers, more hisses and prolonged groans", but there were repeated cheers for the Marquess. He said that here was a structure that would do credit to any city in the civilized world. It was a magnificent structure, and it would not be Melbourne's faultif the city didn't prove the equal of any metropolis in existence. (Cheers.)

Just on the eve of Christmas, the glittering market was turned over to a Juvenile Industrial Exhibition. There were needlework, curtains, antimacassars, working models, plaster mouldings, biscuits, cakes, jams and jellies. Also, made by young people, there were some truly splendid gravestones and examples of graveyard railings. While appreciating the worth of these articles, the Argus couldn't understand why such melancholy symbols had to be displayed in the centre of the cake, jam and pastry department.

So the market settled down into the gaslight era. The 11 m.p.h. cable trams swung round the corner into Bourke Street from Spring Street with gripmen crying: "hold on for the curve please" and went on right by the market.

There were hoop-las and shooting galleries, although the shooting gallery in the basement was discontinued when a drunken gentlemen, one day, aimed his rifle at one of the patrons instead of the target. Phrenologists were quite a specialty. Phrenologists are gentlemen who tell one's personality and capacities by the bumps on one's head. Dancing ducks, too, were most popular. These were stopped, however, when it was discovered that the ducks' enthusiasm for dancing was generated by the superheated bricks they trod.

There were peep-show machines, in which "what the butler saw" was almost enough to bend one's moustache, and other sorts of shock electric to cure everything from goitre to acute alcoholism. There was no end of fortune tellers. The most famous was Madame Zinga Lee. She sat in a darkened room in glorious robes of black velvet decorated with mystic signs.

A pale light glimmered above her head, and a weak current of electricity ran through her body. Fortunes cost a shilling a time, and when clients took her by the hand there was a suitable feeling of excitement. Did Madame Zinga Lee, whose arms were said to be as buxom even as those of Queen Victoria, predict the doom of the Eastern Market and the rise of a hotel with 431 rooms and as many bathrooms?

What else about the Eastern Market? There was the sensational Cartwright murder in 1898. Frank Cartwright was a vaudeville artist, a bally-hoo expert, and he had at least 20 stalls there. Next to his office was Professor Medor, the astrologist. The professor had a sad faith in his own prophesies. One day some boys hung two carrots on his door. Thinking that Mrs. Cartwright was making fun of him, he rushed next-door, and shot her in the arm with a revolver. Cartwright, who was at the other end of the market, heard the noise. He rushed to discover what had happened, but in the darkened office he was unable to see. The professor shot him dead, then almost decapitated him with a knife. The professor was judged insane, and escaped the death penalty. Later he committed suicide Need one add any more to explain the importance of the Eastern Market? But did you know it was the very spot where the Sentimental Bloke met Doreen?

"I see "er in the markit first uv all Inspectin' brums at Steeny Isaacs' stall. I back me barrer in the same ole wav An' sez, 'Wot O, it's been a bonza day

If C. J. Dennis were alive to-day, I wonder what he would write about the Southern Cross Hotel. There are no phrenologists or shooting galleries. Nor is there a Steeny Isaacs stall, but don't lose heart, jewellery is available in many of the gift shops, although it might not come under the heading "brums" This new building is certainly different. It doesn't come within the category of glass-house or filing-cabinet architecture. The windows are in vertical lines. On top and bottom there is a serrated edge, so that the inhabitants of Exhibition Street call their new hotel The Concertina.

The walls on the outside are decorated with a rich blue mosaic tile. How can I describe it? In drab Exhibition Street the Southern Cross stands out like something suddenly imported from Surfers Paradise or Florida. As it happens, however, the blue front is standard for all hotels of the Inter-Continental Hotels Company, PanAmerican's subsidiary, which runs the Southern Cross. There are 431 rooms, air-conditioning throughout, parking space for 300 cars, and 80 shops. As you walk through the concourse of shops, inside there is a courtyard, away from the madness of the streets outside. In the centre there is a garden and a waterfall sculpture. Here you can sit down, contemplate the sculpture and wonder if you can afford the prices of any of the four restaurants inside. But wonder, if you ultimately succumb to temptation, will dissolve into surprise at a bill certainly no more massive than you would get at any other topclass dining-room or restaurant in the city. The hotel manager is Pete Sutherland, a Texan with three children. He is a former. Marine colonel, a decorated fighter pilot from Korea, and his last assignment was the Pan American hotel at San Juan, Puerto Rico. The project manager has been Henry Sanders Rowland 1lI. Nobody calls him Henry Sanders Rowland IlI. He answers to Hank, and, if there are goods and bads in this business, we Eastern Market enthusiasts are inclined to put Hank among the goods. You see, Hank came to Melbourne in January, 1960. He had a son born here. He likes Melbourne, and he has a genuine feeling for the history of the site, so he has tried, where he could, to put something of the old Eastern Market into the Southern Cross. For one thing he preserved the old foundation stone of the Eastern Market. Whelan the Wrecker found it when he was pulling down the building. The date -~May 9, 1878 was on it and underneath there was a box containing a sovereign, other coins of the realm and the newspapers for that day. Jim Whelan thought it was pretty good to find those coins. Back in those days the Lord Mayor would lay the stone at 11 a.m., then the workmen would sneak back at 5 p.m, and lift the stone again for just a moment. You know how it is. Anyway, Hank has put the foundation stone where it can be seen in the new building.

For the club room or grill, he has used some of the market's old bricks for brick arches, rather like a vigneron's cellar. Under the arches there are racks stacked with thousands of bottles to give a comforting, warm effect. The rest of the walls are covered with red velvet, and, when I last spoke to Hank, he was looking for relics. He wanted to display a memorabilia of things pertaining to old Melbourne and the market. He wanted old prints; he wanted, say, a Phar Lap's hoof, a Ned Kelly death mask, and he looked with great envy at Young and Jackson's "Chloe" The main restaurant has a framework around it just like the wrought iron-work of old houses around Carlton and East Melbourne. It opens on to a terrace, and in fine weather the customers will be able to eat outside or inside. Hank, though, is worried about the licensing laws. Melburnians may be able to drink their wines and spirits inside, but on the terrace they might have to stick to tea and orangeade. Actually Melburnian liquor laws and drinking habits proved to be a revelation. The first thought was to make the public bar like an American bar. As Hank put it, they looked in astonishment at the vast quantities of beer that were consumed with such speed between five and the closing time of six. So the Pan American made a special expedition to the Royal Hotel at Essendon.

There they looked in wonder at the equipment required; the refrigerated chamber down below, the plastic pipes through ducts into the bar. So all this had to be installed into the Southern Cross, plus an elevator purely for beer kegs. "Why," said Hank, "we found that we had to instal special cash registers. These need to work at double-quick time, and they have special keys, so that when the barmaid goes into action with wet fingers the drops of beer don't fall into the works. The ballroom can alternate as a convention hall, and all the facilities are, there to swing in everything from motor cars to 40-foot launches, The coffee shop is in the aboriginal style with native murals, and the tavern now that's something to see. It is an old English tavern, or shall we say it has the comforts you'd like an old English tavern to have. It has plank flooring, wood panelling and lots of flutey bits of walnut. The windows are stained glass, and everything is English, except the temperature of the beer and the closing hours.

There is a soda fountain bar, that looks a little like a mid-Victorian American drug store with wire-backed chairs. Hank says this will be a haven for teenagers. Perhaps even a matron or two, who wants to put on several thousand quick calories, might call in for a double banana split. But that's the beauty of this hotel. You can pay as much as you like to put on the calories. However, for the convenience of all, there is a Finnish sauna steam bath. So here you can, no doubt, pay as much as you like to take off as much weight as you like.

The bedrooms look most comfortable. As a special concession to Australians, who have this weird love for fresh air, one can open the windows in defiance of air conditioning. The passages on alternate floors are blue and gold and there are seven different colour schemes for the rooms, On the 15th floor, right across the south end of the building, there is the President's suite. Amongst the 500 employees of the hotel, it is known as the Potentate's Suite or the Oil Sheikery. It has four bedrooms, three baths, a bar, a kitchen, but the beautiful feature is the open-air terrace. This goes right across the south end and from here you can see across the Yarra, over the Botanic Gardens and right down to the Mornington Peninsula. One hopes that oil sheiks, who may be worried over the bill, won't be tempted to step over the railing. They can always transfer to the ordinary rooms where the tariff is strictly competitive with Melbourne's other hotels in the ton bracket All in all, one must confess that the new £5 million hotel is quite an improvement on the old £30,000 Eastern Market. It is designed with all the American hotel designer's science There is not a square foot, or rather cubic foot, that is not meant to pay its way. It is really a city on Exhibition Street, with its own laundry, own bakery, own dry cleanery, and deep in the basement are two 17-ton boilers, so large that each of their insides could accommodate a bachelor flat.

Open up any part of the floor or ceiling anywhere in the hotel, and the wound will reveal the most frightening tangle of entrails, telephone wires, hot-water pipes, air-conditioning tubes, sprinkler systems and the rest. Then, of course, there is the vast kitchen below, where the chef sits in a glass office, as comfortable as a managing director and about five times as important.

I have tried to find out from Hank whether the opening ceremonies will be as grand as those of 1879. Will there be a specially composed anthem? Will 1000 sit down to dinner? Will the dinner be as good as those satisfactory viands provided by Mr. Clements, and (shudder) will there be 11 speeches? Mr. Rowland, so far, has been non-committal, and not at any time is he given to over-statement. But he did say it would be worth one's while getting a tram into town.

This article first apeared in Walkabout Magazine, July 1962. The article with pictures, is available online at Trove.