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PERUCCI SHIRTS PTL LTD FACTORY (FORMER)

Other Name

Fletcher Jones & Staff Pty Ltd (production centre), Perucci ShirtsPty Ltd Factory, Yakka Overalls Pty Ltd

Location

2-6 BALLARAT STREET,, BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 - Property No 12156

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

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Perucci Shirt Factory

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The building at 2-6 Ballarat Street, Brunswick, is a modernist factory comprising a sprawling sawtooth-roofed production building and a double-storeyed office/showroom on Ballarat Street. The latter presents a particularly striking facade, with a projecting concrete-framed and fully-glazed upper storey and a sloping lower level with tiled cladding, plain black columns and tinted paving. Designed for Yakka Overalls Pty Ltd in 1955 by architects A K Lines, Macfarlane & Marshall, the factory was subsequently occupied by Fletcher Jones (1966-1982) and Perucci Shirts (1983-2008).

How is it significant?
The factory is of historical, architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Moreland.

Why is it significant?
Historically, the factory is significant for associations with a succession of important Australian clothing manufacturers that have become household names (AHC Criterion H.1). Built in 1955 for Yakka Overalls Pty Ltd, it provides evidence of the post-war expansion of an important local company after it had outgrown two earlier premises in Brunswick. The building marks a significant phase in the ongoing development of this company, which saw it move to even larger premises in Broadmeadows in 1964 and to establish additional factories in regional Victoria and New South Wales in the 1970s. In the same way, the building's occupation by the Warrnambool-based firm of Fletcher Jones demonstrates the expansion of that company's industrial activity into the Melbourne metropolitan area due to the local unavailability of skilled workers. With its subsequent occupation by Perucci Shirts until very recently, the building has been continuously occupied by the clothing manufacturers for more than fifty years. Once cited as Brunswick's last remaining clothing factory, the building thus demonstrates a significant sub-theme in the industrial history of the municipality (AHC Criterion A.4).

Aesthetically, the building is significant for its Ballarat Street frontage: a bold and striking modernist composition that is virtually unaltered and thus remains highly evocative of the 1950s period (AHC Criterion F.1). The projecting upper storey, with expressed concrete frame and fully glazed window wall, is typical of fine commercial and industrial design of the era, while the ground floor, with its plain black columns, tinted concrete paving and inward sloping wall being particularly distinctive elements. Overall, the building exhibits a notable (and notably rare) level of physical intactness, consequent to being continuously occupied for more than fifty years by companies engaged in the same industry.

Group