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8 Corsair Street

Location

8 CORSAIR STREET RICHMOND, YARRA CITY

File Number

Y2011:9300

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

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RICHMOND CORSAIR STREET 8.jpg

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The former Opportunity Club for Girls at 8 Corsair Street, Richmond, is significant. This two-storey red brick building, on the corner of Corsair and Fraser streets, was built in 1941 by John Thomas Short of Oakleigh, at a cost of £4000 provided by the philanthropic merchant Frederick Blight. The Club opened its doors in August 1942 to provide local girls with facilities for sport, quiet leisure activities and learning practical skills. The gymnasium was used during the daytime as a kindergarten. The Opportunity Club closed in late 1974 and was sold to the Australian Greek Welfare Society.

The post-1944 alterations and additions to the building, including the single-storey kindergarten wing, are not significant.

How it is significant?
The former Opportunity Club for Girls is of local historic and architectural significance to the City of Yarra.

Why it is significant?
Historically, the former Opportunity Club for Girls is a tangible illustration of this charitable movement for the welfare of children in working-class suburbs, was founded in Victoria in 1939. The clubs were established to provide nutritious meals ('Oslo lunches') and a place for recreation and learning new skills after school hours. The first club for boys was opened in Collingwood in a converted factory, followed by a club for girls in Collingwood, and one in Richmond established in a former furniture factory on Lord Street in 1940. The building at Corsair Street may have been the first purpose-built Opportunity Club. (Criterion A)

Architecturally, the former Opportunity Club for Girls is a successful Moderne composition with the classic interplay seen in this style of the vertical and horizontal. The splayed corner entrance sits below a ziggurat motif of red brick piers against a cream render background which retains early or original limewash. The elevations on either side have horizontal bands of cream render in clinker brick borders. (Criterion D)

Group