597-599 Bridge Road

This site is subject to a Statement of Significance for the building, as well as a Statement of Significance for the Precinct in which it is located.

Please find below the Statement for the building, followed by the Statement for the Precinct.

Statement of Significance for the building

What is significant?
This site was a subdivision of Allotment 10, Crown Portion 32: William Morton sold the lot to Thomas Cheeseman in 1860 and Cheeseman sold to William Whipp in 1873 for £120. William Whipp, a boot maker, was the namesake for this shop and its occupier: only one other Whipp was listed in the Melbourne Directories, as a resident in Emerald Hill.

An auction notice in the Argus 16 May 1876 described a weatherboard shop and dwelling house known as Manchester Store, as in Bridge Road, Richmond, as opposite Whipp's Hotel, as an indication of Whipp's prominence in the area at that time. This hotel was listed at 476 Bridge Road from as early as 1865 (currently the site of an Edwardian-era shop).

In the 1870s Whipp was located in a group of shopkeepers and tradespersons at the east end of Bridge Road including Gammon, the draper, Youllden, a butcher, Kershaw the grocers, and JC Jones, chemist (q.v.). His shop & residence was unusually large for that date for a single owner-occupier. Typically if a shop row was created it would be justified financially by selling off other shops and keeping one for the developer. This may explain the listing in the `Government Gazette' for 1874 that Whipp's estate had been sequestrated and that a general meetings of creditors for election of trustees and the other purposes set forth in the 53rd section of the Insolvency Statute was to be held at the offices of the Court of Insolvency, Collins Street, on Monday the 11th day of May.

Whipp had borrowed from Morton to build, repaying some £850. Then he had mortgaged the property to Adam Stackpoole and another for £1050 but after a series of transactions lost the tenure to Joseph Heath. Heath's estate sold the property to Thomas Chaplin in 1886 who sold it John T Corry in 1895 for £748. Michael McNamara, news agent, was at 597 Bridge Road around 1900 and Mrs Sarah Bolton resided at 599 (residence section). After a mortgage to Robert Douglass, Emma Forshaw was the new owner of the building by 1907. The building was divided in 1952.

William married Jouala Jane Broughton and his family included William Edwin (born and died 1854 at Rochdale), Sarah (born 1856, Melbourne), William Richard (born at Richmond in 1858, died 1860), John (1860-); Alfred (1862-); Ann Jane (1864-), and Frances Elizabeth (born 1866, died 1867). William Whipp had moved to South Melbourne by the 1880s.

Despite the financial woes of William, the Whipps were still active in the City during the Edwardian-era with James Whipp resident at 20 Greeves St, Fitzroy, and practising boot making, and with him Ernest (a clicker) and Harold (a packer).

This family were pioneers in Richmond, arriving there soon after the first subdivisions, and William Whipp was a long-term businessman in the area, albeit overreaching his financial limits in the lead up to the boom era of the late 19th century. Despite this failure he has left his name as part of the permanent fabric to an early commercial building in the City. As an early Richmond hotelier he was well known locally such that his premises was used as a local landmark in commercial advertising.

This double-storey rendered shop & residence is designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, with a parapet cornice moulding and frieze set between corbels and urns. A segmentally arched raised entablature is at the centre of the parapet with panels set between piers and four urns. Upper level windows have Gibbsian cemented architraves and the facade wall is ruled to simulate stone; the side and rear walls are typically face red brick. The roof has a rendered chimney with distinctive bracketed cornice and slate cladding, patterned with green scalloped rows.

How is it significant?
Whipp's Terrace at 597-599 Bridge Road, Richmond is historically and aesthetically significant (National Estate Register Criteria A4, E1) to the locality of Richmond and the City of Yarra.

Why is it significant?
Whipp's Terrace at 597-599 Bridge Rd, Richmond is significant to the Richmond locality:
- for the building's relative architectural value, given the early date of 1873, as a forerunner for the numerous highly decorated Renaissance revival designs to follow in the 1880s;
- for the building's distinctive details such as the parapet urns, the Gibbsian surround to the upper level windows and the bracketed chimney cornice; and
- for the building's close association with the life and times of pioneering local hotelier and shop keeper in Richmond, William Whipp.

Precinct statement of significance

Component streets include:

Bridge Road,

Church Street

Waltham Street,

Statement of Significance

What is significant?

Created as a major road reserve in Robert Hoddle's Crown Allotment survey of the 1830s (18), Bridge Road was connected to Hawthorn by a bridge over the Yarra River in 1855. The eastern end of Bridge Road was known as Campbell Parade after it was widened in the 1870s.

As a main thoroughfare from Melbourne to the eastern suburbs by the mid 1850s, retail and service trades concentrated at the west end of Bridge Road, including butchers, drapers, a shoemaker, fruiterers, tailors, hairdressers, grocers, Egan's steam sawmill and several hotels. The villa gardens of Joseph Bosisto and William Highett were on the less developed north side of this end of Bridge Road.

Today the majority of the Victorian-era buildings in Bridge Road date from the 1870s and 1880s when the advent of horse drawn omnibuses brought shoppers to the area. These were replaced by cable trams in 1885 and an electrified tram service in 1916, each new mode of transport improving access to the shops and residences lining the road. The historical and architectural focus of the street, the Richmond municipal offices and town hall complex (incorporating a courthouse), was constructed on the courthouse reserve in 1869-1871 and redeveloped in the 1930s in a Neo-Egyptian manner. Separate post office and police station buildings were added in 1871. Over time, as the civic centre of Richmond, this became the site for other public buildings (two theatres, Metropolitan Gas Company's Richmond gasometer and residence.) erected in the vicinity of the town hall group.

Main development era

Bridge Road Heritage Overlay Area, Richmond is a predominantly 19th and early 20th century commercial strip and Richmond's civic hub, with a contribution from well preserved inter-war buildings and individually significant places of all eras, that has the following key characteristics.

Contributory elements

One and two-storey Victorian and Edwardian-era shops with (but not exclusively):

. Typically living accommodation over or at the rear of ground level shops;

. Typically configured as continuous rows with no front or side boundary setbacks, typically set out on a 6m wide module;

. Some distinctive individually significant building designs;

. Typically parapeted building forms with concealed pitched roofs;

. Typically vertically oriented rectangular openings, symmetrically arranged, to the upper level facades;

. Typically stuccoed facades having trabeation and ornamentation derived from Italian Renaissance architecture but also with some face brick for early Victorian-era (bichrome, polychrome) and Edwardian-era (pressed red brick) buildings;

. Some use of upper level verandahs or loggias for residential use;

. Once typically extensive post-supported street verandahs, timber and iron construction, with some cantilever awnings for 20th century buildings; and

. Once typically large display windows at ground level, timber framed with plinths, and recessed tiled or stone paved entries, some remaining (see 383 Bridge Rd) also some metal framed (brass, copper) shopfronts for early 20th century buildings;

Contributory elements also include (but not exclusively):

. Well preserved inter-war buildings, with original or early shop fronts;

. Architecturally significant buildings that express a range of key commercial development periods in the City;

. Tramlines and associated tram shed sites;

. Traditional street elements such as bluestone pitched crossings, kerbs, and gutters, cast-iron grates, and asphalt paved footpaths; and

. The Richmond City Hall complex, with associated former Court House and Police Station.

How is it significant?

HO310 Bridge Road Heritage Overlay Area, Richmond is aesthetically and historically significant to the City of Yarra (National Estate Register [NER]Criteria E1, A4)

Why is it significant?

Bridge Road Heritage Overlay Area, Richmond is significant:

. As one Richmond's principle thoroughfares that leads to the first bridge to connect Richmond to Hawthorn, retaining many Victorian-era shops;

. As an important commercial precinct in Richmond, particularly expressive of the 19th and early 20th centuries and incorporating Richmond's civic hub;

. For the architectural continuity and high integrity of upper level facades to their construction date;

. For some well-preserved early shopfronts from the Victorian to the inter-war period;

. For the good and distinctive examples of Victorian and Edwardian-era architectural styles and ornamentation as evocative of the street's premier role in Richmond;

. For the architecturally significant examples of shop buildings from the 1920s and 1930s that relate well to the dominant Victorian-era and Edwardian-era scale and character;

. For the tramlines as the functional descendants of those originally installed in 1885;

. For traditional street elements such as bluestone kerbs, pitched crossings, gutters and asphalt footpaths;

. For the landmark quality of the Richmond Town Hall, with associated Court House and Police Station; and

. For the contribution of individually significant or well preserved buildings that express a range of key development periods in the street and the City.

References

18 Cited as 1837- 1st survey 1839

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Residence