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BABY HEALTH CARE CENTRE
Other NamesCOBURG TRUBY KING BABY HEALTH CENTRE , INFANT WELFARE CENTRE , MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH , MOTHERCRAFT , TRUBY KING LocationELM GROVE COBURG, MORELAND CITY
File NumberHER/2000/000031LevelRegistered |
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Statement of Significance
What is significant? How is it significant? Why is it significant? The centre has further historical importance for its association with Dr Sir Frederick Truby King of New Zealand, who became famous worldwide for his promotion of the "Plunket Nursing system" which advocated a complicated feeding formula and a strict routine for babies. His methods were largely ignored by the Victorian Baby Health Care Association who chose to promote other expert opinions. King laid the foundation stone for this centre in 1925, and opened the Victoria's first centre in Coburg in 1919. The building is socially important for its enduring civic value to the community. Its function which combines facilities for baby health as well as for the city's brass band meetings has been an unlikely but successful union since the building's opening, with the premises being in continual use since then. As a baby health centre, the building is socially and culturally important for marking phases in the lives of mothers and infants. Designed to resemble a typical middleclass suburban house, the purpose-built centre was a symbol of domesticity. It was also symbolic of a culturally progressive caring society, a place associated with new scientific ideas, and professionally designed programs designed to improve the health education of women raising families in the developing suburbs.
The Coburg Truby King Baby Health Centre was opened by Mayor Cr J Robinson on 24 July 1926. It succeeded an earlier centre opened on 4 December 1919, the first Truby King Centre to open in Victoria. A growing population and an increasing awareness of the service offered by the centre led to overcrowding and the need for new quarters. In 1925 architect, R McC Dawson designed a new building, and in October that year Dr Sir Truby King laid the foundation stone. The new purpose-built centre opened nine months later. The building facilities were, and continue to be, shared with the Coburg City Band. Located in the Coburg civic precinct, the centre has the domestic appearance and scale of a Californian bungalow house. Constructed of red brick with terra cotta tile roof, it has two projecting entrance porches, each gabled, supported by grouped timber posts and solid brick piers. A rendered parapet between the porches has raised lettering indicating "Coburg City Band and Truby King Rooms 1926". Dr Sir Frederick Truby King of New Zealand began promoting his world-famous methods in mothercraft around the turn of the century, and in about 1913 Sister M.V. Primrose of South Yarra inaugurated the movement in Victoria in conjunction with the Trained Nurses' Association.
The Coburg Truby King Baby Health Centre is of historical and social significance to the State of Victoria.
The building of 1926 is historically important as the first purpose-built Truby King Baby Health Centre to be erected in Victoria. The centre has further historical importance for its links to the earlier Coburg baby health centre, which was the first such centre in Victoria to practice Truby King mothercraft methods when it opened in 1919.
Group
Health Services
Category
Infant Welfare Centre