Former E. S. & A. Bank

Manresa People¹s Centre (formerly the E.S.& A. Bank) was built in 1873 to the design of Leonard Terry. The building was constructed in the Ecclesiastic Victorian Gothic style in Hawthorn bricks with gable slate roofs, and with dressings of Waurn Ponds limestone on a bluestone foundation. The two-storey building was intended to house the banking chamber and offices on the ground floor and accommodation for the manager at the rear and on the first floor. It retains a grand staircase hall with Minton-tiled flooring and Gothic timber stairs. The first floor drawing room also retains a stencilled ceiling and cornice decorations. The building was purchased by the Roman Catholic Trust Corporation in 1923 and renamed the Manresa People¹s Centre.
How is it significant?
Manresa People¹s Centre is of historic and architectural significance to the State of Victoria.
Why is it significant? The Manresa People¹s Centre is historically important through its association with the development of rail transport and the suburbanisation of Melbourne. Built in response to the construction of the railway to Hawthorn in 1861, and the need to finance the subsequent housing boom, the bank subsequently became isolated from the commercial precinct after the extension of the railway to Glenferrie in 1880. The Manresa People¹s Centre is architecturally important in demonstrating an unusually early example of Ecclesiastical Gothic Revival in a secular building in Victoria. The centre is also architecturally important in exhibiting the good design and aesthetic characteristics of Leonard Terry¹s work, particularly through the staircase hall, the Gothic stairs and the former drawing room.
Adopted from Heritage Victoria: 20/06/2012
Classified: 01/11/1979
Revised: 03/08/1998
Part of Historic Area. See also files B4379, B4381, B5601 & B3751l.
Group Statement of Significance: Following the gothic stylistic precedent set by Crough and Wilson's Church of the Immaculate Conception in 1869, two commercial and one ecclesiastical Gothic revival designs were added along Burwood Road over the next 35 years to create a stylistically harmonious group. Together with similarities of style and materials, the group includes important individual designs of the former E S & A Bank by Terry & Oakden (1874) and the Catholic presbytery designed by William Ellis in 1882. The last, least distinguished, addition was King's funeral parlour in 1904.
Group Classification 18/04/1985.
See also B3751.

Group

Community Facilities

Category

Community Club/ Clubhouse