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Former Wool Exchange

Location

44 Corio Street,, GEELONG VIC 3220 - Property No B4769

File Number

B4769

Level

State

Statement of Significance

A building of 1927-8 by Buchan, Laird and Buchan, with an unremarkable Renaissance-style facade, but a striking main hall with steeply ramped semicircular seating of a traditional auditourum character, roofed with a barrel vault in the Roman Baroque tradition, but with Neo Grec decorative detail.
Classified: 17/11/1983
Revised:03/0819/98
Part of Geelong Woolstores Historic Area

Historic Area Statement of Significance: The Geelong Woolstores Historic Area is one of remarkable coherence and integrity. Standing at the corner of Geringhap and Brougham Streets, the row of woolstores stretches away to the east in a unified scene, unequalled in terms of intactness and coherence elsewhere in Victoria.

The Area represents an important aspect of the process of settling the land in Victoria . The consequences of industry created a new economy, a new landscape and a new way of life. In terms of the lives of all of us as inhabitants of an industrial nation, it is the most relevant period of our past, not only because it is the most recent, but because the specific changes wrought during the last century provide the foundation of our present society.

Significant woolstore groups certainly exist elswehere in Australia, for example at Pyrmont and Ultimo in New South Wales, but those structures do not match the group qualities of the Geelong woolstores and were not specifically erected for the storage, handling and marketing of wool. Classified 4.8.80.

Group