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Hesse Street Commercial Precinct

Location

Stokes Street and Hesse Street and Little Hesse Street and Symonds Street and Hobson Street QUEENSCLIFF, QUEENSCLIFFE BOROUGH

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

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Hesse Street looking South
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72 and 74 Hesse Street c.1905
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Hesse Street looking North
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39-41 and 43-45 Hesse Street
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Hesse Street looking south
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Hesse Street looking south
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Borough of Queenscliffe
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View across the undeveloped
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Vue Grand Hotel, no. 46-48
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East side of Hesse Street
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West side of Hesse Street
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View south along Hesse Street

Statement of Significance

Statement of Significance as recorded under the Queenscliff Heritage Study 2009

What is significant?

The Hesse Street Commercial Precinct is of significance for its diverse collection of predominantly commercial buildings dating from the 1860s through to the present day. The precinct also includes key religious and civic buildings in the township and also has a small scattering of residences.

Specific significant and contributory buildings within the precinct are identified in the attached schedule.

How is it significant?

This precinct is of historical and aesthetic significance to the Borough of Queenscliffe.

Why is it significant?

The Hesse Street Commercial Precinct is of local historical significance as the commercial heart of Queenscliff since the 1850s and 1860s. Having developed in a relatively ad hoc manner over a number of decades, through its history, this part of Hesse Street has accommodated everything from stables and boarding houses, hotels, shops, churches, residences, and civic buildings. While in some respects much altered and with some unsympathetic later twentieth century buildings, equally the precinct retains a significant proportion of buildings both from the mid-to late nineteenth century and the Federation and interwar periods. The surviving building stock clearly demonstrates the pattern of commercial development in the township, retaining buildings from all eras in this history, including modest 1860s shops, flamboyant hotels and substantial shops from the boom era of the 1880s, distinctive Federation period commercial buildings and stripped interwar shops.

The precinct is one that contains many buildings with interesting and well-known historical associations.

Notwithstanding that a number of buildings in the precinct have suffered unsympathetic alterations, equally, there are a number of buildings of individual architectural distinction which combine with the more modest contributors to present a streetscape of considerable diversity and interest, which retains a strong heritage character.

Group

Commercial

Hesse Street Commercial Precinct

Location

Level

Statement of Significance

Group

Category