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CAB BUILDING AND HOUSE

Location

177A-179 HIGH STREET MARYBOROUGH, CENTRAL GOLDFIELDS SHIRE

File Number

PL-HE/03/0069

Level

Registered

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Maryborough cab building &
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Maryborough cab building_KJ_8
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Maryborough cab building
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Maryborough cab building
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Maryborough cab building
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Cab building and

Statement of Significance

The cab building and house in High Street, Maryborough were built in the late nineteenth century by the horse cab proprietor Daniel Minahan as his business premises and residence. They were built at the edge of Maryborough's commercial precinct and at the beginning of the prestige residential area. The house was built before 1885, and the adjacent brick cab building in the early 1890s. There was also a single-storey timber stable at the rear, but this has now been demolished. Minahan operated a cab business in Maryborough, and is known to have had a cab stand outside one of the hotels in High Street. The cab building was later used by G J Rice & Co, whose name appears on a sign above the entrance, as wool and skin buying premises.

The cab building is a narrow, two-storey, rectangular plan, red brick building with a corrugated iron roof. The front facade has a brick parapet at the top, and an arched entrance with a pair of sliding timber doors opening directly onto the High Street footpath. The ground floor is open, which would have been a suitable space for the storage of horse cabs, and there is a timber loft above. The ground floor is now concreted. The house is a symmetrical single storey weatherboard cottage with a hipped corrugated iron roof, and a verandah across the front with a cast iron balustrade and frieze. Internally it has a standard nineteenth century plan with a central passage from front to rear.

How is it significant?

The cab building is of architectural significance, the cab building and house are of historical significance and the site is of archaeological significance to the State of Victoria.

Why is it significant?

The cab building is historically significant as a rare surviving example in Victoria of a nineteenth century horse cab building, and is a reminder of a means of transport, and of an industry, which was essential until the twentieth century, and has now completely disappeared. Such buildings associated with horse transport were once extremely common, but few now surviving in the state.

The cab building is architecturally significant as an intact example of a now rare building type, a nineteenth century utilitarian structure used as horse cab premises.

The cab building and house are historically significant as a representative and now unusual example of a small nineteenth century business operation, with the owner living adjacent to his business premises.

The site is archaeologically significant as it has the potential to contain deposits associated with the former use of part of the site as stables.

Group