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Chapel Street Historic Area

Location

Chapel Street, between Dandenong Road and Toorak Road,, PRAHRAN VIC 3181 - Property No B7144

File Number

B7144

Level

National

Statement of Significance

What is significant? Chapel Street is one of the most important shopping strips in Victoria. Most of its buildings date from one of three periods: its initial surge of development in the 1860s; the 1880s and 1890s after the development of the cable tram routes in Chapel Street and its cross streets; or from the emporium development stage of 1900-15.
Although Chapel Street began as a local shopping centre, by the time of World War I it rivalled Melbourne's Central Business District in importance. It became the premier shopping street south of the Yarra, its only suburban rival being Smith Street, north of the Yarra. Its large emporia were without rival elsewhere in the suburbs and no other area of Melbourne so clearly demonstrates the pre World War I retail boom. The immense size of the emporia between High Street and Commercial Road is an intact and evocative reminder of this phase of Melbourne's development, and form an outstanding streetscape.
Chapel Street has played an important role in the commercial and social life of the area over the years, serving a changing, diverse and cosmopolitan population, such as the artisans, the working classes and middle classes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, migrants, especially after the Second World War, and artists and students from the 1970s. In recent years Chapel Street has developed a reputation as a prestigious shopping strip, popular with discerning shoppers and tourists. It is renowned as a stylish, prestigious shopping precinct attracting many clients: locals, casuals and tourists alike.
Chapel Street is a remarkably intact commercial strip of mainly late nineteenth and early twentieth century shops. Individual buildings of note in the precinct include the Prahran Town Hall, some shops from the 1850s to 1860s (for example numbers 24-26, 92, and 302), the Prahran Arcade (number 282-84), and the former CBA Bank (number 340-44). Among its most impressive buildings are the early twentieth century shopping emporia, a building type more usually associated with the central city shopping district. These emporia are all located between Commercial Road and High Street, and include the Big Store (number 303), Osment Buildings (number 197-207), Love and Lewis (number 321-23), the Colosseum (number 233), and Read's Stores (number 325).
South of High Street and north of Commercial Road the streetscape scale is similar to that of other Melbourne suburban shopping strips. South of High Street development pressures in the later twentieth century have been less, and several notable early twentieth century shopfronts have survived.
How is it significant? Chapel Street is significant for architectural, historical and social reasons. The section between Commercial Road and High Street is significant at a National level, the sections between Commercial Road and Toorak Road, and High Street and Dandenong Road, are significant at a State level.
Why is it significant? Chapel Street is architecturally significant for its intact streetscape of nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings, particularly its concentration of boom period shops and its large, early twentieth century shopping emporia usually more closely associated with the central city shopping area. These emporia are architecturally significant for the large range of styles used, and the unusual application of these to such large-scale facades.
Chapel Street is historically significant as one of the most impressive of the shopping strips that developed along Melbourne's cable tram routes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a reflection of the importance of the public transport networks that developed in Melbourne in the second half of the nineteenth century in the growth of the suburban shopping strips. Its large early twentieth century shopping emporia clearly demonstrate the pre World War I retail boom. It is significant as a reflection of the changing shopping habits of Melbourne people between the mid nineteenth century and the present day.
Chapel Street is socially significant as a one of Melbourne's favourite shopping, recreational and entertainment areas for over a century. It was the most important suburban shopping centre in Melbourne in the early twentieth century, and has again become a fashionable shopping strip, for locals as well as for tourists, and is also a favourite restaurant, café and bar strip.
Classified: 08/09/2004

See also: B0589, B0556, B0557, B4155, B5508, B6865, B6867, & B6868.

Group