Bridge Road Precinct
BRIDGE ROAD, RICHMOND, YARRA CITY
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![Bridge Road Precinct.JPG Bridge Road Precinct.JPG](https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/vhd-images/places/000/089/004.jpg)
![Bridge Road Precinct.JPG Bridge Road Precinct.JPG](https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/vhd-images/places/000/089/004.jpg)
Statement of Significance
Bridge Road precinct, Richmond is significant. It is a predominantly 19th and early 20th century commercial strip and Richmond's civic hub, with a contribution from interwar buildings, which has the following key characteristics.
One and two-storey Victorian and Edwardian-era shops with (but not exclusively):
- Typically living accommodation over or at the rear of ground level shops;
- Typically configured as continuous rows with no front or side boundary setbacks, typically set out on a 6m wide module;
- Some distinctive individually significant building designs;
- Typically parapeted building forms with concealed pitched roofs;
- Typically vertically oriented rectangular openings, symmetrically arranged, to the upper level facades;
- Typically stuccoed facades having trabeation and ornamentation derived from Italian Renaissance architecture but also with some face brick for early Victorian-era (bichrome, polychrome) and Edwardian-era (pressed red brick) buildings;
- Some use of upper level verandahs or loggias for residential use;
- Once typically extensive post-supported street verandahs, timber and iron construction, with some cantilever awnings for 20th century buildings; and
- Once typically large display windows at ground level, timber framed with plinths, and recessed tiled or stone paved entries, some remaining (see 383 Bridge Rd) also some metal framed (brass, copper) shopfronts for early 20th century buildings.
Contributory elements also include:
- Hotels from the nineteenth and early to mid twentieth centuries, typically on corner sites;
- Inter-war buildings, some with original or early shop fronts;
- Architecturally significant buildings that express a range of key commercial development periods in the City;
- Tramlines and any associated tram shed sites;
- Traditional street elements such as bluestone pitched crossings, kerbs, and gutters, cast-iron grates, and asphalt paved footpaths; and
- The Richmond City Hall complex, with associated former Court House and Police Station; and
- Industrial landmarks such as the former Finchams Organ Factory.
How is it significant?
The Bridge Road precinct is aesthetically and historically significant to the locality of Richmond and the City of Yarra.
Why is it significant?
The precinct is historically significant (Criterion A):
- As one Richmond's principal thoroughfares, which leads to the first bridge to connect Richmond to Hawthorn, retaining many early Victorian-era shops.
- As an important commercial precinct in Richmond, particularly expressive of the 19th and early 20th centuries and incorporating Richmond's civic hub.
- For the tramlines as the functional descendants of those originally installed in 1885.
- For the contribution of Individually Significant or Contributory buildings that express a range of key development periods in the street and the City.
The precinct is architecturally and aesthetically significant (Criteria D & E):
- For the architectural continuity and high integrity of upper level facades to their construction date.
- For some well-preserved early shopfronts from the Victorian to the inter-war period.
- For the good and distinctive examples of Victorian and Edwardian-era architectural styles and ornamentation as evocative of the street's premier role in Richmond.
- For the examples of shop buildings from the 1920s and 1930s that relate well to the dominant Victorian-era and Edwardian-era scale and character.
- For traditional street elements such as bluestone kerbs, pitched crossings, gutters and asphalt footpaths.
- For the landmark quality of the Richmond Town Hall, with associated Court House and Police Station.
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Bridge Road Precinct - Physical Description 1
The Bridge Road precinct, Richmond is a predominantly 19th and early 20th century commercial strip and Richmond's civic hub extending from the Hoddle Street/Punt Road to Burnley Street.
The typical shop & residence or hotel or bank that lines Bridge Road is from the Victorian-era and uses the Italian Renaissance for its architectural language, typically achieved with cement ornament applied to a stuccoed trabeated facade that joined seamlessly to the next building as a continuous one and two storey wall (sometimes three such as at Toole's Building of 1886) along both sides of the street. The Napier Hotel (former) at Punt Rd is an example of the early phase of commercial development close to Melbourne and set the style for the buildings to follow, being increasingly more ornamented as the century moved on, such as at Lovell brothers at 46 Bridge Road or the shop rows at 49-53 and 108-110 Bridge Road, John Clark Jones shop pair at 637-9 Bridge Road (1889) and the Baroque revival Melbourne Savings Bank of 1889 at 182-184 Bridge Road.
Street verandahs and large glazed display windows provided the ground level architecture, the former being initially timber framed and then made of cast-iron in a Corporation style that followed from Melbourne's pattern. Some of the iron verandahs were recreated in the late 20th century. The Edwardian-era introduced a different architectural style with ox-bow parapets and segmentally or Moorish arched facade openings as seen at 10, 28, 30 and 162-4 Bridge Rd but some of the Victorian-era styles also lingered such as at 132-134 Bridge Road (1903) with the addition of red brick as the new wall favoured wall finish.
Individually Significant places are represented in all development periods along the street with later eras including Moderne style examples such as the cream brick former Grynberg's drapers shop. The Royal Oak Hotel was reborn architecturally in the early 20th century, with its distinctive corner tower, as well as later transforming into a music venue for emerging music makers from the late 20th century such as Nick Cave. New uses inspired new architecture such as the picture theatres that dotted Bridge Road: the interwar former Nation Picture Theatre (177 Bridge Road) is one. At the east end of bridge Road, near the Yarra River frontage where early industry had grown in Richmond was the landmark Fincham Organ Factory complex (see also 2 Stawell Street), later the Jackett, Howard & Co, Flour Mills.
Heritage Study and Grading
Yarra - City of Yarra Review of Heritage Overlay Areas
Author: Graeme Butler & Associates
Year: 2007
Grading:Yarra - City of Yarra Heritage Review
Author: Allom Lovell & Associates
Year: 1998
Grading:Yarra - Richmond Conservation Study
Author: John & Thurley O'Connor, Ros Coleman & Heather Wright
Year: 1985
Grading:Yarra - Heritage Gap Study
Author: Graeme Butler & Associates
Year: 2007
Grading:
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