Just before four on the morning of New Year’s Day 1891, two people walking past the Mutual Store saw smoke pouring from a window. One of them, a boy named Conway, ran to the fire alarm at the Swanston Street corner. At about half past five the roof fell in. By daylight only the outside walls were standing.
Mutual Building · 9 Degraves Street
It burned down on New Year’s Day. By noon the next day it had taken 200 orders.
The store before the fire. Wood engraving, Illustrated Australian News, 2 February 1891. State Library Victoria. Library record
The next morning the store was trading again from empty premises a few doors west. The chemist, Mr Crundall, had three prescriptions made up by a quarter past nine. By noon the store had taken 200 orders. Six months’ stock had been sitting safely in bond, and the delivery vans were stabled out at South Yarra, so both survived the fire.
The Mutual had opened in 1872 as a co-operative, with £2 shares. It sold to its members, and it shared its profits with its staff. By 1917 each department had a profit target, and on the day of the annual meeting every employee who had beaten it was handed a sealed envelope with a cheque inside.
The new store opened on the same corner eleven months after the fire, built with the next one in mind. The stairs and lifts were walled off in the middle, the floors were terracotta, and about 750 sprinklers were set to come on by themselves in the heat.
The next fire came in November 1897. The great fire burned out much of the block between Elizabeth and Swanston Streets and reached the Mutual’s roof, where the asphalt “bubbled merrily”. Forty sprinklers went off. Sixty bags of ashes were swept off the roof, and the building came through almost untouched.
In 1909 that roof became the floor of new tea rooms on the fifth floor, with views over the river to the bay and a string band every afternoon.
The store closed in 1965. The Council of Adult Education moved in for almost forty years, and by 2006 the building had become apartments above shops.
Look up at the Flinders Street front and you can still see both dates. 1872 is over an arch at street level, and REBUILT 1891 is higher up.
Sources12 records
- The Argus, 2 January 1891
- “The Mutual Store Fire”, The Herald, 2 January 1891
- Table Talk, 16 January 1891
- Mutual Store Limited, prospectus, 1872, State Library Victoria
- The Argus, 8 September 1917
- The Argus, 1 December 1891
- The Argus, 23 November 1897
- The Age, 10 February 1898
- A. W. Greig, “The Great Fire of Melbourne”, The Argus, 20 November 1937
- The Argus, 26 November 1909
- Fay Anderson, “Mutual Store”, eMelbourne, University of Melbourne
- City of Melbourne open data, building information and permits
