INFANT BUILDING, MOONEE PONDS WEST PRIMARY SCHOOL

150 ATHOL STREET MOONEE PONDS, MOONEE VALLEY CITY

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Victorian Heritage Register

INFANT BUILDING, MOONEE PONDS WEST PRIMARY SCHOOL SOHE 2008

Statement of Significance

• Additional Place Information

  • History

    INFANT BUILDING, MOONEE PONDS WEST PRIMARY SCHOOL - History

    Contextual History:History of Place:
    Almost a third of Victoria’s nineteenth century urban state schools were built by the Education Department during its first three years of operation from 1873-76. A demand for more state primary schools however, began to grow again by 1885. There was overcrowding in South Melbourne and Prahran, and plans had to be made for extra classrooms at Essendon and Kensington. New schools were erected at East Brunswick, Maribyrnong and North Brunswick, and Flemington had to be reopened. Rural schools were also needed; of the sixty-one built in 1886-87, forty-five were in country areas, many being for new settlements.
    
    The Moonee Ponds West (formerly known as Ascot Vale West) State School opened on 14 February 1888 in a hall at the corner if Mirams Street and Union Road, which was leased for £30 per annum. On opening it had an attendance of 148 children. In the following year an allotment of 1.5 acres bounded by Lennox, Athol, Bowen and Eglington Streets was purchased for £950 and a school to accommodate 500 pupils was erected at a cost of £4,500. As with much of inner Melbourne during the 1880s, Moonee Ponds boomed with domestic and commercial development. Attendances at the school soared rapidly reaching 946 in 1893. Various measures to provide more classrooms included the leasing of the Temperance Hall in St Leonard’s Road and the removal and re-erection of Fawkner State School No.447 for use as an infant room. In its first half century the school had only nine head teachers.
    
    Infant School Buildings
    The Fink Commission (1899) had recommended independent infant’s schools. These did not ensue, but the first detached infants school building was built in Essendon in 1901. This was the prototype for a group of symmetrical gable-roofed infant’s buildings which featured a central pavilion hall with classrooms clustered around, and prominent roof ventilators consisting of shafts with conical caps. Such ventilators became standard design practice for Public Works Department schools, and from 1899 until around 1923 every new school was provided with them. Detached infant school buildings of the Edwardian period were built between 1901 and 1939. According to Petersen’s study fifty-three were constructed.
    
    
    History of Place:
    
    In 1911 two blocks adjoining Moonee Ponds West State School with an Athol Street frontage of 132 feet were acquired as the site for a new infant school of seven rooms, a hall, cloak room and office. The cost for erecting the building was approximately the same amount as for the earlier 1889 school premises (£4,500). It was designed by the Public Works Department under supervising architect, George William Watson, and opened in June 1913.
    
    Separate infant pavilions of this type were designed from 1907 to 1915, and commonly incorporated a large main hall varying from 57 feet to 58 feet by 28 feet to 32 feet, surrounded by five to seven classrooms, an office and a cloakroom. The latter are very large, often 57 feet by 12 feet running the whole length of one side of the hall. The buildings themselves were usually characterised by the use of red brick, with terra cotta rooves, ridge tiles and finials. The roof shape was half hip, hip or jerkin-head. In some earlier examples the gable rooves were symmetrical and timbered. Chimneys had terra cotta pots and broad rough-cast bands. Ceilings were often coved on the line of the scissor-truss roof with up-cast shaft roof ventilators. Windows were either triple or quadruple sash with highlights and shallow curved heads. The most prominent and characteristic elements were the two octagonal plan, domed ventilators over the hall and notable leadlight windows occasionally depicting Australian flora and fauna. Sometimes the the hall had a hammer-beam roof structure.
    
    Richard Petersen identified nineteen such Edwardian infant pavilions of this type from the period between 1901-1914. Of the seven that incorporated Australian flora and fauna leadlight windows, those at Auburn, Footscray and Moonee Ponds were recommended for addition to the Heritage Register.
    
    George William Watson (1850-1908)
    Born and educated in England, George Watson entered the Department soon after his arrival in the colony on 26 October 1872. He was an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects for twenty-one years and also the representative of the Society of Architects (London) in Australia. He designed and carried out many large and important government buildings including, the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum, the Public Buildings and Law Courts in Sandhurst (Bendigo), the Female Prison at Pentridge, as well as many schools, court houses and police buildings in metropolitan Melbourne and country Victoria. Watson was chief Public Works architect between the years 1910-1915, and died on 26 July 1915.

    Permit Exemptions

    INFANT BUILDING, MOONEE PONDS WEST PRIMARY SCHOOL - Permit Exemptions

    General Exemptions:

    General exemptions apply to all places and objects included in the Victorian Heritage Register (VHR). General exemptions have been designed to allow everyday activities, maintenance and changes to your property, which don’t harm its cultural heritage significance, to proceed without the need to obtain approvals under the Heritage Act 2017.

    Places of worship: In some circumstances, you can alter a place of worship to accommodate religious practices without a permit, but you must notify the Executive Director of Heritage Victoria before you start the works or activities at least 20 business days before the works or activities are to commence.

    Subdivision/consolidation: Permit exemptions exist for some subdivisions and consolidations. If the subdivision or consolidation is in accordance with a planning permit granted under Part 4 of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and the application for the planning permit was referred to the Executive Director of Heritage Victoria as a determining referral authority, a permit is not required.

    Specific exemptions may also apply to your registered place or object. If applicable, these are listed below. Specific exemptions are tailored to the conservation and management needs of an individual registered place or object and set out works and activities that are exempt from the requirements of a permit. Specific exemptions prevail if they conflict with general exemptions.

    Find out more about heritage permit exemptions here.

    Specific Exemptions:

    EXEMPTIONS FROM PERMITS: (Classes of works or activities which may be
    undertaken without a permit under Part 4 of the Heritage Act 1995):
    
    Interior painting of previous painted surfaces
    
    Replacement of flexible floor coverings such as vinyl and carpet

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