open house hobart 2023—crisp & gunn

2023 Open House posts

• Architectural Drawing
• Signs of Hobart

Crisp & Gunn

AKA The Forestry Dome

Robert Morris-Nunn’s Forestry Dome

Our second major tour of Open House Hobart weekend was the former Forestry Tasmania headquarters in Melville Street. The site is now owned by the University of Tasmania and is currently being redeveloped as a university building. This development spans from Melville Street to what was Freedom furniture in Brisbane Street.

It’s the focus of much controversy at the moment, due to the university’s proposed move from its Sandy Bay campus into the city.

Murray Street side of the Crisp & Gunn complex

The Melville Street frontage includes two older buildings connected by what is known as the “Forestry Dome”, designed by Robert Morris-Nunn in 1997, to enclose a courtyard on the site. The two buildings it linked were heritage listed but the dome itself, which housed an internal forest, was not.

It received a RAIA Tasmania award for recycled buildings, and the Colourbond Steel in Architecture Award in 1998, and was a finalist in the National Architecture Awards.

Crisp & Gunn ghost sign on the Elizabeth Street side of the complex

Hobart Council approved an application from Tasmania Police in 2018 to demolish the dome for their new headquarters. It was reported that many councillors didn’t support that development and only approved it because there were no grounds in the planning scheme to reject it. Fortunately for the dome, the work didn’t proceed and somewhere along the line, Utas ended up buying the site.

It’s also now listed on the Heritage Register along with the Crisp and Gunn offices and workshop at 79-83 Melville Street.

So the Dome is secure.

The dome in redevelopment

The site was constructed in the 1920s, replacing an older Crisp and Gunn facility from the early 1900s that burned down in 1922.

Ernest and Frederick Crisp went into partnership with John and Thomas Gunn’s southern interests in 1908. This was just one of their sites, the partnership having many building interests around Hobart, including seven timber stores, a timber yard in Derwent Park, and brickworks at Knocklofty (the Gunns originally having been bricklayers by trade).

Over this site, which extended through to Brisbane Street, there was an office building, joinery factory, ironmongery, paint and glass stores and a timber mill. The complex was built by William Cooper and Sons, one of Hobart’s best-known building and architecture families. (See here for more information, and also THR12028 Provisional entry – Datasheet and CPR – Crisp & Gunn offices and workshop, and Forestry Tasmania dome at Heritage Tasmania.

The mill and store on Brisbane Street were demolished in the 1990s. Most recently, that side of the site had been occupied by Freedom Furniture.

Alex and Phoebe introducing us to the sire

We were shown around the site by Pheobe from Woods Bagot, designers of the redevelopment, and Alex, Hunsen Yuncken’s project manager.

Alex observed that one of the main challenges of the site is the eight level difference between the Brisbane Street side, where there was a two-storey underground car park connected to Freedom Furniture, and the structures on Melville Street. So there is a lot of earth moving to do, and this has to take place without removing the structures that they’re retaining.

Inside the office building

We looked through the deconstruction of the office building first. This is the smaller of the two Melville Street buildings, on the Elizabeth Street end.

We heard about the work they’re doing to retain a lot of the lovely timber in there, including a beautiful blackwood staircase. I think they said this will be the main office area for academic staff and others.

Some of the timber panels

Zooming out on the office building

Part of the pressed tin roof

Ceiling detail

The warehouse side of the site, closest to Murray Street, will be the main teaching and learning space, and at this stage it’s hard to envisage what it will look like after it’s all completed. Phoebe said the focus will be away from lecture theatres and more on smaller learning spaces for collaborative group work and face to face learning.

The top floor of the warehouse looking out on Melville Street

The other side of the warehouse

Looking out the window to the Melville Street car park

Making our way to the Brisbane Street side of the site, we got a different perspective on the dome.

Looking back at the dome from the Brisbane Street side of the site

Zooming in on the dome

Shadows on the ground

The work on the Brisbane Street side of the site is also incorporating stormwater upgrades. Alex explained the existing convict-built infrastructure can’t cope with more frequent storms of increased intensity so a lot of the disruption to this street has been because they’ve had to do this work at the same time as the redevelopment.

Brisbane Street side of the site in September

It was an interesting visit and an opportunity to see a site that won’t be fully open for another two years. And no matter what else happens, it’s a big win that the dome is going to be restored and re-forested.

Thank you Alex, Phoebe and Open House for giving us the opportunity to see this work up close. I’ve often passed by and wondered what it all looked like inside so it’s great to finally know.

Crisp & Gunn building

And I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this ghost sign on the site, hinting at the building’s former use as an SES headquarters between 1971 and 1994, before Forestry Tasmania took it over in 1995.

open house hobart 2023—signs of hobart

I love November because it’s Open House Hobart time!

This year, Lil Sis and I had a whole weekend of events planned. And to kick things off, on Friday I went to the architectural drawing class, which I wrote about on my other blog.

Open House is go!

Our first tour was the Signs of Hobart tour, hosted by Brady Michaels. Brady has undertaken a massive trip around Australia to document signs, both well-known and obscure, before they disappear.

His book Signs of Australia was included in our tour registration.

The tour promised to “reveal the hidden and not-so-hidden secrets of Hobart’s built environment, viewed through the lens of vintage signage, advertising and design”.

Start of the Signs of Hobart walking tour

It was a one-hour (and a bit because these tours always run over time) walk around Hobart looking at some of the well known and lesser-known signs that adorn our streets, starting with the Gibson Flour Mill in Morrison Street.

Bushells Tea, Argyle Street

Continuing around to Argyle Street, we stopped to look at the Bushells Tea ghost sign, near the replica Mawson Huts. I think this is a fairly well-known ghost sign in Hobart but I didn’t know that these signs dated back to the 1950s, when tea’s mantle as the most popular drink in Australia was being challenged by coffee. Brady said where you find a Bushells sign like this, you are (or would have been) quite likely to find a Robur sign nearby, as it was the other popular brand of tea at the time.

Bushells Tea sign

If you look very closely at this sign, there’s another sign underneath the white background, which looks like it might say something like “Wards Customs Ale” but it’s very hard to make out.

It was a treat to learn that one of our fellow walkers was the son of the sign writer who had made the Bushells sign! So we got an extra tour guide who had personal connections to many of the signs we stopped to look at, including the Colonial Mutual sign in Macquarie Street, which he had done himself.

Colonial Mutual, Macquarie Street

One of the cool signs we stopped by was a ghost sign I discovered a couple of years ago that marks the site of Hobart’s first public library in the Carnegie Building on the corner of Argyle and Davey Street. (This links nicely to one of Sunday’s tours.)

Hobart Public Library

We made our way through the Elizabeth Street Mall stopping to look at some more signs along the way.

One of Hobart’s most-loved old signs, Kodak in the Elizabeth Street Mall

Part of the McKeans sign in the Elizabeth Street Mall

The beauty of tours like this is gaining a new appreciation of signs I already knew about, as well as seeing ones I must have passed by hundreds of times and never noticed, like this “Blazzers” sign. Brady thinks it was a coffee shop but no one remembers it.

Anyone remember Blazzers?

Brady noted that a some of the signs have been tagged, which is unfortunate. He said in other places, graffiti artists will leave old signs alone, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in Hobart.

I guess it adds another layer of history to them.

Looking up Elizabeth Street to Bathurst Street, past the Moran & Cato ghost sign

I’d always wondered about “Moran & Cato” from this sign further up Elizabeth Street

It turns out Moran and Cato was a chain of grocery stores established in the late 19th century, with stores across Tasmania in the 20th century competing with Colesworths. It converted most of its stores to self-service in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which gives a clue to the vintage of this sign.

Moran & Cato Self Service

Just down the street from this building is this older ghost sign most likely from the Tasmanian Tribune, which appears to have been the local newspaper from 1872 to 1879.

Tribune Office

There’s some very cool signs along Liverpool Street, including the old Mona Lisa restaurant, which I’ve heard a lot of people in history groups reminisce about.

Mona Lisa, Liverpool Street

Mona Lisa, Liverpool Street

Liverpool Street is also home to the Odeon Theatre, formerly the Strand Picture Theatre, built in 1916.

Odeon Theatre, Liverpol Street

There are some other interesting signs on Liverpool Street and we stopped here to talk about some of them.

Checking out the signs on Liverpool Street

Our signwriter companion knew about this one, which I think he said was for a restaurant.

Yin Yang, Liverpool Street

In the next block is the Zebra Stove Polish sign on sandstone, which isn’t a common surface for painted signs like this one. Brady said it was one of his early discoveries. He said he’d been having a meal in the Shamrock Hotel over the road, looked out the window and there it was.

Apparently, it looks better when it’s raining as the water brings more contrast out.

Zebra Stove Polish

Zebra Stove Polish is, as you might imagine, polish for cast iron stoves

We need to start a campaign to get rid of the metal sign the current business has stuck right in the middle of it!

Our final stop was back on Macquarie Street, walking past the former public toilet block near the former Redline Coaches depot in Harrington Street, which someone accurately described as having been “a dump”.

The ghost wall that was erected and re-erected and used to front a rather unpleasant toilet block

In this area of Macquarie Street, just up from Harrington Street, we had a minor medical precinct. Near the intersection is the Kevin Corby Pharmacy and its fancy neon light, and further up the street is another former pharmacy that used to (from memory) have a huge green and red neon sign that alternated NOW OPEN/24 HOUR or some such. It’s now the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Foundation office.

This one alternated between ‘Corby’ and ‘Chemist’.

Former Kevin Corby Chemist, Macquarie Street

Brady recalled that the Kevin Corby sign was the first neon sign he’d ever seen, coming in to Hobart on evening from the Huon Valley as a kid.

Kevin

I can remember staying in the Travelodge across the road on a school trip once, so it’s most likely I saw this sign as a young person too, but I don’t have any memories of it from that far back!.

Macquarie Street with Kevin Corby and the Travelodge in the foreground. The ANMF building in the far background was also once a pharmacy

This was the end of the tour but we didn’t quite end there because some of us had to go back with Brady to OHH Central, to pick up our copies of the book.

So we had a chance to take in a couple more signs on the way, including more sandstone on the side of the Royal Tennis Courts, and the former Federal Coffee Palace in Murray Street, which is now Daci and Daci.

Former Federal Coffee Palace, Murray Street (now Daci & Daci)

It was fitting to end the tour here, since we’d started the morning talking about the competition between tea and coffee in the 1950s.

Federal Coffee Palace, Murray Street (photo from Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office NS1013-1-365)

Coffee palaces were introduced by the Temperance movement, as a no-alcohol alternative to pubs, in the late 19th century. But from what I can tell, in Australia, no one drank coffee at that time; they all drank tea, so these establishments actually served tea. It doesn’t sound like they were wildly popular venues, so they didn’t last long and some of them actually ended up becoming hotels.

It was an interesting tour. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but these signs really do tell stories of our past. As the Signs of Australia website says, “They tell us who we are and how we got here, and they preserve a history of commercial sign writing and typography too.”

Thank you, Brady, for sharing your passion for this fascinating part of our history.