The West Perth of yesteryear, with its avenues of leafy vistas and sprawling mansions housing some of Western Australia’s wealthiest families, was always destined to become the burgeoning business centre of the 21st century.
The West Perth of yesteryear, with its avenues of leafy vistas and sprawling mansions housing some of Western Australia’s wealthiest families, was always destined to become the burgeoning business centre of the 21st century.
UWA associate professor Jenny Gregory told WA Business News: “[West Perth] was a very fashionable place to be living at the turn of the 20th century along with the likes of Peppermint Grove, however unlike Peppermint Grove it was a lot closer to Perth and therefore easily accessible.
“A lot of the buildings created in West Perth, built around the turn of the century, were associated with the wealth generated by Western Australian entrepreneurs.”
Mrs Gregory said one example was Lexbourne House, currently known as Lawton House.
In a heritage assessment document on Lexbourne House, historian Jacqui Sherriff said the house, located on the corner of Colin Street and Colin Grove, was built for builder and entrepreneur Robert Law in 1911. It remained the family home until 1954, when it was bought by the state government and sold into private ownership in 1990.
Retired teacher and producer of education programs for radio and television, Robert Johnston, spent his childhood in the area and remembers the old West Perth with its charming houses and bullnose verandahs, large backyards and friendly corner grocers.
His grandparents moved into 54 Ord St in 1906 from Kalgoorlie.
Mr Johnston’s family was like many in the early 20th century, with West Perth a suburb designed for that “wealthy Kalgoorlie entrepreneur’s generation”.
“54 Ord Street stayed in the family until 1983,” Mr Johnston told WA Business News.
“When my parents died in 1983 we sold the house because we couldn’t maintain it. West Perth was turning into all consultancies and offices, it wasn’t an attractive place to live.
“It was bought by an advertising agency and they did a great deal of restoration, including putting back the bullnose verandah that we couldn’t fix at the time. What had been our dining room became their board room. The house was only demolished last year.”
A number of factors contributed to West Perth’s fast and radical transformation during the past 40 years with the suburb’s proximity to Perth’s central business district one of many reasons for the change.
The area was originally subdivided for wealthy families in the 1880s, with the large blocks of land offering developers more possibilities when buying single blocks.
Furthermore, there was effectively no heritage conservation policy in the City of Perth before the 1990s, unlike the City of Subiaco or Fremantle. Before the creation of the heritage listing in the 1990s, the City of Perth did not encourage the restoration of old houses.
“We would have liked to have kept the house but we couldn’t afford to keep it,” Mr Johnston said.
“At the time we had to offer it for sale we would never have got any sort of rental, which would have maintained it. All those old houses cost an awful lot to maintain.”
This was a common experience for other families based in West Perth, which led to a gradual exodus from the suburb over a 30-year period up to the early 1990s.
Among those moving in at the time – other than the many mid-sized corporate firms and high-rise residential – were clubs catering for businesses clientele.
One such West Perth local is the Celtic Club, which took a circuitous route before settling on its current premises, at 48 Ord Street.
The club’s former president and current manager, John Devine, told WA Business News: “At inception in 1902, the founding members were well-to-do businessmen from the mining and pastoral sectors. They all had a very strong Irish backgrounds.”
Established in 1902 but without a permanent premises, the Celtic Club found a home in the Perth CBD in 1926 before moving to Kings Park Road in the 1970s. The current premises were bought in 1986 but not opened for business until the 1990s.
“In the 1990s we knew there was a need in the West Perth area for a club like the Celtic Club, with a social place to hold functions, meetings, training courses,” Mr Devine said.
“Unfortunately, The Celtic Club has lost most of its Irish roots. Today it comprises a large number from the mining community, IT and finance.”
