The Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 department store of Buckley & Nunn first opened its doors in 1851 as a drapery

Drapery

Drapery is a general word referring to cloths or textiles . It may refer to cloth used for decorative purposes – such as around windows – or to the trade of retailing cloth, originally mostly for clothing, formerly conducted by drapers.In art history, drapery refers to any cloth or...

 store and, in its heyday, competed creditably with David Jones

David Jones Limited

David Jones Limited , colloquially known as DJs, is a high-end Australian department store chain.David Jones was founded in 1838 by David Jones, a Welsh immigrant, and is claimed to be the oldest continuously operating department store in the world still trading under its original name. It...

 (1838) and Myer

Myer

Myer is Australia's largest department store chain, retailing a broad range of merchandise including women's, men's and children's clothing, footwear and accessories; cosmetics and fragrance; homewares; electrical; furniture and bedding; toys; books and stationery; food and confectionery; and...

 (1900). It occupied a succession of buildings in Bourke Street until being taken over by David Jones in 1982.

Popular as a retailer of fashionable garments, its 1914 mail-order catalogue promoted elegant frocks. In 1939, female nightwear was shown in shop windows. In fact, similar displays had caused pedestrian congestion on the footpath from as early as 1912, seen in photos of the day. In the 1920s, the store's tea room was reputedly a fashionable meeting place for ladies.

History

Buckley & Nunn was co-founded by Mars Buckley (1825?–1905), a businessman who was born at Mallow, County Cork

Mallow, County Cork

Mallow is the "Crossroads of Munster" and the administrative capital of north County Cork, in Ireland. The Northern Divisional Offices of Cork County Council are located in the town....

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 and emigrated to Victoria in 1851 with a wife and one child. He began a drapery business in Bourke Street in 1852, with a partner, Crumpton John Nunn (1828–1891).

Buildings

In the twentieth century, the firm occupied two adjacent buildings on the north side of Bourke Street. The westerly one (numbers 306-12) was the Edwardian Baroque-style Buckley & Nunn Emporium, built in two stages in 1911 and 1912. The Buckley & Nunn Men's Store (numbers 298-304) was designed by the same local architects Bates, Smart & McCutcheon

Bates Smart

Bates Smart is Australia's second oldest architectural firm, established in 1853 by Joseph Reed as the practice Reed and Barnes. JPE Design Studio in Adelaide founded in 1851 by Daniel Garlick is the oldest continuing architectural practice in Australia....

 and completed in 1934.

The art-deco men's wear store

The newer Moderne

Moderne

Moderne may refer to:* Moderne architecture, also sometimes referred to as "Style Moderne" or simply "Modern", a more general term for a style of architecture that became popular in 1925 and was described in the 1960s as "Art Deco"...

 or art-deco-style

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 building constructed in 1933-1934 was an architectural triumph which won the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects' Street Architecture Medal in 1934, being "a distinct departure from the traditional and thus exemplary of the modern trend in design". It was decorated with male bas-relief figures in jazz-age costume, glazed terracotta panels and spandrels faced with stainless-steel chevrons and colourful musical-note symbols. The National Trust has described the lift cars and lobbies as "unequalled in Victoria as examples of the European 'Art Deco' geometric forms which dominated decorative art in the 1930s".

'Buckley's chance' idiom

The origin of the Australian slang term "Buckley's chance" (meaning "little or no possibility" or "no chance at all") has been explained as rhyming slang, viz, "Buckley and Nunn" (meaning "None"); and as a punning reference ("You've two chances: Buckley's and none"). Australians in states other than Victoria generally believe the idiom derives from the adventures of escaped colonial convict, William Buckley

William Buckley (convict)

William Buckley was an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years....

.

'Buckley's chance' idiom

• History of Australia (1851–1900)
• History of Victoria
  History of Victoria
  This article describes the history of the Australian state of Victoria.-Aboriginal history:The state of Victoria was originally home to many indigenous nations that had occupied the land for tens of thousands of years...
  
  

This term is often mistakenly thought to have been derived from a punning reference to the Melbourne department store Buckley's & Nunn — 'you have two chances, Buckley's and none'. But this is definitively disproven by records of the saying being used pre-dating the establishment of this store.
First recorded use of this was in 1837(shortly after the escape of Willaim Buckley the convict) by Trevor Johnson, a local merchant born in Heligoland who used it in reply to a local constable from the Bellerine shire demanding he admit his wrong doing in regards to a sale of questionable goods.

External links

• Photos of the buildings at TheTramwalker (2008)
• Small photo, both buildings at David Jones
• Photo of the art-deco building at Panoramio (2009)
• 1956 photo showing the two buildings at State Library of Victoria
  State Library of Victoria
  The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...
  
  
• Former Buckley & Nunn’s Men’s Store (photos) at Walking Melbourne: Melbourne & Australian Architecture Topics