Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Encyclopedia
Road
A road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...
in the central business district (CBD) of 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...
, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. The street runs parallel to and to the north of Flinders Street
Flinders Street, Melbourne
Flinders Street is a notable street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Running roughly parallel to the Yarra River, Flinders Street forms the southern edge of the Hoddle Grid. It is exactly one mile in length and one and half chains in width...
and as a narrow one way lane takes on the name of the wider main street. The street was the centre of Melbourne's rag trade
Textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry....
for the middle decades of the 20th century and is still home to small boutique designers.
The lane has been spared the overdevelopment of nearby Collins Street, with many of these buildings historically subject to strict height limits of around 40 metres. Despite the loss of some significant turn of the century buildings, it is now known for its "SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
" atmosphere. Today, the area is home to many boutique hotels, "loft style" apartment conversions, cafes and bars as well as connecting with a number of smaller lanes, including Degraves Street
Degraves Street, Melbourne
Degraves Street is a street in Melbourne, Victoria. It is named after Charles and William Degraves, pioneer merchants who settled in Melbourne from Hobart, Tasmania in 1849...
, ACDC Lane
ACDC Lane, Melbourne
ACDC Lane is a street in Melbourne, Victoria. It is a short, narrow laneway, running south from Flinders Lane between Exhibition Street and Russell Street in the central business district of Melbourne....
, Manchester Lane and Centreway which weave their way through the city.
For a block between William Street
William Street, Melbourne
William Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly north-south from Flinders Street to Victoria Street, and is located in the western half of the Hoddle Grid....
and Market Street
Market Street, Melbourne
Market Street is one of the north-south streets in the central business district of Melbourne, Australia, part of the Hoddle Grid laid out in 1837....
, Melbourne tram route 55
Melbourne tram route 55
Tram route 55 is a public transport service in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs from the corner of Bell Street and Melville Road in West Coburg to the Domain Road Interchange - Domain Road and St Kilda Road east of the city....
runs along Flinders Lane.
Landmarks
Flinders Lane has many notable multi-storey warehouses, some included on the Victorian Heritage RegisterVictorian Heritage Register
The Victorian Heritage Register lists places of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 1995 which establishes Heritage Victoria as the permit authority...
; including Leicester House (1888), Murray House, Chapter House (1891) by William Butterfield
William Butterfield
William Butterfield was a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement . He is noted for his use of polychromy-Biography:...
, Royston House (1898) by Sulman & Power, Milton House (1901) by Sydney Smith & Ogg, Tomasetti Warehouse, Manchester House and the Majorca Building (1928) by Harry Norris
Harry Norris
Harry Norris was an Australian architect whose works are spread across Melbourne. He was well known for his strong Art Deco Style combining American and Australian architecture. He was one of the most prolific commercial architects between 1920 and 1930...
.
History
Flinders Lane, heart of the schmatte business - Jews in the Australian garment trade.For a large part of the twentieth century, the garment trade was an important industry in the southern Australian state of Victoria. Since clothing was a big part of the country’s manufacturing, the Jews of the garment trade, initially migrants or refugees post WWII, made a large contribution to Australia’s economy. This multi-faceted industry, located in Flinders Lane, Melbourne and expanding during the interwar years, had its own economic and social history, gorgeous products, and vibrant life and camaraderie at its heart.
In the 1880s, big softgoods-importing warehouses established Flinders Lane in the central business district of the Victorian capital, Melbourne, as the heart of the trade, because of the Lane’s proximity to wharves and railway stations, and its centrality to Melbourne’s population. These warehouses, which dominated the Flinders Lane trade for the first two decades of the twentieth century, were not Jewish. A notable exception was the underclothing business of Lazar Slutzkin, probably the first Jewish clothing manufacturer in Melbourne.
Lazar Slutzkin arrived in 1893 from Russia. About the turn of the century, he opened a warehouse making and selling ladies’ white underwear. No ready-to-wear garments had been produced in real quantity before this; most goods were imported by warehouses. Lazar’s brother Sholem joined him in the business and eventually took over when Lazar retired. Both brothers were very religious; twice daily the business came to a standstill when they and their staff, consisting of fellow Jewish migrants, stopped for morning and afternoon prayers. ‘Makers-up’ (or ‘maker-uppers’) were not given material on Fridays lest they work on Shabbat.
Much of the early Jewishness of Flinders Lane was due to Slutzkin, as he employed so many Jewish newcomers to Melbourne and doled out generous advice when they wanted to set up their own businesses.
For over a hundred years ‘The Lane’ was an Australian institution. Through boom and bust fortunes were made and lost. Well known fashion houses like Henry Haskin, (who won Melbourne's Gown of the Year two years running) Charlotte of Fifth Avenue, Cherry Lane, Hartnell, and Saba flourished and fell, and characters larger than life wheeled and dealed in this little street that was the home and heart of Australian fashion manufacturing.
Large and small factories, Jewish retailers and especially woollen mills also existed outside Flinders Lane and indeed all around country Victoria. In the 1940s the government encouraged decentralisation and in the boom years between 1945 and 1960 when migrants created such a huge demand, it was easy to get workers in the country plants, which trained completely inexperienced country workers. So whilst the trade was not limited to Flinders Lane, the Lane still had many advantages. It was close to shops, department stores, transport terminals, and financial institutions, to suppliers, to the labour pool and the potential market. Buyers could come from the country and ‘do’ the Lane in one session; ‘comparison buying’ was important: they needed to survey the scene, and then backtrack to place orders.
For the manufacturers there was easy communication with rival firms. They could keep up with market trends and sometimes help with urgent orders – in this there was reciprocity of favours. And importantly, the ancillary services were within walking distance: pressers, machine importers, embroiderers, button coverers, and so on.
With modern fabrics and modern manufacturing processes, it was a glamorous industry, but over the years the Lane hardly changed physically, and the conditions were far from glamorous. The decrepit buildings housed rats that ate the sequins off the garments. The vermin came from the wharves, and fox terriers were used to chase them between floors. With no air-conditioning it was hot in summer and cold in winter; open radiators to relieve the cold combined with the new, flammable materials and caused fires. No-one is willing to say to what degree fires and financial trouble went together. What they have said is that the manufacturer was always under-capitalised and took big risks, so that between the 1950s and the 1970s, there were plenty of bankruptcies with many fires starting at night or on weekends.
“Chaim Moshe! How was your fire?”
“Shush. It’s not till next week.”
“The old caged hydraulic lifts struck fear into the hearts of their passengers who often preferred the stairs. These old buildings were worse than the average work place at the time, yet they were accepted as part of the experience.”
“With hindsight it was an area with built-in inconveniences – except togetherness – narrow street, tiny lanes and arcades, poor lighting and impossible lift access.”
“Flinders Lane was magic. If you were going out into the street, you’d have to take a joke out with you. It wasn’t just business, it was a lifestyle. You knew about everyone’s families. Competitors lent each other components. Everyone paid his debts before Rosh Hashanah so you never went into the New Year with a debt. But now it’s profitable to owe money!”
“When you took clothes out into the Lane you had to put calico over them to stop people pinching the design.”
“Flinders Lane was like a big, extended family. Friends would not step on each other’s toes; competitors could be friends. Jews liked it because it felt like back in the ghetto. It was a glamorous industry with glamorous women. I enjoyed the continuity of meeting people and the atmosphere suited my personality – I gained a huge family – all kinds of people – models, buyers as well as manufacturers - without the commitment.”
“There was always anticipation and excitement twice a year in preparing for the new collection. Each year it was like starting a new business. Those years in the Lane were extremely exciting.”
The number of clothing firms in the Lane reached 610 in 1939, and this level of activity was maintained until the early 1960s. But in the 60s and 70s these businesses began to leave, or they closed. With changing requirements for space and labour, rising rents and traffic congestion, many relocated to the suburbs.
The first cohorts of the clothing trade had aged. These entrepreneurs had high aspirations for their children, who mainly went into the professions. Dependent on the personality and acumen of the owners, the businesses were not saleable. Closing was simple: no more orders, the ‘girls’ were paid off, the machines sold and the premises vacated.
In spite of everything, Flinders Lane remained the centre of fashion innovation throughout the 70s, the marketing centre from which designs were contracted out to makers-up in the suburbs. The new entrepreneurs began with the bright, innovative and young designers of the 1960s ‘rat pack’ - Norma Tullo, Geoff Bade, Prue Acton, Kenneth Pirrie, Thomas Wardle. They were the first generation of important non-Jewish designers in the rag trade, and their descendants are there still.
This article is based on unique primary research undertaken for an exhibition in 2001 at the Jewish Museum of Australia: Schmatte Business – Jews in the Garment Trade. No-one had comprehensively researched this industry before the exhibition. Almost all the material comes from a series of about eighty interviews with people who had worked in the Victorian garment trade in various capacities; some of these are quoted above.
Non-rag-trade history
Flinders Lane was once home to the 12-storey Queen Anne style Australian Building designed by Henry Kemp, which was reportedly the third tallest building in the world when completed in 1889. The building was demolished in 1980. Other significant buildings lost to development include the Champions Hotel on the corner of Swanston Street.
On Monday 18 June 2007, a shooting incident occurred on the corner of Flinders Lane and William Street when Hells Angels member Christopher Hudson shot and killed Brendan Keilor and wounded two others.
Geography
Flinders Lane runs roughly from east to west and it bisects the CBD (known as the Hoddle Grid) along its long axis. Flinders Lane runs between the parallelParallel (geometry)
Parallelism is a term in geometry and in everyday life that refers to a property in Euclidean space of two or more lines or planes, or a combination of these. The assumed existence and properties of parallel lines are the basis of Euclid's parallel postulate. Two lines in a plane that do not...
Flinders Street
Flinders Street
Flinders Street, named after explorer Matthew Flinders, may refer to:*Flinders Street, Adelaide*Flinders Street, Melbourne*Flinders Street Station, a railway station in Melbourne*Flinders Street Viaduct, a railway bridge in Melbourne...
and Collins
Collins Street, Melbourne
Collins Street is a major street in the Melbourne central business district and runs approximately east to west.It is notable as Melbourne's traditional main street and best known street, is often regarded as Australia's premier street, with some of the country's finest Victorian era buildings.The...
streets.
It intersects Spring Street to the east and Spencer Street to the west.