It appears that this shop has been absorbed back into its adjoining house now, making it entirely residential. But it’s fun to imagine how this would have been in the day. The big display windows, now boarded up, would have been full of fantastic new models each Saturday morning, strategically placed to catch the wandering eyes of kids as they drove past along Church Street on their way to Putney or Top Ryde Shopping Centre. Later in the afternoon, families might stop in and check out the assortment, and perhaps if they were lucky, the kid’d get a model so they’d have something to do on Sunday. I know what I’d be asking for: “I’ll have a Marisa Miller, two Brooklyn Deckers, a Rosie Huntington-Whiteley…”
Past/Lives of the Near Future 
Like this !
I remember passing this derelict store many times driving to Macquarie Uni. Strangely, I never thought of it as a store that had previously sold models, but rather, as a “model” store in terms of the dictionary definition of “one serving as an example to be imitated or compared”. I always thought that it must have been a shop built in the late 19th or early 20th Century which was in the forefront of retailing – a model of fine shopping that other stores couldn’t hope to compete with.
The “model store” was Grace Bros motto for many years, you remember Grace Bros, aka GBs, aka Myer……….
I remember this store as always being a grocery shop. I have no recollection of it being anything else. I grew up in regent street and our two shops were the model store or the one on the corner of regent street and Morrison road I am now 61. Peg
I lived opposite this shop in Church St in the 1950’s but can only remember the Fiala family running it. We bought our sliced meat for a summer salad, ice creams, soft drinks, mixed lollies, mixed biscuits out of large biscuit box and many delicatessen items. After I was hit by a car I had to go to “Glasses Corner” ( the shop at Cnr Morrison Rd and Church St-now a funeral home). It was on the same side as home.
I remember the Model Store well. It was a small grocery store selling ice creams etc. and after World War II was run my Mr. Wilson
We lived in Simpson street and used to walk down to the bus stop outside the Model Store.
The store on Morrison Road corner (Church St) was owned and run by Miss Glass and her very elderly Mother. When they sold the store, they moved to a house directly behind the Police station (Belmore Street.)
I too remember this shop back in the 1970s, as I lived across the road in Junction Street. Apart from the groceries, ice creams and Scott’s pies that Mr. Fiala sold, there were two pinball machines that graced the shop floor, “Wild Life” and “Royal Flush”, if my memory serves me correctly.