Mixed Business/Nothing – Surry Hills, NSW
This place, beside the Norfolk Hotel on Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, has been closed for a good long while. It’s hard to say exactly when it closed from what we can see. There’s a development proposal, so there might not be much time left for it, either. What amazes me is just how much you could get done at a place like this back when it was actually open and functioning. You could get your hair done while waiting for your clothes to be dry cleaned, AND buy a gift for your significant other and toys for the kids. And cigarettes. They all sold cigarettes back then.
Longhurst & Andrew/Pancakes – George Street, Sydney NSW
Established in 1934, Longhurst & Andrew is a security firm specialising in locksmithing, alarm systems and surveillance. This address on George Street, just beside the Event Cinema complex, used to be its registered office. Now, it’s a pancake shop. Do we as a society care more about liqueur pancakes than we do about security? ‘Yes,’ we reply with our mouths full.
D.G.R. Sayburn/Hotel Bottle Shop/Bead Co of Australia/Little Bottler – Hurstville, NSW
Believe it or not, this dump was once D.G.R. Sayburn, an agent of Beale & Co, ‘the largest piano manufacturers in the British Empire’. I guess that’s why the door is extra wide. If I had to speculate (and when don’t I), judging by the Victoria Bitter logo beneath the busted sign it looks to me like this was the bottle shop for the neighbouring Ritz Hotel (which itself has a rich history) sometime in the late 80s-early 90s.
After that, this was the Bead Company of Australia. That’s right – if you were in Broome or Launceston and you needed beads, you had to go through these mugs. These days it’s returned to its bottle shop state (Hurstville City Cellar – mustn’t they be proud), making you wonder if being a nation’s bead supplier was the apex of the building’s life, and will it now continue to regress until it’s once again a piano shop.
Bakery/Handkerchiefs/AV Simon Optometry/OPSM – Mosman, NSW
Formerly, this was AV Simon Optometry before OPSM took over Agent Smith style. AV Simon is still a part of it, and yet it’s an OPSM. But Agent Smith missed a spot…it’s anyone’s guess what the first word was, but what’s clear is that this shop used to sell handkerchiefs. There is little on this planet to match the repulsiveness of a handkerchief.
A long time ago, this was a bakery specialising in health foods. How ironic, given the owner:
SMH, 30 Nov 1932
How ironic too that it would end up hawking the unhealthiest products you could ever hope to buy, and I’m not talking about Transitions lenses. Seriously, there’s a reason those folks in the picture are walking away. They know.
T. C. Whittle Pty Ltd/Belmadar Constructions/Licorice Productions – Mascot, NSW
The history of the companies emblazoned on this building is as murky as the canal flowing past outside. T.C. Whittle was a construction company responsible, from the 1940s to the 1960s, for New Selborne Chambers on Phillip Street in the CBD, the St Margaret’s Hospital for Women in Surry Hills, and the Cameron office complex in Belconnen Town Centre (demolished 2006) among others. But even that illustrious resume didn’t stop T. C. Whittle from ending up delisted from the ASX in 1980, dodgily changing its name to TCW Investments, and finally, being deregistered completely by ASIC in 2005.
Belmadar, on the other hand, was known mostly for roadworks, and we all know how well done those are in Sydney. It’s no surprise then that Belmadar is gone, and the current tenants are an events production group called Licorice Productions. It’s one of a number of new companies moving into the formerly industrial Mascot/Alexandria area to not feature heavy pollution as an output. This building in particular backs onto the Alexandra Canal, and while there immediately weren’t fish jumping happily from the water and dolphins waving hello with their flippers, there may still be hope for it yet.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 