The Gallery site
Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 230 High St, Maitland
Maitland Regional Art Gallery occupies the buildings and site of the former Maitland Technical College. Located on the eastern end of High Street in Maitland, it is diagonally opposite the Town Hall, opposite the new council administration building and sits at the edge of the area known as Horseshoe Bend.
The history of the European occupation and use of the Gallery site and its immediate neighbourhood provides a glimpse into the people, labour, businesses, buildings, activities, sounds and smells that characterize European settlement patterns, work and aspirations in Maitland.
A site by the river
The traditional owners of the land on which the Gallery sits are the Wonnarua people. They nurtured it and lived here for over 40,000 years. I pay respects to their elders past, present and future, and acknowledge that the land they nurtured has undergone dramatic changes.
What is now the Hunter River flowed along the edge of the site. It was the river and the rich alluvial land on either side that lured Europeans. They came up the river from Newcastle and, at the place they dubbed Wallis Plains, marked out allotments, claimed land, and set up farms and businesses. The traditional owners were dispossessed.
The site of the Gallery was at the heart of this early European occupation. By 1840, spreading back from the High Street frontage were farms that filled the land bound by the river. Facing onto High Street were hotels, stores, a post office, soap factory, candle making factory and trading companies. And, less than a block east along the bullock churned surface of the street, the road and river met. The river and the road were the routes that took travellers to and from the settlement. It was a busy frontier town, the trading post for the north and north-west of the colony, and the main centre north of Sydney.
A map of West Maitland in about 1840 showing some of the businesses on and near the site (marked in red) now occupied by the Maitland Regional Art Galllery.
(Reproduced from Turner, The Rise of High Street, p 6)
The Horseshoe Bend farm allotments were slowly replaced by businesses and residences and, in the later nineteenth century, the main business centre gradually moved further west along High Street.
Change also came following the 1893 flood when the river altered its course. The Hunter River no longer flowed close to the back of the Gallery site and the curve of the river that had enclosed Horseshoe Bend became straighter. Flooding, however, remained and remains a key challenge.
Aerial views of Maitland in 1878 and today showing the changes in the course of the Hunter River. The Gallery site is identified in red.
click on above images for larger views
The site
The Gallery site today covers all or part of four portions of Crown Land that were acquired at different times by the NSW government for the Maitland Technical College.
Site plan for the Maitland Regional Art Gallery showing the approximate boundaries of the four portions of land that, over time, were partially or wholly acquired for the former Technical College and consequently the Gallery.
(Reproduced from Higginbotham, p5)
Occupiers and users
In 1818 ex-convict Patrick Maloney was granted 30 acres of land and acquired a further 23 acres in 1823. His acquisition included most of the Gallery site.
The land was cleared and used for farming. Some structures were built.
An 1823 map showing the Wallis Plains farms when first chartered. Patrick Maloney’s grant is number 11.
The 1823 map is superimposed on a map showing land use today.
(Reproduced from Hunter, Bound for Wallis Plains, p 21)
In the 1830s Maloney began to sell some of the land he occupied. Early owners included Maitland innkeeper Benjamin Cox, Sydney merchant Saul Lyons, Francis Walker Owen (portion 173), William Lloyd (parts of portions 175 and 176), Sydney ‘victualler’ Lewis Samuel (portion 176), Maitland grocer and candle manufacturer William Heugh (portion 176), and Morpeth miller John Portus (portion 176). (Higginbotham, pp 7-9).
Portion 176
Site plan of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery showing the approximate boundaries of the four portions of land.
(Higginbotham, p 6)
Bulk store and warehouse
In 1850 portion 176 (the central part of the Gallery site) was sold to brothers David and James Dickson. They had a retail outlet further west along High Street, and used the newly acquired site for a warehouse.
In 1856 the Dicksons erected a new building on the site.
In 1863 (following the death of James Dickson), the warehouse and business was renamed R Strachan and Company (Robert Strachan was James Dickson’s brother-in-law) and then, following Strachan’s insolvency in 1867, became the home of the Northumberland Coach and Buggy Factory. It seems that the Dickson family retained title to the land until the mid-1880s.
Coach and buggy factory
From the late 1860s to 1892, the coach and buggy factory was at times owned by James Woodforth, at other times managed by him on behalf of Miarus Moore, and then owned and operated by Moore.
A plan of the area from the mid-1880s shows the factory building - possibly the original warehouse building constructed by the Dickson brothers - located at the back of the site. Surrounding buildings included a new workshop constructed in 1879 and described as ‘eighty feet long by about twenty-five feet wide’, ‘lofty and well ventilated’, with ‘very complete’ lighting arrangements, and adjacent to the other workshops. There was new labour saving machinery (including ‘a self-drilling machine’ and a ‘Tanite emery wheel’) and new apparatus in the three forges. (Maitland Mercury, 8 March 1879, p 14)
1886 plan showing the factory (indicated by the arrow) and workshop buildings.
(Higginbotham, 2008. p 11)
The site, and neighbourhood, would have echoed with the sounds and smells of banging, shaping, moulding and painting the coaches and buggies. At one stage, neighbour and local solicitor WH Mullen complained about the smoke from ‘the three smith’s forges’ and the water in his tank being polluted by soot (Maitland Mercury, 4 and 5 November 1874). The complaint was unsuccessfully taken to court but it acts as a reminder that this was an industrial enterprise in the heart of what was then the central business part of the town.
The factory gained a good reputation. Its coaches and buggies won awards at agricultural shows and attracted commentary in the local press.
Examples of press coverage of the factory’s vehicles
click on above images for larger views
The coach factory building and site soon after it was acquired for use for the Technical College, 1892
(NSW State Archives)
Technical college
In 1892 Miarus Moore sold portion 176 to the NSW government as the site for the new West Maitland Technical College.
Maitland Mercury, 25 August 1892, p5
(Reproduced from Heap, p 32)
Portion 177
Site plan of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery showing the approximate boundaries of the four portions of land.
(Reproduced from Higginbotham, p5)
Portion 177 straddles the largely vacant land and car parking spaces at the eastern end of the Gallery. From 1845 to the early twentieth century it was largely owned by William Lipscomb and his son William Griffin Lipscomb.
Lipscomb chemist and bookseller
By the mid-1840s Lipscomb’s chemist, bookstore and stationery business operated from the site.
A very small sample of the extensive advertising Lipscomb did in the Maitland Mercury.
In 1865 Lipscomb’s store was one of the many buildings in the neighbourhood that were destroyed by fire (Maitland Mercury, 16 March 1865, p 2).
Lipscomb rebuilt his store.
It is this brick, three storey edifice with a slate roof that can be seen in photos taken in the late nineteenth century. The awning and verandah were added in 1873 and described in detail in the local newspaper as examples of this innovation in street-architecture (Maitland Mercury, 20 March 1873, p 2).
Lipscomb (front left of the photograph) and David Cohen buildings, about 1895
(Maitland CIty Council)
The fenced area to the left of the Lipscombe building (and left bottom corner of the photograph) is the main Gallery site.
Lipscomb building (centre of the photograph with the varandah), about 1899
(Hunter Photobank)
The vacant space to the left of the Lipscomb building is now the site of the Gallery. The buildings to the right of the Lipscomb building belonged to David Cohen and Company.
Lipscomb building (front left of the photograph) and environs, early twentieth century
(Reproduced from Turner, p 39)
Following the death of William Lipscomb in 1873, his son, William Griffin Lipscomb, continued the business on the same site until his own retirement in about 1910. At that time, the bookselling and fancy goods section of the business was purchased by an E T Bradley and moved to new premises, while the chemist and druggist part of the enterprise was continued by H W Stainer in the Lipscomb premises.
W G Lipscomb died in January 1913 (Maitland Mercury, 4 Jan 1913, p 1).
In 1916 the trustees of W G Lipscomb’s estate conveyed the property to nurse Ann Elizabeth Armson who owned it until 1946.
Armson presumably lived and worked from only one part of the building (possibly upstairs) as in 1939 E E Morris was running the pharmacy and had been doing so for about ten years. It was still referrred to as ‘Lipscomb’s pharmacy’. (Maitland Mercury, 26 June 1939, p 9).
Subsequent owners were, from 1946 to 1954, Calliope Gerakiteys, wife of refreshment proprietor Arthur Gerakiteys; from 1954 to 1958, Claude William Ebbeck, garage proprietor and former East Maitland Councillor; and, in 1958, Sydney and Olwyn Smith, motor parts specialists (Baloh, p 19).
In 1964 the site was purchased for extensions to Maitland Technical College and, in 1967, the 1865 Lipscomb building was demolished (Baloh, pp 22-3).
The planned extensions did not eventuate. The site remained vacant and continues largely as vacant land with a small section used for car parking.
Portion 175
Site plan of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery showing the approximate boundaries of the four portions of land.
(Reproduced from Higginbotham, p5)
The land to the left of the Gallery (part of portion 175) has had various owners and uses.
Early owners included Henry Robert Reuben and Samuel Cohen, both members of Maitland’s Jewish community. It seems that Samuel Cohen’s descendants kept an interest in the land until the early twentieth century, presumably renting it out to different tenants. In 1886, for example, it was occupied by AO Lee, architect, and WH Mullen, solicitor.
In 1923 the property was acquired by Clara Ann Capp whose husband, George Milton Capp, was a grazier and had family interests in the Greta Main Colliery. The property remained in the Capp family until the 1950s when the new owners included Daniel Carmody who had a service station on the site and who, in 1954, sold the property to the NSW Department of Education.
Carmody’s garage next to the Technical College building, during the 1949, 1952 or 1955 flood.
(Morpeth Museum collection)
Portion 173
Site plan of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery showing the approximate boundaries of the four portions of land.
(Reproduced from Higginbotham, p5)
Portion 173, which runs across the back of the current Gallery site, changed ownership a number of times between 1830 and 1849 before it was acquired by David and Samuel Cohen and Lewis Wolfe Levy, founding partners of David Cohen and Company. Given the proximity of the land to the river, it is likely that the building there was used as a bond store or warehouse. This parcel of land remained in the extended Cohen family until 1935 when part of the land was transferred to Maitland City Council. Another part was transferred to the Federation of Police Citizen Boys Clubs in 1950, and a small part to the Department of Education in 1953. Eventually the remaining sections which had been retained by Cohen companies, were also transferred to the Department of Education. (Higginbotham, pp 17-20)
Technical College to Art Gallery
Maitland Technical College (later Maitland TAFE) operated from the site from 1892 until 1987. During that time the footprint of the site expanded as further land was acquired. In 1987 the college was relocated to Metford. The original site was in private ownership until 2002 when it was acquired by Maitland City Council and became the home of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery.
References
Australian Dictionary of Biography (online).
Baloh, Jaki, Baseline archaeological settlement: Maitland Technical College, High Street, Maitland, Carste Studio on behalf of Maitland City Council, February 2012.
Booker, Stephen; Elizabeth Evans and Katrina Goddard, Conservation management plan for the former Maitland Technical College, High St, Maitland, Carste Studio prepared for Maitland City Council, January 2012.
Heap, Ron, A history of Maitland Technical College: 100 years of technical education 1896-1986, Bachelor of Education (Technical) dissertation, Institute of Technical and Further Education, Sydney College of Advanced Education, 1987.
Higginbotham, Edward and Associates, Report on the archaeological excavation and monitoring programme for proposed redevelopment of Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Prepared for Maitland City Council, 2010.
Hunter, Cynthia, Bound for Wallis Plains: Maitland’s Convict Settlers, Maitland City Council, Maitland, 2012.
Maitland Regional Art Gallery (website).
Martin, Eric and Associates, Former Maitland Technical College: Conservation and management plan, Prepared for Maitland City Council, March 2003.
Turner, John, The Rise of High Street, Maitland: A pictorial history, Maitland City Council, Maitland Bicentennial Community Committee and Maitland Mercury, 1988.
Views of Maitland (online database).
Wilton, Janis, Maitland Jewish Cemetery: A monument to dreams and deeds, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Maitland, 2010.