Progress House, 323-325 Lonsdale Street, C.1936
In January 1934, Myers paid £421 per square foot for the property on the western side of its Lonsdale Street store. The two-story building that occupied the site had been built in 1856 by D.S. Hughes, a seed merchant who lived and operated from the premises. In recent years it had accommodated a club and tea rooms.
Myers wasted little time demolishing the existing building and, for a short time, the site was used as a carpark. In October 1936, the company - in conjunction with a number of Melbourne businesses - opened Progress House, a fully landscaped two-bedroom home designed and built to showcase its extensive range of furniture and furnishings.
The concept for Progress House arose after Norman Myer and a company partner observed similar display homes in the USA. This was a marketing strategy that emerged across Australia from the late 1920s as businesses and building companies opened fully furnished homes to the public. Within a fortnight of its opening, 45,000 Melburnians had visited Progress House.
Visitors entered the elegant home via a sunroom which led into the lounge. The ground floor also accommodated the dining room, library and state-of-the-art kitchen complete with built-in cupboards, stainless steel bench tops, gas cooker and hot water service (see image in comments). Upstairs, the master bedroom enjoyed direct access to the home’s bathroom though a gentleman’s dressing room and it’s french doors opened onto a sun deck. A gallery over the entrance along with glass bricks in the stairwell flooded the passages with light. The guest room led out onto a balcony at the rear of the house where visitors exited via an external set of stairs.
The following year, the house was redecorated in a colonial style. However, with the Great Depression still exerting it’s influence, Progress House represented aspirational rather than affordable living for the majority of its visitors and, after 1937, there were no further displays at the model home.