Cabbies Shelter, Grand Hotel, C.1901
This is the story of a piece of Melbourne history likely unknown to most Melburnians, even life-long citizens.
This 122 year old shot shows a CABMAN’S SHELTER that once sat in Carpentaria Place opposite the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor Hotel) on Spring Street at the city’s eastern edge.
Carpenteria Place cut through Gordon Reserve, between Parliament House and the Old Treasury building. The little timber building is about 5.3 x 2.3 metres in dimension and provided just enough space for cabbies to get together for a snack, or maybe even a game of cards.
Horse-drawn cabs had existed in the city from the 1840s and by late in the century there were hundreds operating in and around the city. Cabmen’s shelters had been a feature of London streets since mid 19th century but nothing similar existed in Melbourne… at least not until 1898.
In that year an anonymous benefactor funded the building of this one, Melbourne’s first. The architect Nahum Barnet supplied the drawings without charge, based on one of the London shelters recently completed for St James’ Square.
The shelter was opened by the Lord Mayor who noted at the time that it was good the Cabbies (mostly Hansom Cab operators) now had somewhere to eat and drink rather than in their cabs. Interestingly, about 2 years after opening the shelter was fitted with a telephone: Number 180.
While this was the first, more than a dozen were subsequently built in places such as Hawthorn, Kew, Toorak, Malvern, Windsor, Elsternwick, St Kilda and South Yarra.
Known as THE GRAND SHELTER, this little building survived here until the advent of the Melbourne underground rail loop in the 1970s. At that time Carpentaria Place disappeared.