A Vision for the Corso

The National Library's Trove database now includes issues of the Illustrated Sydney News, which are an excellent source of contemporary pictures. The drawing above comes from its issue of 15 March 1886, p20, and shows shops in course of erection for the Anglo-Australian M L & F Company at Manly. The development was on the west side of the Corso. The architects were a young Melbourne pair, Richard Loweish and Frederick Moorhouse. This would have been a significant commission for them, and an important development in the streetscape of the Corso. It is good to know when the scheme was completed and who the architects were.

With the exception of the two shops to the right of the group, the facades of the others and four of the original stone chimneys have survived, 125 years on. The shops have had a multitude of uses over the years. At time of writing, the surviving shops are occupied by clothing and surf stores: All, Diva, Cotton On, Platypus, Sportsgirl and Big Swim. The two shops to the left of the group were for many years occupied by the well-known estate agents, Robey, Hanson and Strong.

Manly 150 years ago

This photograph of the Steyne Hotel and the Corso in Manly has just come to light. The Steyne Hotel depicted here is the first hotel of that name, which was totally burned down in June 1863, so the photograph predates that. The first letters of the licensee's name are visible, "R Ch..", and the licensee of the hotel in 1861-62 was a Mr Russell Chalk, which gives us a likely date for the photo of 1861-2. This makes it just about the oldest photo of the Corso that we know of. The costumes repay a second look. I wonder if the gent with the top hat is Mr Chalk, posing in front of his hotel? We would like to know more about the two-storey stone building in the middle of the photo, on the approximate site of the present-day New Brighton Hotel.

Finding George Stewart

A recent donation to our collection is ‘Finding George’, a family memoir by George Ramsey-Stewart. Professor Ramsey-Stewart has published this very limited edition in memory of his uncle, Joseph George Allen Stewart, known as George. George Stewart was an ANZAC, who was wounded at Gallipoli, and died in France in the 1914-18 war aged just 20. From family letters and from official sources, his short life has been recreated in interesting detail. He was the sixth child in a family of ten children, and his father, J G Stewart, a Scot, opened a prosperous department store on the west side of the Corso in 1905. Stewart’s Emporium was extended in 1911, and stretched from 33-39 Corso. The photograph shows the shop at its fullest extent circa 1916; Professor Stewart’s father, Stan, is third from the right. Another view of the shop can be seen in the 2007 autobiography by Justice Don Stewart, Recollections of an Unreasonable Man.
The Stewart boys were high-spirited. Out paddling one evening, “they came upon a fair-sized beached stingray. For some inexplicable reason, they decided to take this creature home. However, while walking along West Esplanade, they decided that this was not really such a good idea. This revelation hit them as they passed a residence with an open front door and a well lit, linoleum-floored, long hallway. George and Fred, encouraged by Stan and little Harold, with a doubtful Will looking on, lobbed the stingray through the below-street level doorway. Whereupon it slid noisily the length of the hallway, bringing down an aspidistra in a brass pot on its journey. This produced great consternation in the resident family, who unsuccessfully pursued the Stewart boys into the evening darkness.” (p23)
George was a popular member of the North Steyne Surf Life Saving Club, and earned his Bronze Medallion. He played rugby for the Manly Second Grade side, and when war came, he enlisted with a couple of his mates from the team, Clarrie Creighton and Roy Quirk. Finding George vividly describes their war-time experiences.