Historical information

Transcript: Athenaeum building celebrates 170 years

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 11/11/2009

Reporter: Lisa Whitehead

Tomorrow marks the 170th birthday of one of the nation's historic cultural landmarks. Melbourne’s Athenaeum building has, in one form or other, provided education and entertainment for the Victorian colony as it became a city; and along the way, documented its growth.

Transcript
KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: Tomorrow marks the 170th birthday of one of the nation's historic cultural landmarks.

Melbourne's Athenaeum building has, in one form or another, provided education and entertainment. For the Victorian colonies it became a city and along the way documented its growth.

The building's original library and theatre still draw devotees and as Lisa Whitehead reports, a loyal band of volunteers.

KEVIN QUIGLEY, ATHENAEUM PRESIDENT: There's nothing like us that has been here from day one, four years after the boat pushed ashore, here we are. It's a thread that runs through the life of Melbourne.

LISA WHITEHEAD, REPORTER: In the heart of Melbourne's CBD, the Athenaeum is a celebrity in disguise, the oldest cultural icon in the city, but barely noticed.

MARJORIE DALVEAN, VOLUNTEER HISTORIAN: People of Melbourne walk past this area and they have no idea what it is.

RAY LAWLER, PLAYWRIGHT: It seemed to me to be a place that absolutely, or breathes Melbourne, I suppose, culture.

LISA WHITEHEAD: Just four years after Melbourne was founded, the colony built a Mechanic's Institution, one of the first in the world, a place where the working class could meet and learn.

KEVIN QUIGLEY: People think of it as Wild West sort of place where these hearty types drank and rushed about, but Melbourne was freely settled. It was a city of people who wanted to better themselves - entrepreneurs. And the Mechanic's Institution was that innovative idea that had grown up in Edinburgh and London about providing an opportunity for education for the working people.

LISA WHITEHEAD: Mark Twain lectured there. Later, other buildings were added and a theatre to host classic plays. And it adopted its more bourgeois friendly title of the Athenaeum. Crucially from the start there was the library, the first to offer affordable lending to the working man. And it still attracts devotees.

Former University lecturer Margaret Bowman, 89, comes in every Wednesday, along with her dog to join an enthusiastic band of volunteers sorting through the archives.

MARGARET BOWMAN, FORMER UNIVERSITY LECTURER: Doing research is something that I find actually I enjoy more than anything. Every old lady needs to have a project and now I've got a project.

MARJORIE DALVEAN: Margaret, Christine has just found out that Alfred Deakin was a member here from 1874 to 1877.

This place is not flashy, we've never been flashy. But book lovers walk in here and they know this is the place for them.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: Old times and old names. The Athenaeum theatre in Melbourne for more than 40 years has been one of the city's best known cinemas.

LISA WHITEHEAD: In the 20th century, the theatre surrendered to the new craze of talking pictures, and one particular fan was famous Australian playwright Ray Lawler. At 13, he dropped out of school to work in a Footscray factory and two years later his first trip to the glamorous Athenaeum cinema hinted at the education he was missing.

RAY LAWLER: It just had a style about it which I responded to, I think. I was looking for something and this seemed to be part of it.

Ray Lawler went on to write "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" and found literary fame overseas.

About a century after it had started as an educational place for the working man, Ray Lawler had, in effect, become an Athenaeum graduate.

RAL LAWLER: If they had been looking for the sort of person that they were hoping to encourage along the way, I suppose I would have been somebody that might have fitted the mould, you know.

LISA WHITEHEAD: In time, the cinema was returned to its theatrical roots.

FRANK THRING, 1977: It has a great resemblance to the Theatre Royal in Hobart which Larry Olivier has called the best theatre he's ever worked in. And it's almost identical. It is the true Victorian playhouse. The horseshoe shaped thing: stalls, dress circle and gallery. And you're close to the audience and they're close to you. Marvellous feeling.

LISA WHITEHEAD: Today, it's still a theatre. But time has brought compromises. The once vaunted art gallery has now covered its windows and become a comedy club and performance space.

TV and suburban life have eaten away at the library membership. It offers an online service now, and a recent federal government grant will pay for the upkeep of its gracious interior, including the 1930s elevator Ray Lawler used to ride. For him, it's money well spent on history quietly made and discreetly observed.

RAY LAWLER: It's the lack of awareness, I think, that people don't know what they've got here. They've really got the whole history of Melbourne almost.

KEVIN QUIGLEY: It was a similar organisation in Sydney but we are the only one that's got a continual lineage on the same spot. We started here and we're still here and we'll be here for another 100 years.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Lisa Whitehead on a great Melbourne landmark.

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Significance

Beginning as the Melbourne Mechanics' Institution in 1839, the Melbourne Athenaeum has a long history that reflects the cultural and social development of Melbourne. It continues to be managed as a not-for-profit organisation by a volunteer board, with a subscription library (maintained since 1839) and a leased theatre.

Physical description

Video broadcast ABC 7:30 Report for 11/11/2009. "Tomorrow marks the 170th birthday of one of the nation's historic cultural landmarks. Melbourne’s Athenaeum building has, in one form or other, provided education and entertainment for the Victorian colony as it became a city; and along the way, documented its growth."