Bond's Sweet Factory (former)

South Brisbane in the post-war period had past its heyday. Land sales had first taken place in the 1840s, with the area growing to become an industrial, residential and commercial district rivalling the northern side of the river by the 1880s. After WWI the focus of South Brisbane became more heavily industrial, and factories and residences began competing for space. 

Melbourne Street had been slower to develop, with very few buildings in the block between Manning and Edmondstone Streets before the 1920s. Pressures on housing and business forced greater development in inner-city suburbs, encouraging the construction of a number of shops and residences on the block. The area was a multicultural one, existing as a small Chinese precinct in the 1910s and later hosting Lebanese-born Salem Malouf’s residence and fruit shop, a variety of Chinese fruit shops and residences and a Japanese laundry. The corner allotment of Melbourne and Manning Street was owned by Greek-born Nicholas Andronicos and John Katahanas from 1936, who leased the shops on the site to a variety of businesses, including plumbers, dressmakers, and second hand dealers. By this time the block was also home to furniture manufacturers, battery services, a welding company and motor mechanics, and, a reflection of the hardship of the Depression era, the South Brisbane soup kitchen.

By the 1940s, the shift of the wharves to Hamilton and the opening of the Story Bridge had diverted a significant amount of economic activity away from South Brisbane. Conversely, the post-war decline of South Brisbane had left land slightly more affordable, bringing southern investors and European migrants who chose to settle in the area in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Robert Bond acquired title to an extremely small nine perch block of land, just removed from the corner of Melbourne and Manning Street, in May 1947. By November his company had purchased the adjacent 25 perch site on the corner, and had commissioned architect Oliver Coleman to design its new factory. Coleman, an English born Queensland architect, had begun practising in Brisbane in 1939. He had had experience with factory buildings, having been employed as branch manager for the James Bell Machinery Company and designing the replacement building of the Woodford Butter Factory. Coleman began calling for tenders for the Bonds Sweet building in August 1947 and in 1948 a permit had been granted for Bond’s £12,000 modern factory, to be constructed by successful tenders H Sandham and Son. The factory was not completed until late 1951, by which time the building’s cost had ballooned out to £40,000. The completed factory was an unusual Art Deco design, following the style of the late 1930s and stylistically similar to the Credit Union building in Ann Street. It was a striking addition to the Melbourne Street corner, designed with some of the latest building materials, including glass bricks in its prominent circular corner piece. Three storeys high, it included a penthouse residence for the owner.

The factory, however, was never used by Bonds Sweets. Robert Bond had died in July 1951, before he could see the completed building. Bonds Sweets quickly sold the new factory to Demco Machinery Company, an Australian manufacturing business which was expanding into Brisbane. It was sold again to the Associated Distributors Company in 1954, and used by Universal Pictures as a film store. In August 1955 permission was granted for the construction of an additional building on the site for a film store “with only part of the building in two storeys.” In July 1987 the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) opened its galleries in this building, but vacated it in 1991. New tenants have subsequently altered the building, removing the centrally operated lever windows and the Art Deco front doors.

The more regular portions of the building extend parallel to each street away from the entry. These had rectangular window openings originally with glazing bars organised so as to provide square panes down each side and three sets of rectangular panels across between them. All the glazing on the building is now aluminium framed. Two such bays occur across the Manning Street façade and three across the Melbourne Street area. All these windows are protected by cantilevered sun hoods that run continuously along each street elevation above the window heads. These portions of the building have plain flat parapets above the first floor window hoods. Exposed rainwater heads and downpipes flank the corner entry and the downpipes run through the ends of the sun hoods on both levels. Above the parapet line exists a separate residence with a hipped roof. The boundary wall on the end of this façade has a stepped parapet line. At the base of the two street facades were originally protective steel railings which stopped at the entry. Three steps lead up from the footpath to the new glass entry doors. Another entry has been made to Boundary Street by extending one of the windows to footpath level.

1. Richard Irving, Conservation Study of the former Credit Union Building, 1991

2. Graham De Gruchy, Architecture in Brisbane, Bowen Hills: Boolarong, 1988, p.119

3. Donald Watson and Judith McKay, A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940, Fryer Memorial Library Occasional Publication No. 2, 1984, p.55

4. The Architectural and Building Journal, December 1936, p.23

5. The Courier Mail 1947-1952

6. Queensland Post Office Directories 1900-1954

7. Certificates of Title, Department of Environment and Resource Management

8. Brisbane City Council, aerial photographs, 1946, 2005, 2009

9. Brisbane City Council Building Cards

10. Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board Detail Plan, 1925

11. Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit, ‘South Brisbane Area Heritage Study Part A: Project Report’

12. Centre for the Government of Queensland, ‘Queensland Places: West End’ and ‘South Brisbane’, 2011 (website)