F.H. Faulding Warehouse (former)

Francis Hardy Faulding, the son of a physician, left his home in Liverpool in 1842 and moved to the Colony of South Australia. In 1845, he established a retail pharmacy business in Adelaide. The business prospered and by 1850 Faulding began manufacturing his own pharmaceutical products.  According to a recent history of pharmacy, Faulding was the first pharmaceutical wholesaler in Australia.1 In 1861, Faulding took on a business partner, Luther Scammell, who was a physician at the time. Faulding died in 1868 and Scammell continued to run the business.  

Paralleling the progress of medicine, the pharmaceutical industry grew rapidly in the nineteenth century as a result of new developments in scientific research.  Faulding was innovative from its origins in the 1840s and registered a number of important Australian ‘firsts’, such as the first pharmacist to import chloroform following the discovery of its anaesthetic properties in 1847; to produce olive oil from South Australian olives and to undertake production of antiseptic, under the brand name ‘Solyptol’, in 1867.1 ‘Solyptol’ was a contraction of ‘Soluble Eucalyptus Oil’. During the late nineteenth century Australian eucalyptus oil was prized throughout much of the world for its medicinal properties and this product was one of the better known brands at this time.

By the early 1900s, Scammell’s two sons, William and Luther had assumed control of the business; indeed, the Scammell family were to remain closely associated with the management of the company into the late twentieth century. In 1921, the business incorporated as a private company.1 It is from this time that the company developed the slogan, ‘If it’s Faulding’s, it’s pure’.1 By this time Faulding had also expanded into Perth, Sydney and London, though the firm’s headquarters remained in Adelaide.  The establishment of warehouses in these cities was necessary given the focus of the company on manufacture of pharmaceutical products.  It is in this context that a warehouse was planned for Brisbane.

Luther and William Scammell purchased a block of land in Charlotte Street in 1928.  In 1929, the property was transferred to George Vance Scammell, Rupert Boswood Scammell and Catherine Matilda Scammell, widow of William, who died that year.  Construction of a purpose-built warehouse was undertaken in the second half of 1931 and in 1932, title of the land and building was transferred to F. H. Faulding & Co Ltd.  It is evident from the time between purchase of the land and construction of the warehouse, and the transfer of the property from the Scammells to that of the company itself, that plans for expansion into Brisbane had been mooted for some time.  It is also evident that despite the Great Depression, the company was in a position to expand into yet another market because the its products were particularly well-known and the company was at the forefront of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

During the 1920s, Brisbane’s Central Business District (CBD) underwent close to a decade of rapid growth.  Brisbane was seen by many to have achieved a similar, if smaller-scale, degree of development as that of Sydney and Melbourne. The proliferation of ‘skyscrapers’, which continued to be built into the early 1930s; the popularity of the motor car; concreting of the CBD’s major streets; the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925 and the construction of City Hall were developments that marked the 1920s as a significant decade in the history of Brisbane’s CBD.  

With the continuing increase in Brisbane’s population up to this period and the concomitant expansion of the retail pharmaceutical sector, Brisbane represented a significant market worthy of a purpose-built warehouse to enable the efficient distribution of Faulding products.  Rather than see this development as yet another example of Brisbane as a ‘branch city’ – for Sydney, Perth and London were also ‘branches’ of the company, which remained based in Adelaide – it is instead a tacit acknowledgment on the part of the company that Brisbane had reached a critical juncture. This reinforced the ebullient observations made throughout the 1920s by the press that Brisbane was “equal in beauty and progressiveness”1 to Sydney and Melbourne.

Moreover, it is possible to view the construction of the warehouse in even more localised terms – that of the pharmaceutical industry in Brisbane and its concentration in Charlotte Street.  According to a Brisbane History Group publication:

A number of wholesale and/or manufacturing chemists were attracted to Charlotte Street in the 1920s and 1930s, including Atherton & Co., wholesale chemists at the corner of Charlotte and Albert Streets, Taylors and Elliots Ltd, wholesale druggists, at the corner of Charlotte and Edward Streets, Field’s Teething Powder Co. at 142 Charlotte St, and Potter and Birks Ltd, wholesale chemists, on the second floor of the Commercial Travellers’ Association’s Sample Rooms in Charlotte Street, just north of St Stephen’s Cathedral.1

This was part of a consolidation of this particular section of the CBD as a warehouse precinct.  Originally known as Frogs Hollow, for much of the nineteenth century the area was one of ill repute, matched by a tendency to flood.  By the early 1900s, however, warehouses increasingly dominated the landscape in this area and this process reached its peak in the 1920s and early 1930s, along with the more general growth of the CBD.  Wholesale chemists and manufacturers were clearly part of this process.

The architectural firm of Addison & Macdonald (1928-1940) designed the building.  Addison was the son of George Henry Male Addison, who practised architecture in Brisbane from the 1880s.  The building is an example of a small brick warehouse design.  Of some interest is the distinctive glass brick window on the facade of the building, which allowed extensive natural light into the interior of the building.  D. F. Roberts constructed the building with work beginning in mid-1931.  The total cost of the building was £8,105.

Faulding & Co continued to use the purpose-built warehouse until its sale in 1957 to Edwards, Dunlop & Co. In 1983 the company opened another purpose-built warehouse at Mayne, a north Brisbane suburb.  According to the Daily Sun, the warehouse “rivalled leading developments at North Ryde, Sydney’s premier industrial area”.1 It is likely that the company had outgrown its original premises in Charlotte Street by the late 1950s.  Edwards, Dunlop & Co retained title of the property until the early 1970s and in 1975 the property was purchased by ‘The Corporation of the Trustees of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane’.  For a considerable period of time the former-warehouse was used as a religious bookshop and it has recently been converted to house the Catholic Church’s archives.

The building remained unaltered until its sale to Edwards, Dunlop & Co in 1957. From that time the building has undergone a number of alterations.  In 1957 a vehicle dock was added to the building.  The building was extended in 1958 and various other alterations to the warehouse occurred in 1957, 1959 and 1974.  A fire escape staircase was added in 1966. The Catholic Church extensively renovated the building in 1976. 

Faulding’s continued to remain at the forefront of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in Australia. In 2001 the company was taken over by another Australian business, Mayne Pharma. At the time of takeover Faulding and Co was valued at over $2 billion.1

The Brisbane History Group identified the former Faulding Building as a part of Brisbane’s commercial heritage in 2002, when they included it in their publication Walking Tours – Brisbane’s Commercial Heritage 1900-1940.

1. Geoff Miller, “The Australian Scene” in Pharmacy: A look back at the past and a vision for the future – a scandalously short introduction to the history of pharmacy, http://www.psa.org.au/ecms.cfm?id=98, March 2006

2. J. E. Kolm, “The chemical industry – Australian contributions to chemical technology” in Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, at http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/scripts/tia-dynindex.php3?EID=A001042, March 2006

3. Mayne Pharma, http://www.maynepharma.com/AU/318.asp

4. Brisbane History Group, Brisbane’s Commercial Heritage 1900-1940: Three walking tours of the CBD, Brisbane History Group Inc., 2002, p. 51

5. “Editorial”, The Architecture & Building Journal of Queensland, January 8, 1923, p. 7

6. Brisbane History Group, Brisbane’s Commercial Heritage 1900-1940, p. 51

7. “Warehouse sets a trend”, Daily Sun, 28 May, 1983, n.p.

8. Zoe Daniel, “FH Faulding becomes target of takeover bid”, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s305964.htm

9. Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, www.austech.unimelb.edu.au/tia/cover.html, March 2006

10. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, website, post-1946 building cards

11. Brisbane City Council, 1946 aerial photographs.

12. Brisbane City Council, Sewerage Map 1913

13. Brisbane City Council Building Register, 1927

14. Brisbane City Council, Reports and Proceedings of the Municipal Council of the City of Brisbane 1927, Brisbane, H. Pole & Co, Ltd, 1928

15. Brisbane History Group, Brisbane’s Commercial Heritage 1900-1940: Three walking tours of the CBD, Brisbane History Group Inc., 2002

16. Coutts, J.V.D. (ed.), The Architectural & Building Journal of Queensland, 1931

17. Daily Sun, 1983

18. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of Title and other records

19. Greenwood, Gordon, Brisbane 1859-1959 – A History of Local Government, Parramatta, The Cumberland Press, 1959

20. Lawson, Ronald 1973, Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Australian Urban Society, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia

21. Mahlstedt & Son City of Brisbane Detail Fire Survey, Map No. 16, 1951

22. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949

23. Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Queensland), Buildings of Queensland, Brisbane, Jacaranda Press, 1959

24. The Pharmaceutical Society of Queensland, A Centennial History of The Pharmaceutical Society of Queensland, 1980

25. Watson, Donald and Judith McKay. A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940. (St. Lucia: U of Q Press, 1984)