Boans

Boans is the name of a department store that operated in Perth, Western Australia between 1895 and 1986.

The Boans Building in Wellington Street, shown here in 1936, was built in 1912 and demolished in 1987. Padbury Buildings and Forrest Place just visible in lower and mid right portion of picture
Boans c. 1938. Includes brass band playing in street with crowd gathered to listen and The Grand Central Shaftesbury Hotel in the background.

It was located between Wellington Street and Murray Street and had the Padbury Buildings between it and Forrest Place.

The store was founded by Harry Boan and his brother Benjamin who both came to Perth in 1895 from Broken Hill in western New South Wales.[1] Harry and another brother, Ernest, had previously established a successful drapery known as "Boan Bros. Ltd." in that town.

City store

The brothers arrived in Perth in mid-1895 when Harry was 34, and purchased two 1,000 m2 (1⁄4-acre) blocks facing Wellington Street and the Perth railway station,[2] at the edge of a potato swamp.[3] The properties ("V.7-8") were purchased from W. B. Woods & Co, at a price of £42 per foot of street frontage.[4] They borrowed £62,000 and within four months, despite acute labour shortages, had built, stocked and opened a single-storey emporium on the site and named it "Boan Bros." The store opened on 7 November 1895, and almost sold out by the end of the first day of trading.[1] The original buildings were described as a single store that ran from Wellington Street through to Murray Street and appeared as "a line of iron shops".[5]

In 1901, Benjamin died and Harry assumed sole ownership. Harry purchased adjoining land that spanned the block between Wellington and Murray Streets, near Forrest Place. The business was restructured to become a limited company in 1912 and the name was changed to Boans Ltd.[6] In the same year, the original buildings were demolished and rebuilt as a single building between Murray and Wellington Streets.[2]

Over time, the store became the largest private employer in Western Australia.[7]

In late 1929 Harry Boan handed control of the Boans store to his son Frank Boan who had been living in England with his mother since 1913.

Like similar businesses, Boans had a mail order catalogue issued from the late 1930s that continued into the 1950s.

The Boans department store in Wellington Street Perth was subject to a major fire in 1979, which closed the store for some weeks. The store reopened, prior to its closure in 1986 when it was sold to Coles Myer Ltd to make way for the new Forrest Chase Myer complex. This was later considered a bizarre coincidence, as the Boans department store in Morley was destroyed by fire in 1986. The Morley complex was later rebuilt, housing a Myer department store.[8]

East Perth furniture factory

In about 1910[2] Boans opened a furniture factory in East Perth to service the shop. It produced bedroom furniture, including mattresses, dining and kitchen furniture. There was also a cane-ware and upholstery section. Imported furniture was also held there.

After World War II, the factory would also house a bakery and butchery, where smallgoods were manufactured. Between 30 and 40 vehicles operated out of the receivals and despatch section, which also included garaging and mechanical services.

After the Perth store closed, the building fell into disrepair for some years, but in 1996 was assessed by the Heritage Council of Western Australia as having historic, aesthetic and social value. As part of the redevelopment of the area by the East Perth Redevelopment Authority, the buildings have now been transformed into upmarket housing and office accommodation.[9]

The site is bounded by Brown, Glyde and Saunders Streets and the building retains the name of Boans painted on its exterior.

Suburban stores
Boans Limited, Wellington Street, Perth, c. 1900–1910.

During the latter part of the twentieth century, the company expanded by opening a number of suburban stores, as part of the growing trend of decentralised "shopping centres" out of the city centre.

These included:

  • Waverley in Cannington. The first suburban branch.[10]
  • Morley. Opened 1961, destroyed by a fire in 1986. The site has since been redeveloped as Centro Galleria.[11]
  • Innaloo.
  • Garden City in Booragoon.
  • Peppermint Grove. This store site was later acquired by Harris Scarfe in 1996 and was the foundation Harris Scarfe department store in Western Australia. The store continued trading as a Harris Scarfe store until 2001.
  • Melville Plaza in Canning Highway.
  • Medina Shopping Centre, then Kwinana Hub.
  • Karrinyup. A Myer store upon opening. Traded as Boans for two years (1986–1988). Relabelled Myer in 1988.
  • Fremantle. The Myer store was rebadged as Boans for two years between 1986–1988. Myer had bought out Boans and had intended on using the Boans rather than Myer name on its Western Australia stores. Myer closed this store on 20 January 2013.

Country stores

Boans operated department stores in regional areas. When Myer acquired Boans, these stores were sold.

The stores were located at:

Closure

Myer Emporium (now Coles Group) purchased the business in 1985 and the Boans city store closed its doors for the last time on 12 April 1986 so that a redevelopment into a larger department store could take place. The development became known as Forrest Chase with Myer as the anchor retailer.

Ross's Sales & Auctions held an on-site sale that cleared the entire building, including many fixtures and fittings such as the jarrah staircases and a Beale baby grand piano "in-situ on the fourth floor". These items are now occasionally seen in refurbished and new buildings around Perth.

Myer said in 1986 that they would retain the Boans name and promptly rebadged the Myer city store at Murray Street and William Street (to be used as the city base until Forrest Chase was ready) and any Myer suburban stores with the Boans name. However, Myer management changed their mind in 1988 when the Forrest Chase building was nearing completion so that they could centralise all advertising and eliminate cost duplication. The Boans name was phased out over several weeks.

In 1989, Myer opened on the former Boans site with a new and larger store carrying through to Forrest Place. The suburban stores were converted to "Myer" badging.

Boans country stores

Myer sold the country stores in Albany, Bunbury and Geraldton to Geoffrey Bingemann, who was a director of Boans prior to the Myer acquisition of the Boans business.

Bingemann rebadged these stores as Stirlings department stores, and he operated this business as a regional chain until 1996, when Harris Scarfe acquired the business and they became Harris Scarfe stores. Harris Scarfe continued trading until 2001.

See also

References
  1. Toby Manford. "Boan, Henry (1860 - 1941)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, Australian National University. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  2. "Boans Furniture Factory Assessment documentation" (PDF). Heritage Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  3. Gervas, Stan (1994). Perth in the 1930s and "The Way We Were". Maylands: Gervas Books. p. 7. ISBN 0-646-19124-1.
  4. David Hough (16 June 2005). "Special Report - Boans tells history of Perth retail". wabusinessnews.com.au. Archived from the original on 28 August 2006. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  5. "12th April 1986; Boans Closes". City of Perth. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 6 May 2007. (note: this contradicts another source that says the original buildings faced Wellington Street only)
  6. "Boans Ltd (1912 - 1985)". Guide to Australian Business Records. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  7. "Private Archives Collection". State Library of Western Australia. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  8. "Mail order catalogue". State Library of Western Australia. Archived from the original on 10 May 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2007.
  9. Adrian Fini. "Boans Warehouse". National Trust of WA. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  10. "Rotary Cannington, Reminiscences". Archived from the original on 19 October 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-05.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. "History – Part Two: 1930 – present". City of Bayswater. Archived from the original on 9 April 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2013.

Further reading
  • Hough, David: Boans for Service. The Story of a department store 1895-1986. Claremont, Estate of F.T. Boan, 2009. ISBN 978-0-64650966-2.
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