Bolands Centre is a heritage-listed department store at Lake Street, Cairns City, Cairns, Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia. Designed by Edward Gregory Waters and built in 1912, the Centre was home to a David Jones department store and a prominent toy shop. It is also known as Boland's Building and Boland's Departmental Store. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 April 2006.
History The Bolands Centre, a large reinforced concrete former department store, was erected in 1912–1913 for Michael Boland, an Irish immigrant who migrated to Australia in 1881 and became a leading merchant in Cairns. The building was designed by the Cairns architect Edward Gregory Waters, and for many years was the tallest structure in the city. It is the last surviving example of a large, early 20th century department store in Cairns.
Michael Boland was born in 1863 in Ireland. He came from an impoverished rural background but at the age of fifteen moved to Dublin to study business for a year. Around 1879 he emigrated to Australia, initially lodging in Melbourne, then moving briefly to Queanbeyan, New South Wales, where he gained practical experience as a grocer in his uncle's store. He then travelled north, arriving in Cairns in 1882, where he bought a small allotment in Lily Street. Between 1882 and 1887 he became involved in a number of economic ventures within the Cairns district. These included a contract to clear Spence and Bunda Streets in Cairns in 1886, and in 1888 establishing the Camp Oven Creek Hotel at Barron Gorge during the building of the Cairns-to-Herberton railway line. He also held a selection on the Russell River, north of Innisfail, and was reputed to have spent time tin-mining at Bloomfield and working on the construction of the Cape York telegraph line. From these ventures he accumulated sufficient capital to return to Cairns by 1890 and establish a modest grocery shop in leased wooden premises in Abbott Street, which was the initial commercial centre of Cairns.
In 1893 Michael Boland, like many people at the time, struggled to keep his business viable in the face of a world recession and the temporary closure of the National Bank of Queensland. Conditions were made more difficult in Cairns by the onset of the so-called "store wars", an intense competitive struggle between five key merchant firms: Michael Boland, Burns Philp & Co., G.R. Mayers & Co. and two newly opened co-operatives, the Co-operative Cash Stores and the Cairns Co-operative Store Co.
Michael Boland's business survived these difficulties and in 1898 shifted to a allotment in Section 4, at the northeast corner of Lake and Spence Streets. As the Cairns grew, businesses moved from Abbott Street to adjoining streets, and in particular to Section 4, which was later referred to as "The Golden Block" due to its high concentration of prominent firms. Boland was among the first merchants to make this transition. In Spence Street, on the eastern portion of this land, Michael Boland built a single-storied timber shop which he ran as a general store. Boland also constructed three smaller, adjoining shops that he leased out to various small businesses. The western section of the allotment, which fronted Lake and Spence Streets, consisted of a sand ridge and low-lying swamp, and remained vacant.
By 1901 Boland had acquired an adjoining property fronting Lake Street, which contained three shops. Further down Lake Street, Michael Boland's brother, John, established a co-operative grocery and general store.
From these small beginnings Michael Boland gradually emerged as a pioneer of commerce in Cairns and built up an extensive business empire, which included investments in mining and the Cumming Brothers Butchery. His firm was among the biggest importers and retailers in Far North Queensland, dealing with an extensive range of goods, many sourced directly from overseas manufacturers.
The contribution of the firm to the prosperity of Cairns and its district was considerable. Until the link to the state railway system was made in the early 1920s, Cairns remained a relatively isolated community accessed primarily by sea, and the Boland firm was instrumental in satisfying many of its material needs. It was also a major employer while its lines of credit allowed many early sugar growers to survive the hard years of this industry's infancy.
Michael Boland was among the most prominent citizens of Cairns. He was elected to the Cairns Municipal Council in 1896 and was briefly appointed a director of the local Penny Savings Bank in 1899. He was a high-profile supporter of worker's rights, the Labour Party and early unionism, and also had some association with the local Chinese community, in 1904 giving money to help effect repairs to one of the temples and acting as the receiver for the firm of Sun Shun Lee during its liquidation.
Among Michael Boland's most significant roles was his association with the Cairns Harbour Board. In 1899 Boland, with his friend and fellow merchant, Callaghan Walsh, began publicly agitating for the formation of a Harbour Board. They saw this as essential for the growth of trade in Cairns, but faced strong opposition, in particular from one of Boland's fiercest commercial rivals, A.J. Draper, who argued that such a move was premature for the community resources at the time. Following heated public debate, Boland and his faction were successful in establishing the Provisional Harbour Board in 1899, but it took six years of further lobbying before the Cairns Harbour Board was constituted on 20 December 1905. It had its first meeting on 28 February 1906. The Board consisted of 9 members, two representing the Town of Cairns, and 7 representing outlying regions. Both Boland and Walsh were elected as the members for Cairns, and in 1909 Boland was elected chairman. Over the ensuing years the Harbour Board played a critical role in developing Cairns into a major port in North Queensland by improving wharf facilities and implementing the dredging of the harbour to allow deepwater berthing.
In 1902 Boland's business had grown sufficiently to warrant major improvements to his existing premises and construction of a spacious single-storied concrete shop fronting Spence Street, the first large concrete building erected in Cairns. The construction of this store necessitated the partial demolition of the original wooden shop. The new building carried an ornate facade with pediment and parapet, and a bullnose verandah. The verandah had paired columns with decorative brackets, and a frieze of rectangular fretwork. When completed the upgrade permitted Boland to begin the process of transforming his business from a simple general store into a large emporium with separate grocery, haberdashery and hardware departments. Department stores represented a new approach to retailing and were becoming prominent in all of Queensland's main centres and represented a new approach to retailing. The traditional retail business that had dominated Queensland's 19th century retail landscape was centred on a relatively narrow range of products and activities, and in its design and layout gave little consideration to consumer psychology. The department store, however, offered an extensive range of goods and services and created for the consumer an encompassing retail environment that was enjoyable and encouraged shopping.
By 1909 Michael Boland's department store had proved successful and he expanded his business into his adjacent three Lake Street stores, displacing the earlier tenants. Then in 1911 he commissioned Cairns architect Edward Gregory Waters to draw up plans for a new building to be built on the site of the swamp at the vacant corner of Lake and Spence Streets. Waters, who had previously worked in Rockhampton, Mount Morgan and Gympie, was active in Cairns from 1909 until 1917. While in Cairns he worked as the Cairns Harbour Board Engineer. He was a specialist in ferro-concrete construction and was responsible for a number of prominent buildings in Cairns, including the Central Hotel and St. Josephs Convent.
The plans for Michael Boland's new building were approved by the Cairns Town Engineer in May 1912 and JT Bullock was awarded the contract for the construction. Reflecting Boland's increasing wealth and social status, the building was to be an impressive structure of reinforced concrete, the first three-storeyed building in Cairns. Although Boland had pioneered all-concrete construction methods in his 1902 building, in 1912 Cairns was still a town of timber, brick and corrugated iron and the use of concrete for the new building was still a comparatively early use of reinforced concrete in Queensland. Due to its strength and insulating qualities, concrete construction proved highly suitable to the tropical climate and cyclonic conditions experienced in North Queensland and in later decades dominated its building industry.
The construction work, carried out during 1912 and 1913, was a major undertaking that elicited interest from the local press. The swamp at the site was drained and filled but due to the unstable nature of the ground the building sat on a floating foundation laid with girders rather than traditional piles. The walls, floors, internal columns and decorative details of the facade were cast in moulds. The Portland cement used for the building was imported in casks from England and poured using an innovative concrete roller mixer with an independent hoist system. An English firm, Dorman, Long and Co., who later supplied steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, prefabricated the steel work for the building.
The building was rectangular in plan, and when completed measured , with the long axis oriented along Spence Street. The remaining section of the early wooden store had been demolished and the new building was connected internally to the 1902 store. It also had entrances on both Spence and Lake streets. The bullnose corrugated iron awning of the 1902 emporium was extended along both street frontages of the new building and repeated the earlier paired columns, pierced frieze and other decorative elements.
At ground level the Lake and Spence Street facade carried large, rectangular shop windows of clear plate-glass imported from England. On the first and second floor levels the facade was executed in an imposing, ornate style, based predominantly on Classical and Romanesque elements. On the upper storeys the fenestration consisted of a combination of fixed and top-hung sash windows, with a single round window incorporated into the facade at the Lake and Spence Street corner at the second floor level. Immediately above the awning there was also a series of narrow, rectangular, bottom-hinged windows. Early photographs suggest the upper storey windows were filled with opaque glass.
The rear (north and east) walls of the building were unornamented and pierced by rectangular, double-hung, four-pane sash windows. Early photographs indicate that the building was painted in light, neutral colours with the name 'Boland's' picked out in darker colour under the parapet and on the east wall. The north wall carried the line "Boland's Departmental Store".
The roof of the building was flat and of poured concrete construction, and as such was the first known example of this type of roof in Cairns, and among the earliest in Queensland. It was waterproofed by a layer of bitumen and drained by five openings on the parapet on the north side, which connected to two down-pipes. This space was accessible to the public and was referred to as the "plateau" in Waters' design proposal, and as the "roof garden" by staff members. During World War I musicians used it as a stage for patriotic performances. Along the Spence and Lake Street sides the roof was protected by an ornamented parapet incorporating finials, arches, and balustrades of interlocked concrete circles.