Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Then and now

Playing around on the internet I found some old photos of Creswick...so I thought it was time to play Find-the-shop-on-Google-Maps.  Currently melting into the couch (hate hate hate the hot weather), so at least this is keeping me amused.

Draper's shop, Creswick, circa 1865 [source]  I love the thought of a draper's shop...when I was growing up in Creswick, there was Pat Burke the drapers, and I remember buying ribbon there for my Miss Piggy doll. It was in a beautiful old building, and inside it still felt like it was 1960. I can't remember if this impressed 1970s me or not, I was more interested in the ribbon and getting out before Mum ran into someone she knew and started chatting.
This drapery appears to have woollen clothes (?) and hats on offer...and a barber shop next door. We'll assume the man out the front in the impressive hat is the proprietor, with his faithful shop boy, Patsy.






This pic is sort of weird though, do the people to the right look ultra teeny tiny? Or is this just a fault of early photographic perspective? Having a look at Google maps, I'd confidently say it's one of these buildings (currently a estate agent and a French bakery next door):

 

Here's another photo I found of a bakery, circa 1930. [source] Why is it called the Perserverance, I wonder? Life was so hard and crappy that perseverance was a virtue?

 

This one I couldn't quite work out which building it is, although I do know it's Albert Street as well, as I found reference to a Miss Ida Bowley of Albert Street Creswick, in an newspaper of 1919. (She won 1 pound in a newspaper competition, surely very exciting at the time!) Is this Ida in this photo?  Was CC her father?
Here's a probate notice for CC, from The Argus, Wednesday 17th August, 1938.


Anyway, I do digress...is the building still there?
At first I thought it was this one:

But the more I think about it, I'm going for this one:

Another view:

Any thoughts? *crickets chirp*

2 comments:

  1. ~Chirp~
    I like these comparisons of old and new that you have been doing. The second one I don't think is a match to either of your options though as the original shows 5 windows down the side split in 3 and 2 but neither of your options are similar. Also the windows at the front aren't a match either, the original is quite unbalanced with a display window on the left and a "house" window on the right. <Makes me want to go searching!

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