3.2 Commercial Frankston

American Style Shopping

The issue of open hotels was one symptom of the strains placed on Frankston commerce by the changing character of the post-war suburb. From 1945 onwards council, shopkeepers and residents welcomed an expanding commercial centre. This was attuned to a mass market and familiar faces behind the shop counter disappeared gradually.

This new trading heart eventually erased most remnants of the older Frankston commercial township. Even public land in the centre of the town was converted to shops despite local objections. An open space near the corner of Well's Road and Thompson's Road was purchased for a park land in 1945. This area, Lawrey's Paddock was to become Central Park (purchased for £5000).1 Lawrey's Paddock "where rows of derelict shanties and wrecked wire fences disfigure the whole landscape" was soon coveted by traders for new shop sites and a car park. Lawrey's Paddock was also claimed by the Returned Soldiers League who insisted that council had originally intended it to become a Memorial Park.

By 1950 when council was reserving new shopping centre sites in the shire some citizens wanted the Park to become a parking site. One resident wrote to council demanding that it adopt a "futuristic outlook" and turn the open space into a site for car parks; others insisted that it become a green lung in the centre of the town.2

These arguments went back and forth for more than a decade with several attempts to overturn council decisions until finally, with the recommendation of the MMBW, Central Park disappeared to make way for shops and car parking. By then Frankston was well on the way to becoming a centre of supermarket shopping.

In response to new demands the local branch of the Housewives Association of Victoria had wanted a traditional market in Frankston, following the closure of street stalls by by-law. In June 1954 the new Frankston Market was opened by the President of the Victorian Housewives. This initially had fifty outlets facing Station St. In September it was expanded to include an outdoor selling section.3

Yet by then old-style market shopping was being challenged. In 1949 Cole's Stores leased A.V. Carter's Billiards Saloon for a food store in Bay St.4 In 1952 Coles identified their store as a SUPERMARKET and extended the shopping floor and added fluorescent lighting.5 Some years later the most modern and largest food store in the state, RTS, opened in Frankston in Thompson Street (Coles eventually took over RTS).

But the real thrust for a modern Frankston shopping centre came from J. Pratt a former Shire president and owner of a small grocery near the railway station before the war. When his son went into the RAAF Pratt left his business only to return with his son (recently demobbed) after the war and ready to create a new modern store. In October 1956 local resident and media star Graham Kennedy opened Pratt's new store "one of the most modern around the bayside."6

The new Pratt's had three thousand square feet of floor space, forty feet of deep freeze and a 24 foot Frigidaire unit and 36 feet of biscuits on display. More fascinating for local shoppers was the new self-service system regulated by an "ingenious and modern" checkout system.7 Pratt's had adopted the sophisticated American system of listing all the products for sale on a cartographic display board on the rear wall. The store's technical modernity was set off by an up to date colour system. Pratt's chose tangerine for the rear wall, royal blue and white for side walls and mustard for the ceiling. Along with Graham Kennedy, Ted Whitten, Brian Naylor and a host of media luminaries graced Frankston for the opening of Victoria's most American sales centre.

Pratt's "Americanised Supermarket" was soon outshone by the owner's new scheme. Pratt proposed a plan for a "Heart of Frankston" shopping centre the prototype shopping mall in Victoria. This was to have an expanded supermarket as a core, attached speciality shops and car-parking; ingeniously here the cars were to park on the roof of the heart. Council approved plans for the Heart on June 20 1960.8 Designed by Chancellor and Patrick it once again drew a raft of media stars to the suburb. It also launched a series of schemes for new mall style shopping emporia in Frankston, all of them taking their appearance and functional configuration from standard American retailing designs. Whitner's Shoes opened a new store on the Central Park site in 1961, to a design by Grounds, Romberg and Boyd and incorporating offices alongside a modern shopping floor.9

The National and State Savings Banks opened new modernist branches soon after.10 And in 1968 Ball and Welch opened their emporium in Frankston, the largest store in the city and built on the old Plaza site.11 All the while Frankston was constantly imitating what was known of American suburban style.

Executives of these stores constantly impressed on council the need to provide car parking and used the example of the American downtown where all shopping was done by car (ironically as Frankston councillors came to terms with their plans, the car was destroying the American downtown in favour of even grander suburban shopping malls). G.J. Coles, Ball and Welch and all other major local retailers turned to the car as the saviour of Frankston commerce. The old Frankston shopping centre with its flies and smells had vanished in a short space of time.12

When On the Beach began filming in Frankston they brought with them a pump action fly spray. So that Peter Finch, Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner would not have to spend the entire shoot waving away Australian flies, they were fumigated with this backpacked spraygun as they prepared for each scene. So inspiring was this modern American device that Frankston traders and councillors decided that staff would use a similar antifly device to fumigate shops once the film crew left! Frankston's fascination with modern America was redoubled by the visit of the stars of Hollywood screen stars. When this film about the end of the world was made in Frankston shopkeepers and councillors had already embarked on plans to modernise and Americanise their town centre.

One of the most marked changes was the disappearance of the old post-supported verandahs. In 1956 civic leaders decided that these were lowering the standard of the suburb.13 More than just the verandahs lowered local tone. Residents used them to hang out washing. Council wrote to one offender who displayed washing on a Bay Street shop verandah reminding her that in "Council's opinion the hanging of washing in the main street of the town does not add any attraction to it and appealed to ... civic pride in the matter.14 Over the following decade the verandahs disappeared to make way for modern Americanised Frankston, a commercial precinct in which the very few remnants of an older Frankston merit protection along with the most innovative modern elements of supermarket shopping.