3.1 The Public Buildings

mechanics institute

For many years the best-known building on this government reserve was the Frankston Mechanic's Institute. It is still a prominent structure for anyone passing along the Nepean Highway from the north. The first Mechanic's Institute was erected on a Crown grant in 1880.1 For the next seventy years the institute building served as a meeting place for the Shire of Frankston and Hasting throughout one in every three years. Before the separation of Frankston, the Council met for one year in Frankston, another in Hastings and a third in Somerville. Growing from a meeting of the Independent Order of Good Templars, the Mechanics Institute was extended in 1918 and 1929.2

By then the Mechanics Institute was firmly established as the major meeting place for people in a scattered district with no true public hall. As the Standard acknowledged the Mechanic's Institute was

"a democratic institution [whose] original purpose was for the education and betterment of the working man or mechanic as the name implies. However since its inception it has become to be regarded as a community centre where all may meet and enjoy the benefits of Social and educational contact."3

As an aid to this educational role the institute had built up a library of more than 2000 books. Yet residents, many of them members of the building's 24 regular user groups in Frankston complained about the poor facilities provided by the hall and demanded a replacement to that "obsolete mechanics institute."4 Extensions were completed in 1938.5 The war gave residents more weighty matters to think about but it became clear within a few years that the extensions were inadequate.

Rumblings about the problems with the old hall surfaced after the war. In 1953 the old and increasingly inefficient telephone exchange was moved to Playne Street and the Post Office approached the Mechanic's Institute trustees to lease vacant land on the institute's property.6

In 1953 serious plans were put forward to rebuild the hall, create a new municipal library and to transfer control to the shire council.7 Over the next three years new plans were drawn up. But the incident which eventually forced the community into action occurred with radio personality Jack Davey's visit to Frankston. More than 500 fans had crammed into the Mechanic's Institute when a fire scare and crushes of people at the exits made clear not only the lack of comforts but the real dangers which might flow from continued use of the hall.

In February 1956 the Mechanic's Institute held its last meeting in the hall.8 In August 1956 the Frankston Choral Society performed in a farewell concert to the old hall. By October the building had been partly demolished.9 M. Gamble won the tender for rebuilding and in the following year the new hall was complete and by October 1957 the new library was opened in the Institute building.10