Only months after losing the Band of Hope and Mechanic’s Institute buildings to make way for the new GPAC redevelopment, Geelong’s Ryrie Street looses another of its heritage buildings, the Belcher’s Corner Building located on the corner of Ryrie and Moorabool Streets.
After some structural concerns, inspections were carried out on the building in September 2018 and it was declared that the building could not be saved due to safety issues and needed to be demolished.
The two-story heritage listed building was built in 1921 and was named after George Frederick Belcher (1823-1909). Irish-born George was somewhat of a pioneer in the region and arrived in Melbourne from Ireland in 1839, just 4 years after John Batman founded the city. George first tried his hand as a pastoralist and as a squatter but by the mid 1850s he had settled down in Geelong and found much success in business and public life. In the 1872 he became a vice-consul at Geelong for Norway and Sweden before becoming the elected mayor of Geelong in 1873 and 1875. Today, Several other buildings and landmarks around Geelong still bare The Belcher name, including the beautiful light tower that was once part of the Belcher Fountain outside the new Worksafe building in Malop Street.
When compared to the buildings on the other three corners of Malop and Moorabool Streets, the Belcher’s Corner Building is fairly conservative designed with classical renaissance design queues. While the lower floors have been altered several times over the years, the upper level of the building features steel framed windows with fairly simple decorative motifs and a lovely cornice and parapet surrounding the top of the building.
We have been trying to remember some businesses that have been located in the Belcher’s building. George’s Rugs with its never ending closing down sales is the one of the biggest memories in recent years. Others include a bag shop specialising in travel accessories, Harlequin Costume Hire upstairs, a Tattoo parlour and a nail parlour. Things were starting to look promising for the building over the past year or so, with previously vacated shops replaced with the likes of tasty burger joint Burger Johnny and more recently Cake Bar that had become quite popular over the last few months. One other sketchy memory is of an independent record shop with grungy café downstairs in the early 80’s, but we really can’t remember much about it.
The Belcher’s Corner Building was eventually demolished in mid 2020, If you have any memories of the building or any other business that was located in it we would love to hear from you.
