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Vacuum Oil Company
7 Pakenham St, 1907; architect: Joseph Allen
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A Mrs McCann owned and occupied a house on this site in 1880 and is believed to have extended it to use as a boarding house. She sold it in 1887 to Fay Lawrence who used it until 1904 when the Strelitz brothers purchased it. In 1907 they erected a two-storey office building for the Vacuum Oil Co. In the same year they bought other lots to expand their warehouse premises, which extended through to Henry Street. Food manufacturers Patterson & Co. bought the Vacuum Oil Co. in 1916 and sold the property to Elder Smith & Co. in 1950. Seppelts bought it in 1968 for storage of wine and spirits. (Hutchison)
Only the facade remains. The sign under the pediment says Commonwealth Offices Fremantle, but the signs near the doors indicate that it is now occupied by Notre Dame University's Campus Services and IT. After the Commonwealth Government department moved out, Notre Dame moved in, and it's now where their Campus Services and IT are housed, the former having moved from the Ajax Building, and the latter from the Bank of NSW.
References and Links
Hutchison, Fremantle Walks.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 30 March, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/vacuum.html (it was last updated on 14 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.