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Yard Property
Real estate agents
Fremantle Society mail:
8 May 2020: Yard Property - the yardstick for heritage
View from the top scaffolding of Yard Property’s new purchase from Main Roads – the long vacant East Fremantle Post Office at 101 Canning Highway, on a very busy junction. The real estate company intends to make the old post office their new headquarters by the end of 2020 after an extensive restoration project.
East Fremantle separated from Fremantle 123 years ago and has fiercely fought moves to be reintegrated with Fremantle ever since. After independence, it desired its own identity and a new post office, police station, and town hall. The first post office, in 1898, was in a ‘commodious’ room attached to Messrs Pearse and Samson’s concert hall on Canning Road run by Miss Adams.
When the Public Works Department informed the locals they were getting a new post office, the citizens were delighted, until it was revealed it would be a simple low one storey building akin to the ‘back blocks’ style of the police station built on the adjacent block next to the town hall.
The locals won the battle to get a proper civic building, and Mr Lake came down from Subiaco to build for £1472 the handsome two storey building seen here that is now being restored by Yard Property. The whole top floor was given over to a three storey house for the postmaster, with a handsome London style front door entrance at the front of the building. The post office opened in 1901.
Nathan Hewitt and Todd Grierson of Yard Property survey the view from their new asset, looking towards the forlorn Royal George Hotel, also an orphan of Main Roads, though one still neglected and unloved after so many decades. While Saracen bought the Royal George for next to nothing and demanded a 20 storey tower block on the site to pay for the restoration of the hotel, Yard Property asked for no density bonuses. They are doing the right thing by their building, for the right reasons.
Extensive repair and restoration works are under way and the original signage has been revealed after using the product Peelaway to remove many years of paint.
Yard Property deserve praise for taking on this major project in such a thorough and sensitive manner.
They say they are delighted the building is part of the East Fremantle Heritage Trail, and when completed, Yard will welcome trailers to ‘drop in for a scone.’ The only person not welcome will be Kodak, the graffiti pest who has damaged this building and many others from Kings Square to the river on numerous occasions.
John Dowson
President
The Fremantle Society
john.dowson@yahoo.com
93352113
References and Links
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 18 June, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/commerce/yard.html (it was last updated on 11 December, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.