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Perth Girls High School
Islay Kelly:
Perth Girls School was first established in 1847 as the Perth Colonial Girls’ School. This school was originally run at the Court House, then a property in William Street, then a house in Hay Street. In 1854 a new building for the Perth Girls School was opened on Pier Street.
The school then moved to a location between James and Roe Streets, which is now covered by the Cultural Centre. From 1896 the older girls, aged seven to 14, moved to the new ‘Government School’ in what is now the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. When that building was no longer suitable for the school, a new building was erected in East Perth, which later became the Police Traffic Branch building when the school closed in 1962.
Perth Girls School was originally formed to give girls in the lower classes of society a basic education and provide them with basic life skills. Later, the school offered professional and commercial classes in addition to general and domestic classes. The school only offered classes up to Junior Certificate level, which was achieved at the age of 15. The school was closed in 1962 due to declining enrolments.
The Perth Girls School buildng on Wellington and Plain Streets Perth was designed by A.E. Clare and the PWD in 1936, and received the RIBA Bronze medal in 1939. It is currently the police traffic building. It is monumental in scale, bold in form and commanding in its siting. It is in stripped classical/art deco style with a central entrance block and two wings that extend outwards, with a lesser block at each end.
References and Links
Kelly, Islay 2001, 'Perth Girls School, 1847-1962: A New Heritage?', Early Days, vol. 12, part 1.
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 28 January, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/schools/perthgirls.html (it was last updated on 30 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.