1911 King St Newtown Garage Sign Completely Vandalised

That valuable piece of our industrial history has now been finally destroyed. The 1911 garage sign with ads for early Australian icons such as Perdriau Tyres, Waratah Motor Spirit and Cars For Rent (in 1911!!!!) is now completely gone. If you don’t know what sign I’m talking about, here’s the link to the original story

This morning I was walking up King Street when I noticed one end of the chain mesh fence that closed off the vintage garage sign from King Street had been pushed aside

No fence is going to get in the way when there's paintin' work to be done!

“Hello,” I thought, “What surprise awaits me?”

A blank grey wall – with – wait for it – some tagger’s scribble. Already! The tagger even “copyrighted” their scribble with a “c” and the date! Got to laugh! Have a look….

Grey Wall - 1911 King St Newtown Garage Mural Destroyed

But the blank grey wall! All the historic 1911 sign is now gone. And here’s another laugh. The painters carefully painted around a metal strip! Derrrrr! The metal strip seems to have been put in to stabilise the top fascia on the adjoining fire-damaged shopfront

Careful! Paint over our history, but careful with the metal strip!?!

The vacant lot is up for sale. The sale sign went up a few days ago

For Sale Sign

Now I’m just reporting the facts as we can all plainly see them in the photos. I have no idea who, when, how, why, what? I will not speculate. I do not accuse

Here’s one last photo. After the last bit of graffiti went up that wiped out the bottom half of our history contained in the 1911 sign, someone leant a chipboard sign up against the vandalised wall. The sign read “Marsh. Dumb ass”. The grey painters have blotted out the name, Marsh

?

Fortunately, due to this blog, the sign has been measured and will be reproduced full size in the Motor Life Museum, Albion Park. Here’s the story. But could it have been the interest stirred up by this blog that lead person or persons unknown to destroy our valuable first hand history before the land was put up for sale? 101 years old and now out

1911 Garage Mural To Be Restored

Hello Fans of the 1911 Mural on King Street Newtown

Here’s some good news. I received it a week ago and just got permission to publish. I had been in touch with The Powerhouse Museum about this rare treasure in Australian commercial art. They passed my email and pictures on to more specialist museums…

“Greg

You may be surprised to hear from us, but the info re the c1911 mural at Newtown was referred to us by the Powerhouse Museum as an item of interest. We have been to the site, measured a few critical bits, and the committee has decided to reproduce the mural in a prominent spot here at The Australian Motorlife Museum!  Whilst the wall in question may not be destroyed by developers, it will almost certainly be covered by the erection of a replacement building on the burnt out site.  We have access to resources which will allow us to do so authentically, and will very soon be speaking with a couple of “tame” signwriters who can do the work.  All in all we trust you will see that this is about as good a result as can be managed in the circumstances.  (Some of our people thought I would be up at Newtown bringing the thing here brick by brick, but of course the people in the shop whose outer wall carries this signage may not like the breeze?

A search of the tenants of this site reveal the probability that the only relevant tenant was in 1911/12.

Regards

Wendy Muddell

Hon Curator

The Australian Motorlife Museum“

For those of you who aren’t up-to-date on what I’m talking about, here is the link to the original post on this blog about the 1911 mural, how I dated it, and a description of the motor products it advertises: Demolition Reveals 1911 Garage Wall Ad, King Street Newtown

And here’s a link to a later entry on this blog after the historic commercial artwork was vandalised with baby scribble. The comments tell the story of what readers, residents, art lovers and grafitti artists felt. (It was attacked a second time by some mushroom practicing their signature, too, but most of that’s been repaired by an unknown hand): Rare 1911 Newtown Art Work Defaced By Lame Tagger

Here’s some photos I took of the signage before it was pratted…

Hand-Painted Waratah Motor Spirit Sign From 1911

Perdriau Tyres Logo - The Oldest Extant?. Before it was painted over by Rod & Todd

Feel free to comment and to email and thank The Motor Life Museum