The facade of the RS Exton and Co premises at 333 Ann Street.
Brisbane’s Shrine of Remembrance, dedicated on Armistice Day in 1930.
The Story Bridge, spanning Brisbane River, was built between 1935 and 1940.
The Masonic temple at Barcaldine was constructed in 1901.
My heritage place
All Saints Anglican Church at Tamrookum near Beaudesert is family-owned, built in 1915 as a memorial to Robert Martin Collins.
Media releases
State honours for Trades Hall
The Toowoomba Trades Hall in Russell Street has been heritage listed, ensuring its preservation for generations to come.
The Queensland Heritage Council (QHC) announced the decision to enter the building in the Queensland Heritage Register today in Toowoomba where the Council is holding its annual regional meeting.
QHC Chair David Eades said the building, built in 1934 for the Toowoomba Trades Hall Board, had been a central gathering place in the city for various unions and the wider labour movement since its opening.
“The Trades Hall demonstrates the growth of the labour movement and organisation of workers in Toowoomba during the twentieth century and illustrates the city’s longstanding historical role as the industrial centre of the Darling Downs,” Mr Eades said.
“The building has been a central gathering place for unions and the labour movement since its opening in 1934.”
Mr Eades said the Toowoomba Trades Hall was Queensland’s oldest surviving purpose-built trades hall, having sustained its original use since opening.
“Trades halls were established or built in large urban settlements throughout Queensland during the twentieth century, but since then many have been demolished and the few remaining put to other purposes,” he said.
The Toowoomba Trades Hall was built in 1934 by Kell and Rigby to the design of Toowoomba architect Matthew C Williamson, for the Toowoomba Trades Hall Board, a group associated with the Toowoomba Trades and Labour Council. MC Williamson was responsible for a number of other buildings in Toowoomba, as well as others in Dalby, Crows Nest, Miles and Oakey.
Mr Eades said the Toowoomba Trades Hall demonstrated the principal characteristics of a purpose-built trades hall and was important for its aesthetic significance.
“The building is highly intact on the outside, with its well-executed classical detailing giving it prominence in Russell Street, where many of Toowoomba’s other historical buildings remain lending this part of the city a distinctive visual character,” Mr Eades said.
“The use of classical architectural elements in the façades of institutional buildings, town halls, banks and commercial buildings was popular in the 1920s and 1930s and has made a noticeable contribution to Queensland’s built environment.
“While some changes have been made inside, the original arrangement of offices and meeting spaces, including a large hall on the upper level, and many finishes are intact.”
QHC member and Queensland Council of Unions nominee, Howard Guille, said Toowoomba, like other Queensland cities with significant industrial components to their economy, became a regional centre for union activity.
“At the time of building the Trades Hall, Toowoomba was a city of around 25,000. The main industries were the railways, Toowoomba Foundry, the Defiance Flour Mill, the Darling Downs Co-operative Bacon Factory, and the Darling Downs Co-operative Dairy,” Dr Guille said.
“Toowoomba was and is the heart of the Darling Downs rural industries. But it was and is a unionised town and a strong base for the labour movement.
“The Trades Hall has seen intense and difficult industrial situations with conflicts between unions and Labor governments including the railways strike of 1948 where delegates had to be smuggled into meetings that were banned under laws of the then Labor government.
“Yet Toowoomba Trades Hall also demonstrates the community contribution of unions and their members. It has been a place for dances, social events and a vast range of community meetings about peace, politics, literature and arts, and environmental issues.”
The Toowoomba Trades Hall was suggested by the Brisbane Labour History Association through the QHC’s Our Shared Heritage initiative (late 2009 to end March 2010). The application to enter the place in the Heritage Register was made by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM).
The Queensland Heritage Council is the state’s independent peak body and advisor on heritage matters and determines what places are entered in the Queensland Heritage Register.
Places that are entered in the Heritage Register are considered of importance to Queensland’s history and are protected under heritage legislation.
The next Queensland Heritage Council meeting will be held in Toowoomba tomorrow (Friday 29 October).
Did you know?
From the 1860s notable events connected to the labour movement were occurring in Toowoomba:
- In November 1865 about 200 navvies on the Main Range railway working ten hour days for 7s 6d went on strike and marched into Toowoomba, to agitate for eight shillings for an eight hour day.
- Early in 1866 Toowoomba’s carpenters celebrated the commencement of the ‘eight hour system’ for their trade.
- Although short-lived, it was at a meeting of 200 shearers in Toowoomba in March 1875 that the Queensland Shearers Union was formed, 12 years before another shearer’s union was established.
- During the shearers strike of 1891, ten prisoners convicted of rioting at Lorne Station (some local), were railed to Toowoomba for trial, enroute to Brisbane. A large group of union supporters assembled inside and outside the Court House, cheering on the prisoners. Troops were assembled and the local magistrate read the Riot Act, before the situation was defused by allowing large numbers of unionists to attend the trial.