Schotia Place is a heritage-listed former market and now community centre at 201 Bolsover Street, Rockhampton City, Rockhampton, Rockhampton Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Eaton & Bates and built in 1898. It is also known as former Rockhampton City Markets and Rockhampton Senior Citizens Centre. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
History Schotia Place is a brick retail market building designed by architects Eaton and Bates for the Rockhampton Municipal Council. The building, which features twin cupolas and a barrel-vaulted roof, was opened on 18 April 1899.
Rockhampton was established on the Fitzroy River on land originally part of Gracemere, a pastoral property operated by the Archer family. Proclamation as a town occurred on 25 October 1858. The first sale of allotments was conducted the following month. A six-man council was elected in 1861, subsequent to the formation of the Municipality of Rockhampton on 15 December 1860.
Rockhampton's citizens first petitioned their Council for the establishment of a market in 1870. Land bounded by East, Bolsover and William Streets was designated a Market Reserve the following year. As the Council then lacked the funds to erect a suitable building, sections were leased for a period of fifteen years. Conditions applied to the type of construction allowed. In this manner it was envisaged that suitable buildings would be erected, while a fund for further development accrued.
The idea of a market for the sale of perishable goods was linked to the medieval concept of a designated day for buying and selling goods that were local in range and narrow in provenance. As open space areas with a free movement of people they became the centre of the community's commercial and social life. In England this form of market gradually was superseded by regional markets, where wholesale as well as retail trading was conducted. As transport and communication improved, metropolitan markets then developed. They featured the regular, contracted consignment of produce and wares to metropolitan factors or merchants. The Industrial Revolution introduced changes in marketing which led to the decline of the traditional, open market place.
Markets which served a public function were usually administered by trusts or corporations linked to local government. Although a temporary private market was established in the Queen's Wharf area of Brisbane around 1851, the city's first market trust operated from premises in Eagle Street between 1867 and 1881. Due to the inadequacies of the site it was not a great success. A new Brisbane market, more wholesale in style than retail, was completed in upper Roma Street in December 1884 and operated there until August 1964 when new premises were opened at Rocklea.
Markets also were established in other Australian capital cities and regional towns. As early as 1803, Sydney residents could purchase their supplies at a Saturday produce market in the vicinity of Circular Quay. Grocers nearby soon began to offer market foodstuffs for sale every day. After 1841 a market commission was established in Melbourne and premises sought. In general these markets, and the shops which clustered around their perimeter, provided everyday necessities for ordinary people. Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market, featuring single-storey buildings and open sheds, was established in 1878. A rebuilt "Eastern" market, which included a large hall, opened in Melbourne soon after. The Argus of 23 December 1879 reported that this building "provided ample accommodation for the requirements of every class of trade usually conducted in a market of this character".
Some large cities in the USA referred to the places where farmers' produce could be sold as Eastern markets. The Eastern Market in Detroit commenced in the 1850s as an open-air site. Its first sheds were constructed in 1891. The usefulness of the Eastern Market in Washington DC centred on its open-plan brick building, erected . Until this latter market was rented out for the sale of other commodities, farmers sold their produce on stands inside the hall, spilling outside and on to the street.
From its proclamation as a Municipality in 1860, the Rockhampton district was well catered for by the commercial agents and merchants of Quay and East Streets. The larger mercantile companies were "universal providers". Their warehouses and shops stocked dry goods, wine and spirits and stock and station supplies including fencing and saddlery. The city's grocers, who in the 1890s numbered nearly forty, sold flour, teas and sugars in smaller quantities.
Twenty years after the initial request for a public market in Rockhampton, no proper structure had been built. In March 1891 the Rockhampton General Advertiser called for the expenditure of not less than £5,000 for markets which would suit the city's wholesale and retail requirements, noting in the same article the considerable amount of money which already had been collected through the lease of Market Reserve land. A new petition was presented to Council. Until matters were resolved, farmers sold their produce from a temporary facility, an old stable in Bolsover Street.
The firm of Eaton and Bates commenced design work for the new City Markets in 1896. This architectural partnership had set up practice in Rockhampton two years previously. George T Eaton and Albert E Bates, later with Arthur B Polin, established branch offices in six regional Queensland towns before moving their main office to Brisbane in 1902. Amongst their buildings in the Rockhampton area are the Lakes Creek Hotel and the Killowen residence.
At the request, and in the presence of the Governor of Queensland, Baron Lamington, Mayor Hugh Fiddes opened the new Rockhampton City Markets on 18 April 1899. That day the Governor observed that even Brisbane, then considered Rockhampton's key rival, did not possess a retail market.
Rockhampton's City Markets as a commercial venture did not survive much beyond two decades. Encroachment by other users was gradual. The Naval Brigade Office was located there in 1903, most likely in one of the offices facing Bolsover Street. Three years later stall-holders complained of the building being used by visiting entertainers during carnival week. An office for army recruiting opened in the front section of the building during the First World War. The City Markets also provided refuge for 200 people forced from their homes when early in 1918 the Fitzroy River rose a record , lapping the walls of city buildings and inundating the river flood plain.
The City Markets for local produce ceased around 1920. Their closure was in line with the general decline caused to public markets as retailing modernised and shoppers patronised the new department and cash and carry stores. The short trading life of this market in particular may also have been influenced by the city's pre-existing, well-established body of merchants, grocers and fruiterers, some with exclusive trade agreements with farmers.
In the mid-1920s the Electricity Supply Department of the Rockhampton City Council began a long occupation of what was then being referred to as the City Markets Building. Classes from the nearby Rockhampton School of Arts were conducted there in the following decade. By 1940 the red-brick offices and former market were referred to as the City Council Buildings. During the Second World War the covered open space proved useful to the US Army. After the war its occupation by government utilities continued. The building's survival as a rare example of a public market of the late 19th Century owes much to the adaptability of its internal space.
In the 1970s the Rockhampton City Council restored the former Rockhampton City Markets as a community centre for senior citizens. As a part of this substantial renovation, the new rear section of the building was added. An undated photograph from the University of Central Queensland's Capricornia Collection (MB126) reveals that in the past a fan-shaped pattern filled the curved gable on Bolsover Street and the barrel-vaulted roof covered a large area at the rear of the allotment. The large, barrel-vaulted roof was replicated during the renovation, while the pattern on the fan-shaped roof facade was possibly covered over. The Federal Minister for Health, Dr Doug Everingham, opened the community centre, renamed Schotia Place, on 15 November 1974.
In 2012, the building's facade was renovated at a cost of $140,000.
Description The Schotia Place allotment is bounded by Bolsover Street, and Market and East Lanes. The building consists of two main parts: a single-storey section addressing Bolsover Street that was built in 1898–99 and a large rear section built in 1974 that has single and double storey components. The front facade of the single-storey building sits opposite Rockhampton's Municipal Library and Theatre (formerly the Rockhampton School of Arts), and the Rockhampton Town Hall. The city's orthogonal grid is aligned to the Fitzroy River (which flows from the north-west to the south-east) and Bolsover Street is one of the main arteries. Schotia Place is on the southern edge of the central business district; the river is two blocks away to the north-east, and the central railway station three blocks to the south-east. The stretch of Bolsover Street in which Schotia Place is situated contains a high concentration of buildings of heritage significance. Apart from the two listed above, there are a further three that are included on Queensland's Heritage Register: the Rockhampton Technical College, St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, and the GS Curtis Stores. The Normanby Hotel is also located in this precinct of Bolsover Street, however it is only listed with the Australian Heritage Commission's Register of the National Estate.
Schotia Place, the front section of which was constructed using classical motifs, currently functions as a senior citizens' centre. The exterior walls to this section on Bolsover Street are built of reddish, sandstock bricks laid in English bond with white mortar, while the walls to the larger rear section are of dull coloured bricks laid in Stretcher bond. All are modelled to varying degrees with white cement render. The front facade to Bolsover Street is much more densely decorated than the remaining three. A large barrel vaulted roof, which reads on the front facade as a simple curved gable, acts visually as the building's spine. Three mechanical extract vents puncture its uppermost surface. Skillion roofs fall away from this structure to the three exterior parapet walls. All roofs are clad in corrugated Colorbond steel. Continuous lines of clerestory windows are positioned under each side of the vault, and at a matching level on the gable end facing East Lane and the north-east. The latter are louvred and their facade is also clad in corrugated Colorbond steel.