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To cope with the delay, Arnold Street once again resorted to dispersed education. In October 1959, Headmaster Bill Johnston requested permission to investigate leasing suitable available premises in the neighbourhood. These included church halls, the Carlton Cricket Ground Pavilion, and the Exhibition Bui1dingBuilding.19 By 1963, his students A occupied five different locations. Arnold Street catered for the majority of the students. Classes were conducted in the old building, in portables in the schoolyard and in 51 Arnold Street, the old house in the south-east corner of the yard, where the tenant had been ousted to make way for small senior classes. Senior classes were also taken in the school’s she1tershelter-shed, hallways of the main building and the staff room‘. The school also reoccupied C Block, a dilapidated shoe factory on the junction of the lanes behind Arnold and Richardson Streets, previously used as the Sloyd and Cookery centre.
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Form 1L was housed in that old standby, St Michael’s Hall, leased for £700 per annum. Eight classrooms were leased for £40 per week from Peretz, the Jewish school in Drummond Street, to accommodate 200 form 3 students. In 1962, Pigdon Street returned the hospitality of 1959-60, and accepted two portables on its grounds.20 To appease grumbling teachers, the Schoo1’s School’s 30 Advisory Council agreed to reimburse staff members 9d. per mile petrol money for using their cars to travel between annexes. The Education Department refused to contribute. When news came in 1960 that a new building would be provided, members of the newly formed Advisory Council began to dream of a ‘Canberra’ model school with a gymnasium, assembly hall and other coveted facilities. No such dreams materialised. Not only were the assembly hall and gymnasium refused, but there was no sign of work commencing on the building. On 15 November 1960, a delegation called on Sir John Bloomfield, the Minister of Education, to press the urgency for a new building. The delegation Headmaster Johnston and John Polglaze, the chairman of the Advisory Council - received no satisfaction. The Minister would not commit himself to a date for the calling of tenders, and the Department would not even accept the Advisory Council’s offer of £5000 over ten years to pay for an assembly hall and canteen on a £1 for £1 basis.21 The Minister did, however, agree to buy land. One plan mooted was to buy houses in Garton Street behind the school to provide a corridor for students to Princes Park. By March 1962, tenders had still not been called. The building originally planned for completion by early 1962, was now unlikely to be occupied before the beginning of 1964.22
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The fire confirmed the fears expressed in a timely article published in the Herald the previous Friday and signed by thirty-six teachers at Princes Hill.34 The article pointed out that the building was ideal for a bonfire, with its tinder-dry wooden floorsfloors, its makeshift partitions, its old and defective wiring, its ceiling spaces full of flammable wood and a century of accumulated dust; it only needed the spark. The narrow, maze-like passageways filled filled with lockers and whatnot, the dead-end staircase that did not lead to any external doors but finished finished in the middle of the building, and the lack of external fire-escapes, would make the building a certain death-trap if a fire erupted during school hours. It would be impossible for 500 panicking students to make their escape without serious casualties.
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The need for speed and cost determined the physical character of the building. Off-form, flat slab, unpainted concrete walls were chosen to create a ‘non-school’ atmosphere. Bold tangerine reds, magenta, greens, sunflower sunflower yellows and royal blues, ‘to inspire the imagination of students’, strike the eye. Tinted windows offset the harsh morning sun, and spacious planted courtyards provide refuge.45
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These delays pushed the timetable back to June 1971.54 Thirdly, in July 1971 the Education Department admitted that expenses totalling $19 million were being carried over from the previous financial year.55 Consequently, tenders for Princes Hill could not be called until October 1971.55 Lastly, the Princes Hill project was a new experience for the Public Works Department. For the first time, a school contract was outside its direct architectural control. The Public Works Department was obliged to collaborate with Jackson and Walker: to confirmconfirm, assess and approve designs, and to cost estimations. Furthermore, the designs proffered by the architects were totally foreign to Public Works’ traditional philosophy of school architecture. Meandering buildings, open inter-connecting spaces, courtyards, bold colours juxtaposed on raw grey were anathema to the compartmentalised, cell-like, standard-sized classrooms leading off long corridors that characterised Public Works’ schools. As a result, the plans were received antagonistically, leading to unnecessary delays. There were consultations back and forth, lulls and dead periods while committees chopped and changed, deliberated on submissions and reassessed the plans, until the shock of innovation was absorbed and consensus was reached.57 As an indication of the communication problems between the architects and the Public Works Department, the builders, Swanson Brothers, commenced working on the site on 19 January 1972 without the architects’ having been notified!58
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Today, the new building is showing its age. Roofs leak, walls are covered with graffiti, tables and chairs are inclined to ‘wobble. But it was not like that in 1973.
A view of Princes Hill Secondary College, after the half-street closure
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