The development of the Princes Hill schools entered a new phase in 1958. In June of that year the Education Department announced that the Princes Hill schools would be reorganised: from 1 January 1959, Pigdon Street would become SS 2955 and Arnold Street would house High School 8245.¹

Although it had a long gestation, the Arnold Street school’s change of status is not surprising. Calls for a High School in the Princes Hill district were first heard in 1913-4, and were repeated in the 1940s. The arguments raised are familiar: the population of Princes Hill and North Carlton was growing, as was the demand for secondary education, with approximately 95 per cent of grade 6 continuing into secondary classes; Arnold Street’s proximity to the University of Melbourne made it ideal as a High School. In 1944, the Department had responded by elevating the Arnold Street school to the status of a Central School, allowing it to take students in the first two years of the high school course. But its conversion to a full high school had to wait on the major changes in Victorian secondary educational policy that occurred after the Second World War.²

The Victorian state secondary school system was inaugurated in 1905, with the opening of the Melbourne Continuation School, later to become Melbourne High. In the next four years, five more high schools were opened in 25 country centres. The Education Act of 1910 signalled a more systematic approach to state secondary education. After the Act was passed, Higher Elementary Schools, district High Schools, Preparatory Trade Classes, Trade Schools and Technical Schools immediately began to open and new curricula were developed. In 1912 alone, eight new high schools and seventeen higher elementary schools were opened.

The new system, however, was far from being comprehensive. Director-General Tate saw state post-primary schooling mainly as vocational preparation for agriculture and the trades; he was not prepared to countenance the establishment of a system of secondary schools that would compete with the private schools in the academic curriculum. This bias was compounded by pressure from country MPs and from the private schools, which feared that they would be eclipsed by ‘the wealth of the State’.³ As a result, all the high schools established in 1912, and a majority of those that followed in the next decade, were outside the metropolitan area.⁴ The Department’s preference for country high schools and its hopes to develop an agricultural curriculum persisted for many years, in spite of clear evidence that the agricultural curriculum was not a success and that enrolments in the country districts were waning.⁵ In 1929, only ten of Victoria’s 36 high schools and two of its 48 higher elementary schools were in the metropolitan area.⁶ Tight budgetary restrictions in the 1930s and during the war made it impossible to redress the imbalance: only one new high school was opened in the 1930s and another during the war though, significantly, both were in suburban areas.

The Department was caught completely unprepared for the massive increases in enrolments after the Second World War. The combined effects of the post war baby boom, immigration and growing student retention rates sent school enrolments soaring. Primary school enrolments increased from 185,798 in 1950 to 290,027 in 1959; in the same period, high school figures had jumped from 37,019 to 82,004 an increase of 130 per cent.⁷ The increase in the secondary sector placed immense pressure on the Education Department to accommodate these children. High schools were being opened everywhere: the Department set a record in 1958 and 1959, opening sixteen new high schools each year. But the Department was facing a losing battle, especially in the outer metropolitan suburbs, where new housing developments were burgeoning.⁸

By 1958-9 there was an urgent need for secondary schools in inner suburbs such as Fitzroy and Carlton. After a period of depopulation, ‘slum’ demolition and general socio-economic decline before the Second World War,⁹ these inner suburbs were now experiencing a new growth. Fresh waves of migration to Carlton, North Carlton and Princes Hill were again increasing pressure on Carlton’s schools.

Arnold Street’s elevation in 1944 from Elementary to Central School formalised the ‘high school’ curriculum that had been introduced in 1915 and added to the pressure for a secondary school in the inner northern region. Although Princes Hill had been designated as a natural ‘feeder’ for University High School, the latter school’s wide appeal and very restrictive selection limited the number of local students it could accept. And there were not many alternatives nearby: Coburg, founded in 1916, Northcote Boys’, founded in 1926, and Brunswick Girls’, founded in 1924, were all a considerable distance away. Nearby technical schools included Brunswick Boys’, founded in 1911, Collingwood, founded in 1911, and Emily McPherson, founded in 1906. In 1953, Moreland High was opened; in 1958, Fitzroy was elevated from Higher Elementary to High School status; Princes Hill followed in 1959, and Brunswick in 1964.¹⁰

The decision to separate Princes Hill Primary and High schools was accompanied by an undertaking by the Education Department to provide a new building at Pigdon Street as a matter of the highest priority. Nevertheless, in December 1958, the school’s representatives were informed that tenders were unlikely to be called before July 1959, and no firm date could be given. In November 1959, the undertaking was extended to July 1960. Meanwhile, the senior primary grades had to stay on at Arnold Street; even the two headmasters were forced to share an office. The new building at Pigdon Street was finally opened on 16 November 1960.

Positioned to the north of the 1924 building on an east west axis, the building cost £33,643. It was constructed according to a 1953 Public Works Department innovation known as Light Timber Construction, with timber stud walls clad with concrete tiles two inches thick. The building was simply designed: it is divided by a long central corridor with classrooms on each side.¹¹ The offices and staff room are positioned in the centre of the building. The eight standardised classrooms, each twenty-four feet square, give little scope for layout variations, and initially the building had no specialist or small-group rooms. Integration classes are held in the staff room. Ample windows along the north and south walls of classrooms provide natural light, but they limit wall space for work displays. Specialist rooms followed much later, thanks largely to parents’ initiatives. An Arts and Craft Centre was built in 1972, after parents raised $7000 to supplement an Education Department grant of $6000. The next year, money was collected to create the Adventure Playground. A decade of working and waiting for a library at the primary school was finally rewarded in May 1980.

On 24 July 1964, the concrete cast of the school’s name and number, until then fixed to the front of the Arnold Street building, was shifted by the Public Works to its new home. This had been first requested on 18 April 1962.¹²

Meanwhile, accommodation was already running short at Arnold Street. When the Education Department declared Princes Hill a High School, it anticipated net enrolments of ' 500 pupils.¹³ Reality proved to be quite different. In 1958, enrolments in the Central School numbered 400. In 1959, 494 students enrolled: 212 in form 1, 183 in form 2 and 99 in form 3. Of these, 236 were new pupils. The numbers increased each succeeding year, as the school developed its programme to cater for older students. There were 560 students in 1960, 689 in 1962, 748 in 1963. In 1964, the first year that form 6 was offered, 833 passed through the school’s doors. In five years, the school’s numbers had increased by more than half.¹⁴

The influx arose partly from the increase in the primary school intake and partly from Australia’s expanded immigration policy after the Second World War. Pigdon Street, Lee Street, Rathdowne Street and South Brunswick were primary contributors. Others regularly feeding Princes Hill High School included King Street and Errol Street, North Melbourne, and North and Central Brunswick.¹⁵ Children of immigrants were another source. There had already been large numbers of Central European Jewish children attending Princes Hill during the 1930s and 1940s, and Italians and Greeks, Russians, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians, Yugoslavs, Cypriots and Australian-born shared the classrooms of the 1950s and 1960s.¹⁶

Another factor in the increase during the 1960s was the construction of high-density Housing Commission estates in North Carlton and North Melbourne. In 1962, D. Lovegrove MLA estimated that these estates would add 791 primary and 238 secondary children to Carlton’s schools. The majority of children of secondary age were expected to attend Princes Hill.¹⁷

Overwhelmed by these odds, the Department capitulated in 1960 and agreed to provide a new building. It was finally occupied in February 1964. Despite all efforts, the Education Department could not keep up with the demand for secondary places and classrooms, which was running 60 per cent ahead of its 1950 estimates. By now, more schools were being opened than were being built. The Department’s only recourse was temporary quarters wherever they could be found: in portable classrooms, in leased halls, in buildings already occupied by another school, in staff rooms, in shelter-sheds and in specialised classrooms.¹⁸

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 Building.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 shelter-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.

'Dispersed education’: the various locations of Princes Hill High School in the early 1960s

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 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

The initial plan was to construct a two-storey building on the corner of Arnold and Richardson Streets²³ That was replaced with a building positioned on a north-south axis along the rear boundary of the school property. According to popular myth, the building, erected at a budget of £140,000, had been intended for Kew High School. The desperate situation at Princes Hill, however, forced the Department to adapt the plan to that site. The rear boundary was the only available space that would accommodate the long, rectangular building.²⁴

This building was one of the first in the latest Education Department/ Public Works Department developmental plans for inner suburban schools. The Light Timber Construction plan, which required ample space to lay out a school complex (as for example at Newlands High School, which was built in 1971), had to be adjusted to fit the smaller inner-suburban sites. The Light Timber Construction plan the long corridor with basic-sized rooms leading off remained the nucleus of the design, but now buildings were multi-levelled rather than spread out on ground level. The buildings also appeared far more solid and permanent than the earlier versions. Other examples built about this time include Kew, Prahran, Caulfield and Chadstone High Schools.²⁵

The three-storey building offered two fully equipped science rooms, two art rooms, a domestic science block, a manual training class for woodwork and mechanical drawing, four general classrooms, a staff room, book storeroom and general office. A single-storey link connecting the two buildings at the north end of the site housed the offices of the Principal and Senior Mistress. On Saturday, 6 June 1964, the Minister for Education, The Honourable Sir John Bloomfield, declared the new wing open. Dignitaries present included the Director of Education, Mr A. McDonell, Lord Mayor Curtis and school officials. The Mothers’ Club of Princes Hill High School made the afternoon tea.

One-One-One

On the fateful Sunday morning of 8 February 1970, the old Arnold Street building was set alight.²⁶ The fire began about 2 a.m. Debra Hilton, who was sitting in a car outside her parents’ house, a stone’s throw from the school, was the first to raise the alarm. Awakened by his sister, Chris Hilton telephoned Alleyne Sier with the news that his school was on fire. According to Chris Hilton, Sier’s reply was, ‘Right-o; I’ll get my keys and be right over’.²⁷ At first, the Arson Squad attributed the fire to an accidental shorting-out of power wires in the roof.²⁸ A spate of school fires during that year, however, aroused suspicions that an arsonist had been at work.²⁹ The destruction was complete. The top floor, consisting of six classrooms, was entirely destroyed, and the ground-floor classrooms were extensively damaged by smoke and water. The building was rendered useless; it had to be razed to the ground. The fire was the climax of a long debate between the school’s representatives and the Education Department about the fate of the old building. Moves to replace the building had begun even before the 1964 building was completed.

Princes Hill High School ruined by fire, 1970. Photograph courtesy of the Age, 9/2/I970.

The Advisory Council backed‘ Headmasters Archibald Gibson and Alleyne Sier, who argued that the new building would not accommodate the 800-plus school body. Furthermore, the old building was showing its age: demolition was the only answer. To this end, in 1965 the school asked the private architects MacKay and Potter to provide preliminary sketches for a new building.³⁰ Meanwhile, despite a Departmental commitment in March 1963 to alleviate the chronic shortage of space in the school yard by purchasing surrounding properties, the Department announced that it could not provide a new building, buy land, or even remodel the old building until 1973.³¹ A stalemate ensued. The desultory discussions and correspondence continued into 1969.³² A glimmer of hope appeared in September of that year, when the Public Works Department concluded that the old building was beyond being remodelled. Public Works, however, could not say when a new building might be provided.³³

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 floors, 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 with lockers and whatnot, the dead-end staircase that did not lead to any external doors but 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.

This was not the first occasion that concern had been expressed about the danger posed by the school’s design and condition. In 1959, in his report to the Examiners, Headmaster Johnston specifically emphasised the lack of fire escapes. At a meeting of the Advisory Council in March 1969, John Thurgood, the teachers’ spokesman, repeated the warning about possible dangers.³⁵ A report presented in April 1969 by the Chief Fire Officer of the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade confirmed the teachers’ concerns.³⁶

The lack of official concern about this issue is made bitterly clear in the correspondence of Mr Tripovich, MLC for Doutta Galla, who had been asked to intervene on the school’s behalf. On 13 August 1969, Tripovich wrote to Sier explaining that the delays on the fire escapes had been caused by three factors: the Building Branch was having trouble ‘tracing the architect concerned’ for that project; consultations with other inner-suburban schools with a similar problem had slowed down progress; concerned about the cost, the Education Department was intent on finding a way of installing a cheap but efficient fire escape. Two weeks later, John Rossiter, the Acting Minister of Education, explained that the officer responsible for the building programme in the Secondary Division had been changed. The new officer had placed the file in the ‘buildings to be remodelled basket’. In any case, Rossiter continued, (perhaps in atonement) the Department would provide Princes Hill with a new building. It would be placed along the south and east boundaries which was where the 1964 building was originally intended to be and the old structure would be demolished. Although he did not specify when this would happen, he did add that Princes Hill had been ascribed the highest priority.³⁷

Promises without time schedules, however, are of little value. Pressed beyond endurance, in May 1969, the Advisory Council contemplated the unthinkable. Besides going public with its tale the open letter of February 1970 had been intended for publication the previous October the school’s guardians seriously considered advising parents to take their children out of the school.³⁸

The fire threw Princes Hill High School into unprecedented disarray. Normal overcrowding problems paled into insignificance. The fourteen burnt-out rooms (staff room, six classrooms equipped for science, art and other special subject equipment, and normal classrooms) had accommodated half of the school’s population. As well, the old shoe factory (three classrooms) had been condemned as a grave fire risk by the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade, and had to be abandoned.³⁹ The school’s administration resorted to emergency measures. Shifts were rostered: half the school attended classes between 7 a.m. and 12 p.m. and the remainder between and 12 and 5 p.m. Then began a desperate search for alternative spaces. Peretz could take some of the 460 students, but not all. The only solution was portables; but where to put them?

If proof were ever needed that vested interests whether private or public tend to supplant all wider considerations, it was provided by the next phase of the school’s history. There were several possible locations for the fourteen portables required by Princes Hill: Princes Park, the then vacant land on the junction of Neill, Palmerston and Rathdowne Streets, Princes Hill Primary School and the vacant railway land at Park Street. T

he school laid out the options in an application for permission from the Melbourne City Council to use Princes Park. Princes Hill Primary School was out of the question. Although the site was huge, it was already heavily overpopulated. The space was more than filled by the Primary School, the Kindergarten, the Baby Health Centre and four portables housing an overflow of students from Lee Street who were bussed daily to Pigdon Street. To add the High School students to the site - totalling more than 1100 students would render the situation critical and pose dangerous health hazards. The range of age groups occupying the space, from ‘tiny’ kindergarten toddlers to form 6 ‘giants’ would be too great for comfort, inflicting possibilities of conflict and injury. Staggering recess and lunch breaks to keep the junior and senior scholars apart would disturb classes in session by an inordinate number of bells, playground noises and the like.

Neill Street was considered inappropriate for pedagogical and administrative reasons. First, the site had already been earmarked for an urgently needed primary school, mooted for 1971, to accommodate children living in the Housing Commission flats. It could not be delayed: Lee Street, the nearest school, was filled beyond capacity. Secondly, the distance would cause insuperable staffing and organisational problems, to the point where a second administrative unit would be required at Neill Street. Thirdly, placing half the student body at Neill Street would deny those students the use of science, drama, woodwork and home economics facilities at the High School; it would hamper the progress of new courses being developed in migrant education and general studies; it would sever the unity built by continuous communication between all members of the school, staff and students, and would make it impossible for the senior students to provide leadership to the junior school. Valuable time, energy and patience would be lost by staff shuttling back and forth. In essence, a move to Neill Street would be the death of Princes Hill High School.

The railway land, some 500 metres from Arnold Street, was a tricky proposition. The site had been vacant for several years, and for some time the school had been trying to acquire it. At the time of the fire, it had been leased by the Railway Department to a private developer who intended to erect a warehouse to store Kleenex tissues. According to the Department, to break its contract would cost too much in compensation. Consequently, by a process of elimination, the only space available was Princes Park.

The strongest argument for the use of Princes Park to site the fourteen portables was its proximity to the school. Time would not be lost by staff and students moving back and forth between the dispersed seats of learning. The school would be able to function properly, with regular assemblies, staff meetings and subject conferences. The school would be able to keep up the extra-curricular activities that were essential to the life of any school, the personal 36 development of students, and school morale - the Students’ Representative Council, school newspaper and drama group.⁴⁰

Persuading the Melbourne City Council was one thing; persuading the local residents was another. A powerful lobby group arose. The proposal to populate the park with portables had aroused deep acrimony in the community. The lobby group had formed and become battle-hardened in the campaigns against the State Government’s plans to reshape the ‘slum face’ of Carlton in the late 1960s and early 1970s with freeways and high-rise Housing Commission flats. The group mounted a campaign on two fronts against the Government and the Education Department. A Princes Park Preservation Association was formed to oppose the depositing of the portables in the park. Besides voicing the traditional political slogans, denouncing the government for land-grabbing and abuse of power, the Association accused the Education Department of using parental and staff pressure to fight opposition to the portables in the park and press the Department of Lands into changing the by-laws to permit the park to be used for educational rather than recreational purposes. When the portables arrived in May 1970, blockades were erected to stop the trucks entering the park grounds. All the hallmarks of a good protest followed: a two-day standstill; police presence; full media coverage.

On a different tack, attention was turned on the Railway Department’s commercial use of the railway land. Bolstered by a ban placed on the site by the Builders Labourers’ Federation, the Association demanded that the space should be used for community rather than commercial purposes.

The lobby group was successful on both counts. The railway land was turned over to Princes Hill High for portables, and the approval to use the park was made subject to a guarantee that the portables would be removed within two years and the park fully repaired. This arrangement almost came unstuck in 1973, when progress on the new building fell behind schedule. After threatening to evict the portables, the City Council bowed to public pressure and agreed to extend the lease for another year. Forms 1 and 2 were deposited at Princes Park; Forms 3 and 4 on the railway land; Forms 5 and 6 at the school and at Peretz.⁴¹

Confronted with a problem of unforeseen magnitude, 37 and hounded by parents, teachers and Carlton residents, the Education Department approved a new school immediately. On 5 March 1970, Mr D. Thomson, Chairman of the Advisory Council, thanked the Minister, Lindsay Thompson, for approving the new building. At last the school would have a canteen, library and gymnasium.⁴²

It can be confidently asserted that Princes Hill’s new building bore no relation whatsoever to what the Education Department officials or the representatives of Princes Hill High School would have expected. The new building erected was designed by architects Daryl Jackson and Evan Walker. It gained Jackson and Walker the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ Victoria Architecture Medal for 'the outstanding building’ of 1973.

This was the first time that the Education Department had commissioned private architects to build a school rather than relying on the Public Works Department, which had been designing schools for the Education Department since 1885. With the state’s education programme expanding rapidly during the 1960s and early 1970s, the Public Works Department had fallen behind schedule. Such was the backlog that it seemed Princes Hill would have to wait two years for a new building. Under intense community pressure for immediate action, the Minister was left with little alternative. By-passing the Public Works Department, he appointed Jackson and Walker, who had already developed a reputation for expertise in school design. It was political urgency, rather than questions of style or aesthetic considerations, that led to the use of outside consultants.

The architects were assigned a challenging brief. Time, space and funding were at a premium. The urgency of the situation required that the building, which would integrate with the existing building and house 1000 persons, be erected as quickly as possible. In March 1970, the Minister was thinking in terms of eight months’ planning and fifteen months’ building. The site was only four-fifths of an acre, much of which was occupied by the other building, the little that remained of the school yard, and the temporary portables and terrapin. The architects were allotted a budget of $1 million.

While the architects conceived the basic concept, the resultant school was the fruit of consultations between the architects, the school staff, the Education Department, the Public Works Department and the local community. According to George Casasayas, Jackson and Walker’s project architect, the school at the time was blessed with staff members who sympathised with the architects’ philosophy and were prepared to experiment with new design ideas.⁴³

Seeking to break away from the traditional Light Construction-type design, the architects created a building that evoked ‘openness’, emphasised student comfort and was accessible to a number of users. The final plan revolved around two interrelating factors. First, the school was designed for maximum movement with minimum internal travel; secondly, faculties in preference to individual subjects were placed around two main cores. Vertical movement within the school was channelled along a central stairway, with two external stairways at each end. The main horizontal thoroughfare was on the second level, rather than the ground or top levels. The two cores around which the school was designed were the theatre and library. Each faculty was placed in more or less proximity to these facilities, depending on their pattern of use. The English and language faculties, which would use the library and theatre regularly, were placed nearest the library on the second level and close to the theatre on the ground floor or first level. Home Economics, an infrequent user of the library and an unlikely user of the theatre, was tucked away on the ground floor of the 1964 building.

The first level was deemed to be the social heart of the school. A funnel-like entrance leads into a wide foyer where students can mill and meet, with the administrative centre, canteen and theatre alongside. The theatre would be used for music, drama, general studies, English, film, dance and movement groups. Built with a flat floor and an overhead grid lighting system, the theatre is also a community resource, being used for examinations, exhibitions, social functions, theatre in the round, dance and so forth. The music tutorial rooms are in the old building, behind and around the theatre. The art faculty occupies the southern half of the ground floor. Designed to allow a mixing and flowing on of activities and students, rather than traditional separation of activities, the art faculty incorporated spaces for painting, pottery, metalwork, woodwork and photography, in an open, merging complex with adjacent courtyards. Today, the open spaces have been closed and activities isolated to particular subject rooms.

The debate that arose when the art department was placed on the ground floor illustrates the conceptual differences between the new design and the Education Department’s traditional planning, which arbitrarily married subject to classroom irrespective of the geographical position of that subject in the school, of the needs of the subject, or of the relationship between that and other subjects in the school. In 1964, the art rooms which require heavy materials, machinery, paper, and a buffer zone to isolate the creative hub from the remainder of the school - had been placed on the top floor. In 1970, Jack Ford, the Director of Education, opposed shifting the art department to the ground floor. He thought the art department was fine where it was.⁴⁴

The focal point of the second level was the library. This would be the heart of school activity, where students would congregate for study, general research, general reading, specific reference work and use of audio-visual carrels. Pedestrian circulation on the second and top levels was designed around the library. Floor-to-ceiling glazed walls allowed passers-by to look in. Ranked as the most frequent users, the faculties of history, English, languages, and mathematics were positioned around the library. The main staff room was placed on this level, and smaller faculty staff rooms were dispersed about the school near their respective faculties.

The third level had no core. The science faculty, with its five laboratories and greenhouse, and the geography, commerce and general studies faculties were situated on this level.

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 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

The finished school, with 7360 square metres of floor space, covered half of the 5978-square-metre site. It comprised thirty-five classrooms, staff rooms, offices, sick bay, storage spaces, assembly hall, canteen, gymnasium and half-size basketball courtyard. It could accommodate 1280 students, but the optimum was considered to be 1000 students. In contrast with South Melbourne High School, which was built about the same time at a cost of about $1500 to $1600 per student, Princes Hill cost $1000 per student.⁴⁶ The final cost for the school was $1,012,000.⁴⁷ Remembering the dire need for economy and speed, it is worth noting that the school was built below budget, and in the time allocated.

Limited funding was the biggest obstacle confronting the architects. The spate of school fires in 1970 (allegedly lit by the same arsonist) inflicted unexpected financial hardships on the Education Department, causing it to reconsider its initial generosity.⁴⁸ At Princes Hill, the Department’s cost consciousness threatened the plan to provide such ‘luxury’ facilities as a gymnasium, canteen and assembly hall.⁴⁹ The canteen, promised by the Minister the previous year, was assured.⁵⁰ The gymnasium/assembly hall could only be provided if the school contributed $25,000 to the cost, on a $3 to $1 subsidy. The money was raised, and the hall was included too.⁵¹

Another priority was time. In March 1970, the Minister noted that, allowing eight months to design and fifteen months to build, the new school would be ready for occupation in February 1972.⁵² Unfortunately, building projects are doomed to contradict expectations and the building took almost two years longer than anticipated to complete. The reasons for the delays are numerous.

First, although the Education Department approached Jackson and Walker in early 1970, their appointment was not officially confirmed until October, and then only after they had made complaints.⁵³ Secondly, the initial plans were subject to a number of changes, affecting both design and structure. An audio-visual department was added to the library; changes were made to the science rooms; the theatre and the art and craft rooms were redesigned to accommodate Department and teacher suggestions; the gymnasium and toilet block at the north end were deleted.

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 confirm, 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

The frustration of three years’ adversity dispersed temporary accommodation, wasted travelling time, absenteeism, health risks, insufficient furniture and equipment, long hours, low morale, resignations finally took its toll. On 18 July 1973, angry parents and teachers met with the Minister of Education, the architects, builders and representatives of the Public Works Department at the Church of All Nations to thrash out their grievances.⁵⁹ The pressure had the desired effect: within a fortnight, on 3 August 1973, the first students took up residence in the new building. It was officially opened by the Minister three months later, on 4 November 1973.⁶¹

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

Jim was in form 1 when the new school opened. With his friends, he watched the building grow and tried to imagine what it would look like when the construction workers departed. The building was like no other school that they had seen. When the new building was occupied, the students were conscripted to help move the furniture in. They took the opportunity to explore the unfamiliar maze of empty rooms. Everything smelt new. Even the ‘old’ building had ‘been tarted up with bold colours. Among themselves, the students agreed that this new building was ‘amazing’, ‘modern’, ‘swisho’. They were impressed by the library, with its spectacular design. They admired the consoles and other equipment in the science laboratories. The art, craft and photography facilities were beyond anything they could have imagined.

Jim and his friends took great pride in their new, modern school. But for Vera and Ron and Jane, students in the 1920s and ’30s, something seems to be missing. Their link with the past has gone. For all its idiosyncrasies, the old building that was cobbled together over three-quarters of a century embodied something of the students’ own history, and that of their suburb. It is now for Jim, his peers and subsequent generations to build a new history for Princes Hill.