The Art Deco Facade of the Former Commercial Banking Company Building - South Gippsland Highway, Korumburra

            Located near the top end of the main shopping strip, the Commercial Banking Company’s former Korumburra bank branch is a tribute to 1930s architectural style and stands out sharply amid its Victorian and Edwardian neighbours with its clean lines and bold brown brick and white painted colour scheme. 

Like the Korumburra Masonic Hall around the corner, the Art Deco facade of the former bank branch, is extremely stripped back.  The only piece of ornamentation identifying it as a branch of the Commercial Banking Company is the cartouche above the central window of the building, in which appear the letters CBC intertwined in classical script.  Whilst the building now houses a firm of barristers and solicitors, when the building was occupied by its original owners there would not have been any more signage to advertise the business inside.  There were identically designed and decorated branches in towns across South Gippsland to give uniformity and help with the recognition of the bank’s brand.  There is still an existing example in Korumburra’s neighbouring town, Leongatha. 

The building is very Inter-War Stripped Classical in style because of the limited decoration, its symmetrical façade, the division of the frontage into vertical bays indicating classical origin, vestigial classical columns and the element of the Art Deco style in its decoration.  This Art Deco detailing is perhaps the building’s main attraction as it is very much in the “Egyptomania” or “Tutmania” style that gripped the world after the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922.  The columns have stylised papyrus capitals and the portico they hold up is decorated in the same patterns which is so evocative of the Jazz Age.  A similar design of papyrus flowers top each of the three windows appearing on the bank’s façade.  The bank also features Functionalist Moderne metal windows.  

The Commercial Banking Company began operations on 1 November 1834 as The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. In 1848 it was incorporated by an Act of the New South Wales Parliament. 1981 saw the bank amalgamate with the National Bank of Australasia Limited.

Korumburra is a medium-sized dairy and farming town in country Victoria, located on the South Gippsland Highway, 120 kilometres south-east of Melbourne.  Surrounded by rolling green hills, the town has a population of a little over 4,000 people.  Korumburra has built itself on coal mining (after the discovery of a coal seam in 1870), local forestry and dairy farming.  Whilst the coal seam has been used up, farming in the area still thrives and a great deal of dairy produce is created from the area.  The post office in the area opened on the 1st of September in 1884, and moved to the township on the railway survey line on the 1st of November 1889, the existing office being renamed Glentress.  The steam railway connecting it with Melbourne arrived in 1891.  Whilst the train line has long since operating commercially, it has found a new life as the popular tourist railway the South Gippsland Railway which operates a heritage railway service between the major country centre of Leongatha and the small market town of Nyora.

Taken in: Australia / Victoria / Korumburra (show map)

Taken on: January 8, 2013

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Sets appears in: • Art Deco • The Former Commercial Banking Company Building

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Camera: Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS, f/3.2, 1/500 sec, 8.3mm, ISO 80 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS
Aperture:	f/3.2
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	8.3mm
ISO:	80
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Auto, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
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