Detail of the Former Commercial Bank – High Street, Yea

            Built along Yea’s main thoroughfare of High Street, the former Commercial Bank Building was built in 1901.  Built of red brick with “blood and bandage” banding and white detailing, it stands out prominently along the streetscape.  

The former Commercial Bank building is a notable example of Federation Free Style architecture, a style which grew from William Morris’ Arts and Crafts Movement.  In Britain, civic architects struggled with applying the handmade, modest principles of the Arts and Crafts movement when it came to design of much larger commercial and institutional buildings which were not in urban settings.  As these architects did dot stick specifically to dogmas established by William Morris, but their buildings were in the spirit of the style, their work was dubbed “Free Style”.  Free Style designers often used asymmetrical planning, combined two or more traditional walling materials such as brick, stone and roughcast for visual contrast, created piers projecting above parapets, and touches of Art Nouveau were often introduced, especially in the lettering applied to the facades of the buildings they created.  All these elements appear in the former Commercial Bank building.  It features arched windows with variegated voussoirs, Art Nouveau lettering in the cartouche that features the bank’s initials, a parapeted gable with a non-pointed apex and piers projecting above the parapet.     

Although the Commercial Bank no longer exists and the bank’s doors have long since closed on its last customer, the former Commercial Bank building has a new lease on life as an art gallery for local Yea artists, who exhibit work for sale in the new open space that was once where tellers stood to serve customers.

Yea is a small country town located 109 kilometres (68 miles) north-east of Melbourne in rural Victoria.  The first settlers in the district were overlanders from New South Wales, who arrived in 1837. By 1839, settlements and farms dotted the area along the Goulburn River.   The town was surveyed and laid out in 1855 and named after Colonel Lacy Walter Yea (1808 – 1855); a British Army colonel killed that year in the Crimean War. Town lots went on sale at Kilmore the following year. Settlement followed and the Post Office opened on 15 January 1858. The town site was initially known to pioneer settlers as the Muddy Creek settlement for the Yea River, called Muddy Creek until 1878. When gold was discovered in the area in 1859 a number of smaller mining settlements came into existence, including Molesworth. Yea expanded into a township under the influx of hopeful prospectors, with the addition of several housing areas, an Anglican church (erected in 1869) and a population of 250 when it formally became a shire in 1873. Yea was promoted as something of a tourist centre in the 1890s with trout being released into King Parrot Creek to attract recreational anglers. A post office was built in 1890, followed by a grandstand and a butter factory (now cheese factory) in 1891. There was a proposal in 1908 to submerge the town under the Trawool Water Scheme but it never went ahead.  Today Yea is a popular stopping point for tourists on their way from Melbourne to the Victorian snow fields and Lake Eildon, and is very popular with cyclists who traverse the old railway line, which has since been converted into a cycling trail.

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

Taken on: March 31, 2013

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Commercial Bank

Commercial Bank of Australasia

commercial building

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1901

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Federation Free Style

Federation Free Style architecture

Federation Free Style building

Free Style

Free style architecture

Free Style building

Art Nouveau

Nouveau

Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts & Crafts

Arts & Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts building

Arts & Crafts building

Edwardian

Edwardiana

Yea

Victoria

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country Victoria

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north east Victoria

High St

High Street

building

architecture

architecturally designed

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symmetrical

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Sets appears in: • Edwardiana • Yea the Butter Town more » • The Former Commercial Bank « less

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Camera: Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS, f/4.9, 1/640 sec, 18.6mm, ISO 80 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS
Aperture:	f/4.9
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Focal Length:	18.6mm
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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