Grace Bros.

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For Grace Brothers, the fictional department store portrayed in the BBC TV series, see Are You Being Served?
Grace Bros.
Type Department Store
Founded 1885 (re-branded 2004)
Headquarters Sydney, New South Wales
Industry Retail
Products Clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, homewares, electrical, furniture, general merchandise
Website http://www.myer.com.au/

Grace Bros was an Australian department store chain, founded in 1885. It was bought by Myer (later Coles Myer) in 1983. There were 25 stores across NSW and the ACT, until they were re-branded under the Myer name in 2004.

Contents

[edit] History

Grace Bros had a long and rich history of retailing in Sydney following its founding by the Grace brothers, Albert Edward and Joseph Neal Grace, in 1885.[1] The two brothers migrated from England in the 1880s and sold goods door-to-door. In 1885, they opened their first small shop in George St City and by 1906, they had opened a five-storey building at Broadway (now the site of the Broadway Shopping Centre). In 1931, Joseph Neal Grace died and Albert Grace became Managing Director of Grace Bros Ltd. Prior to his death in 1938, Albert Grace planned suburban expansion of the Grace Bros stores from the City, a move which is considered the reason Grace Bros survived when many of their contemporaries perished such as Anthony Hordern’s and Mark Foys. Isabel Grace died in 1970 at age of 86 years.

An interesting insight into employment at Grace Brothers in the early days is found in the case of Catherine Morrison whose reference gives her period of employment as December 1899 to October 2007. She was fourteen years old at the time she commenced employment and was paid two shillings and sixpence (twenty-five cents) per week. This was later doubled to five shillings per week. The working week was forty-eight hours and her job is described on the reference as "cashier and book-keeper".

[edit] Broadway

Sydney's major Grace Bros was located on Broadway. Through several different stores at varied locations in the city, the store first came to Bay St in 1904. Subsequent additions and property purchases over the years culminated in the existing buildings being completed in 1923. Grace Bros boasted a store with, among many features, "three and a half acres of furniture"![2] The Grace auditorium dominated the social life of Sydney with dances, fashion parades, children's events displays and pantomimes held within it. 1954 saw the Royal Visit of Queen Elizabeth II with the Broadway stores extensively decorated. However, the centre of Sydney shopping gradually moved from Broadway into the current CBD around Market and Pitt Sts, and Grace Bros vacated the Broadway store in 1992. The building was resurrected as a multi-million dollar retail and cinema complex in. Now Supermodel,Miranda Kerr, in the past has modelled for Grace Brothers teen clothing catalogues 1998.

[edit] The Grace Building

In 1926, the Grace Brothers, Albert Edward and Joseph Neal Grace, purchased a block of land on the corner of York, Clarence and King streets in Sydney, on which they would build the "Grace Building", the jewel in the crown of their retail empire. They believed the site was perfectly positioned for the building they planned would become "The Showpiece of the Company", with new public transport routes and the coming Sydney Harbour Bridge turning York and Clarence Streets in the major city thoroughfares. Company letterhead even showed the building as being "...on the Harbour Bridge Highway." Broadway had been affected by the shift of the city's commercial district toward Circular Quay and the changing public transport routes away from Sydney's South end, and so the Grace Building was to be the company's saviour. The Grace Building was officially opened by Lord Mayor, Alderman ES Marks on 3 July 1930.

York St never became the shopping thoroughfare the Grace Brothers had envisaged and, combined with the effects of the Depression, the building never lived up to expectations. By the onset of the Second World War Grace Bros. was experiencing difficulty in leasing office suites and only six firms occupied the entire building.[3] In 1943 the Grace Building was requisitioned under national security regulations by the Federal Government for use as headquarters by the Supreme Commander of allied forces in the south-west Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur.[4] In 1995, the Grace Building was purchased by Kuala Lumpur based Low Yat Group for adaptive reuse as a 382 room hotel, opening in 1997.

[edit] Suburban expansion

Grace Bros opened two small stores in suburban Sydney (in Parramatta and Bondi Junction) as early as in 1933; these stores were completely rebuilt and expanded in 1957 into the first department stores in Australia designed with the family car in mind.

In 1965, Australia's first major suburban shopping centre opened at Roselands at a then cost of $15 million. The centrepiece was a large Grace Bros department store. However, at 4.30pm on 13 June 1969, a huge fire broke out on the 4th floor of the Grace Bros section of Roselands. Fire brigades from all over Sydney attended the huge blaze which caused thousands of dollars worth of damage before it was brought under control. Suburban stores were subsequently opened at Hurstville, Miranda, Parramatta, Penrith, Bondi Junction, Burwood (closed, now David Jones), Blacktown, Castle Hill, Hornsby (opened 1980), Liverpool, Carlingford (closed, now a Target), Chatswood, Macquarie and Warringah. Regional stores were opened in Dubbo, Orange, Wollongong, Charlestown, Erina, and Wagga Wagga. Some of the stores that have closed include Top Ryde, Goulburn (closed 1995), Ulladulla, Nowra (closed 2003), Tamworth (closed 2003),[5] Bathurst (closed 2004), Cooma, Gordon, Maroubra Junction (became the Good Buy Clearance Centre in the 90s, closed in 2002 prior to the Maroubra Mall/Pacific Square redevelopment), Queanbeyan, Campbelltown, Bairnsdale and Mount Druitt(closed 2005).

[edit] Taken Over

In 1983, Grace Bros bought Myer NSW, and then in July Myer acquired Grace Bros Holdings Ltd. The Myer store on Market and Pitt Sts in Sydney became the main Grace Bros store. In 1985, the company became a division of the Coles-Myer corporation, and the Grace Bros stores effectively merged with the 35 Victorian based Myers stores. In February 2004 a marketing decision was made to rebrand all the stores as Myer stores.[6] This decision brought the name of the Myer chain into line around Australia. It is thought that this was the largest and fastest rebranding exercise in recent Australian retail history.

[edit] Grace Bros Removals

Grace Bros Removals was established by Albert Edward and Joseph Neal Grace in Sydney in 1911. It is known today as the Grace Removals Group.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes and References

  1. ^ Joseph Neal Grace Biography. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved on 25 August 2006.
  2. ^ Broadway Shopping Centre History. Broadway Shopping Centre. Retrieved on 25 August 2006.
  3. ^ tenants of the Grace Building.
  4. ^ Grace Building. State Library of NSW. Retrieved on 25 August 2006.
  5. ^ Tamworth and Nowra Grace Bros Store Closures. NSW Government Hansard. Retrieved on 25 August 2006.
  6. ^ Coles Myer ditches Grace Bros name. B&T magazine. Retrieved on 25 August 2006.