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https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/if-hill-of-content-bookshop-dies-a-piece-of-melbourne-dies-with-it-20240206-p5f2pt.html>
"Last week’s announcement that the Hill of Content bookshop building is set to
be auctioned next month is reason for both sadness and alarm. At best, the
Bourke Street building will be purchased by a sympathetic owner who wants the
store to remain, at worst, Melbourne will lose yet another bookshop.
When I wrote last year that bookshops are vital to our city’s culture, I had
more positive responses than anything else I’ve previously written. I didn’t
expect to be writing about the topic so soon again.
Hill of Content isn’t so much a store as it is an institution. It typifies a
kind of bibliographic Melbourne which is insistently waning. As the bookshop’s
owner and manager Diana Johnston noted following the sale announcement, it’s
not just the building itself that is heritage listed, but also many of its
iconic internal features including the staircase. Beyond the physical though,
over its 101-year-long history, the store has become, as Johnson says, “part of
the fabric of Melbourne city”.
When it first opened in 1922, founder A.H. Spencer understood the primacy of
location. Ensconced on the hill towards parliament, it is a highly desirable
site. While Hill of Content says it is hoping future owners may allow them to
stay, the reality of Melbourne’s redevelopment cannot be ignored, with Johnston
telling
The Age, “We own the name, so we can take it anywhere. The bookshop
has moved before, and survived, so there’s no reason, if necessary, it can’t do
it again.”
But the recent republication of the book
The Hill of Content, by Spencer,
contains reflections from contemporary writers and highlights how intrinsic the
link between the store and the space is."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
