former Shop, Port Melbourne

I don't know when this former shop in Port Melbourne was built but it was almost certainly while John Le Clercq ran his hairdressing business here.

It certainly is a modist building. The bottom half of the wall is constructed from a thinner style of brick when compared to the rest of the building. The top half of the wall is renedered but there are stepped decorations on the corners using the same bricks as the lower part of the wall.

Above the verandah, the parapet is made from standard bricks with a line of angled bricks adding subtle decoration just below the roofline. The central section consists of a simple stepped column, rendered to stand out from the red bricks.

John Le Clercq opened as a hairdresser here in 1932 and it is possible that the shop was built at that time, although there was a building on this corner before that. He worked here through WWII at least into the 1950s.

The Sands and McDougall directory of 1955 shows that it was still a hairdressers run by C Goldfarb. In 1965 C Fotter ran it and in 1973, D Nikolic.

In more recent times it has been converted into a residence, like so many corner shops, but we can still appreciate the its simple beauty.