The Melbourne Athenaeum Library will be closed for the holiday period from 4:00pm on Wednesday 18 December and will reopen at 10:00am on Tuesday 7 January.
No books will be due during this period but there will be a returns box available on the landing whenever the building is open. Ebooks will continue to be available during this period through OverDrive and the Libby app.
We wish all our members a very happy festive season.
Thomas Osborne purchased two allotments of land on behalf of the newly formed Mechanics' Institution in 1840, at an auction, for a low £142/10/- per allotment, the upset price being pre-arranged with the auctioneers.
The land fronted Collins Street and extended to Little Collins Street.
When knowledge of the transaction was revealed at a meeting of the Legislative Council in Sydney, the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Charles Gipps, regarded the transaction as similar to a 'celebrated land conspiracy case' to defraud the land fund. At the next meeting, on 2 September 1840, this serious matter was discussed resulting in Gipps (grudgingly?) approving the transaction. Click here to see the transcript from the Sydney Herald report.
Gipps considered doubling the upset price for future sales, to prevent a similar situation.
With the land secure, the new, yet still small, group of interested citizens of Melbourne set about raising money to erect a building. One of the allotments, half of the land, was sold at auction at a generous profit and, together with donations from groups such as the Debating Society and the Masonic Lodge, it funded a two-storey rendered brick building, which graced the town to the delight of its culturally-starved citizens.
