All around the Town
One
hundred years ago the committee observed that three things were annual
events; the telegraph match with NSW, the handicap tournament and the
removal of the club to new quarters. No one could now plot with
certainty the moves since 1866. The sites of former homes are scattered
all over the city. Early street numbers are misleading. For the first 23
years of the club's life you must think of Bourke and Collins streets
as divided by Elizabeth St into East and West, each half with its own
set of numbers, beginning at the bottom of the hill. And so street
numbers are better avoided until east meets west in 1890 and the streets
are renumbered from Spring St all the way to Spencer St.
The club was born of a meeting on 4th August 1866 at the Mechanics'
Institute in Collins St, where the Athenaeum now stands. The first
clubroom was on the eastern hill, and we have seen in an earlier chapter
how the claims of Mr Nissen's cafe prevailed over those of his nearby
rival, the temple of Pomona. The latter establishment, named after the
Roman goddess of fruit, had vanished by 1875; perhaps it was too exotic a
growth to flourish in Bourke St. Nissen's lasted a good deal longer, as
did the waxworks that lay between the temple and Nissen's. The room
above Nissen's cafe, described by the Argus as commodious and in every
way adapted to the requirements of the club, was open at 4pm from Monday
to Friday and 2pm on Saturdays. As so the club began as it was almost
without exception to continue; in control of its premises and keeping
them open for play most days of the week. In June 1875 the club moved
from Nissen's to Oliver's cafe, taking the room that the Yorick club had
vacated. Miss Oliver's cafe was on the south side of Collins St, up
from Swanston St. The club may have had a room in the London tavern in
Elizabeth St for a few months in 1878. It was in difficulties at this
stage and its movements are hard to trace. A little alter we find Mrs
Goodall, described as the club caterer, being authorised to obtain
supplies of ale, porter and spirits for its members. By 1879 the
clubroom was in the building of Mr Ogg, the chemist and druggist, on the
north side of Collins St, east of Russell St. In 1882 the club crossed
to the other side of Collins St and took up residence in the City Club
hotel, a few doors up from Swanston St. A "handsome ground floor room"
was obtained in the Oriental hotel at the top of Collins St in July
1883, but a few weeks later yet another move brought the club back to
Nissen's cafe.
After the club purged itself of
whist in 1884 it met every Monday evening at the Victoria Coffee Palace,
and in 1885 it began meeting there on Saturday evenings also; at this
troubled stage of its life the club seems to have had no tenancy or
similar arrangement.
Players were distracted by
concerts at the Athenaeum, which stood next door to the coffee palace
in Collins St. And there were other disadvantages, all duly noted by
that unpopular expatriate G.H.D.Gossip, who had arrived from England not
long before. In his letter to Stenitz's International chess magazine
Gossip complained of the short playing hours and the sound of music. He
counted 58 steps on his climb to the clubroom. The annual handicap
tournament lasted nearly a year because players failing to appear did
not forfeit. But this was not all. "The club", Gossip continued,
"labours under serious disadvantages...the coffee palace where they play
being a temperance cafe, no wines or spirits can be had, and for those
players who have been accustomed for tears to their glass of wine or
whiskey, this is a fatal drawback." Things soon improved, for in June
1886 the club took a room in the Thistle cafe in Little Collins St, 5
doors down from Swanston St. It shared this room, and the rent of one
pound a week, with the Victoria chess club, Melbourne using it on
Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights and the Victorian players coming on
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This Cox and Box arrangement lasted
less than 3 years and members were told that the correspondence before
its termination "resulted in considerable friction, which your committee
ascribes wholly to the attitude assumed by the committee of the
Victoria chess club, and the terms of its communications". Melbourne
stayed on at the Thistle and its rival went to the Palace hotel. In May
1889 a correspondent ("Gambit" of Toorak) was given this advice by "En
passant", chess columnist of the Journal of the Bankers Institute of
Australasia.
"There are two clubs in Melbourne,
the Melbourne, just resuscitated, and the Victorian, which has led an
active and stirring life since its start 6 years ago. On sanitary
grounds alone you should join the latter. The Victoria chess club has
the larger members' roll. Its room is lit by electricity, and is open
day and night. The former club is over a pie palace, and meets but 3
evenings a week. I can give you an introduction to either secretary as
you will. Thistle cafe, Little Collins St is the address of the former
and Wilson's palace hotel, Bourke St, that of the latter. You may get a
game resembling chess at Parer's cafe, bit in our parlance it is known
as skittles. What with the disputes over dominoes, the noise of a
hundred feet constantly moving about upon a marble floor and it being a
rendezvous for the betting fraternity, who do not speak in hushed
voices, miracles will have to be worked before chess is much played
there."
The columnist's preference for the
Victoria chess club possibly had something to do with the fact that, as
F.W.Miscamble, he had been one of its founders. Grand as the room at
the palace may have been, it proved to be beyond the means of the
Victoria club, which was forced to move to the Globe hotel in 1890 and
went out of existence in 1891. Membership of the 2 clubs had always
overlapped and when the Victoria club disappeared some of its remaining
members transferred to Melbourne. But Miscamble always remained aloof.
In June 1890 Melbourne chess club moved to a room in the Vienna cafe at
270 Collins St, using it every night except Sunday at a weekly rent of
25 shillings. Invitations to the opening went out to other clubs and
"leading gentlemen preferably". In less than 18 months another move took
place, this time to a room at the palace hotel, the hours being 10am
till 11.30 pm. Here the club stayed until 1895. By September of that
players were perched in a large room high up in the Athenaeum at 188
Collins St. The Athenaeum was the successor to the Mechanic's Institute,
and so nearly 30 years after its foundation the club was back where it
started. The clubroom was open every weekday. The committee tried to
encourage afternoon play , but for some reason the number of stairs to
be climbed prevented this. The long climb made the committee seriously
consider amalgamating with the Stock Exchange club on condition that 2
rooms be set aside for chess. Mercifully the merger was averted. But in
1902 the club did take a 12 month lease of a room in the Stock Exchange
building at 376 Collins St, with the result that there was afternoon
play as well as evening play. When this lease ran out, the club took a
room on the first floor of 191 Collins St, opposite the Athenaeum, at
one pound a week. In about 1906 the club moved next door to 193 Collins
St; here the first recorded attempt was made to roster members willing
to each keep the club open for a few hours every week. The club seems in
1908 to have changed its room at 193 Collins St for one on the "second
floor back". In 1915 the committee asked the president to wait on the
landlord and ascertain on what terms lavatory accommodation, improved
ventilation and open street door could be provided. How members fared
without some of these facilities is a matter for speculation. A month
later a subscription list was opened to raise funds to install electric
light (eight bulbs) and a fan.
The club
returned to the Athenaeum in 1920, with an arrangement that every member
would join the institution. It was not until 1932 that the Athenaeum
agreed that only club members should have access to the clubroom. Until
1936 the chess room was open 7 days and nights a week; thereafter it was
closed on Sundays and public holidays. On 21st August 1937 the recently
decorated clubroom was re-opened by Sir Isaac Isaacs, former chief
justice of the high court of Australia and Governor-general from 1931 to
1936. In agreeing to becoming a patron of the club, Sir Isaac recalled
that he had taught R.L.Hodgson, who had won the Victorian championship
in 1901. In 1944 the Athenaeum gave the club notice to quit by June 30.
The club stayed on. A second notice arrived in 1947. Again the club
stayed on. In 1950 it was given notice to vacate by April 30. Again the
club stayed put; but all good things come to an end and on July 26 1950
the Athenaeum trustees took the case to the City Court. Dr Woinarski,
who at the age of 22 had narrowly been beaten by Crakanthorp in the 1926
Australian championship and who had forsaken chess for Latin and the
Law, was briefed for the club. Taking perforce the black pieces,
Woinarski played at the City Court a sound defensive game lasting 2 and a
half days, but the odds were too great and the club was ordered to get
out by January. Woinarski would take no fee and was made an honourary
life member at the next committee meeting. He was appointed to the
County Court in 1958.
At the Athenaeum the club
had been in what might be called a cramped position; by the time of the
court case membership was twice the immediate pre-war level. The court
proceedings brought newspaper publicity, which itself brought offers of
accommodation. From the athenaeum the club went to the basement of 109
Flinders Lane as tenant of the Victorian Spiritualists Union, where it
was open from Monday to Saturday between 1pmand 10.30 pm. In 1959 the
club moved to a room on the ground floor of 447-449 little Bourke St,
open from noon 7 days and nights a week. The sign had proved too much
for a Swiss migrant, who wrote to the Melbourne cheese club wanting a
job in a dairy produce factory. In 1961 the club moved to 23
Tattersall's Lane, between Little Bourke and Lonsdale streets. Two years
later the clubroom was transferred to the first floor of 16 Little
Latrobe St, where play continued 7 days a week, according to the
committee, generous donations made the new clubroom "the best furnished
and most decent premises ever". From there the club moved in November
1966 to the second floor of 483 Elizabeth St. The cycle began again; a
building alteration fund was opened and the premises refurbished.

For many years the Victorian Chess Association used the
club's premises for tournaments, matches and meetings, at first free of
charge and then for a daily or yearly fee, which was often the subject
of disagreement. As early as 1962 the club had talked of buying a
building. Nothing came of a 1972 proposal that the club form a company
to raise money for this. In 1975 and 1977 the clubrooms were extensively
renovated at the cost of some thousands of dollars and innumerable
hours of donated time. Some members were quite oblivious of the work,
and games continued despite the noise of drills, the drips of paint
brushes above the players' heads and the fine sawdust that filled the
air. Side by side with the improvement of the existing clubrooms came a
feeling that it was time to end the long march from one rented venue to
another, and in September 1977 the committee invested $500 as the
nucleus of a fund to buy a building. 5 years later the club took
possession of 110 Peel, North Melbourne, which it had bought for $77,500
using the building fund (which had somehow grown to $20,000), a seven
year bank loan of $30,000 and gifts and interest-free loans from
members. So Melbourne became the only chess club in Australia to own its
own clubrooms. The building was bought shortly before the club's lease
of its existing rooms expired. A proposal had been put forward that the
new lease should no longer be in the club's name and that the premises,
while continuing to be shared by the club and the VCA, should simply be
known as the VCA chess centre. The club saw in this suggestion a very
serious threat to its existence and searched anxiously for a building.
Having made the purchase, it offered the association a tenancy of the
ground floor of 110 Peel St, but the offer was refused. And so the
ground floor was let to another tenant. Conversion of the first floor to
the present comfortable clubrooms was largely the work on the
indefatigable Carl Nater, aided by other members too numerous to
mention.