The Manly Emporium: The Corso's Grand Old Store and the Name Behind Lost Manly Emporium
Stand on Manly Wharf in 1913, look up The Corso, and the first big building you see is an emporium. A hundred years later, I started one of my own.
The photograph
It is about 1913. You have just stepped off the ferry and you are looking north-east along The Corso towards the ocean. The Norfolk Island pines are already tall. Two trams sit on the tracks, a horse and cart waits by the kerb, and three men in hats stroll up the middle of the road as if traffic were somebody else's problem. On the right, filling the corner of The Corso and East Esplanade, is a handsome brick building with cream bands and arched windows. Across its parapet, in big letters, it announces itself: MANLY. WHITE BROS. EMPORIUM. Beneath the upper windows: GENERAL MERCHANTS.
This photograph is held by the Northern Beaches Council Library Local Studies collection (record LH010276). I have had it restored and colourised, and I have also kept the original alongside it, because the two together tell the story better than either one alone.
What an emporium actually is
When I chose the name Lost Manly Emporium, I looked the word up properly. Emporium comes to us from Latin, and before that from the Greek emporion, a trading place or market, which in turn comes from emporos, meaning merchant, and originally traveller. So an emporium is, at its root, the place where travellers and traders meet. It is where the goods and the stories of a place gather under one roof.
That is exactly what White Bros and later Campbell's were to Manly. Everyone came off the ferry, everyone walked The Corso, and everyone passed the Emporium. It was the hub. And it is exactly what I want Lost Manly Emporium to be, only online: one place where the people, places and stories of Manly and the Northern Beaches are gathered, remembered and shared, and where you can take a piece of that history home with you.
White Bros: the first big store on The Corso
The Dictionary of Sydney records that White Brothers, the first large general store on The Corso, opened in 1907, and that it later became Campbell's General Merchants, a Corso landmark for many years. The brick building we see in the 1913 photo carries the date 1912 on its facade, so what you are looking at is a store that was barely a year old when the photographer set up on the wharf. Brand new, and already the biggest thing on the street.
The State Heritage Inventory describes the Manly Emporium at 6 The Corso as "a relatively intact example of an early 20th century department store of which no other distinct examples remain in the vicinity", designed in the Federation Free style with "a strong street presence". It reflects the later development of the south side of The Corso and the growth of Manly as a suburb. Its neighbour at 50 East Esplanade was built, in the Inventory's words, "close to the ferry wharf and the newly arrived tram service". Location, location, location, even in 1912.
Campbell's: universal providers
The second photograph, taken around 1920, shows the same building under new management. The parapet now reads CAMPBELLS LTD EMPORIUM, and the verandah sign promises UNIVERSAL PROVIDERS. Look closely and you can read the smaller signs too: Complete House Furnishers, Builders and General Ironmongers, and a board declaring Campbell's the sole agents for Hardie's Fibrolite cement sheets. Next door is Mathew, Chemist, and the dentists upstairs in the Pharmacy Chambers. Out the front, the staff have lined up for the camera in their aprons and waistcoats.
The Campbells were country people. Manly Library's Local Studies notes record that the brothers were sons of Dugald Campbell, who ran a long-established grocer's at Nevertire, near Dubbo. Campbell Brothers, general storekeepers, were registered on The Corso as early as 1903, and an advertisement in the Manly Daily of 15 December 1906 announced that "Campbell Bros (the new firm) next to Church of England, Corso, have opened for business with a large and well-bought stock", listing departments of drapery, clothing, millinery, boots and shoes, grocery, ironmongery, produce, provisions, crockery, paints, oils and colours. All goods at city prices. Telephone 232.
Campbell's were first listed at number 6 The Corso, the Emporium building, in the 1921 Sands Directory. The flats above the shop were still known as White's Flats. James Campbell, who managed the store with his brother Lachlan, lived at 74 Addison Road and is buried in Manly Cemetery.
By the 1920s, according to the Dictionary of Sydney, The Corso was the shopping centre for Manly and the whole of the northern beaches, and on Friday nights through the Depression years families would walk its length, window-shopping and meeting friends. If you grew up in Manly, there is a fair chance somebody in your family bought a saucepan, a school shoe or a tin of paint at Campbell's.
The end of the Emporium
Campbell's advertised in the Manly Daily right through the early 1960s. The last advertisement the library has sighted is from 11 August 1966. The likely culprits are familiar ones: the new Totem shopping centre at Balgowlah and Warringah Mall at Brookvale were pulling shoppers away from The Corso. The premises were sold for 100,000 pounds to developers T J and I Beale, who proposed five shops in its place. Gala Pharmacy opened there on 19 January 1968, and in 1973 the building was damaged by fire.
The facade survived, though, and today it is heritage listed. Plans for a major rebuild behind the old brick frontage have been approved and then put on hold, so for now the Emporium waits, as it has done for more than a century, directly opposite the wharf.
1913 and 2013
I did not plan the coincidence, but I am happy to claim it. The photograph was taken around 1913. Lost Manly began in 2013. A hundred years apart, two emporiums, one on The Corso and one online, both built on the same simple idea: gather what matters about this place, look after it, and pass it on.
That is why the Emporium is now part of our name and our logo, and why it is the first image in our new Emporium Collection: the restored 1913 photograph on a T-shirt, a print for the wall, and a few other pieces to follow. Each one is a small way of keeping the old store on the corner alive.
If you remember Campbell's, or your family worked there, or you have a photo of the Emporium in any of its lives, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or send me a message. Stories like this only get better when more people add to them.
Photo credits and sources
- View facing north-east from Manly Wharf along The Corso showing Manly Emporium, c.1913. Northern Beaches Council Library Local Studies, LH010276. Restoration and colourisation by Lost Manly Emporium.
- Campbell's Ltd Emporium, formerly White Bros, c.1920. Manly Library Local Studies, MML2645.
- View facing east from atop the Pier Hotel showing The Corso, Manly, 1922. Northern Beaches Council Library Local Studies, LH010435.
- Remodelling of the Australian Bank of Commerce Ltd, corner of The Corso and East Esplanade, mid-1920s. Northern Beaches Council Library Local Studies, LH010296.
- Manly Library Local Studies research notes: Campbell's Hardware, Corso; Butler Brothers, Corso west side.
- Dictionary of Sydney, The Corso: dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_corso
- State Heritage Inventory description of the Manly Emporium, 6 The Corso, quoted at aspiringproperties.com.au/manly-emporium
- Word origin of emporium: Online Etymology Dictionary
