Heidelberg Town Hall is a civic building located on Upper Heidelberg Road in

Ivanhoe ''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' ( ) by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in December 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. It marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more ...

, a suburb of

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. It is now more commonly known as The Centre Ivanhoe. Opened in April 1937, the building was designed by

architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

firm Peck & Kemter in association with A.C. Leith & Bartlett for the Heidelberg City Council (now

Banyule City Council The City of Banyule is a Local government in Australia, local government area in Victoria, Australia in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. It was created under the Local Government Act 1989 and established in 1994 as an amalgamation of for ...

) and was influenced by the

Hilversum Hilversum () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is ...

Town Hall in the Netherlands. It listed on the

Victorian Heritage Register The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. ...

, described as "the greatest and most eloquent expression of the interwar brick Moderne style in Victoria." The architects were awarded the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) Street Architecture Medal for 1939 for the building.

The ’Berg

Not long after the town hall opened the council engaged Bill Glennon to organise public dances on Wednesday and Saturday nights. An 18-piece dance band played in the Great Hall, two smaller downstairs rooms– the Streeton and Condor rooms has separate dances each featuring different music styles. The Streeton room featured ‘old-time’ music and the Condor Room, Jazz. Free buses brought patrons from Melbourne’s Northern suburbs. The dances were hugely popular, over 2000 people would attend on a Saturday night. Many locals recount meeting their spouses at the ’Berg. The dances continued until the 1970’s.

References

External links

Official website
{{Town halls of Melbourne Town halls in Melbourne Heritage-listed buildings in Melbourne Buildings and structures in the City of Banyule Art Deco architecture in Melbourne 1937 establishments in Australia Heidelberg, Victoria Government buildings completed in 1937 Clock towers in Australia

The ’Berg

See also

References

External links