History

Sixty years after the Athenaeum opened its first reading room, two fires broke out within six months of each other. Gone was the timber building that had been the Athenaeum’s home for over fifty years. Gone was the book collection painstakingly built over the years, including, according to The Herald newspaper, ‘valuable volumes of works by Shakespeare and other well-known writers’.

The first fire, in 1933, didn’t cause a great deal of damage or attract much media attention.  From a report in The Age, we know the fire was quickly under control and, although the main building was gutted, the billiard hall at the rear was untouched. We also know local people rescued books from the fire, which is probably how the historically significant first minute book survived. The book, which records committee meetings from the earliest days, is now safely stored in the State Library Victoria.

The committee had only just set about rebuilding when the second fire broke out in February 1934. The alarm was raised by the local baker, Alexander McArthur, who unfortunately then collapsed and had to be revived.

With two fires in the same building in a few short months, rumours of arson were quick to spread, particularly as a long running campaign had been waged by a few local residents who wanted the Athenaeum billiard room closed down. The main suspect amongst locals was a Miss White who lived next door and had taken to banging on the wall, presumably when she could no longer bear the noise.

This second fire was far more destructive and, combined with the sensationalism of suspected arson, was widely reported from the Murray to Melbourne and many places in between. The Riverine Herald informed its readers:

LIBRARY BURNT: Incendiarism suspected. A fire at 2am today destroyed the Athenaeum Club and the public library … Thousands of library books and many records of the club, and also the material of the local cricket club and the records, banners and flags of the Maldon branch of the Returned Soldiers’ League, which had been stored there were lost. The blaze started in the front portion of the building of the building where the reading room and library are situated, and the books and furnishings provided ready fuel for flames. … There were many valuable old furnishings in the club, but all were destroyed. The cause of the fire is unknown but some local residents suspect incendiarism.

The main building was gutted and this time the billiard room was also damaged:

The billiard room at the rear of the building caught fire, but the brigade was able to save the frame, although three billiard tables were ruined by heat and water. Only the balls and cues were saved.

Also stored in the billiard room, were the tools of five carpenters who had been working on rebuilding after the first fire. The tools were burnt along with ₤40 of timber.

With damages estimated at a daunting £1000, the committee once again set about the task rebuilding. The building was partly covered by insurance of £460, but with no government assistance available, the committee was faced with a huge fund-raising effort. A ‘strong committee of ladies’ had already held a bazaar to raise money after the first fire, and the RSL had held a ‘Euchre and Dance’ night. To add to this, the committee issued debentures, and members of the community donated money to the effort.  

Community involvement remained strong once construction began, with almost all of the workmen being Maldonians and all of the materials locally supplied by Dabb & Co at a reduced cost. Despite escalating agitation from those who didn’t want a billiard room, by December 1934, just ten months after the old timber building burnt to the ground, the new brick Athenaeum, with a timber billiard room out the back, was ready to reopen.

The opening ceremony, as reported in the Maldon News on December 25 1934, was attended by a large number of town and district residents. It was held in the main room which was to be the library and reading room. John Huish, Secretary of the Athenaeum committee, was reported as feeling ‘proud of the fact that what the committee had once thought impossible had been accomplished’. The new Athenaeum was officially opened by Mr Shields M.L.A. who congratulated the committee and the builder (Mr Peterson) for the ‘lasting memorial that had been erected’.

The main room – the reading room − remains the heart of the library, being magnificently furnished with a large partners desk and glass-fronted cedar cabinet on permanent loan from the Old Mint in Melbourne. It is bathed in soft light through two stained-glass windows that reputedly came from a pub being demolished in Melbourne at the time of the rebuilding. The room still provides newspapers and now houses most of the non-fiction collection. However, the library itself has grown over the years: in 1996 its fiction collection expanded into an adjacent room that had formerly been a meeting room; in 2019 an additional room was built and now houses an impressive crime fiction collection; in 2004, the children’s library was established in a room once rented by a firm of solicitors; and an overflow of non-fiction books now line the hallway. As the author Helen Garner commented in our visitors book, it is ‘an inspiring place – peaceful and particularly well-stocked’.

Lynda Achren 2025

References

Library correspondence held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Library minutes held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

Newspaper articles held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only:

The Tarrangower Times, Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, October 25, 1933.
The Tarrangower Times, Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, December 20, 1933.
The Maldon News, December 25, 1934.

Rhule, Brian (2019) Maldon: A new history 1853−1928. Exploring History Australia, Bendigo, Victoria, p.314.

Online sources

National Library of Australia Digitised Newspapers − trove.nla.gov.au

The Age (Melbourne), August 2, 1933, p.13.
The Riverine Herald (Echuca), February 17, 1934, p.2. 
The Age (Melbourne), Sat 17 February 1934, p.21.