Filing Cabinet

A metal filing cabinet, grey and rust-streaked, sits on the production floor of the Northcote Shoe Factory on Arthurton Road, Northcote. Dust has settled across the top. The drawers are closed. Whatever records it holds, they stayed behind when the operation shut down. The factory was built in 1926 on the corner of Arthurton Road and Helen Street, replacing two smaller buildings the company had been running on nearby Eastment Street. The purpose-built premises reflected the growth of shoe manufacturing in Melbourne's inner north, a concentrated industry that employed close to 12,000 workers across the city at its peak in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the Arthurton Road factory was operating under the name Purnell Shoe Company. The State Library Victoria holds a pair of brown lace-up shoes in their original Purnell-branded box, acquired between 1970 and 1979, which places the company firmly in that period. The factory closed sometime in the 1980s or 1990s as tariff reductions opened Australian footwear manufacturers to low-cost imported product. It was a pattern that played out across Northcote, Collingwood, Fitzroy, and Richmond, one small factory after another locking its doors in the same decade. The exact closure date for this building has not been confirmed from available records. When Lost Collective photographed the interior in 2012, the production floor was largely intact. Clicker presses, sewing desks, vacuum sealers, dispatch areas, and a smoko room with a radio were all still in place. So was this filing cabinet. The rust on its surface accumulated over years of disuse in a building that had no reason to stay dry or clean once the workers stopped coming in. The factory building was demolished in 2016. The site at 9-13 Arthurton Road was consolidated and redeveloped as a residential unit complex. This photograph is one of the few records of the interior that remains.