Coogee Media

With the pace of development happening in Coogee and with so much change to the built environment, we thought it would be timely to take a look one of the Coogee's most charming streets, and some of its history, origins, how it evolved and some of its characters.

Subdivided on 22 September 1937
Glenwood Avenue is located on land that was originally part of the estate of early colonial settler, George Catley. (Read more about George Catley here.) It was named by the developer when land was subdivided on 22 September 1937. I imagine the name was designed to sound attractive to prospective buyers. Glenwood Avenue runs off Dolphin Street, close to the Beach, and is a relatively short dog-legged cul-de-sac. Its dozen or so art-deco style two-storied apartment buildings present an attractive and appealing streetscape. It is a short street, but all up, it has 48 apartments.

Coogee Media's perambulations often take me there. It is quiet enough and with little enough traffic to walk down the middle of the street, only having to dodge toddlers on their bikes and push-toys.

The Avenue's neat collection of two-storey Art Deco style inter-War flats demonstrate the intensification of land use which resulted from increases in population and scarcity of other land for subdivision during the 1930s as the economy started to pick up after the deprivations of the Depression. Its late 1930 style remains largely intact, apart from Number 9, which was substantially modified a couple of years ago.

Glenwood Avenue has one interesting characteristic. Its buildings are numbered sequentially rather than having odds and even numbers alternating on either side of the street.

Book Cover: Backyard of Mars

Vica & Emery Barcs: 5 Glenwood Av.

The Barcs were committed to a new life in Australia and Dr Barcs worked as a journalist and talks writer for a number of organisations including the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) while he tried to join the Australian Army as part of the effort to fight fascism.

To his dismay, because he knew some Australians disliked the idea of immigrants living together in one area forming "ghettos", the Barcs were soon followed to Glenwood Avenue by other Hungarians, creating a little Hungarian enclave by the seaside. Glenwood Avenue soon developed a cosmopolitan air.

Dr Barcs describes the events in December 1941 (after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor) when late one evening there was a knock at his door at No. 5 Glenwood Avenue by a detective policeman who had come to take him (and another Hungarian neighbour living at another flat in No. 5) into what was known as internment of "aliens" as a war precaution. As Hungarian, they were now technically citizens of an enemy power. After some weeks, when authorities were convinced of his bona fides he was released and he describes the relief of driving down Dolphin Street Coogee, to his little piece of mittel Europa in Glenwood Avenue. The couple were able to spend the rest of the war years here in Coogee until he had completed his service with the Australian Army.

World War Two Air-raid Shelter
In 1942, the owners of eight blocks of flats in Glenwood Avenue got together to form a "Glenwood Avenue Protection Association". Each of the flat owners were asked to donate £12 towards the construction of an "underground bomb proof shelter" in the backyard of one of the residents, Mr A. D. Foley. The 145 feet long, 6 feet high trench with a roof of thick oregon timber topped with sand could hold 130 people. Press photographs show three men standing in the impresssive structure.

The underground shelter at Glenwood Avenue

William John Stones, c1940 RAAF Enlistment Photo

Stones Milk Bar & Nightclub Another resident of the Avenue, also at No. 5, was William John Stones (1916 - 1982) - the son of William and Bridget Stones, the owners and operators of Coogee's iconic Stones milk bar and night-club that operated in Dolphin Street, near the Beach. He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, and when he was discharged from war service in October 1945, he changed his address from the residence at Stones to Glenwood Avenue and settled down to a post-war life in the street. You can READ MORE about the Stones family. Baby Boomers Michael Liddy, aged one, was perhaps the ultimate baby boomer, born in 1945 to Captain and Mrs Liddy, he lived with his family at No 1 Glenwood Avenue. The photograph of the smiling infant appeared prominently on the front cover of the Australian Women's Weekly in March, 1946, as a promotion for the sale of government security bonds.

Infant Michael Liddy in 1946

Making a New Home
Emery Barcs' observation about the street becoming a centre of middle European domicile in Coogee, was correct. In the post-war era, many residents made press announcements (as they were officially required to do) of their intention to become naturalised citizens. Lily Buchwald (also know as Buckwall) who lived at flat 4, No 5 Glenwood Avenue (the same building Barcs lived in) made such an application in October 1946, for instance. Erwin Furst of no 2 Glenwood Avenue made an announcement in April, 1945. Others followed. Clearly, people were making long term plans to settle.

Local Jewish Community
Glenwood Avenue played an important part of the history of the local Jewish community.

In 1954 Olga Hochstadt of Unit 3, No. 10 Glenwood Avenue, who came from the town of Borsa in what was then Czechoslovakia, announced that after living in Australia for five years, she intended to apply for citizenship naturalisation. The Hochstadt family members were to become prominent figures in the street, and it their garage (which handily opens almost directly onto the street) became the temporary site of many functions of the Coogee Jewish community in the 1950s while the Coogee Synagogue was being constructed. In 1953, Abraham Hochstadt was inviting members of the Coogee, Randwick, Clovelly Hebrew Congregation to its first General Meeting.

No 10 Glenwood Avenue is a two storey building, like the rest of the buildings in the street, but with its central checkerboard arrangement of glass bricks above the main entrances, and rounded balcony metal balustrades, is in the style of the inter-war Ocean Liner architectural style.

The congregation was finally able to move to newly constructed Synagogue in Brook Street in January 1961. The Hockstadt maintained their presence in the street for some time after that. By 1975, Jacques and Olga Hockstadt were living in unit 3 when they passed on condolences for the death of their uncle Leo Marcus Rosewald from unit 4.

Divorce
Up until the Whitlam Government introduced no-fault divorce reform legislation in the 1970's, court cases involving divorce were standard fare for newspapers seeking out gossip involving anyone who came before the divorce courts with but the slightest of a public profile. It seems cruel now, but the accounts do provide a fascinating insight into the lives of many people who would otherwise go unnoticed. So it is the case in 1949 of Noni Elizabeth Leveson (1917 - 1995), a daughter of the remarkable politician and journalist Voltaire Molesworth (1890 - 1934). She lived at Flat 2, No. 1 Glenwood Avenue with her errant accountant husband Mr John Leveson (1914 -1993). He had an affair with a Nancy Falconett, who worked with him in the offices of the newspaper The Newsletter operated by Voltaire Molesworth Junior (Noni's brother). (See Note 1)

The newspapers of the day lapped up all the juicy details including the claims by each of Mr Leveson's amore that they would kill themselves if they could not have their man to soley to themselves. No newspaper sought out any salacious detail more eagerly than the Truth who revealed that Noni came across her husband's affair by accident when she saw her husband and Miss Falconett "talking together" through a window as she passed by the Newsletter offices on a tram! Mrs Leveson was granted a divorce and presumably, one of them had to leave the Glenwood Avenue. John Leveson and Nancy Falconett later married.

Truth newspaper article with divorce case of Mr and Mrs Leveson

Crime
I tried to seek out any stories or data about crime in the street; however, it appears the residents must have all had a fairly peaceable life over the decades. One account I came across involved a greyhound racing bookmaker William Hilder in Aug 1945. He reported to police that a robber had entered his Glenwood Avenue flat through a window and stole the then considerable amount of £280 in cash hidden in a wardrobe, while he and his wife slept. To make matters worse, the thief had also taken £2 10s from his wife's purse.

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