As part of our office renovations, the talented team of stained glass restorers, led by a lady called Denise, are repairing the windows which have been a feature of the old building’s entrance hall for 135 years. Denise has had extensive experience in working with stained glass on some of Melbourne’s oldest and most iconic buildings. In our discussions, I mentioned to the team that I believe that a few of our windows were not created for the Mentone Coffee Palace, but had, in fact, had a previous life at Ripponlea. Ripponlea was built more than 20 years before the Coffee Palace and both buildings were designed by the firm Henderson, Reed and Smart. Joseph Reed is considered the most important architect in early Melbourne, having been responsible for many of our city’s earliest buildings, including the State Library.

My theory began when I visited Ripponlea a few years back and spoke to their Historian and noticed that a number of the designs, such as the frangipanis, appear in both buildings, and, indeed, at the Mentone RSL. When I mentioned this to Denise, she found it intriguing as she had noticed that our windows are not edged in lead as they should have been. While this makes them easier to work with in some respects, it also suggests that they had been cut away from a larger window.

Just like Ripponlea, as you walk in our front doors, you find a further set of doors. At Ripponlea, this internal set of doors is similar to those you might find in a porch at a Cathedral. I was told at Ripponlea, that this internal set of doors had suffered so much in their first few years that the stained glass was removed and replaced with frosted glass. Interestingly, our internal doors are made of frosted glass, and, I believe this could be for the same reasons as those at Ripponlea. The company who installed our original glass was probably the same one responsible for Ripponlea and in an early show of sustainability, I believe someone made the decision to repurpose those from Ripponlea in Mentone’s Coffee Palace and the home of Mr J. B. Davies, which is now the RSL.

While we are on the subject of windows, Mrs Delahunty took a photo for me the other day of a window one rarely sees open at Kilbreda. The interest in this window, is that it is visible from outside, but not from inside. If you walk along the bottom floor, you will not see it. Then if you head upstairs, the same is true. It happens to have been half-way up the old back stairs of the Coffee Palace. The same stairs used by nuns for many years to access the Dining Room and school from their private quarters upstairs in the vicinity of the current staffroom.

Damian Smith
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