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11 May 2005
CATANI ARCH RESTORED
One of St Kilda’s most whimsical landmarks – Catani Arch – is now back in business for photographs and general adulation. Situated next to the Stokehouse on the foreshore, the Italian-inspired arch is a favourite location for wedding party poses. Everyday photographers also delight in it as they wait to frame a cyclist riding along the beachside path on the other side of the arch.
St Kilda Ward councillor, Karen Sait, said the arch had been out of commission for seven months.
“It was riddled with concrete cancer and the steel rods, which are crucial to the arch staying up, were rusted. It took a lot longer than planned as all the rods had to be carefully removed and new rods reinserted. The degree of corrosion was much worse than expected though hardly surprising. Catani Arch been at the mercy of often extreme weather for ninety years,” she said.
The new balustrades were pre-cast in a factory and then grit-blasted on site to give them the appropriate weathered look.
Built in 1916, Catani Arch was part of the reclamation and beautification of the entire St Kilda foreshore to Point Ormond instigated by the St Kilda Fore Shore Committee. Established a decade earlier in 1906 under the visionary leadership of Carlo Catani, the committee modelled the St Kilda foreshore along the lines of a Mediterranean resort.
The steel rods used in Catani Arch were part of a process patented in 1867 by Joseph Monier, a French manufacturer of garden ware. He used a grid of small-diameter iron bars embedded in a coarse mortar especially for the construction of planter pots. The technique and patents were gradually extended to cover, amongst other things, arch bridges.
The Australian patent was held by John Monash, a prominent Melbourne engineer and later World War 1 hero and knight of the realm. Monash often worked with Catani, the chief engineer with the Victorian Government’s Public Works Department, and is given credit for designing another Monier-style bride, the Anderson Bridge over the Yarra, though some historians claim that Catani played by far the greater role. What is certain, though, is that Monash designed the small St Kilda Street bridge over Elwood Canal.
The bridge of Catani Arch provided access to the upper deck of the Pavilion Tea Rooms, later modified to become the Stoke House. It was a romantic setting which, according to photographs from the time, attracted throngs of pleasure seekers.
The Argus of April 10,1916, furnished this report: “Those who remember the foreshores ten years ago will agree that the committee has done wonders. In the earlier portions of the area treated, the plot at the northern entrance to the pier, the trees are already growing high, cypress and smaller shrubs forming fine break winds for brilliant beds of flowers.
“Down at the south end there is a splendid show of dahlias, sheltered by an avenue of cypress, beneath which a Continental cafe does such business on a summer holiday that it will have to be enlarged. There is a larger tea room below the Esplanade, which returns the trust, in rental twenty percent on the capital cost - a pretty good investment. Just now Mr Catani's soul is centred on a bridge near this tea room, which will form the central feature in a long curved path along a ramp which shelters the lawns from the spray of Port Phillip."
Cr Sait said that, while the arch itself was intact, the original design of the surrounds has pretty much been destroyed by successive alternations.
“The original design was a delightful example of late Federation landscaping, according to the council’s heritage study. A tall earth embankment with lava rock, clipped hedging and grass was constructed between the beach a expansive picnic lawn.
“The bank formed a sheltering windbreak and visually divided the picnic area from busyness of the beach. A promenade along the top of the embankment allowed views both ways and passed across the top of the arch. At the picnic lawn level, Catani Arch provided a dramatic entrance to the beach.
“The heavy modification of the tea rooms, the removal of large parts of the original embankment, the intrusion of play equipment onto the picnic lawns, detract from the original design,” she said.
Cr Sait said that the surrounds of Catani Arch would get a new lease of life as part of St Kilda’s Edge, the council’s twenty-year program to rejuvenate the St Kilda foreshore in keeping with Catani’s original vision.
“Let’s hope, though, that the arch itself will now be right for another hundred years,” she said.
Repairs to Catani Arch cost $270,000 and were funded by the City of Port Phillip’s capital works budget.
Written by:
Carmel Shute
Council Media Officer
11 May 2005
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