Whelan the Wrecker

Whelan the Wrecker was a family owned and operated Australian demolition company which began in Brunswick, Victoria and was later based in Melbourne. The company became well known through the 1960s and 1980s for its role in the destruction of a number of grand Victorian era buildings of Marvellous Melbourne that the city had become famous for, many of them along Collins Street's "golden mile", which has led to much criticism, particularly in recent times.

As the thousands of soldiers arrived back from the battlefields following the end of World War I there emerged a sense of renewed pride and a willingness to forget the dark days of war. The Council of the City of Melbourne was no doubt buoyed by this new nationalistic pride and put in place schemes to modernize the city which included increasing the building height limit and removing some of the Victorian era cast ironwork.

From the 1920s onward, cantilevered verandahs came into fashion, for their clean lines and modern appearance. At this time the City Council began to encourage the removal of the cast iron ‘corporation verandahs’, and their replacement with hung verandahs (which visually emulated the cantilevered ones).

In the years leading up to World War II the Whelan firm had already pulled down thousands of structures in both the city and surrounding suburbs. James Paul Whelan's obituary of 1938 suggests that his company had the task of demolishing up to 98% of buildings marked for removal in the city alone.

From the 1950s onwards society, and the economy, had entered a state of change so vast that the ‘Whelan the Wrecker Is Here’ sign became a powerful symbol of the desire for urban renewal and social change in Victoria, Australia. Many simply labelled this period as "progress" while others mourned the loss of the aesthetic architecture which gave the city its character.

Prior to the 1956 Summer Olympics Wreckers, such as Whelan's, were primarily responsible for executing a City of Melbourne by-law, which in 1954 called for the demolition of all cast-iron verandas, supposedly aimed at removing the risk of pedestrians accidentally colliding with a pole. The act in fact resulted in the demolition of many of Melbourne's much-loved buildings well before heritage legislation took effect in the late 1980s, and the city which could claim more decorative cast iron than any city in the world had suddenly found cast iron in the Central Business District to be extremely rare.

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Wikipedia