The rare neo-Gothic building in Lonsdale Street – that was left to rot for 20 years – is set for demolition, its significance to women's history and culture of Melbourne likely to be lost.

Joy Damousi, a professor of history at the University of Melbourne, says the club's function as a place of sanctuary for young country women – who started coming into Melbourne in large numbers to find work in the 1920s – isn't "too dissimilar" from that of the Windsor Hotel, where the sons of the squattocracy were housed when doing business in town.

"We'd be more outraged if we were to demolish the Windsor," Damousi says. "But with icons to male activity, there isn't as much acceptance for them to be torn down. The Princess Mary Club hasn't been given the significance it deserves." 

'You had to lock them up'

The club's history is complex, in that it provided opportunity, but was also an attempt at social engineering that essentially backfired. The Wesley Church built the Princess Mary Club not simply as a hostel for young women, but as a virtual lock-up to keep them from slipping into prostitution.

This is why the city's leading businessmen threw their money into the project – for fear that their own vulnerable employees might fall into whoring if they weren't being supervised at night, being away from the guardianship of their fathers.

Professor Shurlee Swain is a social historian with Australian Catholic University, and co-author of The Challenge of the City: the centenary history of Wesley Central Mission 1893-1993. She says the story of the Princess Mary Club is also the story of a time in Australia when young women couldn't live independently without, it was perceived, there being a grave risk to their morality.

"So you had to lock them up," Swain says. In effect this meant women weren't able to entertain male visitors, except in the downstairs receiving room. They were on a strict curfew and under the supervision of a matron, a practice that continued up until the 1980s.

The Princess Mary Club was one of a number of hostels that appeared in the 1920s – the Anglicans and Catholics had them – as more women started working in shops and factories and, the horror, studying at university. The Princess Mary Club, however, had a bigger profile because it was smack dab in the middle of the city.

Swain tells the story of Dr Samuel Hoban, the minister at the bluestone Wesley Church who "had a great interest in moral welfare issues". Hoban provided effective pastoral care to girls working in the brothels that backed onto the church grounds. Determined to build his hostel, he told the city's businessmen, if they didn't protect the young women they were employing, they'd make the one slip that would send them into prostitution.

"That's the way people understood how women took to prostitution; they had been seduced and cast out from respectable womanhood," Swain says.

'The problem of the city is not the boy but the girl'

On the day the building was officially opened, it rained like hell. Still, the lord mayor and other dignitaries gathered to give their speeches and enjoy the reflected piety.

According to the Argus, lord major S. J. Morello "expressed the hope that the beginning given by the Methodist Church in the erection of this hostel would be an incentive to other churches; and denominations".

In his own speech, Hoban said: "The first object of the club is therefore to provide for the safety of girls ... The problem of the city is not the boy but the girl, and if we can care for our girls we are making a great contribution to the permanence and progress of our city."

A historical image of the Princess Mary Club. Photo: Supplied

Swain says there was always an expectation – and disappointment – that the women residents would become devout churchgoers. They didn't. It was also hoped they'd adopt the church's values. Didn't happen either. Parishioners were routinely confronted by young women making out with men in the alcoves.

All of this makes the club significant in the history of women seeking to make independent lives. The Melbourne Heritage Action Group and change.org are petitioning for the club to be saved from demolition. Sophie Paterson, great-granddaughter Alfred Nicholas – who contributed significant funds to the club's construction – is agitating for the building to be saved.

In November, on White Ribbon Day, Fiona Patten MHR raised as an urgent adjournment matter a call for action from the Minister for Women ``in helping to save a unique part of Victorian women's history".

While Patten noted that the building, designed by the renowned Melbourne architect Alec Eggleston is significant in itself, she argued that its social significance is of even greater importance. "We should remember the extraordinary work that the Princess Mary Club did in providing safe and secure accommodation for thousands of Victorian women over the last century. I am urging the Minister for Women to intervene to save the Princess Mary Club as a very important part of Victorian women's history."

Building left to rot

Ruth Davies, was 19, living in Mildura, with local youth unemployment at 30 per cent. Her mother sent her to Melbourne for a job. Despite the 11 o'clock curfew on week nights – and being locked out for the night on more than one occasion – Davies lived happily at the Princess Mary Club from 1986 to 1987.  "There was a waiting list to get in. It was cheaper than getting a flat."

For $90 a week, she had a small room and three meals a day, seven days a week. The worst dinner featured half an eggplant, boiled and soggy. The best were the weekend scones and passionfruit cheesecake. She remembers a woman who had been living there for 14 years. There were two others, ``and they were a bit simple", who had lived and worked there for most of their lives.

She was there when the policy was changed and long-term residents "were forced out". That was the beginning of the end. The heritage-listed building was eventually left to rot.

Last month the City of Melbourne approved the demolition of the club, and some neighbouring buildings. Heritage Victoria has issued a demolition permit. The Uniting Church, owner of the Princess Mary Club, has said it is relying on the project's go-ahead to fund a badly needed restoration of the Wesley Church.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story reported that the state government had approved the demolition and redevelopment of the Princess Mary Club site. This was incorrect. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning is preparing a brief for the Minister of Planning Richard Wynne to sign off on the project.