Summary

Image showing spectators at a greyhound race meeting at the Arden Street Oval in North Melbourne.

Better known as a cricket and football oval, the venue was used by the Melbourne Greyhound Racing Association for greyhound race meetings on Monday nights between 1957 and 1962. The races were run around the perimeter of the oval. The greyhound race meetings were launched at Arden Street by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne on September 11, 1957. Laurie Richards took this photograph just a few months after the launch when there was a boom of interest in greyhound racing.The race meetings attracted crowds of several thousand people and prompted construction of a betting ring behind the grandstand. In 1962 the greyhound races moved to Olympic Park.

One of approximately 85,000 negatives from the Laurie Richards Collection taken by the Melbourne based Laurie Richards Studio between the 1950s -1970s. This particular negative is part of a group of images taken for the Melbourne City Council in North Melbourne and the Melbourne CBD on 23 December 1957. As well as the Arden Street Oval, which was owned by the Melbourne City Council, this group of negatives also includes night images of the Melbourne Town Hall in Swanston Street.

Laurie Richards was a professional photographer who began his career as a photo-journalist, working for the Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide, and the Argus and the Herald newspapers in Melbourne. In 1953, he opened his own business and set up a photographic studio at his home at 4 Tower Avenue, Alphington, an inner suburb of Melbourne. At its peak, in the late 1960s, the Laurie Richards Studio was one of Melbourne's pre-eminent commercial photographic studios, employing twelve photographers. The Laurie Richards Studio worked mainly in advertising and public relations, and had a broad clientele which included commercial companies, government institutions and the entertainment industry.

Description of Content

Oblique aerial photograph of the city of Melbourne looking south-east from Arden Street showing the area bounded by Curzon, Victoria, Spring and Flinders Streets. It also features Haymarket Roundabout. In the foreground is the Queen Victoria Market and Flagstaff Gardens. Further in, on the corner of La Trobe and Swanston Streets, is the State Library of Victoria and behind it is the Russell Street Police Headquarters.

Physical Description

negative; black and white; silver gelatin; cellulose acetate.

More Information