East Melbourne, George Street 192

This house, first known as Zeta, was built by W. J Fowles of Canterbury for Henry Charles Slocombe and his second wife, Beatrice May, in 1908.  Henry’s first wife, Beatrice Cecelia, had died in 1904 after only two years of marriage.

Henry Slocombe was manager of Kodak and was himself a keen photographer. He toured the country giving talks on photography and also gave a weekly talk on the radio. 

The house had ten rooms and from descriptions of parties held at the house we can glean that there were the usual lounge, dining room and breakfast room as well as a billiard room.  At a ‘juvenile’ party in 1912 the breakfast room was set up to show moving pictures ‘which proved a great attraction to the young guests’.

Henry and Beatrice moved out of Zeta about 1936. Henry died in 1941 and Beatrice in 1966.
The next owner was John Joseph Welch followed by Thomas Lindsay Caldwell who divided the property into two flats of five rooms each. In the early 1940s one of the flats was leased to Frederick William Hagelthorn, a former Minister of Public Works for Victoria and a founder of the Country Roads Board. Caldwell sold the property in 1955.