PROJECTS / FORMER PEATT BOOT FACTORY
THE FACTORY AND
THE WORLD IT
BELONGED TO.
A site history supporting Banco Group’s adaptive reuse of the former Peatt Boot Factory, Collingwood.
CLIENT
BANCO GROUP OF COMPANIES
LOCATION
64 WELLINGTON STREET,
COLLINGWOOD, MELBOURNE
SERVICES
STRATEGIC NARRATIVE INTEGRATION; SITE HISTORY; ARCHIVAL RESEARCH; VISUAL RESEARCH
Banco Group commissioned a site history for the former Peatt Boot Factory to support marketing and stakeholder engagement across the redevelopment. The research traced the factory through three construction phases between 1894 and 1945, the founder's career across three colonies, the federal tariff reforms of 1902–03 that allowed Collingwood's boot trade to triple its workforce in a single year, the school council seat that linked the factory to the suburb's training pipeline, the wartime order of 100,000 pairs of boots to the Australian military, and the building's continuous working life since bootmaking ceased—including textile manufacture, swimwear, and an artists' collective until 2025. The deliverable gave Banco a documented sequence the project could draw on directly, and positioned the redevelopment as the next chapter in an established pattern of working life on the corner of Wellington and Glasgow Streets.
STRATEGIC ROLE
From site history to project positioning
In a suburb where adaptive reuse can easily slip into generic industrial nostalgia, this project needed more than atmosphere. It needed a historically grounded narrative that could support and differentiate the redevelopment within Collingwood's crowded post-industrial landscape.
The research surfaced a clear story: not simply a boot factory, but a site embedded in Collingwood's working, making, and training culture over decades. That allowed the redevelopment to be framed not as a break from the past, but as a continuation of the site's established pattern of labour, craft, and reinvention.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Three narrative anchors
01 — Industrial identity
The factory's role within Collingwood's rise as Melbourne's footwear manufacturing centre.
02 — Wartime relevance
Production for the Australian military gave the site a wider civic and national dimension.
03 — Continuous working life
From bootmaking to textiles to artist studios, the address retained a long rhythm of production and use.
7 image sequence
selected archive
A restrained visual set reinforcing the research depth behind the narrative.