Boans - City Store

City Store

The brothers arrived in Perth in mid 1895 when Harry was 34, and purchased two quarter-acre blocks facing Wellington Street and the Perth railway station, at the edge of a potato swamp. The properties ("V.7-8") were purchased from W.B. Woods & Co, at a price of £42 per foot of street frontage. They borrowed £62,000 and within four months, despite acute labour shortages, had built, stocked and opened a single-storey emporium on the site and named it 'Boan Bros.'. The store opened on 7 November 1895 with spectacular results, almost selling out by the end of the first day of trading. The original buildings were described as a single store which ran from Wellington Street through to Murray Street and appeared as "a line of iron shops".

In 1901, Benjamin died and Harry assumed sole ownership. Harry purchased adjoining land which spanned the block between Wellington and Murray Streets, near Forrest Place. The business was restructured to become a limited company in 1912 and the name was changed to Boans Ltd. In the same year, the original buildings were demolished and rebuilt as a single building between Murray and Wellington Streets.

Over time, the store became the largest private employer in Western Australia

In late 1929 Harry Boan handed control of the Boans store to his son Frank Boan who had been living in England with his mother since 1913.

Like similar businesses - Boans Limited had a Mail order catalogue issued from the late 1930s which continued into the 1950s.

The Boans department store in Wellington Street Perth was subject to a major fire in 1979, which closed the store for some weeks. The store reopened, prior to its closure in 1986 when it was sold to Coles Myer Ltd to make way for the new Forrest Chase Myer complex. This was later considered a bizarre coincidence, as the Boans department store in Morley was destroyed by fire in 1986. The Morley complex was later rebuilt, housing a Myer department store.