Buildings/madrid.html
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Madrid Restaurant
Madrid Restaurant and Madrid Fruit Palace, High Street, run by the Andinach family - now the Buffalo Club.
Photo of the Madrid Restaurant (ref. no. E0000047-01 from the Fremantle City Library Local History Collection).
Group of people outside the Madrid Restaurant and Madrid Fruit Palace. L-R two employees, Uncle Anthony, Francis and Josefa Andinach (also right), Uncle Paul, employee. The building was bought by the Fremantle Buffalo Club Inc. during the 1938/9 period. In 2015/2022, No. 54 is still the Fremantle Buffalo Club.
The photo was also put in Facebook (by the Library) where Carolyn Cavana wrote the personal part of the above caption.
The Fremantle Buffalo Club is at 54 High St, and opened in 1938. Presumably it has or had something to do with the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.
Ron Davidson describes: '... a slightly rusty building in High Street with a facade which Fremantle wits call art deco revival. That means green tiles and a buffalo skull set into the stucco wall.' (The Clubs, 2010: 99)
The building is on what was the original 1833 town lot no. 105 which was granted to GF Johnson. It is now lot 500.
Before it was the Buffalo Club, the building was used as the Madrid Restaurant, owned by the Andinach Brothers, who ran the Madrid Fruit Palace at the same address.
Before that there was a cottage housing the telegraph office.
Hitchcock:
On June 21 of that year [1869] the telegraph line to Perth, which was built by private enterprise, was opened, the first office being an old cottage standing back from the road at the rear of where the Madrid Restaurant now [1929] stands in High Street. The first operator was W. Holman, who had been an officer of Mrs. Habgood's barque Zephyr, and the first messenger was the late W. T. John, then a boy. The first telegraph cadet was Horace Stirling who was appointed to take charge of the Fremantle office. Horace Stirling was afterwards closely allied with telegraph extension throughout the State and was a keen observer and a well known historian. Hitchcock: 54.
In June 2021, the building has had its disgusting awnings removed, tho the facade has not been made good. One can only hope that some hero will restore the Madrid verandahs, tho there are hardly any verandahs left in High Street. Here's the building with mouldy awnings, from my snap of c. 2017?
References and Links
Hitchcock, J.K. 1929, The History of Fremantle, The Front Gate of Australia 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
Parker, David Dare & Ron Davidson 2010, The Clubs, FotoFreo, Fremantle.
Page for Josephina Andinach on streetsoffreo.com.au.
Streetsoffreo.com.au page for the Buffalo Club and Madrid Restaurant.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 1 October, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/madrid.html (it was last updated on 3 April, 2024). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.