Glass and gas

Shopfront windows used small panes of crown glass set in frameworks of glazing bars before the advent of large sheets of thick, clear plate-glass. Farmer & Co. was the first Sydney store to install plate-glass display windows in its Pitt Street premises in 1854. But glass windows and gas lighting proved to be an explosive combination.

On 13 July 1880 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that, ‘considerable commotion was created in the busiest part of George-Street ... by a gas explosion on the premises of Messrs Hopkins and Alford, drapers’. A gas leak had been noticed when the shopmen arrived for work, but the gas company employee called to investigate it ‘foolishly struck a match’, blowing out the entire shopfront.

Read Sydney Morning Herald, 10 July 1880, p.5 in National Library of Australia TROVE