East Melbourne, Albert Street 366

The house at 366 Albert Street East Melbourne was built in 1909 for the Rev Llewelyn David Bevan (1842-1918). It was built on the land which had once been the garden of the neighbouring house, No 364, which by this time Bevan owned.
In 1886 Bevan emigrated to Melbourne to take up the ministry of the Collins Street Independent Church and, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, was for the next twenty-three years a leader of Protestant intellectual life in Melbourne.  In 1910 he moved to Adelaide to take up the position of principal of Parkin (Congregational) College. It may have been that Bevan originally meant to live in the house but changed his mind when the offer from Adelaide came up. But as it happened the house was from the start an investment property.  Together with the house at 364 Albert Street it became known as Wellpark, a boarding and guest house.
The architects for the house were Grainger, Kennedy and Little.  John Grainger is remembered as the architect for Melbourne’s iconic Princes Bridge. The builders were Lockington and Sinclair.
Bevan died in 1918 but his family retained ownership of both buildings until 1949 when they were sold. The former tenants, the O’Brien family, continued to run the two buildings as boarding houses until about 1963 when the properties were again sold.
The new tenant of 366 Albert Street was Vagn Ove Gunness. Gunness was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1918. He served with the Danish resistance during the war and emigrated to Melbourne in 1948. He opened Bims Restaurant which served Danish food and was one of the pioneering restaurants introducing Melburnians to ‘foreign’ food and paving the way to Melbourne’s multicultural restaurant scene. Gunness moved out in 1974. [For Wendy Pomroy's memories  of the restaurant see Catalogue Ref below]Later the restaurant became Joyeux, run by Joy Snedden, wife of Sir Billy Snedden. This time it was French food amid a Parisian turn-of -the century décor. Then from 1984-1990 under Dennis Gowing, aka Kevin Dennis, the well-known car dealer, it became Gowings. The walls were decorated with his collection of contemporary Australian art. Food writer Rita Erlich wrote that, “The food was good, the wine list impressive, the waiters excellent – and Gowings was a great place for a party.” It has been known as Le Gourmet since.