Cox Brothers store in Rundle Street, Adelaide city, from 1938 becomes new Cox Foys in 1956 with rooftop fun fair
Cox Brothers' smart art-deco department store (left) in Rundle Street, Adelaide city, was replaced in 1956 by the new Cox Foys store (right), taking Cox Brothers new name after it bought out the Foy & Gibson group. The new Cox Foys store's big attraction for children was its rooftop fun fair including miniature train rides (inset).
Images courtesy State Library fo South Australia and The Advertiser, Adelaide, archives.
Foy & Gibson department store, transferred in the 1920s to the premises originally built for William Gibson to be the Grand Central hotel on the corner of Rundle and Pulteney streets, was sold, as part of its national chain of shops, to Cox Brothers, another department store chain from Victoria, in 1955.
Originally a Fitzroy, Melbourne, tailoring business that diversified from 1906, Cox Brothers opened their four-storey Adelaide city department store from 1938, at the western corner of Rundle and Twin streets. In art-deco style, the store had with a clock mounted high on the façade, large plate glass shop windows and cantilever verandah. It was regarded as Adelaide’s finest department store, with plate-glass blackwood doors, a terrazzo entrance, high ceilings and polished Queensland maple shop counters and fittings with rounded edges.
Cox Brothers became Cox Foys when they bought out the Foy & Gibson chain in 1955. Cox Foys was the name for the new store that replaced Cox Brothers’ original Rundle Street building from 1956. The stores was best remembered for its fun fair on the roof that was a strong attraction for children. The fun fair offered rides on a ferris fair, miniature electric train, Flying Pigs, merry go round and boats.
The Cox Foys group was liquidated in 1968 and its Rundle Street/Mall store taken over by Harris Scarfe in the late 1970s. It later became the Renaissance Centre with a Kmart at ground level.
The last trace of Foy & Gibson department store’s imposing history in Adelaide was lost in the 1970s when the former Grand Central hotel building was demolished to make way for a multi-storey Adelaide city council carpark on the corner of Rundle and Pulteney streets. The Foy & Gibson chain opened its four-storey warehouse store (at that time, Adelaide's tallest building) in Rundle Street east in 1907. William Gibson of Foy & Gibson bought the adjoining York Hotel and other properties that became the Grand Central hotel from 1911. When the hotel failed to prosper, it was converted to a Foy & Gibson store.
