Frome Street created from 1962 to be major north-south traffic artery cutting through Adelaide city centre
The black line shows Frome Street (proposed to be much wider boulevard than it became) slicing through William Light's original grid plan for Adelaide city centre. The creation of Frome Street (halted at Carrington Street) meant the puchase and demolishing of many buldings including the 1880s Tavistock Hotel (bottom right) on a Rundle Street corner.
Frome Street – never part of original planner William Light’s vision – was created from 1962 as part a wider plan to slice through Adelaide city centre to create a grand north-south car artery.
Adelaide town clerk Bill Veale came up with the idea to connect Main North Road with Glen Osmond Road to reduce congestion in King William Street, Adelaide city. This would be done by extending Frome Road into the city grid and creating a north-south traffic corridor by buying up a large amount of land. This north-south corridor became Frome Street.
Light's orginal plan had allowed for Pulteney Street to continue northward through the park lands and link up with what became Frome Road. But a northern extension of Pulteney Street was blocked by the siting of Bonython Hall, completed in 1936 on North Terrace, as part of the University of Adelaide campus.
The city council started on the 1960s Frome Street plan by widening two small lanes: Tavistock and Ackland. Workers’ cottages and the historic 1880s Tavistock Hotel building, with a history going back to 1857, were demolished among the many buildings bought by the council for the project in the city centre and North Adelaide.
The vision for Frome Street was for a much wider boulevard than what remained after the project came to a halt. The wrecking ball clearing the way south for Frome Street was stopped at Carrington Street, after concerns about it were raised by many, including urban planning academic Hugh Stretton.
In the 1970s, South Australia’s premier Don Dunstan ended the Frome Street push there, along with the more extensive the 1968 Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study plan for 98 kilometres of freeways, 24 kilometres of expressways and widening 286 kilometres of arterial roads.
Frome Street, as part of Adelaide’s car-centred mentality, was at the centre of another dispute in the 21st Century over the Adelaide council council’s bike lane project that removed two lanes for motor vehicle traffic.