City Streets: Progressive Adelaide 75 years - Wakefield Press

Introduction
In 1936, the centenary year of the former colony of South Australia, printer and newspaperman Gustav
Hermann Baring published Progressive Adelaide. The big, handsome book was a mighty achievement.
Baring wanted his State to shine on its 100th birthday.
Progressive Adelaide embraced the capital city and its seaside resorts, along with South Australia’s major
provincial centres. By photographing the city’s street fronts, Baring created a near-perfect record of the
Adelaide CBD of the 1930s.
And by financing his book with advertising, he also left us with a profile of the business life of the State as
South Australia carried itself out of the Great Depression.
Progressive Adelaide is the inspiration for City Streets. Three-quarters of a century on, the City of Adelaide
and Wakefield Press recognised the enduring significance and human interest of the first book. Yet simply
reprinting Progressive Adelaide would have heightened nostalgia, but served no particular purpose.
Adelaide is more than its past. There is its present, and its future.
So you hold the second book. City Streets relives Baring’s pictorial exploration of the city CBD, going to
the same places, taking their photos again and pausing for stories along the way. We also have allowed
ourselves the liberty of extending the range of this book beyond the original’s commercial boundaries into
Adelaide’s rich cultural dimension.
As far as we are aware, a book of this scope chronicling two eras of a capital city has never been published
before.
Certain historic buildings in Progressive Adelaide did not survive to appear here. There will always be a
lesson in that. But Adelaide remains a captivating city in its many forms. City Streets re-interprets the
rich legacy of Progressive Adelaide. It might just start a trend.
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