Some Horse Bazaar history
Named after the once common horse auction houses of nineteenth century Melbourne, Horse Bazaar is a meeting of old and new. At one time Melbourne’s Bourke Street was lined with ‘horse bazaars’. The car dealerships of their age, horse bazaars were fundamental to the thriving horse-drawn economy of the 1800’s and provided Melbourne’s residents with the opportunity to buy horses at auction. Sadly this colourful aspect of Melbourne’s history is largely forgotten, however a small slice lives on in the name given to Kirk’s Lane, marking the location of Kirk’s Horse Bazaar established by James Bowie Kirk in Bourke Street in late 1840.
We initially attempted to open Horse Bazaar’s first bar in a fantastic 19th century four storey warehouse building in Kirk’s Lane, on the site of the original Kirk’s Horse Bazaar, which is how the name originally came about. Due to the vagaries of local councils and unnamed heads of planning departments this was not to be. We walked away from a protracted battle when another appropriate premises presented itself, having decided that it was better to pour our energies into realising our vision rather than to continue fighting red tape, bureaucracy, and the forces of darkness. The Horse Bazaar name followed the project as HQ migrated a few blocks north to our current location at 397 Little Lonsdale St.