Fabrications The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and New Zealand

ISSN: 1033-1867 (Print) 2164-4756 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfab20

Eclecticism in the Work of Colonial Architect F. D. G. Stanley, 1871–1881

Stuart King

To cite this article: Stuart King (2012) Eclecticism in the Work of Queensland Colonial Architect F. D. G. Stanley, 1871–1881, Fabrications, 21:2, 37-60, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2012.10739944

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2012.10739944

Published online: 12 Aug 2013.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 31

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rfab20

Download by: [UQ Library] Date: 24 September 2016, At: 00:01 Eclecticism in the Work of Queensland Colonial Architect F. D. G. Stanley, 1871-1881 Stuart King

Introduction Scotsman Francis Drummond Greville Stanley (1839-1897) occupies an ambivalent position in the history of Queensland and Australian architecture. His works constitute the largest volume of public buildings designed under the stewardship of a single Colonial Architect in Queensland. Stanley’s career is outlined in Donald Watson and Judith McKay biographical dictionary Queensland Architects of the 19th Century.1 Many of his key buildings survive and have been documented in individual heritage assessments and the occasional thesis.2 His contribution to Queensland’s heritage of public buildings is also acknowledged by the current day F.D.G. Stanley Award for Public Buildings offered by the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects.3 Yet despite this commendation of the architectural profession, there

has been limited critical analysis of Stanley’s work and his contribution to the development of public architecture in Queensland or Australia more generally. Whilst documenting the contexts and key works of F.D.G. Stanley’s career in the Office of the Queensland Colonial Architect this paper has two primary objectives. Firstly, it aims to use the Queensland case study to complicate our understanding of the idea of British ‘colonial architecture’ in Australia. As observed by Philip Goad and Julie Willis, the former Australian settler colonies, present a particular circumstance for the understanding of colonial architecture due to the relative lack of strongly competing indigenous built culture or other settler groups affecting the urban architectural production.4 Within these settler societies British migrants were the dominant settler group, yet this is not to assume culturally homogenous societies. In the early 1860s, the Colony of Queensland was observed by Governor Bowen to be developing a cosmopolitan culture, through the assimilation of a broad mix of settlers from Britain, Ireland and continental Europe.5 Nonetheless, Raymond Evans has argued that the Queensland Government acted to legislate for the self-conscious creation of a New Britannia.6 European migration was officially discouraged with no continental immigration agent appointed by the government for the period 1864-70 (and later for the period 1874-75). In 1864, a disproportionately large quota of Irish Catholic immigrants was addressed by the Queensland

King 37

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 37 7/01/13 3:06 PM Colonial Government’s Immigration Act (1864), which sought to replicate the ethnic mix of the British Isles with ethnic quotas of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers, to re-instate a Protestant majority.7 Yet such policies were not to secure a singular cultural majority to subsequently support a straightforward positioning of Queensland architecture as English, or even British. Irrespective of no European agents, Germans immigrants represented 20% of white settlers arriving to Queensland throughout the 1870s, underscoring the diversity of the colony’s settler population.8 Importantly for the discussion of the Scottish émigré’s role in Queensland, is that even the English, Welsh and Scots remained largely separate cultures within the construct of Britain and, by extension, the British Empire.9 A detailed consideration of the public, commercial and ecclesiastical architecture of F.D.G. Stanley in Queensland during the 1870s is thus useful in highlighting one aspect of the cultural diversity of the Australian colonies: the impact of different British ethnicities and cultures that have shaped Australia’s nineteenth-century urban environments. At stake in the paper is the influence of Stanley’s background and professional training in Edinburgh in the 1850s on the building of the Queensland colonial capital in the 1870s. While attempting to build a more nuanced understanding of nineteenth century Queensland architecture in relation to the cultural ethnicities that constituted the colony, linking the development of to Edinburgh – a very specific part of Britain – also raises the need for nuanced and multi-faceted contextual

interpretations of British architecture abroad. The second objective of the paper is to expand recent discussions about stylistic eclecticism in Queensland architecture, which is often allied to discourses of place. It seeks an alternative explanation in a specific instance of eclecticism in Stanley’s architecture by focussing upon his professional background in . To construct the argument about Scottish influence in Queensland, this paper does not rely upon issues of representation of an ‘other’ place or culture that have underpinned examples of earlier Scottish influence in Australia. Rather, it interprets a mid-nineteenth century eclectic Scots mode translated within the specific context of colonial Queensland.10 With Paul Walker, I have documented elsewhere a tendency within the historiography of Queensland architecture to construe the interpretation of architectural styles in relation to contemporary discourses of place.11 This phenomena is most apparent in instances of eclecticism, and specifically G.M.H. Addison’s Queensland Exhibition Building, Brisbane (designed in 1888), in which descriptors including ‘Indo-Saracenic’ suggested potentially anachronistic associations to the tropicality of colonial India. Whilst Addison engaged in debates about future stylistic prospects for Queensland architecture and identified climatic response as a part thereof, in the case of the Queensland

38 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 38 7/01/13 3:06 PM Exhibition Building, stylistic details similar to T.E. Colcutt’s design for the Imperial Institute, London, highlight a more sophisticated un-packing of local, regional and global connections. In subsequent work by Deborah van der Plaat, Addison’s eclectic method has been positioned in terms of Victorian theories of cosmopolitanism, arguing a debt to the design reform movement of the South Kensington School of Art and the writings of Owen Jones, and further complicating formerly simplistic readings about architectural responses to the conditions of place.12 Stanley’s work predates (and overlaps) the progressive eclecticism of Addison, as well as a subsequent generation of designers in Queensland including John Smith Murdoch and Robin Dods. It also represents an earlier strain of eclecticism in which different styles were deployed for different projects, typically determined by a matrix of associative and contextual factors. At times, plural styles were combined in individual projects, but without the level of synthesis seen in the work of later nineteenth century designers such as Addison, marking an important distinction. In Stanley’s designs, codified individual elements retained their autonomy. A consideration of Stanley’s eclecticism thus raises important questions regarding nineteenth century approaches to the use of architectural style with particular intellectual pedigrees. To achieve these dual goals, the paper discusses Stanley’s training in Edinburgh, his arrival in Brisbane and local professional discourses which framed his practice in Queensland. What follows, is a discussion of the scope

and a selection of designs from within Stanley’s public works oeuvre, with an emphasis on interpreting the rationale of a learnt eclectic mode.

F.D.G. Stanley and the Scots Mode Francis Drummond Greville Stanley was born in Ascog, Scotland in 1839. He entered the architectural profession, articled to the Edinburgh firm Brown & Wardrop in 1855, and, from 1856, attended classes in applied art, drawing and presentation, provided by the Government Schools of Design.13 Both Thomas Brown and James Wardrop had been trained in Edinburgh, without professional experience beyond Scotland. Thomas Brown had been articled to his father, also Thomas Brown (City Superintendent of Works in Edinburgh) before working for William Burn. In 1837, the younger Brown was appointed as the architect of the Prison Board of Scotland and went on to establish his own practice in 1838. James Wardrop was later articled to Brown, becoming a partner in 1849 and ultimately taking over the design work within the practice during the early 1860s. By this time the practice was established as one of Edinburgh’s leading architectural offices with an extensive practice in prisons, county buildings, parish churches, town houses as well as the remodelling of large country houses and farm buildings.14

King 39

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 39 7/01/13 3:06 PM In contrast to the polarised battle of the styles in , north of the border a variety of styles were understood to encapsulate different aspects of nationalist sentiment and identity. By the 1830s, Grecian had gained acceptance as the preferred national style for public buildings and monuments of the New Town, giving physical expression to the cultural and intellectual achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment.15 From the 1830s, the Scottish Baronial emerged as a parallel style for the expression of a pre-classical and more specifically Scottish identity.16 The mid-nineteenth century Scottish Baronial style was understood as a historically hybrid style, embodying a fusion of Scottish vernacular and continental elements. Initially deployed in the field of large country houses, especially through the work of William Burn, by the 1850s the Scottish Baronial was seen as particularly appropriate for the redevelopment of the medieval burgh of the Old Town because of ancestral associations and its picturesque qualities in relation to the physical setting, and was extended for use in rural public buildings across Scotland.17 Alongside these developments, the ecclesiastical association of the Gothic dominated religious architecture in Edinburgh, whilst mercantile identities were expressed through the vocabularies of the Revival, as exemplified in David Bryce’s Refuge Assurance Building (1840), David Rhind’s monumental Commercial Bank Headquarters in Edinburgh (1843) and Venetian Renaissance palazzo block for the Life Association of Scotland (1855-58).18 Following his articles (completed in 1859), Stanley was appointed to the

role of draughtsman with Brown & Wardrop. Although Stanley’s involvement in specific projects is unclear – the only positive attribution available being the stables at Ladyland, Ayreshire (1861)19 – the breadth of work undertaken by the firm would have provided him with exposure to the design of a broad range of building types and styles. Reflecting a wider acceptance of stylistic plurality in Edinburgh at mid-century, Brown & Wardrop did not restrict their design practice to any specific revivalist discourse, rather designed in an eclectic mode. The eclecticism practiced by Brown & Wardrop was predicated upon a set of associations that had developed to mediate an expanding field of stylistic choice for an expanding range of building types. The appropriateness of particular styles was determined in relation to a matrix of concerns, including physical, cultural and social environments, as well as institutional identities, histories and hierarchies.20 In most instances, styles, or elements thereof, were borrowed and composed whilst maintaining autonomous identities. For example, the Linlithgow County Building (1861) was designed in a Georgian style in deference to the town’s existing Burgh Building. Brown & Wardrop’s parish churches typically conveyed appropriately calibrated ecclesiastical associations through the use of an Early Decorated Gothic style.21 The main style used by James Wardrop for large country houses was the contemporary Scottish Baronial and,

40 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 40 7/01/13 3:06 PM reflecting larger developments, this style was also extended to institutional and county buildings, such as the Fife and Kinross Asylum (1860) and Alloa County Building (1863).22 A broader interest in contemporary hybrid styles is also seen in the free-standing Wigtown County Building (1862) designed in a polychromatic French-Italian Gothic style.23 In each case, stylistic choice was governed by concerns about appropriateness to context and constituency.

Brisbane and Discourses of Style With a broad and eclectic vocabulary to hand, Stanley left Edinburgh, immigrating to Brisbane in 1861-62.24 By November 1862, Stanley had arrived in Brisbane and was working in private practice, before being appointed the following year as a Clerk of Works in the Office of the Queensland Colonial Architect under the leadership of Colonial Architect, Charles Tiffin.25 The appointment was rumoured to have been facilitated by friend, fellow Scotsman and Minister for Lands and Works, the Hon. Arthur Macalister.26 Brisbane, in the early 1860s, presented Stanley with a deeply different environment compared to the cool temperate landscape of Scotland and the established social and urban context of Edinburgh. Despite its status as a colonial capital, Brisbane would have appeared little more than an overcrowded, frontier town. The local press complained of a capital where, “so primitive is the style of architecture adopted by the great majority of people … that not only are the comforts of life not studied but its decencies disregarded and shamelessly

transgressed”; a capital where most residents lived in “paltry humpies … neither air-tight nor water-tight.”27 From the perspective of Victorian Britain and new immigrants, the Australian colonies (with the possible exception of ) were considered generally tropical – distinctly different, environmentally, climatically and culturally from Britain.28 But Brisbane’s hot-humid conditions matched by exotic landscapes, luxuriant vegetation and intense colour, and compounded by the ever-present threat of tropical fevers further distinguished Queensland from its southern counterparts. Yet the town also presented a distinctly exotic impression, being set within an unfamiliar sub-tropical landscape. One visitor from in the early 1860s wrote that Brisbane was not “much beyond a rising bush town in , but its aspect, nestling in the twisted folds of its bright river, is very charming, especially to eyes unused to the splendid forms, and the dazing wealth of color [sic] of tropical vegetation.”29 Within this environment, architecture quickly assumed a role in both defining and positioning a new society in relation to a new place. In 1859 – the year the Colony of Queensland was separated from – Charles Tiffin, the Queensland Colonial Government’s first Colonial Architect, lectured at the Brisbane School of Arts on “Dwelling of Mankind or Building Work.” Ranging across the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

King 41

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 41 7/01/13 3:06 PM John Ruskin and James Fergusson (among others), Tiffin argued the social agency of architecture in the new colony illuminated by an encyclopaedic sketch of the “course of civilisation … evinced in [man’s] dwellings.”30 He concluded:

Let us have good, true, and beneficial houses and shops and never fear for the churches and other public buildings, as we shall then have a people contented with the land they live in and will gladly spend the residue of their time and talents and money, to add still more happiness to their life. In the absence of a local vernacular, Tiffin advocated a cosmopolitan vision on style, recommending “Grecian, Gothic, Chinese, or Cholulan [Mexican], each is beautiful in its proper place.”31 Similar themes were pursued the following year by Justice Alfred Lutwyche who lectured on the topic of “Domestic Architecture” (1860) and Architect William Coote on “New Homes for a New Country” (1860), which argued “the necessity of taste and refinement, not less than convenience and healthy arrangement, as essential instruments in promoting the progress of a people, and in educating the young.”32 A discourse on climatic architecture was also quick to establish, in which architecture was envisioned in a twofold relationship with the unfamiliar environmental conditions of the colony. On one hand, architecture was positioned as a crucial instrument for both physical and cultural acclimatisation. In 1862, Coote advanced his thesis on the civilising role of architecture in the new colony, in a paper entitled “The Influence of Climate on our Domestic

Architecture” and delivered to the Queensland Philosophical Society. The argument drew upon popular environmental determinism, contending that the development of architectural styles, like biological systems, was determined by the nature of prevailing climatic conditions. By extension, the use of architectural styles from related climatic zones would ensure an appropriate relationship between architecture and its environment, thereby bringing the settler population into unison with the environment. For Brisbane, understood as climatically similar to Algiers or Maderia, this implied the adoption of courtyard dwelling typologies and styles from southern Europe and northern Africa – Mediterranean or Moorish styles – in favour of “climatically inappropriate” styles such as the Elizabethan.33 On the other hand, encounter with new physical and social environments was advocated as an opportunity for the ‘advancement’ of a new architecture. In a lengthy letter to the British journal, The Builder, on the topic of “The Sanitary Arrangement of Buildings in Hot Climates” (1864) – written in response to ongoing agitation concerning the sanitary design of military barracks for British troops in India – Charles Tiffin outlined strategies for an architecture suitable to Queensland’s tropical environs, taking into account environmental conditions and cognisant of the economic, technological and cultural contexts of the Queensland settler colony.34 He rejected the feasibility of technologies developed

42 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 42 7/01/13 3:06 PM in England and questioned the social efficacy of devices such as the punkah to facilitate ventilation and cooling as employed by the British in India. For Tiffin, the essential challenges and opportunities for architecture in Queensland were in an engagement with physical and social complexities of place. Rallying his argument, Tiffin concluded by calling for a new architecture in the face of new conditions: “I suppose we ought to strike out something quite new in Australia in architectural art; but where is the man that dares attempt it? We are wedded to the habits and customs of the English.”35 In challenging the fixity of a dominant English identity, Tiffin envisaged a future Queensland architecture responding to the exigencies of place while being formulated within the inter-colonial networks of the British Empire and a part of wider global history of architecture. Public and private architectural production during the 1860s was an important context for these debates, and for calibrating appropriate architectural responses within the colony. From within the Office of the Queensland Colonial Architect, it was the enormous task of providing the built infrastructure for settlement and governance throughout the new colony, “under quite new conditions of labour, materials and climate,” that in part prompted the technical concerns outlined in Charles Tiffin’s letter to The Builder.36 In parallel, the office was engaged in the preparation of designs for ambitious projects intended to position Brisbane as a colonial capital, including Government House (Charles Tiffin, 1860-62) and the Queensland Houses of Parliament (Charles Tiffin, 1865-67 ff.). Procuring a design for the Queensland Houses

of Parliament, in particular catalysed local debate. In 1863, a competition open to architects resident in the Australian colonies attracted eleven entries – three from Melbourne architects, two from and six submitted by Brisbane architects – all designed in classical styles.37 The two premiums were controversially awarded to Charles Tiffin – for a scheme described as being of a “Corinthian or composite order,” comprising four ranges enclosing a central domed hall establishing a landmark element within the composition – and FDG Stanley – for an economical “arcaded Roman” design that seemingly adapted the Neo-Classical spirit of William Playfair and William Hamilton’s Neo-Greek Edinburgh to the sub-tropics of Brisbane.38 Tiffin’s and Stanley’s schemes were awarded the premiums as the least expensive designs of merit, but the design that captured the collective aspirations of the colonial public was a proposal by Benjamin Backhouse, designed in progressive French Second Empire style (described as “modern Italian”), but eliminated from contention on grounds of cost. The gulf between economics and aspirations, refracted through style, was eventually resolved following government intervention and a variant on the French Second Empire style designed by Charles Tiffin in late 1864, allowing work to commence on site in 1865. Ecclesiastical architecture was also a productive field for shaping local

King 43

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 43 7/01/13 3:06 PM discourses on architectural style and the positioning of place. In 1859 (prior to Stanley’s arrival in Brisbane), Burges’s design for a Brisbane Cathedral (1859, unbuilt), which drew upon Ecclesiological principles attempted to realise a speluncar type – an invented tropical Gothic. Stylistically, it drew upon early French Gothic precedent deemed appropriate for the colony in terms of climatic analogy and with regard to uncomplicated detailing able to be achieved in the absence of a skilled European workforce. The appropriateness of the design – upon which the exigencies of place and position were seen to be writ large – was praised by the Ecclesiologists and it was included as an exemplar of a tropical cathedral in A. Beresford Hope’s The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century (1861).39 Following a critical review of the design published in the British journal, The Builder, however, it was emphatically rejected in the Brisbane press.40 Whilst the scheme may have represented a rational response to the geography and conditions of the new colony, the unmistakable primitivism was misaligned to the aspirations of local constituents. Contentions that framed the reception of Burges’ design were reprised in a subsequent competition (restricted to architects resident in the Australian colonies), held to procure another design for the Cathedral. All the nine submitted schemes, including one by F.D.G. Stanley, were variants of the Gothic and predominantly English, ranging from Early English to Decorated and Perpendicular, with one design identified as Italian Gothic and an extensive review of the nine schemes focussed on the adaptation of precedent and

associated issues of the propriety of climatic responsiveness.41 Of the locally prepared designed, aspirations were again captured by Benjamin Backhouse, in a progressive scheme that was not identified stylistically but described as a striking out on a “bolder course” in comparison with the other competitors, with a large climate adapted roof.42 Stanley was also identified as “a gentleman who has, we believe, already won his architectural spurs” and his design was considered to display a corresponding level of professionalism, demonstrating skill in realising a “very acceptable addition to our colonial architecture,” albeit lacking “grandeur.”43 Of further interest was the suggestion of an interest in a picturesque eclecticism, whereby the compositional method involved the combination of known stylistic elements, each independently expressed. Precedents for Stanley’s design were identified in a known but unacknowledged church in Newcastle (UK) and St Dunstan’s, London. He was, however, criticised for the adaptation of his sources and the fidelity of his detailing.

Eclectic Questioning In 1866, a major collapse of European financial houses virtually brought building in the Colony of Queensland to a halt.44 Gold discoveries eased the pressures, however, public works were severely curtailed and very limited for

44 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 44 7/01/13 3:06 PM the remainder of the decade. Even the Queensland Houses of Parliament were left incomplete in 1867, without its honorific façade of tiered arcaded loggias (subsequently completed in 1878). In 1871, Charles Tiffin was suspended from the role of Queensland Colonial Architect for criticising the policy of a new colonial government and in 1872 Stanley was appointed to the role of Superintendent of Roads and Buildings, subsequently redesignated Colonial Architect in 1873.45 The timing of Stanley’s promotion proved fortuitous; the early 1870s saw an economic recovery based on pastoral expansion in the west, the development of sugar plantations in the north and the discovery of new mineral deposits throughout the colony. Sustained economic growth allowed a re-invigorated colony-wide public works programme, under Stanley’s design leadership, which extended into the late 1870s. In Brisbane, the public buildings of the 1870s were crucial to the shaping of the civic environment, as the sites of the former military administration (pre-separation) were reconfigured for the institutions of civil governance. In 1871, construction commenced on the Colonial Government’s first major public building for Brisbane, the General Post Office (completed 1872), located on the site of the former female prison, at the mid-point of Brisbane’s main commercial thoroughfare, Queen Street. This was followed in 1872 by the construction of the Registrar General’s Office that constituted the first stage of the redevelopment of the site of the former Military Barracks (colloquially known as Treasury Square) at the intersection of Queen and George Street. Although a relatively small

building when completed in 1873 (occupying only one corner of a city block), Stanley later argued that it was intended that the structure would ultimately be extended to complete a full city block of government offices, two storeys high.46 It was thus envisaged that the building would become Brisbane’s most substantial, and in terms of the Colonial Government’s administrative structures, second only to the Houses of Parliament. This vision for a consolidated block of public offices was threatened in 1876 with a proposal to build a Queensland Museum on the southern portion of the site.47 However, internal government lobbying and an alternative proposal from the Colonial Architect, sought to preserve the ambitions for a monumental landmark on this most strategic site in the fledgling colonial city.48 An alternative proposal was thus accepted to site the Museum to the east of Treasury Square on a long triangular site at the intersection of the southern edge of the city grid and the banks of the Brisbane River.49 Although only comprising a single block in 1879, the Colonial Architect reported to Parliament that future growth would see the building expanded to include flanking pavilions, with arcades and colonnading fronting the Brisbane River and giving definition to the town’s southern river edge.50 In parallel with the Museum, Stanley realised the Brisbane Supreme Court (1874-79) – the largest and most expensive public buildings of the 1870s – also fronting the Brisbane

King 45

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 45 7/01/13 3:06 PM Figure 2. Brisbane General Post Office, Brisbane, ca. 1875 John Oxley Library, State library of Queensland, Neg: 143672

River, two blocks to west of the Registrar General’s Office and Museum. In concert, visions of the three buildings indicate the ambition of a consolidated group of public buildings lining the northern edge of the Brisbane River. Broadly characteristic of the nineteenth century public building in the Australian colonies, this group of primary public buildings were designed in classical styles. Yet they simultaneously demonstrate the workings of an eclectic search for an appropriate public architecture, as multiple variants of the classical tradition were adapted to civic, institutional and pragmatic requirements. The Brisbane General Post Office (Fig 2) – Stanley’s first major public building – drew upon eighteenth and early-nineteenth century models of British colonial buildings in the tropics, comprising a double storey pavilion with arcades to the ground level and a colonnaded verandah above. The provision for a small forecourt established a civic presence for the structure, reinforced by a Palladian composition with careful classical detailing applied to the arcades, which were intended to shelter the public awaiting the arrival of the European mail. The climate discourses of the 1860s provided an essential lens for the apprehension of the architecture and apparent departures from European

46 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 46 7/01/13 3:06 PM Figure 3. North Quay Elevation (South) of the Supreme Court, Brisbane ca. 1886 John Oxley Library, State library of Queensland, Neg: 15252

precedent. In a substantial review for both local and European audiences (the review was re-printed in the monthly “Summary for Europe”), the Brisbane Courier enthused: “[t]he feature most worthy of remark in the building is the evident attention the architect has paid to the requirements of the climate.” In doing so, the author raised two critical issues about the perceived influence of climate on local architecture.51 First, the newspaper spuriously argued that climate was instrumental in the choice of style – “Italian of the classical type, … being best suited for tropical or semi-tropical countries,” simultaneously localising the style and mobilising local in relation to a wider culture.52 Secondly, the review raised the question of the potentially detrimental affects of a sub- tropical climate on the decorum of the public building, revealing attendant anxieties of acclimatisation interpreted through architecture. Having described both formal and pragmatic climatic responses, the newspaper reassured its readers that “through this [climatic adaptation] the beauty of the design has not in the least been impaired.”53 At stake was the lightweight appearance of the structure challenging the interpretation of civic dignity conventionally expressed through the building’s mass or scale. Countering the potential criticism, the Brisbane Courier reported that the inclusion of the verandah under the volume

King 47

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 47 7/01/13 3:06 PM of the main roof was “said to be more substantial, as well as producing greater architectural effect,” but ultimately revealed an uneasy tension in a building both strange and familiar as the orthodoxies of a Renaissance idiom met the experiences and anxieties of a hot and humid climate in Queensland.54 The Registrar General’s Office was designed in a notably more ornamental Italianate style, described in the local press as “modern Italian,” arguably appropriate to the status of the building’s envisioned future as the colonial government’s administrative centrepiece.55 The architecture of the Museum (possibly drawing upon an earlier design prepared by Charles Tiffin in 1863) deployed the common nineteenth-century model of a sixteenth-century Italian palazzo block.56 The piano nobile was expressed with a Corinthian colonnade but separated from the façade of the building to provide a narrow colonnaded loggia overlooking the street, while also shading the northern face of the main exhibition hall. In an apparent allusion to antiquity, the Corinthian capitals were specifically based upon those of the Tower of the Winds, and combined with a decorative frieze panel, over-sized console brackets, a dentiled cornice and balustraded eaves, achieving an overall ornamental effect through the modelling and juxtaposition of classical details. Stanley’s subjective use of classical elements was amplified in his design for the Brisbane Supreme Court (1874-79, dem.) (Fig 3). It comprised three separate courtrooms and associated public offices, rationally arranged in a T-shaped plan, with the central hall and each of the three courts occupying the upper levels of

the arm of the T.57 The overall composition of the principal elevation resembled the formula of Robert Adams’s Register House, Edinburgh (1774-92), yet with a French Second Empire effect achieved through enriched detailing of the principal façade and a raised bell-cast roof in lieu of Adams’ dome. The latter inclusion reflected the broader acceptance of the French Second Empire style for major civic buildings as illustrated in The Builder during the 1870s. It may have been motivated as an associative gesture to the French Second Empire styling of the Queensland Houses of Parliament as per the applauded competition entry of Benjamin Backhouse (1864) and as subsequently realised in a new design by Charles Tiffin (1865). Yet in the instance of the Supreme Court, the bell-cast roof was a discrete element observed to introduce a certain hybridity to the architecture. The Brisbane Courier remarked that it “deviat[ed] somewhat from the pure Italian style of architecture,” but the paper nonetheless considered the eclecticism, “a very judicious modification” which gave “prominence and effect” to the design.58 More radical for a major public building was an overt eclecticism worked out on the northern elevations of the building (Fig 1). Two distinctly Italianate stair towers flanked the bell-cast roof; segmental arcades and colonnaded verandahs provided access and shade to the courts and public offices; and, at the stem of

48 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 48 7/01/13 3:06 PM the T, a formal Renaissance Revival loggia and giant order aedicule enriched a secondary entrance – yet the most frequently used59 – to George Street. The overall effect involved rational planning and arrangement rendered through a picturesque composition of discrete stylistic elements. Looking more widely at Stanley’s provincial buildings, institutional hierarchies were similarly mediated by a variety of classical modes, adapted in response to social and contextual factors. For Townsville in northern Queensland, a single-storey, brick-fronted courthouse, approximating Inigo Jones’s interpretation of a primitive Tuscan Temple at St Paul’s Covent Garden (1631-33) and echoing early temple-fronted courthouses in New South Wales, was the first permanent public building in the town, providing accommodation for assizes of the Supreme Court and offices for non-court government officials.60 The larger, double-storey pavilion of the Maryborough Courthouse and Public Offices (1875) was conceived as a freestanding arcaded pavilion bracketed by robustly modelled Italianate towers, with inset Regency-derived verandahs and treillage in lieu of the arcaded loggias. In contrast, the scale and status of the Bowen Northern Supreme Courthouse and Post & Telegraph Office (1881) was expressed with a giant arcade superimposed with giant Doric pilasters. The full scope of Stanley’s responsibilities involved vast numbers of small structures: courts of petty sessions, and police stations and (from 1876) schools, for which standardised timber structures offered an efficient response to the pressure of expanding settlement. These largely pragmatic structures were

afforded economical interpretations of classical details, typically applied to the gables and verandahs that mediated the public realm. However, distinctive among this group were the courthouses for Mackay (1871) and St Lawrence (1878), which deployed a Gothic-derived expression of an exposed timber frame, developed in Queensland churches and schools by émigré architect Richard Suter for both the Anglican Church and the Queensland Board of Education in the 1860s and advocated by the Board of Education as a potential vernacular.61 Although among Stanley’s most modest structures, the hybrid combinations of a Gothic-derived tectonic and a modest interpretation of classical stylistic elements effectively straddled institutional and architectural traditions, exemplifying an eclectic search for a suitable public architecture that could speak specifically to its small-town surroundings and constituency. The variety within Stanley’s classical public buildings is brought into sharp relief when compared to the conservative classical traditions that informed the public buildings programmes in the southern Australian colonies of Victoria (under the leadership of Inspector General of Public Works, William Wardell; born and trained in London) and New South Wales (under the design leadership of Colonial Architect, James Barnet; a Scotsman, trained in London), both designing according to strict regimes of decorum. In Victoria, Wardell’s

King 49

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 49 7/01/13 3:06 PM leadership of the Department of Public Works is widely associated with a tightly controlled regime of economical, conservative classical design. Under Wardell, Victorian public buildings were designed within a broad classical vocabulary: buildings were simply massed, usually symmetrically arranged; preference was given to smooth astylar structural expression; and spare ornamentation (drawn exclusively from Renaissance Revival and Italianate sources) tended to be evenly distributed and always subservient to the overall form. Major urban buildings designed in this manner include the Royal Mint (J.J. Clark, 1869-72), additions to the Melbourne Custom House (J.J. Clark, 1876) and the Victorian Government House (William Wardell, 1872-76). The prevailing imperative for the restraint imposed by Wardell came from political pressure to control the costs of public works.62 Yet architectural propriety always mediated economic response: Wardell argued a fitness to purpose – “the simpler the better, so long as the proper architectural effect is preserved” – a position that architectural historian George Tibbits has related to Wardell’s Puginian training.63 In New South Wales, James Barnet’s primary buildings, including the Sydney General Post Office (1866-91) and Lands Department building (1876-91), synthesised Italian Renaissance and Baroque precedents, yet with a highly disciplined use of classical types, elements and ornament, as established through customary use over time.64 Peter Kohane and Chris Johnson have argued that Barnet’s design method was underpinned by notions of civic decorum, or the creation of a legible urban environment, and point to the theories of Charles Robert (C.R.) Cockerell

and Edward Lacy Garbett as having a lasting impact on Barnet’s career.65 Stanley’s work shares the pervasive concerns of his professional contemporaries, in terms of the role of the public building in the definition of well-ordered legible urban and social environments, as framed by key nineteenth century theorists including Pugin, Cockerell and Garbett. A shared understanding of the classical principles of decorum, or the traditions and customs governing the use of classical elements is also evident, for example, in Stanley’s deployment of the orders, colonnades and arcaded loggias as well as the calibration of architectural ornament within urban settings. However, the picturesque composition of the classical Brisbane Supreme Court – Stanley’s largest and most prestigious public building – indicates the operation of an eclectic discourse, which accepted and expressed stylistic difference, distinguishing Stanley’s approach from the classicism of Wardell and Barnet. Acceptance of stylistic plurality, allied to an urban consciousness, may be further seen in a significant departure from the near-exclusive use of classical styles for public building in the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. In the early 1870s, preceding the design of the Brisbane Supreme Court, Stanley produced a group of public buildings, which interpret the palazzo block form in variants of a Italian Gothic style. Stanley would have been familiar with the

50 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 50 7/01/13 3:06 PM Italian Gothic through John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice (1851-53), and also aware of Ruskin’s lectures in Edinburgh (1853), which entailed an influential criticism of the uniform classicism of Edinburgh’s New Town development.66 He would also have encountered the style directly in the work of his Edinburgh employers, Brown and Wardrop and through architectural journals throughout the 1860s. It is unclear, however, whether Stanley adopted the Italian (predominantly Venetian) Gothic as an orthodox style for deployment as part of a learnt eclectic repertoire, or further valued it for its inherent stylistic hybridity, as promulgated by Ruskin and subsequently advocated as a source for future stylistic development by George Edmund Street’s Brick and Marble Architecture of the Middle Ages: Notes on Tours in the North of Italy (1855) and George Gilbert Scott’s Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, Present and Future (1857).67 Stylistic motivations are difficult to resolve, especially as Stanley does not appear to have left any writing on architectural style to indicate any philosophical position. However, patterns of stylistic choice are clear and insightful. Notably, Stanley deployed the Italian Gothic for the specific case of a second tier of secular institutional accommodation. The sites for these buildings were less strategic, urbanistically, and the projects were allocated lesser budgets, precluding the expense of stone façades reserved for the most prestigious public buildings, hence indicating a connection between site, status and style.68 From this perspective the use of the style might be interpreted as occupying a position

within a larger repertoire. The intentions of the design methodology, in terms of individual elements and the question of stylistic development, is less clear beyond the observation of a syncretic approach to coalescing multiple stylistic elements pre-empting the compositional approach of the later classical Brisbane Supreme Court. In the Queensland Government Printery (1872-73) (Fig 4), an understanding of classicism ordered the composition while individual stylistic elements construed a North Italian vernacular through the combination of both Classical and Gothic details all under a French bell-cast roof, purportedly designed to ensure thorough ventilation of the top level binding room.69 As this alternative stylistic mode was extended, the local press emphasised its economy and modernity. The Roma Street Railway Station, Brisbane (1873) (Fig 5) was identified in the local press as “an Italian Gothic order of architecture” while exhibiting an overall Venetian character, combining Classical, Romanesque and Gothic elements.70 It was followed, by additions for the Public Works Office (1874), reported as “a modernised type of Venetian Gothic,” and new Police Courts (1874-76), described as “Italian Gothic, a happy combination of the classic with the modern, and particularly suitable where both elegance and economy have to be studied.”71 In 1876, designs were tendered

King 51

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 51 7/01/13 3:06 PM Figure 4. Queensland Government Printing Office, Brisbane, ca. 1883 John Oxley Library, State library of Queensland, Neg: 61125

for a new Police Station (attributed to draftsman George Connolly; 1876-80), initially described as “Italian and Byzantine,” and subsequently re-appraised as “Venetian-Italian.”72 Climate discourses were also brought to bear on the apprehension of the appropriateness of the style. For the Police Station, locally manufactured white bricks were used in lieu of freestone dressings and were reportedly the first use of white brickwork in the city, advocated by Stanley as an economic substitution for stonework with the advantage of a colour appropriate to the local climate and clarity of the atmosphere.73

Private Practice In 1881, Stanley resigned as Queensland Colonial Architect and committed to private practice, having secured the commission for Brisbane’s largest commercial building of the time, the Queensland National Bank (1880-85) – the most expensive and prestigious building of his career. For this commission, Stanley wrapped a Renaissance palazzo block in giant order, with a projecting temple front overlooking the commercial thoroughfare of Queen Street. The model suggests the ongoing legacy of Stanley’s Scottish background through an apparent familiarity with David Rhind’s Commercial Bank Headquarters,

52 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 52 7/01/13 3:06 PM Figure 5. Roma Street Railway Station, Brisbane, ca. 1888 John Oxley Library, State library of Queensland, Neg: 17669

Edinburgh (1843). It also highlights a further shift in the use of particular typological and stylistic elements deemed appropriate to the bank’s scale and status. At the same time, an underlying approach in a syncretic compositional method was evinced in the facades comprising a confident montage of represented structure. A restrained adaptation of the classical arcaded and colonnaded pavilions developed in Stanley’s public practice was deployed for a raft of provincial bank buildings, notable among them the Queensland National Banks in Rockhampton (1880), Bundaberg (1886-87) and Cooktown (1889-90). Otherwise, Italianate detailing was generally used for offices, hotels, shops and warehouses. For private ecclesiastical buildings (undertaken in both public and private practice), Stanley shifted to variants of an English Gothic, reflecting the predominant ecclesiastical Gothic mode of Brown and Wardrop.74 The urban churches for Holy Trinity Church of England, Fortitude Valley (1875-77) and St Paul’s Church of England, Maryborough (1877-79), were both constructed in polychromatic brickwork and Early Decorated Geometric tracery, with distinctively expressed stylistic elements such as the superimposed entrance portal at Holy Trinity. St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Spring Hill (1885-89) was

King 53

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 53 7/01/13 3:06 PM constructed in stone and also in an Early English Gothic style, while an adjoining church hall was designed in an English Perpendicular style.75 With the economic boom of the 1880s, Stanley’s private practice rapidly assumed the position of one of the largest in Brisbane, curtailed only by dire economic conditions of the mid-1890s. In 1895, Stanley was forced into bankruptcy, and in 1896 he returned to the Queensland Public Works Department as a temporary inspector.

Conclusion Stanley’s search for an appropriate public architecture in Queensland during the 1870s was underpinned by an eclectic method learnt and practiced in Edinburgh in the 1850s. A direct connection can be made through the observation of Stanley’s use of a similar repertoire of styles as used by his former employers, Brown and Wardrop. Moreover, the approach in both instances involved the selection of alternate styles, and occasional admixture of stylistic elements, in relation to a matrix of concerns, which included physical, cultural and social environments, as well as institutional identities, histories and hierarchies. While in Queensland this entailed mediating the conditions of a sub-tropical climate and associated professional and public discourses of acclimatisation, Stanley’s eclecticism must first be understood in relation to a mode of practice rather than as a representation of the contingencies of place. Stanley continued to work in this syncretic eclectic mode, as trained, rather

than pursuing the subsequent ideal of a synthetic, or progressive eclecticism first articulated by Beresford Hope in the mid-1840s and popularised in the 1850s and 60s. Beresford Hope’s progressive eclecticism was to be assimilative in pursuit of a new style. In contrast, the eclecticism practiced by Stanley fostered variety as styles and stylistic elements were afforded autonomy, contributing to the development of an urban consciousness interpreted as modern. Connected to an appreciation of variety was a positioning of contextual specificity as expressive of the advancement of a wider architectural culture. Drawing upon a distinct intellectual and professional milieu, these works pre-empted a later expansion of the field of Victorian architectural styles, including an assimilative and cosmopolitan eclecticism practiced by a subsequent generation of architects in Brisbane in the 1880s, and contributed to prompting the Aldine History of Queensland (1889) to observe that

[t]he advent of each new man introduced to the community new styles of architecture, resulting in a variety that gives to Brisbane a charm that no other city in the colonies possesses.76 The impact of Stanley’s Scottish heritage thus highlights the need for a further consideration of the agency of networks and actors within the British settler communities of the Australian colonies. This requires ongoing

54 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 54 7/01/13 3:06 PM examination of the breadth of intellectual and professional backgrounds brought to bear in the emerging architectural cultures of the Australian colonies. Moreover, as romantic assumptions about responses to place and climate in Queensland architecture continue to be scrutinised, Stanley’s Scottish-ness offers an alternative rationale to the more familiar trope of climate in this specific instance of Queensland eclecticism.

King 55

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 55 7/01/13 3:06 PM Author’s Note An earlier version of part of this paper was presented at the 22nd Annual SAHANZ Conference in Napier, 2005. Recent research and the development of this paper was supported by a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History (ATCH) in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland, in November 2011.

notes 1. Donald Watson and Judith McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century: A Biographical Dictionary (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994), 166-179. 2. Stuart King, “Colony and Climate: Positioning Public Architecture in Queensland, 1859- 1909,” PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2010; Bruce Ward, “Classical Detail and its Influence on Facade Designs of Nine Brisbane Buildings between 1865 and 1930: Parliament House, Museum, Australia National Bank, Treasury Building, Customs House, Lands Administration Building, Family Services Building, City Hall and Bank of New South Wales” Masters diss., University of Queensland, 1994; Warwick Lavers, “A Historic Survey of the Brisbane General Post Office,”U ndergraduate diss., University of Queensland, 1982. 3. This professional award also serves to recognise that Stanley was the inaugural President of the Queensland Institute of Architects from 1888 to 1890. Watson and McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 168. For a discussion of the context and establishment of the Queensland Institute of Architects, refer: Donald Watson, “Foundations: The Queensland Institute of Architects,” in Brisbane in 1888: The Historical Perspective, eds. Brisbane History Group (Brisbane: Brisbane History Group, 1988), 109-16. 4. Julie Willis and Philip Goad, “A Bigger Picture: Reframing Australian Architectural History,” Fabrications 18:1 (June 2008): 11. 5. Raymond Evans, History of Queensland (Cambridge, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 89. 6. Evans, History of Queensland, 89. 7. Evans, History of Queensland, 88-89. 8. Evans, History of Queensland, 88. 9. James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo- World, 1783-1939 (: Oxford University Press, 2011), 59. 10. On visual manifestation of Scottish influence in the early years of the Colony of New South Wales refer: Diane Brand, “An Urbane Gaol: Macquarie’s Sydney,” Journal of Urban Design 3:2 (1998): 225-239; and Mary Casey, “A Patina of Age: Elizabeth Macquarie (née) Campbell and the Influence of the Buildings and Landscape ofArgyll, Scotland, in Colonial New South Wales,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14 (2010):335-356. 11. Paul Walker and Stuart King, “Style and Climate in Addison’s Brisbane Exhibition Building,” Fabrications 17:2 (2007): 26-47. 12. Deborah van der Plaat, “The Emancipated Imagination and Victorian Cosmopolis: Stylistic Eclecticism in Addison’s New Exhibition Building (1891),” in Imagining, Proceedings of the 27th International SAHANZ Conference, eds. Michael Chapman & Michael Ostwald (Newcastle, N.S.W: the Society, 2010), 451-456. 13. For discussion of architectural profession and education in 19th century Scotland, refer: David Walker, “The Architectural Profession in Scotland, 1840-1940: Background to the Biographical Notes,” in Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Accessed August 25, 2012. .http:// www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/themes.php, 14. “Brown & Wardrop,” Dictionary of Scottish Architects. accessed August 25, 2012. http:// www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200149. 15. John Lowrey, “Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the Question of Scottish Identity within the Unionist State,” JSAH 60:2 (2001): 155. 16. Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 131. 17. John Lowrey, “Caesarea to Athens”, 142. Glendinning & MacKechnie, Scottish Architecture, 144. 18. Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes and Aonghus MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 268-69.

56 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 56 7/01/13 3:06 PM 19. “Francis Drummond Greville Stanley”, Dictionary of Scottish Architects. http://www. scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=203110. Accessed 25 August 2012. 20. J. Mordaunt Crook, Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post- Modern (London: John Murray, 1987), 35. 21. “Brown & Wardrop”, Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Accessed August 25, 2012. 22. “Brown & Wardrop”, Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Accessed August 25, 2012. 23. “Brown & Wardrop”, Dictionary of Scottish Architects. Accessed August 25, 2012. 24. Watson and McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 167. 25. Watson and McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 166. 26. Watson and McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 166. 27. The Brisbane Courier, May 17, 1864, quoted in: A.A. Morrison, “Brisbane One Hundred Years Ago,” Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 7:1 (1962-63): 77. 28. As discussed by Thomas Metcalf, in his examination of the architecture of the British Raj in India, the tropics were not only defined by climatic differences but cultural differences from those of Europe. See: Thomas R Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 5-6. 29. The Brisbane Courier, April 1, 1873, 2. 30. Charles Tiffin, “Dwelling of Mankind or BuildingWork,” Courier, June 18, 1859, 5. 31. Tiffin, “Dwelling of Mankind or BuildingWork,” 5. 32. Moreton Bay Courier, November 6, 1860, 3. 33. William Coote, “The Influence of Climate on our DomesticArchitecture” (1862), in Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Queensland (Brisbane: Warwick & Sapsford, 1884), [unpaginated]. 34. Charles Tiffin, “Sanitary Arrangements of Building in Hot Climates,” The Builder, April 30, 1864, 310. 35. Charles Tiffin, “Sanitary Arrangements of Building in Hot Climates,” 310.

36. Tiffin, “Memorandum,” Queensland State Archives, WOR/A67. 37. “Proposed New Houses of Parliament: Report of the Commission,” 315. Unfortunately, the report does not list the names of the eleven entrants; only the identities of the four preferred schemes were reported. 38. Queensland Daily Guardian, April 18, 1864, 3. Drawings of these designs have not been located and the contention about possible influences on Stanley’s design are speculative, relying on a short written description of the design. 39. A.J.B. Beresford Hope, The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century (London: John Murray, 1861), 84-87. 40 “The Architectural Exhibition,” The Builder, April 21, 1860, 251; and “Cathedral for Brisbane,” Moreton Bay Courier, August 4, 1860, 3. 41. “Proposed New Church of St John’s”, Brisbane Courier, December 20, 1865, 3. 42. “Proposed New Church of St John’s”, 3. 43. “Proposed New Church of St John’s”, 3. 44. “Summary for Europe – Public works,” The Brisbane Courier, July 19, 1866, 2. 45. Watson and McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 166. 46. Colonial Architect to Undersecretary, Department of Public Works, “Memo: on Proposed sites for new Museum buildings Brisbane,” December 21, 1876. Queensland State Archives: WOR/A343, letter no. 6049/76. 47. “Memo: on Proposed sites for new Museum buildings Brisbane,” December 21, 1876. 48. “Memo: on Proposed sites for new Museum buildings Brisbane,” December 21, 1876; See also: Michael Kennedy, “The Cultural Significance of theT reasury Building, Brisbane,” Q Build Services, Administrative Services Department of the Queensland Government, (September 1991), 9. 49. The Brisbane Courier, January 4, 1877, 2.

King 57

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 57 7/01/13 3:06 PM 50. F.D.G. Stanley, “Report on the Works Carried Out Under the Colonial Architect”s Department for the Year 1879,” Queensland Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, (1880), 1007. 51. “The New Post-Office”,The Brisbane Courier, September 19, 1872, 3. 52. “The New Post-Office”,The Brisbane Courier, September 19, 1872, 3. 53. “The New Post-Office”,The Brisbane Courier, September 19, 1872, 3. 54. “The New Post-Office”,The Brisbane Courier, September 19, 1872, 3. 55. The Brisbane Courier, March 2, 1872, 2. 56. In 1863, Charles Tiffin had prepared an earlier design for a museum in an ornate“ style, viz. The Florentine.” When discussions for a new museum were revived in 1871, Stanley was requested to retrieve Tiffin’s design for consideration. Refer: The Brisbane Courier, May 16, 1871, 2. 57. For a detailed account of the history and design of the buildings of Brisbane’s law courts refer: Donald Watson, “A Tolerably Imposing Pile: the Brisbane Law Courts 1879-1976,” in Supreme Court history Program yearbook 2010, eds. Michael White and Aladin Rahemtula (Brisbane: Supreme Court Library, 2011), 46-121. 58. “New Law Courts”, The Brisbane Courier, August 4, 1874, 3. 59. Watson, “A tolerably Imposing Pile: the Brisbane Law Courts 1879-1976,” 67. 60. Prior to the construction of this building, court proceedings were conducted in a small timber structure that served as both courthouse and custom house. Refer: Dorothy Gibson- Wilde, “Historic Courthouses of Townsville,” Heritage Australia (Spring 1985): 27-29. For a broader discussion of Townsville’s early development and townscape, refer: Dorothy Gibson- Wilde, Gateway to a Golden Land: Townsville to 1884 (Townsville: James Cook University, History Department, 1984). 61. Donald Watson, “Outside Studding: ‘Some claims to architectural taste,’” Historic Environment 2:3 (1988): 22-31. 62. Ursula de Jong, William Wilkinson Wardell 1823-1899: His Life and Work (Clayton, Victoria: Department of Visual Arts Monash University, 1983), 20. 63. George Tibbits, “Wardell and the Classical Style” in W.W. Wardell the Architect and His

Era: Centenary Papers, ed. Ursula de Jong (: Wardell Centenary Committee & Deakin University, 2000), 61. 64. Peter Kohane, “James Barnet and the Classical Ideal: Architecture in Sydney,” in James Barnet: The universal Values of Civic Existence, eds. Chris Johnson, Patrick Bingham-Hall and Peter Kohane, (Balmain, NSW: Pesaro Publishing, 2000),12. 65. Chris Johnson, Shaping Sydney: Public Architecture and Civic Decorum (Hale & Iremonger: Alexandria, NSW, 1999), 80-81; Peter Kohane, “James Barnet and the Classical Ideal: Architecture in Sydney,” 12. 66. Deborah Howard, “Reflexions of eniceV in Scottish Architecture,” Architectural History 44: Essays in Architectural History Presented to John Newman, (2001), 130. Howard argues that Ruskin”s lectures (1853) made a deep impression on the city of Edinburgh that was rapidly manifested in the architecture of the city. This was during the period that Stanley was entering the architectural profession. 67. Crook, Dilemma of Style, 133. 68. For a discussion of the matrix of site, scale, status and style in the context of 20th century interwar eclecticism, refer: Julie Willis, “Style/Scale/Status/Site: The Sensibility of Architectural Eclecticism,” in 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, eds. Harriet Edquist and Helene Frichot (Melbourne: the Society, 2004), vol. 2, 533-538. 69. The Brisbane Courier, October 31, 1872, 4. 70. The Brisbane Courier, October 18, 1873, 5. See also: Kevin Green, “The Nineteenth Century Railway Station as a Portal to Modernity,” in 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, eds. Harriet Edquist and Helene Frichot, (Melbourne: The Society, 2004), vol. 1, 189. 71. The Brisbane Courier, October 6, 1874, 2; and Brisbane Courier, November 3, 1874, 2. 72. The Brisbane Courier, January 15, 1876, 5; and “New Police Station”, Brisbane Courier, April 22, 1880, 3. For attribution refer: Watson & McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, 40.

58 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 58 7/01/13 3:06 PM 73. “New Police Station”, The Brisbane Courier, April 22, 1880, 3. 74. In 1869, Stanley also produced a rare Italianate church for the non-conformist Congregational Church, Ipswich, demonstrating his proficiency in the style.Queenslander , November 20, 1969, 10. 75. The Brisbane Courier, October 10, 1887, 7.; & Brisbane Courier, June 12, 1886, 3. 76. W. Morrison, Aldine History of Queensland (Sydney: Aldine Publishing Co., 1889), 427.

King 59

FAB 21-2 04 King.indd 59 7/01/13 3:06 PM

Figure 1. Peregian Roadhouse soon after opening on 2nd June 1962. Photograph courtesy Shaun Walsh.

© SAHANZ & Roger Benjamin. Published in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 21:2 (March 2012): 60-81. ISSN 1033-1867.

60 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 21:2

FAB 21-2 05 Benjamin.indd 60 7/01/13 3:09 PM