No Mean Plans

NO MEAN PLANS Designing the Great Court at the University of Queensland by John W. East 2014 © John W. East The author would like to express his gratitude for much information and assistance provided by Bruce Ibsen (University of Queensland Archivist) and all the staff of the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland. CONTENTS 1. Introduction . 1 2. Prelude . 4 3. Jack F. Hennessy, Architect of the Great Court . 20 4. The First Phase (1936-1942) . 37 5. Post-War (1945-1960) . 64 6. The 1960s . 94 7. The 1970s . 119 8. The 1980s . 135 9. The 1990s . 140 10. 2000-2010 . 147 11. Afterword . 153 1. INTRODUCTION Whoever has the honour to be entrusted with the architecture of St. Lucia … must make no mean plans, for mean plans have no magic to stir any man's blood, or awaken inspiration in anyone, and the University should be an inspiration to her students. (J.J.C. Bradfield, June 22, 1936)1 The University of Queensland is blessed with perhaps the most attractive university campus in Australia. Nestled in a pocket of the Brisbane River at St Lucia, a leafy western suburb of Brisbane, it stands about five kilometres by road from the centre of the city, but is best approached by water, on one of the high-speed ferries which skim up-river from the central business district. The wide, meandering river surrounds the campus on three sides. Normally a placid, tidal waterway, it floods severely about once in a generation. This fact of nature has preserved the lower-lying parts of the campus from development, and the riverside areas are used mainly for sporting ovals and other recreational pursuits, creating a green girdle around much of the university. The meanders of the river also preclude the development of any major traffic route through the site, which is a natural cul-de-sac, removed from the noise and pollution of Brisbane's busy arterial highways. The lagoons, which were a feature of the area long before European settlement, have been disciplined into substantial lakes. These lakes not only form attractive water features, they also provide irrigation for the lawns and gardens of the university. As development has spread from the central plateau down towards the lower ground, architects have used the main lake to great effect, creating striking buildings on its banks with internal spaces which open out to the water. The tall trees which were planted along the river bank, to screen the memento mori of the Dutton Park cemetery, have long since fulfilled and exceeded their brief, and they now contribute to the rural charm of the riverside roadway. The exotic jacaranda trees attract hundreds of amateur photographers when they bloom in October, especially where they reflect themselves in the lakes. The many other native and introduced trees, carefully chosen and cultivated for decades now, are one of the delights of the campus. The students and staff who are able to enjoy the amenities of this attractive site, to say nothing of the morning walkers and cyclists and the weekend picnickers who also make good use of it, would be surprised and amused to discover that, when first mooted as a location for a university, it was considered too remote, and even too unhealthy, for such a purpose. Those 1 [J.J.C. Bradfield], "University at Saint Lucia Lay-Out: Address before the Senate and Staff of the University at the Geology Theatre, June 22nd, 1936," UQ History Collection, Fryer Library, UQFL458, box 12, folder 2. 1 familiar with the old universities of Europe, or even with the well-established universities of Sydney and Melbourne, expected a university to be close to the centre of the city. The medical profession, impatient for the establishment of a medical school in Queensland, wanted a university close to what would become the main teaching hospital at Herston. The "great site debate" was not finally resolved until construction began at St Lucia in 1938, by which time a medical school was already being built at Herston. Now, after seventy-five years of development, the St Lucia campus is a huge educational complex which has outgrown its natural boundaries and outsourced some of its functions to roomier sites outside of Brisbane. The buildings on the campus are an object lesson in changing styles of Australian academic architecture over the last three-quarters of a century. They include many fine buildings, and also some cheap and nasty ones, but the recognised centre of the campus is the complex of sandstone-clad buildings, carefully situated at the apex of the site, adjacent to what was once called Mill Road, a dirt track which ran down to William Dart's eponymous sugar mill on the riverbank. Since the early 1950s, this central complex of buildings has been known as The Great Court. The origins of the name are lost in university antiquity, but it has medieval resonances which would have appealed to white Australians of an earlier era, raised, as most of them had been, on the history and folklore of "the old country." Partially obscured and overshadowed by subsequent building, the Great Court is still the architectural centre of the campus. The purpose of the present study is to provide a history of the development of the earliest university buildings which now form the Great Court. They were originally designed by one of the most prominent Australian architects of the inter-war years, a man whose name is unknown today except to architectural historians. These buildings then suffered from endless delays in construction, which effectively rendered the design out-moded before the buildings were even completed. For decades thereafter they were regarded as something akin to an embarrassing older relative, until changing tastes discovered in them the charms and attractive eccentricities of a dignified old age. Today the Great Court is a heritage-listed complex, rich in architectural sculpture, and it attracts considerable interest, both from the casual visitor and the architectural historian. It is hoped that the following chapters will give a better understanding of this site. Seeing these buildings in their historical context may perhaps stimulate a renewed desire to preserve them and to respect the integrity of the original design. However a working university is not a museum; its buildings have to be constantly adapted to meet the changing needs of students, teachers and researchers. To achieve this, while simultaneously respecting the vision, artistry and craftsmanship of our forebears, is a major challenge. Intelligent and sensitive refurbishment must be informed by a knowledge of the path already trodden. 2 Figure 1.1: Aerial view of the St Lucia site, about 19302 2 Fryer Library, UQFL466 AB/P/53. 3 2. PRELUDE (1926-1936) The Earliest Plans In October 1926, Dr James Mayne and his sister offered to pay for the resumption of land at St Lucia to create a new campus for the University of Queensland. The Brisbane mayor, William Jolly, declared that this was a site "unequalled for a University in any city in Australia or in the world." Certainly it offered great benefits when compared with the cramped accommodation which the University then occupied at George Street in the city, on the site of the current Queensland University of Technology. Nonetheless there were many who still favoured an earlier proposal to move the University to a site at Victoria Park, which was close to the centre of the city and also to the Brisbane General Hospital at Herston, which was envisaged as the teaching hospital for the future medical school.1 The academic staff of the University generally favoured the St Lucia proposal. One of the strongest advocates was A.C.V. Melbourne, lecturer in history.2 Melbourne praised the St Lucia setting as being "secure in its isolation."3 He quickly began to assess the possibilities of the site, and had a rough layout sketch prepared by a Brisbane architect, R. Martin Wilson.4 In many ways Wilson's plan was the template for most of the subsequent plans. He located the principal buildings on the central plateau, using a square layout, with the main building in the centre of the square and other buildings at the corners. He proposed a bridge over the river to Boundary Street, with a tram line running up Mill Road. Unnamed buildings (probably colleges) were sited on the southern ridge by the river. There is no lake in Wilson's sketch, but he envisaged a riverside drive.5 However the first serious attempt to plan the St Lucia site was undertaken by the University's Professor of Engineering, R.W.H. Hawken.6 He presented a preliminary plan for the site, drawn by his colleagues in the Engineering Department, to a meeting of the University's Buildings and Grounds Committee in September 1929.7 This evolved into a layout plan which clearly influenced later thinking on the subject.8 At the centre of the campus, on the highest point of the St Lucia site, he situated the Library building (including the 1 Malcolm Thomis, A Place of Light & Learning: The University of Queensland's First Seventy-Five Years (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1985), 157-9. 2 See also Helen Gregory, Vivant Professores: Distinguished Members of the University of Queensland, 1910- 1940 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Library, 1987), 98-102. 3 Thomis, Place of Light & Learning, 160. 4 See also Donald Watson and Judith McKay, A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Library, 1984), 209-10. 5 The sketch is in the UQ Site Plans Collection, Fryer Library, UQFL250/7/1.

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