Capital Designs : Australia House and Visions of an Imperial London [1 ed.] 9781922454690, 9781925801316

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Here is a definitive history of the aspirations, planning, design, financial extravagance, and sheer sweat that went into the making of one of London’s and Australia’s greatest imperial buildings – the much-loved Australia House. Highly readable and impeccably researched this book is a must read for anyone interested in how public space in early twentieth century London was rethought and how the overseas British world was integral to it. Carl Bridge, whose books include The High Commissioners (2010) and Australia and the United Kingdom (2011)

In telling the remarkable story of the creation of Australia House, Eileen Chanin also reveals how London was reimagined as both modern and imperial. This meticulous and engaging study, remarkable for the depth and breadth of its scholarship, shows that the new Federation’s projection of its growing national pride and self-assurance via an imposing stone building was also part of the quest to make of London a city that fully expressed the ambition, achievement and grandeur of empire. Frank Bongiorno FRHistS FASSA, Professor of History, The Australian National University

The Commonwealth of Australia, federated in 1900–1, was the first of the dominions to build a really big London headquarters for its High Commission, the others not being built or converted until after the First World War; and although it was not to be the largest, it remained the finest, a conscious demonstration of Australia’s wealth and a reflection of the classical buildings erected by its more prosperous states from the 1850s onwards. The story of its building and the wider context of the Holburn to Strand improvements at Aldwych of which it formed part is here brilliantly told. David M. Walker, Dictionary of Scottish Architects

Also by Eileen Chanin Awakening, Four Lives in Art Limbang rebellion, Seven Days in December 1962 Book Life, The Life and Times of David Scott Mitchell Degenerates and Perverts, The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art The Art and Life of Weaver Hawkins Collecting Art: Masterpieces, Markets and Money Contemporary Australian Painting

Australian Scholarly

To Adrian and Roland

© Eileen Chanin 2018 First published 2018 by Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd 7 Lt Lothian St Nth, North Melbourne, Vic 3051 Tel: 03 9329 6963 / Fax: 03 9329 5452 [email protected] / www.scholarly.info ISBN 978-1-925801-31-6 PB ISBN 978-1-925801-43-9 HB All Rights Reserved Cover design: Wayne Saunders Front cover: Australia House, ground floor, looking to the entrance, July 1918. By permission of Historic England Archive Back cover: Detail of the entrance to Australia House on the Strand, December 1919. By permission of Historic England Archive

Contents

Acknowledgements ix Prologue xiii Part One: The New London (to 1906) 1. Improvement Schemes 3 2. The Strand 8 3. The London County Council 16 4. The Commonwealth of Australia 21 Part Two: Location (to 1908) 5. ‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’ 31 6. Representation in London 43 7. ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ 53 8. Competing Dominions 70 Part Three: Foundation (1908–1910) 9. ‘At the Fore’ 87 10. Emporium of the World 100 11. Victoria House 117 12. ‘Doomed to Disfigurement’ 128

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Part Four: Anticipation (1910–11) 13. Pulling Together 137 14. Old and New Orders 148 15. Concluding Negotiation 161 Part Five: Construction (to 1913) 16. Overseas Dominion Building 181 17. ‘The Great Centre’ 194 18. ‘Australia’s Day’ 213 19. A National Expression 220 Part Six: Determination (1914–1918) 20. Displaying Purpose 239 21. Play the Game 254 22. Take the Strain 267 Epilogue 278 Select Bibliography 282 Notes 317 Index 404

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Acknowledgements

There are so many to thank for their help with this book. Professor Carl Bridge, Professor of Australian Studies, Kings College London first encouraged my interest. I am indebted to him for his welcoming me to the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London where I was the Rydon Fellow (2014) and the Menzies Foundation Fellow (2015). I appreciated his invitation to participate in the Australia in the Great War Symposium (2016), coordinated by Bartholomaeus Zielinski. Dr Ian Henderson, Director of the Menzies Centre, encouraged my endeavours from the start, which he fully supported. The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies is the leading Australian studies centre in Europe. All there anchored me in London while working on this book, as did the many colleagues at King’s College London who have assisted and encouraged me in so many ways. I thank you all. I much appreciated the warm reception that I received from Professor Ed Byrne, Principal, King’s College London and Professor Max Saunders, Director, Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Professor of English and Co-Director, Centre for Life-Writing Research, King’s College London. Illuminating points always followed from discussion with them, as well as from discussion with Simon Sleight, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, Department of History and Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre; the Late Dr Duncan Probert, who brought to my attention the pre-medieval history of the Strand and kindly disspelled modern misunderstandings of long-held names known on it; Eureka Henrich, now at the University of Hertfordshire; Jatinder Mann, now Assistant Professor, Department of History, Baptist University, Hongkong; Dr Peter Kilroy, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Stephen Morgan, Department of Film Studies & Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. James Baggaley, Laura Douglas and Alex Creighton, Arts & Humanities Research Institute, King’s College London always cheerfully offered help. As did Christine Kenyon-Jones, Research Fellow, Department of English; Leanne Hammacott, Cultural Institute; and Julie Thomas. The Australian High Commission in Australia House, London, were very generous with their support. Files there were essential to view. The Hon. Alexander

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Downer AC and Mrs Nicola Downer AM took special interest in this project and did all they could to assist. As did the Deputy High Commissioner, Mr Matt Anderson, PSM. Staff there generously helped with my enquiries particularly Maria Mills, Executive Assistant to Minister-Counsellor (Management), and the High Commission’s longest serving staff members Spiro Demetriades and Kevin McNally. Their interest in the building and its history is of unmatched enthusiasm. Perspective that came from the archives of the Agents-General was also essential. I am grateful for the help given to me by former Agent-General for the Government of Victoria Victoria, Geoffrey Conaghan, and his assistant Ann Wilson; former Agent General for Queensland Ken Smith and his assistant Lauren-Lee London; Agent-General for Western Australia John Atkins, and Sally Janssen. Particularly useful was the Victoria House Archive documenting plans for the offices for the Government of Victoria which was kindly made available to me. I am especially grateful to Emeritus Professor David Walker, OBE, who generously shared with me his knowledge of the remarkable architectural dynasty of the Mackenzie family, and who kindly read a draft of the manuscript. Every conversation with him about architecture and history is enriching and much valued. Others who shared with me their enthusiasm for architecture and the history of the period include Professor Richard Dennis, University College London, whose interest in the modernity of cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is infectious; the Late Professor Gavin Stamp who tirelessly championed neglected architects and imperilled buildings; and architectural historians Professor Andrew Saint, the Survey of London (to whom I am grateful for insight into W. Edward Riley and Sir Samuel Waring, Bt), and Dr Alex Bremner, Edinburgh School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh. James Huntington-Whiteley introduced me to some little-known architectural delights in London. The book could not have been written without my having access to archival records held at many archival respositories where I found items that helped me piece together the history. Archivists who were particularly helpful were Edward Bottoms, Architectural Association, London; John Dojka, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York; Peter Fisher, Electra House, London; Mike Harkness, Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections; Heinz Archive & Library, National Portrait Gallery, London; Dr Kurt G. F. Helfrich, British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects; Charles W. Hind, Chief Curator and H.J. Heinz Curator of Drawings, Royal Institute of British Architects, British Architectural Library, Victoria and Albert Museum; Dominic x

Acknowledgements

Kearney, Irish Guards Archives; Alan Knight, Bylander Wadell Archive; Paul Langton, Esher District Local History Society; Julie Melrose, Archivist, Islington Local History Centre, Finsbury Library, Clerkenwell; Carol Morgan Archivist, Institution of Civil Engineers; Mark Pomeroy, Archivist, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House; Sue Riva at the Surrey History Centre; Katie Sambrook, Head of Special Collections, King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections Library; Susan Scott, Archivist, The Savoy, London; Elizabeth Scudder, Principal Archivist (Access), and Daniel Beagles, and their colleagues at the London Metropolitan Archives; Julie Tancell, Archivist, The Carpenters’ Company; Victoria West, Archivist, V&A Archive; Oliver Urquhart Irvine, The Librarian, & Assistant Keeper of The Queen’s Archives and Miss Pamela Clark, Senior Archivist, Royal Archives and Lynnette Beech; the willing archivists of the Special Collections Centre, Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen; Evelyn Watson, Head of Archive, Royal Society of Arts (RSA); Nigel Wilkins, Historic England, Swindon. I am also grateful to Dr Beverley Cook, Curator, Social & Working History, Museum of London besides Cathy Ross, Director, Collections and Learning and Alex Werner, Head of History Collections, Museum of London; Ted Molyneaux, National Rifles Association Museum, Bisley. Librarians were of indispensible assistance: Laura Dimmock-Jones, RUSI Library; Dr Richard Espley, Head of Modern Collections, and James Cook, Library Space Manager, both at the University of London’s Senate House Library, where it is always a pleasure to read thanks to the ready assistance offered by its librarians with their collection. Karine Sarant-Hawkins Royal Academy of Arts Library; Jon Moore, Dittons Library, Thames Ditton. In Australia, I appreciated interest shown in this history by Dr David Lee, Director, Historical Publications and Research Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT); colleagues from the Australian National University, Professor Frank Bongiorno, School of History; Professor Paul Pickering, Director at the Research School of Humanities and the Arts; Professor Helen Ennis, Sir William Dobell Chair of Art History; Dr David Headon; Steven Miller and Eric Riddler, Art Gallery of New South Wales; and Professor Andrew May, University of Melbourne; Associate Professor Austin Lovegrove, University of Melbourne; Glenn Howroyd, Commonwealth Bank Documentation & Archives Centre; Stewart Crawford, National Archives of Australia, Canberra; Virginia MacDonald, Senior Archivist, Reserve Bank of Australia, Sydney; Nicola Mackay-Sim, Curator of Pictures, Pictures & Manuscripts Branch, National Library of Australia and Michael Proud, Assistant Curator; Angus Trumble, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Kim Burges, Australian Institute xi

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of Architects, Nedlands, Western Australia; Dr John Taylor, FRAIA, Claremont, Western Australia; former Australian Ambassadors Richard Woolcott AC, Dr Alison Broinowski, Vice President of the Honest History Association and of Australians for War Powers Reform, and Richard Broinowski, President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW. Former High Commissioners John Dauth AO, LVO, and Mike Rann AC, CNZM, kindly gave me their time with interviews, as did Bill Muirhead AM, Agent General for South Australia and long-time Australian House staff-members Nola Kent, Lola McDonald, and Athalie Colquhoun. Individuals to whom I am grateful include Rupert Best, Portland Port Limited/Portland Harbour Authority Limited; Neil Fuller, Portland Stone Firms Ltd, Portland; Dr Jenny Gaschke and Julia Carver, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; Rebecca Muscat, Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey; Peter Nemaric, King Edwards Horse; Steve Parlanti, Parlanti Bronze Foundries; Major General Andrew Ritchie CBE, Director, Goodenough College; Donald Sherlock for information about his grand-uncle, AGR Mackenzie. Kind souls cared for my well-being while in London (I can’t thank you enough for your many kindnesses and generosity): Isla Baring, Tina Bicat, Mathew Erbs, Angus Forbes, Lola and Mervyn Frost, Rosalie Horner, Helen Idle and Joan Leese, Gill Kerslake, Terry and Katrina Mathews, Karl Philips, Bill Samuel, Nora Shane, Carolyn Stone, the Late Jeremy Theophilus and Linda Theophilus, Mike and Sophie Trotter, the Late Andrew Loewenthal and Eugenie White. Readers of the text at various stages, to whom I am indebted, are Dr Duncan Anderson MBE, Head of the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; Richard Farrimond and Dr Ian Henderson, King’s College London; my son Roland Chanin-Morris and husband Adrian Morris; and most particularly, Robert Holden, author and curator, who attentively read the completed draft and gave me helpful advice, as did Professor Carl Bridge. Final thanks go to Nick Walker and his team at Australian Scholarly Publishing for their dedication to this book and to helping to recover the scarce images that in many cases are the only images known to have survived from the time, when news was more often illustrated by drawings and photographs were the exception.

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Prologue Australia led the Dominions in the policy of erecting in the centre of London a material symbol of its progress, and a standing advertisement of its resources.1 On 24 July 1913, before a large and excited crowd, King George V laid the foundation stone of the edifice that the leading British architectural journal, the Builder, would in due course hail as an important addition to Britain’s great modern buildings. It ranked it as one of the best public buildings of the time, saying that few buildings occupied their sites with such good results, both in themselves and to their surroundings. Australia House holds a unique position. It has been a significant landmark from the start, standing high on the Strand, at the eastern end of Aldwych. As the King declared that the first stone of the building was ‘well and truly laid’ on a site that was universally regarded as ‘the finest’ in London, shouts of ‘Coo-ee’ rang out from the crowd of Australians gathered in the Strand. The new building, built to serve as the offices for the recently federated Australian Commonwealth in the Imperial capital, was identified, from that moment, as Australia’s home in Britain. As well, it was the first purpose-built foreign legation, and today it is the longest continuously occupied foreign mission in London. It is Australia’s oldest Australian diplomatic mission. It stood for national idealism and imperial business. As the Builder remarked, it symbolised the strength and stability, the wealth and importance of Australia as an Imperial unit. Erected during the First World War, the building represented the close union between Australia and Great Britain and showed the world their mutual confidence in the future, and their common determination to provide for it. Significantly, it also became a new model for London, which noted architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner pointed out. As the first Dominion House built in London, it signalled to other Dominions the type of building they would erect in its wake. Later buildings clustered nearby, with Canada House (1924), India House (1930), South Africa House (1933), and New Zealand House (1959) following it in its purpose and scale. Australia House set a trend

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that defined London’s imperial precinct and helped shape the metropolis and its image. Australia House was conceived at a time when concerned Londoners fretted over whether their city was an appropriate hallmark of Empire. They were anxious that London’s infrastructure and amenities should not be outmatched by other capital cities like Paris, Berlin or Vienna. Edwardian ideals for London anticipated, in some respects, present-day anxieties about London’s on-going renewal. Then, as now, London aspired to holding its place as the world’s foremost global city. Aldwych led to Kingsway, the new road for central London, which was to emulate Paris with a grand boulevard from High Holborn to Aldwych. The Kingsway Project proved slow to take off, until Australia House anchored development in this precinct. The building boosted the long-planned and muchhoped-for Holborn-to-Strand Improvement. This development was the largest of the many regeneration projects undertaken at the start of the twentieth century which transformed London and gave it the shape and character for which it is presently largely known. The story of Australia House is part of the story of Imperial London and of how London was transformed in the years before World War 1. The literature devoted to the buildings erected in the redevelopment of London during this period is relatively slender. The loosely termed Edwardian era (a crucial, albeit brief, period wedged between the long Victorian era and the First World War) enjoyed a vogue in the 1970s when publisher Alastair Service (1934–2013) and architect A. Stuart Gray (1905–98) did much to remind us of the period’s architecture.2 However, the era is one that is noted for its excess; most accounts of Edwardian buildings and the Edwardian streetscape disparage the opulence that accompanied the period’s prosperity. Many today, as through the later twentieth century, regard the architecture that emerged during the Edwardian age to be overblown. They favour a more streamlined aesthetic (as sprang from later Bauhaus or Scandinavian models). Consequently, Britain’s Edwardian architectural history receives less attention than does the subsequent Modern Age. Many see the years ahead of the First World War (and those up to 1930) as architecturally moribund. Some dismiss the Edwardian period as a slumberous time, when prosperity stultified ideals in architecture. In reality, the Edwardian years were giddy with the pace of change and material advances, when the idea of the modern city was incubating. In hindsight, we can appreciate that the Edwardian age was complex. Strict chronology claims the year 1910 as marking the close of the Edwardian age, when in fact habits of mind from that epoch continued beyond the First World War. Despite the xiv

Prologue

feverish prosperity of the age, seemingly bubbling over with gaiety, an ominous undertow pulled at it. It was a time of both prosperity and crisis. Sweeping change took hold in London. New commercial needs harnessed new technologies to transform building techniques and work. Industries specialised. Increased material well-being followed for the manual worker. So too did stagnation and difficulty for many professional men (with artists and architects badly hit). Industrial unrest grew, public criticism sharpened, and calls for improved urban design increased. Modernity was the moving spirit, inspired and stimulated by new means of communication and transportation, new materials, new modes of manufacturing, and new ideas about building and city living. This was a time when London came alive to, and was a frontier of, architecture and urbanism. Few alive doubted that they were at a turning point in history. The Earl of Crewe, who played his part in London’s development, wrote, ‘Whatever rude remarks History may make upon us hereafter she will have to own that we have achieved some stirring times.’3 The Edwardian age seemed, to many who lived through it, revolutionary, and thus exciting. Why this period of English architecture has long been overlooked engaged architect Harry Goodhart-Rendel when Oxford’s Slade Professor of Fine Art in the 1930s. ‘This was because the juiciness (there is no other word for it) of this prosperous period of architecture is not very much to our taste to-day’ he said, ‘and the many ambitious works in which it is displayed should be brought up for judgement fifty years hence rather than now.’4 Echoing this opinion in 2014, the British architectural historian Alan Powers argued in the Architectural Review that it is timely to try to understand what the architects of the time were really trying to do, and to evaluate afresh the ‘supposedly barren years between 1908 and 1930’.5 This book aims to contribute to a re-appraisal of a part of this unique time, by looking at this landmark building and its location in central London. Australia House shares its history with that of London’s changing fabric during the Edwardian years and mirrors the changes that occurred during this pivotal moment in architecture and urban planning. Few accounts of this era study fully the erection of a single building in London, let alone one which rose between 1913 and 1918 when the shock of war so profoundly disrupted the existing order of things.6 It is a history that needs to be set against the broader history of London’s development and against the contemporary ideas about what constituted architectural excellence. For the history of Australia House is also part of a global story. It was built as a centre and symbol for a new nation – in, and for, an imperial capital, and as part xv

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of an international expression. Great ambitions were held for the building when it was conceived at the start of the century. That it was envisaged as being dressed in classical garb was in itself an important statement. A forceful Beaux-Arts plan and façade were in keeping with the style that was favoured world-wide during the prosperous years before the War. The style looked to France as the epitome of civilization; one that invested architecture with taste and dignity, attributes that were thought proper for a significant civic building. Australia needed lofty expression and the designers chosen to draw up plans for the London building were associated with the foremost exponents of the style. The classicism of this international style was an expression of power; it was the style in which the elite built worldwide. Conceived and thought of in Australia as a national building, its architectural expression was in fact international. The building in London was designed while an international competition for a permanent parliament building in the still undeveloped federal capital Canberra was initiated. (Judges for that competition were Otto Wagner and Eliel Saarinen.) But while the design and construction of Australia House in London went on apace, plans for developing Canberra were postponed. King George V opened Australia House in London in 1918; Canberra’s provisional parliament building did not open until 1927. Today, Australia House is on the United Kingdom’s statutory list of Government buildings of special architectural or historic interest, as a Category II building. Yet the richness of its early history and function as a building has escaped proper and considered attention. This is why I have followed the story of how this building came to be. It is told from the perspectives of those who were caught up in its making, so this account is also about the people who made it happen. Their story and its varied aspects are told within a chronological frame because this appeared to be the simplest way to thread together the many strands that hold interest in their story. It is written as a narrative history in which the cast of characters across the globe who were involved grapple with the complexities they faced. It is in fact the story of two buildings. One of the early steel-framed buildings to go up on the Strand, Victoria House was built to house the offices of the Australian Commonwealth’s State of Victoria. Completed in 1909, it was the precursor to Australia House which seamlessly embraced the earlier building. The two stand together today. This book is made up of six parts. Part One, The New London (to 1906), explains how, a century ago, the Strand–Aldwych was the epicentre of one of the largest regeneration schemes undertaken in London’s history. It introduces the xvi

Prologue

expectations for the Strand–Aldwych, and why building there became such a focus of attention in the years before the Great War. Although the book concentrates on the years up to 1919, Part Two, Location (to 1908), encompasses the period from the 1880s to account for the essential back-story. This is required to appreciate the burning issues of the day. Greater detail about London’s property at the time is amplified. Chapters 4 through 8 outline the reasons why the Commonwealth of Australia determined to build in London. A blueprint for Australia’s building in London, as it was expressed at the time, is revealed in chapter 5. Competition with other Dominions and Australian States for markets and immigrants partly underpinned the Commonwealth’s determination to build. This brings us to the Imperial story: the lens is turned on London as the world’s emporium in Part Three, Foundation (1908–10). It is the Age of Steel, and a mania for ‘French style’ takes hold. The Franco-British Exhibition draws millions to its ‘White City’; ideals in architecture are considered; and Victoria House is built. In Part Four, Anticipation (1910–11), attention turns to the Australians and the London County Council; the story follows their negotiations, uncovering attitudes to advancing technology and the impact this had on building. The picture thus far drawn leads into the last two parts of the book, which cover the years 1913–18. Chapter 16 tells how plans for the Commonwealth’s building evolved in London and Australia alongside other prominent proposals, including one for the Strand. Such then-current schemes for ‘Imperial London’ illustrate how attitudes and practices toward trade and diplomacy were evolving, and the white settler Dominions of Canada and Australia competed to sell themselves. In Chapter 17 we see how the building went up. It dwells on the creative approaches brought to erecting the building; and how it was regarded both in and beyond London as it rose. How the building was completed during the War is the focus of the section Determination (1914–18). The epilogue, Reception (to 1919), concludes this account. Archival material relating to the building of Australia House abounds in Australia and Britain. Many of the files held in the National Archives of Australia, in Canberra, were first opened for this book. However, only half the picture comes from Australian records. Little in Canberra indicates the importance of the building in terms of its position in London and where it belongs in London’s metropolitan context, let alone in British and world architecture. Records in English archives sharpen the perspective that must be considered in order to properly view the history. A rich picture of the London scene came from sources found at many archival centres in Britain including the London Metropolitan Archives; the Museum of London; the National Archives, Kew; the Royal xvii

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Academy; and Westminster City Archives. Details from this original material add breadth and depth to the history of London. The story of this building, and the precinct in which it stands, provides a fuller understanding of architecture and urbanism in London a century ago.

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PART ONE

The New London (to 1906)

CHAPTER 1

Improvement Schemes London! – the name is like the rumbling away of a cannon’s roar – a single centre which for the first time in history since the fall of Rome all the nations agree in regarding as the very heart of the world; … the living, breathing, squalid and heroic, cosmopolitan London of to-day, populated by every creed and every tongue, every temperament and every passion … 1

Bare-breasted and winged, she crowned the dome of the new Gaiety Theatre on the Strand. Hovering above the building, a trumpet to her lips, the gilded angel that everyone knew as ‘The Spirit of Gaiety’ proclaimed the high-spirits of the time. Yet Hibbert C. Binney’s levitating figure mocked both her own seeming lightness and the often-sordid reality of the streets she overlooked. Made in oak and teak sections, and secretly bolted together, she weighed two tons.2 Like Binney’s sculpture, contradiction marked London’s streets in 1904. They tantalised with showiness. Entertainment thrills, from the music hall, the cinematograph, and palatial hotels, implied prosperous merriment. Congested shops, poor air, invasive advertising, surging traffic, and unrelenting noise, made London’s streets a less than joyful experience. Within sight of Binney’s glittering figure, paupers huddled in the midst of all the clamour and grime, hoping for relief, in rebuke of gaiety.3 London was a study in contrasts: of grandiose new buildings and rickety rookeries; of avenues thought fine thoroughfares (like the not-long-developed Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road) lined with new flaunting ginshops and wretched old houses. The turn of the century saw Britain at the height of its imperial and industrial prosperity, and its capital was a city that was unprecedented in size and population, wealth and power. London overtook Paris as Europe’s largest city by the 1700s and was the world’s wealthiest city by the 1850s. By the close of the nineteenth century London was a centre of trade with a network that circled the globe. The hub of a global empire, London received a constant flow of goods and people from all parts of the world and was the axis of global finance. It thrived on 3

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

free enterprise. High-reachers converged there because no other city could equal the pace of affairs, the volume of business, and the scale of interests dealt with in London. ‘London seemed to offer the greatest chances of the lasting success I sought,’ said Imre Kiralfy, the Hungarian impresario of epic productions, and future builder of London’s White City, on the heels of his successes in America.4 Yet, as the promising British architect and city visionary Arthur Cawston wrote in The Times in 1889, London was beleaguered, suffering from concentration and the scarcity of good thoroughfares. By concentration, London-born Cawston was referring to the inner-city areas of poverty and overcrowding adjacent to the New Gaiety, those areas of deprivation and decay that Binney’s Spirit of Gaiety overlooked and the founder of the Salvation Army, General William Booth, called ‘darkest England.’5 London’s growth had been organic rather than planned. London had largely kept to an eighteenth-century scale until well into the second half of the nineteenth century, when the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization had their impact. The building boom of the late Victorian Era and its speculative builders left London needing to improve its streets and facilities. In 1891, London’s population was over five and a half million. Within thirty years, by 1921, this would reach over seven million.6 London mushroomed in chaotic fashion, without a central government structure and barely any controls on development. The personal wishes of property developers controlled developments in London.7 The ongoing growth of the world’s largest city called for an active response to its ramshackle nature. It needed long-overdue physical improvement. Clapham architect Arthur Cawston was among many reform-minded activists calling for a ‘New London’.8 As we shall see, their call for change would influence London politics throughout the years ahead. In A comprehensive scheme for street improvements in London, Cawston wrote that Londoners began to realize that the gigantic growth of their city, without the controlling guidance of a municipality, left them with probably the most irregular, inconvenient, and unmethodical collection of buildings in the world.9 He pointed to the example that other cities gave to London. It was a divided metropolis: home to pleasureseekers and paupers, with Londoners living in separate worlds of rich and poor, of widening social divide, with sanitation and health perils to all. He advocated for the betterment of London, urging that a comprehensive plan for improvement be authoritatively adopted in the metropolis. His plea was timely. His book appeared in June 1893 at the time of the Royal Commission into the unification of London. Cawston, an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, held hopes for the city’s future. ‘London is often described as ugly, but it is not past 4

Improvement Schemes

redemption … it may be possible to evolve out of the chaos of its streets a city which will be a worthy capital of the world.’ Hitherto this was impossible because London ‘never possessed a real municipality and has consequently lacked the unity of purpose … that effective self-government alone can give.’10 Cawston believed that Londoners were prepared to pay substantially for a handsome city. He envisaged an improved London which ‘by a gradual process of reconstruction, can be made not only well proportioned and convenient, but one of the most attractive of cities.’ He advocated removing impediments to traffic by making main streets ninety feet wide. This would admit light and air in London’s most crowded districts, create arteries connecting the important centres of business, and facilitate approaches to the several railway termini. He wanted to see these improvements brought to central London’s closely-packed areas which, long neglected, ‘are like so many hidden talents right in the midst of our metropolis.’ Improvement schemes in London were ongoing through the nineteenth century. Some developments – Regent Street (first developed in 1810) and Trafalgar Square (cleared around the same time) – gave the city an unlikely new character. Impressive edifices such as St Pancras Station (in use from 1868) and Tower Bridge (opened in 1894) reflected London’s status as a global trading hub.11 But more was needed. The start of the new century and the progressive temper of the time hastened concerned Londoners to compare their city with other of the world’s most sizeable cities and consider what shape their city would take in the century ahead. London, half a century behind Paris, spent a fifth of what Paris spent on its city.12 London’s past gave it a built form that was far from keeping with an imperial character. The end of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902 and the coronation of the new King and his Queen that year called for celebration. Yet King Edward VII’s Coronation Procession (taking the route of his mother’s Jubilee Procession in 1897) could not avoid the depressing surroundings that Cawston lamented. Minds turned to the question of a ‘Royal Road’ (which London lacked).13 Critics asserted that London, far from being the fitting crown of the greatest empire known to history, lacked the splendour that matched its standing as the capital of the world. Its streets were not nearly wide enough for the traffic. Yet more than better roads was needed: something should be done to ennoble London. London may be the centre of world trade, and be the world centre for news distribution, control the world’s shipping lanes, and even be the point from which world time was measured, but its own thoroughfares were a reproach. London needed to fix itself, not only for the well-being of Londoners, but if it was to compete with other great cities that were bent on improvement. A 5

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

comprehensive plan for the transformation of Paris had been gradually developed since 1848; slums disappeared from Berlin from 1879; Vienna having completed her stately outer ring, began remodelling her inner city. Even British provincial cities were improving: Glasgow remodelled eighty-eight acres in its centre; Birmingham transformed ninety-three acres of squalid slums into fine streets, flanked by notable buildings. Lessons learned from successfully improving these cities could be applied to London, as Cawston and other similarly-minded critics pointed out. Opportunity came with the formation of the London County Council (LCC) in 1889. It assumed the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the body responsible for the development of London from 1855. The largest municipal body in the Empire, the LCC, was led by a Progressive Party that won the first London County Council elections in 1889. Allied with the Liberal Party, the labour movement and the Fabian Society, the coalition of progressive members, introduced a rationalisation of London’s metropolitan organization in terms of building. The London Building Act of 1894, and the London Government Act of 1899 simplified London’s local government, replacing forty-one vestries and districts with twenty-eight metropolitan borough councils. Up to then, the railways and tramway companies spent more in London than did municipal authorities. Railway companies developed immense London terminals, which brought increasing numbers of people flooding into the middle of London (their numbers growing threefold in twenty years from 1881). With them came the building of luxurious palace hotels, to accommodate growing numbers of visitors. The seven-storey Savoy Hotel that opened on the Strand set the standard for the future, with electricity continuously supplied from the hotel’s own power-plant.14 (Opened in 1889; the architect responsible for extensions to the hotel in 1895 was T. E. Collcutt, known for his sympathy to French spirit.) The nearby Hotel Cecil, with over eight hundred rooms, was the largest in Europe when it opened in 1896.15 Its Grand Hall accommodated 1,000 guests at a banquet or ball. Large hotels like these were a register of growing incomes and consumer spending. (The income of the average British consumer doubled between 1851 and 1901.) They reflected the aspirations of the day and signalled things to come. ‘Luxury, and more luxury, is what is demanded’, said one West End hotel manager, referring to the march of demanding consumers.16 With growing incomes and consumer spending, the increasing materialisation of improved living represented more than merely a change of tastes. To activists like Booth and Cawston, it was the forcible indication of a moral evolution, ‘a great augmentation in social solidarity’ that pointed to political change.17 The sale of 115,000 copies of Booth’s In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890) in 6

Improvement Schemes

four months indicated desire for ‘what ought to be’.18 For Londoners in the early years of the new century were living in an expansionary era when innovative activities surged and were opening up the globe. Successive transport revolutions, that included record-breaking steamships and flight, made it the Age of Travel. When the Telegraph, Film, and the New Journalism quickened communication. It was the Age of Nation States. Memorials were being built to the Boer War, and a Palace for Peace in The Hague. A century of peace between Britain and the United States would soon be celebrated in 1912. The Panama Canal was under construction. Unearthing Knossos, Arthur Evans uncovered an unknown past. Sir Edward Elgar’s first Pomp & Circumstance Marches (1901–7) caught the spirit of the moment. Large country houses, new schools and public libraries, and municipal buildings went up across Britain. It was an age of optimism. (But, as we shall see, it was also a time of growing doubt.) Demonstrating the increasing interconnectedness of the time was the 1901 British Empire Tour on the royal yacht HMS Ophir by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (the future King George V and Queen Mary). When launched in 1891, she was among the first ships to have palatial interiors. The Admiralty took over the ship from the Orient Steam Navigation Company for temporary duty as a Royal Yacht. She was painted white and refurbished to accommodate her royal guests and state occasions during their eight-month tour which began on 16 March 1901. Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury designed the unprecedented 231-day goodwill tour to thank the Dominions (those colonies which enjoyed internal self-government) for their participation in the South African War. It took the Duke to Australia for a second time (he visited Australia in 1881). He opened the first session of the Australian Federal Parliament upon the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The federation of six states (each with responsible government and representative assemblies) was fixed on fairer laws and wider liberties (eventually including universal suffrage) for a population that numbered under half that of Greater London.19 During the extensive tour of the new Commonwealth, visiting all six state capitals, the Royal Party heard complaints about the apathy of British manufacturers. Criticism of Britain’s general complacency was widespread in 1901 with critics arguing that its industrial advantage through the Second Industrial Revolution was being supplanted by Germany and America. Impressed by the historic ceremony, and with indelible memories of the warm reception that they received, the Duke and Duchess left Australia. The future king found the selfaware mood there was inspiring: ‘Wake up’ was his message to England when he returned to London.20 7

CHAPTER 2

The Strand And when the streets are dazzling bright, And wet with rain, I’m told, An Alchemist is working hard, To turn the mud to gold.1

A key location in central London in dire need of attention was the Strand. The Strand has been a central artery for London, linking the City of London and the City of Westminster, and bridging East and West London, for centuries. This principal thoroughfare ran for just over three quarters of a mile, from Fleet Street at its eastern end to Charing Cross (and so, to Trafalgar Square). With the Thames just to its south, and Covent Garden (and the area surrounding it) at its north, many historic events and literary memories are attached to the Strand. Once princely palaces graced it, their gardens skirting the banks of the river, but the street’s grandeur was long gone by 1900. As early as 1716, the poet John Gay depicted the Strand’s lost glory in Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London.2 By his day, the streets running off the Strand to the river lacked their former magnificence. Only their names (like Essex, Arundel and Norfolk Streets) hinted at the splendid palaces once situated there. Yet the Strand ranked as a chief street of London, because, with the City being taken as the heart of London, the Strand (along with Holborn, less than a mile to the north) was the main artery by which London’s blood – its traffic – circulated.3 Proposals to improve the city’s main channels of communication were among the many projected architectural changes in London at the start of the twentieth century, when widening the Strand became the focus of improvement.4 Londoners fixed on the eastern end of the Strand because removing obstruction there was critically important for the flow of traffic in central London. However, as the London County Council (LCC), the newly established local government body for the County of London, noted, ‘The great importance of Street Improvements

8

The Strand

in London is perhaps exceeded only by the difficulties attending their inception and execution.’5 ‘One of the principal thoroughfares of Europe’ and ‘one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world’ is how the Illustrated London News described the Strand in 1858.6 The journal occupied 198 Strand for the first fifty years of its publication, until the site was cleared in late 1905 for a new six-storey building. The new premises of the United Kingdom Provident Institution rose at the corner of the Strand and Milford Lane. They faced Christopher Wren’s late seventeenth century church of St Clement Danes (the church stood just outside the western limit of the City of London, formerly marked by Temple Bar). The new building, with sculptural features and a cupola atop its roof, marked the shifting scene on the Strand. It was hailed as the most magnificent new building in London because of the richness of its interior finish. With walls lined with Cipollino marble, and decorative panels of ormulu bronze and mother of pearl over the doors, it registered the state of commercial interests with money at command.7 Blocks occupying the Strand at its eastern end, between the two island churches of St Clement Danes and St Mary-le-Strand, not more than a few hundred feet apart, were a notorious pinch-point. Two centuries earlier John Gay had cautioned crossing the street at this constricted spot where ‘the mixed hurry barricades the street.’8 Removal of Temple Bar in 1878, from the start of Fleet Street on the Strand’s east end, did not relieve congestion. Nearly twenty years on, guide-book publisher Herbert Fry mapped bird’s-eye views of London (bought by growing numbers of visitors flocking to the city). Like many in 1895, he found that obstruction on the Strand was a serious nuisance and complained about the delay caused there. Commerce depended on good means of communication, and time meant money. Far from the Strand offering direct access to the City, Fry complained that ‘whereas the average time occupied by a Hansom cab in traveling from Charing Cross to the Mansion House by way of the Strand is twenty-two minutes, the journey by the Embankment takes but twelve minutes.’9 Laid in 1870, the Victoria Embankment still needed more accessible approaches by which to reach it, yet one could get to the Bank by this route in about half the time occupied by taking the narrow-thronged Strand. Fry’s map shows the awkwardness of the Strand, forty feet wide at the small church of St Mary-le-Strand (the most perfect example of an early eighteenth century church in London) before vehicles added to its constriction. Photographs taken in 1900 show that anyone traversing the Strand toward its eastern end could expect to be caught up in a tight jumble of hansom cabs, horse-drawn omnibuses, and hawkers’ drays.10 Nimbleness was required to 9

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

cross the street, to avoid the crush of conveyances, let alone hazards like animal ordure. New methods of locomotion added to the Strand’s obstruction (as they did in other narrow thoroughfares in central London). The arrival of the automobile was beginning to revolutionise the city landscape. A Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into transport and traffic in London in 1903. It sat for eighteen months. Under its examination, London’s Assistant Commissioner of Police emphasized that the increased traffic in London’s streets was a serious evil. The popular satirist for the Daily Mirror, William Kerridge Haselden agreed with this view of motorization on London’s streets. The gathering strife between motorized traffic and pedestrians meant increasing casualties. Londoners, shocked at the motorized takeover of roads, with no speed limit imposed on motor vehicles in the city, felt helpless in the face of the mounting traffic. Cartoons in Haselden’s series, How to save your life while crossing the streets of London (1908), offered hints to pedestrians for their safety. Haselden suggested crossing motorized streets by over-head wire, catapult, or parachute. Most recommended was a ‘Never-mind-being-run-over’ suit. ‘Don’t cross them on foot unless encased in [this] shock-proof pneumatic suit, fully inflated,’ Haselden warned. With deliberate irony, he added, ‘These pneumatic suits are a positive danger to motorists!’11 Further sense of the chaos of unregulated traffic comes from the German illustrator Otto Gerlach who pictured the Strand for the Illustrated London News at its busiest point, at the corner of Wellington Street diagonally opposite the Gaiety Theatre.12 The caption with Gerlach’s impression of hustle, bustle and confusion said that no-one who knew the Strand would deny the accuracy of his depiction. The Royal Commission on London Traffic singled out this corner, where the congestion of traffic at the junction with the Strand was excessive. Close to two thousand vehicles converged and were held-up there at its busiest hour, a serious instance of what was occurring in many parts of London where streams of traffic crossed each other.13 Gerlach, Haselden, and the Royal Commission showed that concern for personal safety was justified. The Strand was the most problematic pinch-point because, apart from the street’s narrowness towards its eastern end, London lacked a North-South throughway at this juncture of the city. A future roadway would have to be opened up in order to better connect North and South London. One of many plans suggested to improve the Strand (and traffic flow on it) was a proposed street from Holborn to the thoroughfare beginning at the southern part of Wellington Street (which Gerlach depicted) – to lead over Waterloo Bridge and to south 10

The Strand

London.14 The idea of joining Holborn to the Strand dated back to 1836, and the Metropolitan Board of Works applied to Parliament in 1883 for power to do this (their application was unsuccessful). In 1892, the LCC took a radical approach to this problem. It applied to Parliament for a Bill authorizing the construction of a new central street, from Southampton Row (alongside Russell Square) to the Strand. At the time the proposal comprised the largest scheme of town improvement that had ever been placed before Parliament. The scale of the plan to create this new central thoroughfare and other subsidiary new streets was unprecedented. It involved clearing buildings and land on the Strand’s north-east side together with the widening or improvement of various existing streets. It entailed demolishing existing properties and clearing a large area of some twenty-eight acres. Swept away was Clare Market, a produce market since the eighteenth century, a jumble of narrow, dirty passages where beasts were slaughtered; offering escape to thieves and miscreants, it was described at the end of the nineteenth century as crowded, noisy, and an unsavoury place. As was customary with such schemes, parliamentary approval was called for, to give the responsible Improvement Committee the right to overrule the property rights of those who owned or used the land needed for improvement.15 Early speculative proposals mooted for the anticipated street, pending approval of the proposed Bill, included one that appeared in an issue of the weekly illustrated newspaper, the Graphic, in 1896.16 It came from the pre-eminent architectural artist and historian Henry William Brewer who drew for the widely-read journal the Builder. His architectural rendering indicated how the Council could regenerate the Strand by erecting a suggested municipal building in keeping with the scope and importance of the Council’s operations, along the street’s northern side. At the time, the Council worked from the building known as Old County Hall in nearby Spring Gardens, inherited from the Metropolitan Board of Works. The LCC quickly outgrew this building and faced the question of future office accommodation. Brewer proposed a new County Hall. His hypothetical structure is a massive Gothic building with a towering central spire. Brewer’s edifice straddles the Strand. At its western end (from along the northern side of St Mary-le-Strand) it abuts the corner of the hoped-for new street. Its eastern corner fronts the westfacing entrance of St Clement Danes and looks to the adjacent Law Courts. It is set before a square opening onto the street. A second square opens where the supposed building’s eastern side faces the Law Courts. Brewer featured a long garden connecting the two churches on the Strand. 11

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

Key to Brewer’s drawing is the Holborn to Strand axis, planned by the Council to open up a North-South link to the Strand, and which became central to Strand improvements. For centuries the Strand and Holborn-High Holborn were the principal routes westwards from the City of London. Northsouth movement was bound to the confines of Chancery Lane or Drury Lane or consigned to a convoluted maze of ancient streets between the two. The proposed new road called for clearing the slum properties and crowded alleys at the northeast end of the Strand (between Holborn and Fleet Street). Clearance of this squalid and jumbled maze – a closely packed area that Arthur Cawston viewed as among London’s ‘hidden talents’ – was seen as a further advantage of the scheme to improve the Strand and its adjacent district (as Brewer pictured). Also key to Brewer’s drawing is the sizeable area that his speculative building occupies. It covers up to half an acre (from Wellington Street at the western end of St Mary-le-Strand, to the Church of St Clement Danes). When eventually cleared by the LCC at the turn of the century Londoners called this vast block the Strand’s Island Site. Until developed, this very big area on the Strand (the length of present-day Aldwych) became a focus of attention for the Londoners who expressed strong opinions about this field of empty space in London’s centre. Cawston and Brewer saw land cleared just further east of the same north side of the Strand when the Law Courts relocated to the Strand from south of Westminster Hall. This followed the fire of 1834 which destroyed the Houses of Parliament (they were rebuilt by Sir Charles Barry and completed in 1854). Sir John Soane’s Law Courts at Westminster survived the 1834 fire and remained in use until new courts were completed. The outcome of a competition held in 1866, and awarded to architect George Edmund Street, the New Royal Courts of Justice were completed in 1882 (Law Courts that Barry proposed for Lincoln’s Inn Fields were never built). Street’s building is a late Victorian expression of thirteenth century Gothic style and was built when Gothic form was considered the most appropriate expression for public buildings. To house all the superior courts concerned with civil (non-criminal) cases, Street’s building occupied five acres. At the time, most agreed with Herbert Fry’s opinion, that clearing the ground for the Courts of Justice saw the removal of some of the filthiest and most wretched tenements in London and very few noteworthy houses or streets were lost.17 Street’s Royal Courts of Justice was the foremost development then seen on the Strand. Costing about £700,000 to build, the land alone cost the Treasury £1,453,000. Gothic windows pierce its Strand front which measures five hundred 12

The Strand

feet long. It is set off by gables, pinnacles, and a great bell tower, one hundred and sixty feet high on its eastern end. In scale and Gothic expression, Street’s structure set the tone for the Municipal Buildings that Brewer suggested to the LCC fourteen years later. Gothic architecture expressed the values of spiritual and social unity so was a style that suited the purpose of conveying civic pride. One site that escaped being cleared for the Law Courts consisted of the double blocks of Wych and Holywell Streets. They lay parallel to each other, squeezed at the cramped point on the Strand where Brewer drew a garden between the two churches of St Mary-le-Strand and St Clement Danes. These were ‘mean streets’, only just wide enough to allow a cart to pass along; two abreast on their footways was a crowd. The longer Wych Street ran from the Strand to near-by Drury Lane. Once known as Via de Aldwyche, this thoroughfare’s past name indicated the centuries-old (including Roman) history of the district.18 We can see what Wych Street looked like in 1900 thanks to a pioneering architectural photographer who worked from his studio at 147 Strand. At the time, when photographers and artists favoured the antique and picturesque, Henry (also known as Harry) Bedford Lemere, distinguished himself by recording contemporary buildings which he documented in a crisp, modern manner without adding fashionable romanticising flourishes. However, he also photographed narrow Wych street. It is darkened by the over-hanging fronts of the houses, parts of which dated back to the seventeenth century. A few lofty gabled houses also stood on nearby Holywell Street. When Herbert Fry knew it in 1895, the street was London’s second-hand book mart (as it was a century earlier). These houses, and both streets, stood as relics of an earlier age and of the characters once found there. In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson, lived nearby (just off Fleet Street); he portrayed the colour and atmosphere found in their vicinity because the locale also held other, less reputable associations. ‘Here Malice, Rapine, Accident, conspire,’ wrote Dr Johnson. He also noted its architectural failings, ‘Here falling Houses thunder on your Head.’19 At the close of the nineteenth century reputedly little had changed since Johnson’s and Gay’s days. Nor also since the quarter inspired Charles Dickens, while working as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle at nearby 332 Strand, when the dark and squalid houses, especially in Wych Street and its adjacent courts, were the resort of thieves and criminals. So notorious had the quarter become, that attempts made to change the name of Holywell Street to Booksellers’ Row never succeeded.20 The district behind the northern side of the Strand, bookended between Covent Garden and Lincoln’s Inn, was historically noted for the rabble of the 13

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

Street, variety entertainments, scenes of riot and dissipation, and the Bar with its nearby Inns of Court. Here grew the twin qualities of irreverence and tolerance that made Londoners. Unsurprisingly, the prospect of losing buildings from this aspect of London’s historic past to future street widening, caused much anxiety. In the debate over the area these narrow streets would be championed by some as valuable, as part of a vanishing London, threatened with being destroyed by alterations required by the new road.21 Improvers like Cawston and the LCC disagreed. In their view, character had long been swept away from these laneways of mean shops and unsanitary tenements. They possessed little of antiquarian interest, having been much reconstructed. Their buildings represented dreaded fire-traps. The area was notorious for its licentiousness. Concerned about public drunkenness, the Council saw that fifty-one public house licences could be abandoned in regenerating the district.22 Here, on Wych and Holywell Streets, London’s modern needs collided with regard for London’s past. Some considered the two streets were the most picturesque in London with dwellings, some thought, that pre-dated its Great Fire of 1666. Legendary recorder of London in the 1930s, the graphic artist Hanslip Fletcher, who drew changing London for Pall Mall Magazine, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times, believed that enough survived to make Wych and Holywell Streets one of the showplaces of London. With evident emotion, Fletcher lamented their clearance for a broad, straight road. Improvement Acts might clear space for new building but they entailed evicting residents and destroying the built environment of the past. ‘Never was there such a devastation!’ Fletcher cried.23 He mourned the passing of Holywell Street, where book-lovers spent hours turning over the contents of shelves and boxes of books, pamphlets, or music in all stages of newness and decrepitude, and that might be had for no more than perhaps, a few pence, or, up to a shilling. To Fletcher, clearing the quarter was wanton destruction, and disrespectful of the past. He dismissed boulevard mania, ‘For myself, I take no joy in the Strand Improvement … For this much has been swept away … a whole district which bore up the last character of the medieval city, and contained within itself as large a collection of old-timber-framed houses as now survives in the whole of the metropolis.’24 He deplored their clearance, which cost the loss of an irreplaceable aspect of London. ‘Holywell Street and Wych Street remain only a memory – a memory of something that has gone for ever out of London’s life.’ Much was disappearing from the Strand in the name of progress. At its north-western end, Lowther Arcade (completed in 1830) ran from the Strand to 14

The Strand

Adelaide Street, 245 feet long from street to street. Once a shopper’s paradise with domed sky-lights, sledgehammers were rapidly demolishing the last of what could be seen of the arcade in May 1902. New offices for Coutts’s Bank would replace the arcade’s twenty-five shops of toys, much-loved and as entrancing to children as a Toy Paradise. The Illustrated London News portrayed replacements on the Strand like these as new playthings for London. Little Miss London is drawn satirically as a child in the matter of city improvements. With the Council taking to the Thames, to run a passenger steam-boat service on the river, she coos, ‘What a lot of lovely toys I’m getting, nice new houses, and a beautiful motor ‘bus, and Uncle County Council has promised me next year a real steamboat that goes!’25 Undeniably, mass urbanisation was changing London. The city was growing rapidly and changing character as it advanced into the twentieth century. Many failed to realize how rapid and profound the changes were.

15

CHAPTER 3

The London County Council The County Council? Look what they’ve done down Clare Market way! Pulled down half the houses, turned the people out of the other half as insanitary, and let tenants into ‘em and sent all the respectable people to go and crowd into Holborn as best they can.1

The London County Council (LCC), when formed in 1889, with an income of under £2.5 million largely derived from rates, became responsible for the development of London.2 The London Building Act of 1894 confirmed this, and gave power to the LCC to appoint a Chief Architect to oversee the enforcement of regulations outlined in the Act. Taking charge in 1899 as Superintending Architect was W. Edward Riley, a Yorkshire-born architect and engineer, fourth son of a self-made West Yorkshire fireworks factory owner.3 Given his expertise, it was unsurprising that he was autocratic and had a forceful personality (let alone a somewhat unnerving appearance, sporting the severest of walrus moustaches to compensate for his baldness). Up to then, Riley’s working life was occupied at the Admiralty Architectural and Engineering Works which was responsible for designing and constructing naval buildings world-wide. With thirty years continuous engagement there Riley rose to be Assistant Director. He was accustomed to having oversight of many staff and running large construction jobs. Just prior to his appointment, Riley was in charge of works and the superintending civil engineer at the Malta Dockyard, where his duties extended to other naval Mediterranean stations. Structures that he built in Malta were in conspicuous positions, and in close proximity to some of the architectural features of Malta’s Grand Harbour, where ‘they harmonise well with the surroundings’, noted the President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich when supporting Riley’s application to the LCC.4 At the age of forty-seven, Riley took command at the LCC of a staff of around a hundred designers, working in offices dotted around the vicinity of 16

The London County Council

Trafalgar Square, to lead the biggest municipal building programme in the country. Under his watch as Superintending Architect of Metropolitan Buildings the role of the architect’s department expanded as the range of structures built under orders of the Council grew. The work included the construction of housing (under the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890), including slum clearance; erecting buildings in connection with the introduction of electricity; putting up (and maintaining) educational buildings, hospitals and institutions, fire brigade stations, bridges; as well as constructing street and road improvements, public parks, Weights and Measures Stations and Gas Meter Testing Stations. Riley was responsible for overseeing the design and construction of everything that the LCC built. District Surveyors reported to the Council on any new buildings and any infringement of the Act. High hopes for ‘bettering’ London surrounded the formation of the LCC. It represented the first real determination to make London something better than an agglomeration of local vestries (as when presided over by the Metropolitan Board of Works). New schemes for London (including those of social welfare and education) took shape under the leadership of the progressive Liberal-Labour coalition elected to run the LCC. The Royal Commission into London’s transport found that the only effective solution for London’s congested traffic ‘is the broadening of the streets and creating some new great thoroughfares.’5 A scheme to meet long-standing cries for a new route for traffic between Holborn and Fleet Street evolved once the LCC came into existence. The Holborn-to-Strand Improvement, when passed through Parliament in 1899, was the LCC’s first large urban improvement scheme in central London. As we have seen, it entailed sweeping away an entire district to rejuvenate the area north of the Strand. No town improvement scheme of this scale had ever been undertaken in London; it was thought to be the most extensive clearance project undertaken in London since the Great Fire.6 The scheme’s large boulevard, running north to connect the Strand with Holborn, was named Kingsway in honour of King Edward VII, who opened the street on 18 October 1905: a state occasion. The King processed to Kingsway with a Field Officer’s escort of the Royal Horse Guards. Guests of honour were the members of the Municipal Council of Paris and visiting French dignitaries, who were invited to London in homage to the lead that Paris gave London. At 100 feet (30 m) wide, Kingsway was London’s broadest street. About six hundred properties were acquired and demolished to create Kingsway and fourteen acres of adjacent land were made available for its new buildings.7 The building plots on either side of the new thoroughfare were to be leased to speculative builders by 17

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

the LCC which intended the cleared Holborn to Strand area of Kingsway to be London’s new commercial hub. Modern in spirit, Kingsway signalled the LCC’s vision of London as a rejuvenated city of tree-lined boulevards, office blocks and free-flowing traffic. A new crescent at the south end of Kingsway connected it (and Holborn) to the Strand. With the disappearance of Wych Street, its name lived on in the name given to the new crescent. It received the name of Aldwych, a combine that drew on the history of the locale. ‘Wych’ is thought to derive from the Anglo-Saxon wic, a ‘dwelling place’, a term that was common in names of places that became important at an early date.8 James Gibbs’s early eighteenth century church of St Mary-le-Strand stands where the Assembly of the Danish community in London met to administer their affairs and their laws. The new crescent was so named as a reminder of the district’s long history of continuous settlement, where perhaps the oldest suburb of London once stood. Aldwych curved east to meet the Strand alongside the neighbouring historic church of St Clement Danes. The front of the church stared down the Strand, looking west. It faced the empty island site, cleared by the LCC for the Aldwych crescent that now provided the link to Kingsway’s desired-for connection bridging north to south London. On the Strand corner of the opposite, western end of the acreage cleared by the Council, stood the new Gaiety Theatre (extended in 1902–3). It faced the Wellington Street corner that Gerlach depicted. The LCC became landlords of the theatre which they renovated. This was the first building completed by the Council on the land cleared to improve the Strand and its area north to Holborn. The ‘new Gaiety’ (as it was known) opened on the site of an earlier theatre named the Gaiety which opened in 1868 with an operatic extravaganza by W. S. Gilbert. Its demolition for the new theatre was lamented as the closing of an era because the earlier theatre was a notable feature of London. Much loved by Londoners, the earlier burlesque theatre was not only home to many stage celebrities, but the first to introduce matinee performances and the first theatre in England to install electric light on its street frontage (in 1878).9 The new Gaiety Theatre was of unusual height and imposing form. The complex (with a restaurant and hotel fronting the Strand) stood for the new times, a landmark building that flagged the improvements to come. Adjacent to it lay the unoccupied island site, hidden behind a hoarding, two-storeys high, prominently advertising the LCC’s Strand Improvement. With empty space being rare in the heart of London, this sizable site commanded attention. Writing to The Times, Edward Poynter, the President of the Royal Academy was among those who expressed concerns held about building on the Strand, keen 18

The London County Council

that what might arise there should be built in a manner that suited so great an opportunity. They were anxious that building heights should not overshadow the two churches and Somerset House ‘which are and should remain the principal ornaments of the Strand’.10 Architects like John Belcher, President of the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA), agreed that it was important that beauty, grandeur and dignity should be a feature of buildings for the Strand. The street called for spacious and stately architecture, not least because the north front of Somerset House, one of London’s great public buildings, faced the LCC’s island site. Somerset House stood directly opposite, on the Strand’s southern side, not far from the new Gaiety and overlooking the Embankment and the river. Somerset House is a late eighteenth century neo-classical suite of buildings designed by Sir William Chambers on the site of a former Tudor palace. Like its neighbourhood surroundings (where much was rebuilt over time) Somerset House was twice rebuilt. The original Somerset House was a mansion begun by the Duke of Somerset in 1547 who built with stone taken from the cloisters of St Paul’s. When rebuilt from 1775 in its present form, Chambers designed it as a textbook of Classical architecture. Considered to be London’s first great metropolitan office block, it served as a symbol of Britain’s might, in large part built to house the growing number of bureaucrats needed to administer the Royal Navy. Its frontage to the Strand led to the vestibule from which entry was once gained to the learned societies of the Royal Academy, the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries.11 From 1771, the Royal Academy used rooms at Somerset House where the first Royal Academy Exhibition was held in 1780. Among London’s focal centres of expertise and sociability, these institutions remained at Somerset House until the many departments of the Inland Revenue Office over-ran the building in the late nineteenth century (and it became dubbed ‘the national beehive’). Although weathering over time stained the Strand façade of Portland stone with its Corinthian columns, Somerset House remained a model of Classic style. Then, as now, it was regarded as ‘an object of national splendour.’12 Unsurprisingly, the centrality and scale of the LCC’s block on the Strand attracted speculators. It became a focus for grand concepts. As the LCC cleared the site in 1901, a syndicate expressed plans to erect on it a building of the ‘American type’. It proposed a long rectangular block, largely unadorned, seven storeys high with a set-back portion to rise to ten storeys, all built of steel. Principal spokesman for the Anglo-American syndicate behind the scheme was a New York entrepreneur, who was among the Americans who were in London to escape the financial meltdown of the 1890s. Frederick B. Esler’s proposal was 19

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

among the transatlantic influences that began to dominate London’s West End. Formerly Vice-President of the North-eastern Elevated Railroad, Philadelphia, Esler promoted and organised utopian schemes that were largely unproductive, to the mournful memories of creditors. Philadelphians knew him for his fancy financial footwork. However, in London, Esler signalled a new measure to building. His concept was markedly different in scale and design to new premises designed at 352 Strand by T. E. Collcutt: four storeys housing a ground floor restaurant with mullioned glass windows, just 30 feet wide and 53 feet deep. Esler could not see how property owners could subsist with small-scale building like this which typified London. Press reports said that Esler’s proposed office block, with a Strand frontage of seven hundred and fifty feet and a floor space to lease of 900,000 square feet, would be in cubic content the largest in the world.13 This scheme, far removed in design from Brewer’s Gothic-styled County Hall, signalled an unprecedented architectural example for London. It alarmed Poynter and his fellow Academicians. The Times endorsed the scheme’s American-made plans to treble the accommodation thought possible on the site for being a welcome new departure. There is needless alarm in some quarters over the American invasion, it is forgotten that we are always invading other people in just the same way. In every corner of the globe British capital is invested and British enterprise is directing all sorts of industries. But we forget to be equally enterprising at home, and the Americans have found it out. For our own part, we welcome their cooperation. The stay-at-home Englishman has a very great deal to learn, and, as his fine insular superiority prevents him from learning by inspection of what others are doing, the best thing possible for him is that other people should come here and do things under his nose.

20

CHAPTER 4

The Commonwealth of Australia There is certainly no city in England which can boast of nearly as many fine buildings, or as large ones, proportionately to its site as Melbourne.1

To the West, in his Westminster office, Captain Robert Muirhead Collins, C.M.G., R.N. (ret’d), had reason to reflect on London’s changing face. Somersetborn, a country surgeon’s son, and aged fifty-four, he watched London double its size in his lifetime. Recently living in London through most of 1905, he returned from Australia early the following year. Press reports in 1906 describe him as dapper, ‘a polished and exceedingly well-dressed man … a careful and popular officer, and practical politician with experience of ambassadorial and official missions in London.’2 Australia’s usually caustic Punch magazine wrote that while he dressed with the daintiness of a dandy, ‘his light, ladylike figure is no index to his character.’3 Widely read, always posted up-to-date, astute, discreet, he was the Commonwealth of Australia’s first Federal Agent in London.4 Collins knew the twists and turns taken in the long passage to federate the six Australian States in 1901.5 Public-spirited men, like Collins, served Federated Australia well in its early years. Collins was among those Federationist civil servants who, like his friend, constitutional lawyer (Sir) Robert Garran, delivered the Federal Constitution through its protracted birth and carefully steered it into the wider world. They were men of big ambitions for their country, in keeping with its continental span. They were also linked to the other side of the world as most of them, or their parents, were born in Britain; British kinship gave them a global view of things. The country’s first Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, and its Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, were sworn in at a grand ceremony inaugurating the Commonwealth of Australia in Sydney’s Centennial Park on the first day of January in 1901. Shortly after, on 9 May, the Duke of Cornwall and York 21

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

opened the First Parliament of the Commonwealth. The historic event was held at Melbourne’s impressive Exhibition Building that went up to host the Melbourne International Exhibition two decades earlier. The next day, the new parliament moved to Melbourne’s Parliament House. The Commonwealth had yet to build a federal capital let alone a federal parliamentary building. Until this was done in 1927, Melbourne’s Parliament House would be home to the Federal Parliament. The building dominated Melbourne’s centre on its elevated site at the top of Bourke Street. A national flag too would have to be designed but, meanwhile, a Federal flag showing the Union Jack and Southern Cross on a blue background was unfurled over Melbourne’s Exhibition Building. In Collins Street, a few blocks away from Melbourne’s Parliament House, engineers, architects, surveyors and members of allied professions convened an eleven-day congress to discuss the unique opportunity of building the Federal capital.6 Within months, Federal senators would examine possible sites for the new capital. The new Australian government lacked not only the symbols of State or a legislative capital, but also the machinery of a centralized government. It set about its construction and embarked on an ambitious program to institute muchneeded reform and update legislation that would bring the fledgling nation into the new century. It established a Federal Treasury, Department of Home Affairs, a High Court, set up a general civil service organization, and took over customs, post offices and the defence forces from the States. The question of Australia’s defence was central to Federation and when, under the new constitution, Defence became a federal concern, Collins’ role was vital in this transition. In 1901, Collins was appointed Inaugural Secretary of Australia’s Department of Defence. He had served twenty years as a Royal Navy officer, ten of them in Victoria, where he was Secretary for Defence for the colony from 1886. In January 1905, a Council of Defence, to deal with questions of policy, and a Military Board, to supervise the administration of the forces, were constituted.7 Up to then all orders for defence materials in Australia were distributed among the offices in London of the several Agents-General, each representing one of the six colonies, now States. The newly federated government sought greater efficiency, with defence the second largest Commonwealth expenditure.8 Australia’s Defence Department needed a single office in London to centralize growing purchases abroad. The Governor-General, empowered to arrange for the efficient defence of the Commonwealth without parliamentary consultation, directly appointed Collins as Australia’s official representative in London. 22

The Commonwealth of Australia

In 1906, Collins handed over charge of the Defence Department to its Chief Clerk in Melbourne, and, while remaining Secretary of the Department, sailed for London on 6 March to set up the London office. He would see that orders were concentrated, assist in their supervision, arrange for their inspection prior to their dispatch, and improve the supply of military equipment orders for Commonwealth purposes. However, Collins had an additional role in London. Australia’s new federal government needed to establish its identity in London. Desire for single responsible representation in London was expressed early in Australia’s twenty-year move to federation. It was expected that Australia would follow Canadian example: with federated Australia represented by a High Commissioner to deal with and act for the Federal Government, the Agents-General dealing with and acting for the State Governments.9 Most agreed that appointing a High Commissioner in London was urgent; the position was before Australia’s Parliament and the Government wanted preparations made in London for the High Commissioner’s arrival once the position was instituted by Parliament. The knowledge that Collins had of London would be useful for this task. In expectation that a High Commission would be established imminently, Collins was to pave the way for that office. From his arrival in London in April, Collins was effectively High Commissioner, although not in name.10 The Federal Treasurer, West Australian Sir John Forrest, rumoured by the Australian press as having his heart set upon being the first High Commissioner, stated that Collins ‘will do all that the High Commissioner has to do’.11 Collins effectively established the separate identity of the Federal Government and laid the foundations for the first High Commissioner.12 Australian press reports at the time reflect that Collins was highly regarded. The Australasian said that Collins ‘was an official with a special aptitude for checking, criticizing, and organizing, who is likely to do useful service.’13 Even Melbourne’s Punch thought he was a first-class administrator, and noted his sophistication in handling the Press.14 He had an eye for detail developed in the Navy. And the rapid coming and going of short-lived Ministries in colonial Victoria with frequent changes in defence policy had brought him many opportunities to hone his adaptability.15 His experience mattered because the Federal Government and Australia suffered from bad publicity. Britain’s Press, if they covered Australian affairs, criticised financial management in Australia. Australia’s Press condemned government expenditure as wasteful. Such negative opinion was surprising, Australian journalist-politician Winthrop Hackett said, when addressing 23

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

London’s Royal Society of Arts in 1907. Despite its progress, ‘Australia has just now so many critics, and seems in so many eyes to occupy the position of a suspect which, if we consider the date of its foundation, its earlier drawbacks, its geographical situation, and then look at its position to-day, one can say without hesitation presents the most marvellous example of successful colonisation recorded in any age and for any people.’16 Statistics supported this outlook. Yet memories of investments lost in the 1892–3 Great Financial Crisis coloured perceptions, associating Australia with financial ruin in many people’s minds, and British deposits all but evaporated from Australia. Such a mindset sat at odds with the bullish national mood existing in Australia in 1905, that the phrase ‘Advance Australia’ encapsulated. To offset criticism, Prime Minister Barton advised Alfred Deakin, another ‘Father of the Commonwealth’ and Australia’s second Prime Minister (1903–4, for seven months; 1905–8; 1909–10, for ten months), to use the term ‘Australia’ rather than ‘Commonwealth’. Barton argued, ‘There’s a good deal in a name, and people who prefer to regard the Commonwealth as an alien entity are deprived of much of their ground when you write or talk of an Australia whose unity and common purpose they will soon have to leave off abusing.’17 Collins knew only too well the strain of federating and instituting new centralising procedures. Successive changes of government followed in the years immediately after Australia federated, when no one party possessed enough power in its own right to govern with reasonable independence. Three main parties, the Liberal-Protectionists (led by Barton and Deakin), the Free-traders, and the Labor party, none with a majority of its own, were to exist in the House of Representatives and the Senate until 1909, and legislation stalled while they and their members feuded. In 1903 Prime Minister Barton resigned to become one of the three judges who founded Australia’s High Court. The following year, Deakin’s Ministry resigned. The first Federal Labor government which followed did not last long; nor did the succeeding coalition under George Reid and Allan Mclean through half of 1905, with a majority of never more than two (they were former premiers of New South Wales and Victoria respectively).18 A federal mind was yet to develop across the country. Geography continued to separate the new union. Party divisions and cross-divisions in the different states, and state-held views on different issues, stone-walled and frustrated the legislative program of Federationists in the Commonwealth Parliament. New South Wales was open to Free Trade; Victoria championed Protectionism. The Premier of New South Wales expressed how the States wished to present themselves to Britain’s Secretary of State in April 1906: 24

The Commonwealth of Australia

… the States are entirely independent of the Commonwealth, and are absolutely entitled … to communicate direct with the Imperial Government, and without intervention or interference on the part of any officer representing any other Government, subordinate as the States and the Commonwealth alike are to the Imperial Authority.19 Federationists, like Deakin, itched to advance the country with a progressive programme.20 Talk of progress was in the air in Melbourne as in London. Advancing national growth was the principle behind the Federal Government’s plans to open Australia to a trans-continental railway and to building a federal capital. Easing congestion in order to advance commerce lay behind the new Kingsway thoroughfare and the Holborn-Strand Improvement of the London County Council (LCC). Maintaining share of growing world trade by enhanced marketing was behind transferring management of the Imperial Institute to Britain’s Board of Trade in 1902.21 Collins shared his optimism about the future with Atlee Hunt, the Australian-born Sydney barrister who (like Garran) worked hand in glove with Prime Minister Barton. Hunt was Barton’s private secretary, but at Federation became the first Secretary (permanent head) of the new Department of External Affairs. With minimal staff, he worked closely with the Prime Minister (into late1916). Collins and Hunt were among those who, like (now Sir Edmund) Barton, Alfred Deakin and Sir John Forrest, were responsible for developing what was then the world’s newest country. They had lived through, as Barton famously declared, the creation for the first time in the world’s history of ‘a Nation for a Continent, and a Continent for a Nation’.22 Ambitious for it, they were committed to advancing Australia in the World. Collins found London in the grip of a building boom, full of the stir connected with schemes for new streets and the new buildings to come with them. Improvement schemes were reconstructing quarters; new streets were being carved out; more buildings were reshaping the city’s form; quaint old shops too small for modern business were being demolished. London property was being shaken out and the city was undergoing rapid transformation. New building developments were prominent for their scale and magnificence using costly building materials. New buildings like the new Gaiety Theatre highlighted the stark difference between the past era of the naked gas jet (when the earlier theatre – like London – was ‘a gas lit jewel, pearl-amber’) and the modern era of sharp electric light.23 25

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

Like the tempo of the changing times, the musical production opening the new Gaiety, The Orchid, moved faster than productions seen at the older theatre. ‘Full of high spirits’ praised The Times, encouraging its readers to see the production at the new theatre where ‘something had happened which waked everybody up’; in a sign of the times, it urged readers to go to the new theatre which it called ‘the professed home of gaiety’.24 Once there, abandon any judgement, the paper urged, giving measure to the spirit of the day. ‘It is no use, then, trying to judge the Gaiety by rational standards; only go prepared to surrender to her frivolity.’ Taking stock of the changes about in London, Collins appreciated only too well that cities grew in fits and starts. Having lived in Melbourne from 1877, Collins knew the land and building boom that it saw in the 1880s when monuments to confidence in the future rose rapidly. He watched the inflated land values of the city grown rich on gold, wool and financial speculation. The imposing South Melbourne Town Hall begun in March 1879 (by architect Charles Webb) went up within fifteen months. The Grand Hotel (also by Webb), built for shipping magnate George Nipper, was thought the climax of architectural magnificence when it opened in 1884; sold two years later, it almost doubled in size in 1888.25 The twelve-storey Australia Building on the north-west corner of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Lane was claimed to be the world’s tallest in 1889.26 At the time, Melbourne was one of the world’s most advanced cities, marvelled at world-wide for its rapid growth, wide streets, trams, and grand buildings. Within fifty years of its foundation in 1835, Melbourne was viewed as the ninth major city in the Western world (London, Paris and New York were the first three).27 Its population rose to half a million inhabitants, and by 1893, its growth was surpassed only by that of Chicago (which experienced a population increase that was unparalleled in American history). ‘I don’t think people at home have the least idea of its magnificence and extent,’ wrote Yorkshire clergyman Edward Sugden, when he arrived in Melbourne in 1887; ‘It is a world’s wonder.’28 As seen in England, people were abandoning rural life. By 1851 more Britons lived in towns and cities than in the countryside, and Australians too preferred the ease of town life or settled country districts to the hardships of living on remote outstations or selections. Australia’s level of urbanisation was among the highest in the world, with almost fifty per cent of Australians living in cities and towns. They were quick on their uptake of the latest labour-saving devices. Comforts of convenience were expected. ‘He orders his dinner and makes his appointments by telephone, – a necessity even in the humblest middle-class households; he goes to work on sumptuous electric trams; he cooks by the latest stoves, writes by 26

The Commonwealth of Australia

typewriter, and plays by pianola.’ So London-born, Oxford-educated Percy Fritz Rowland described Australians in 1903 in his book The New Nation, A Sketch of the Social, Political and Economic Conditions and Prospects of the Australian Commonwealth. Touring New Zealand and Australia at the turn of the century, Australia’s capital cities captivated the future educator and essayist. Melbourne impressed Rowland with the ‘huge scale of its public buildings’; as did its ‘metropolitan feeling, in her broad well-kept streets that you will not find elsewhere.’ For him Melbourne must be taken as the ‘show’ Australian city: ‘easily the first city in the southern hemisphere’.29 He gives us a double reflection of conditions both in Australia and London. The Commonwealthman, on his first visit to London, for instance is amazed at means of locomotion inferior to those of many a fourth-rate Australian township. That men whose time is worth, presumably more than that of most Australians, should content themselves with crawling through teeming alleys, constantly barred from further progress by the finger of the policeman; the spectacle of London omnibuses lumbering on their painful course, crowded within and without, while unsuccessful would-be customers stand patiently waiting on the pavements; the dismal Stygian windings of the underground; – all this, in the wealthiest city in the world, amazes the Australian, familiar with the orderly, all-penetrating cable-tramways of Melbourne, or with the rapid comfort of Sydney electric cars.30 Rowland was not alone in being struck by the Australian uptake of the New. Those on the Royal Tour gained the same impression. Official recorder of the tour was Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, foreign correspondent of The Times. He established the foreign desk for the paper and was thought to be regularly (or at least earlier) better-informed than the Foreign Office. He described Melbourne as ‘hurriedly spread out in all directions over an area of 6,000 acres’ with principal thoroughfares ‘broad and stately in their proportions’, on a scale similar to that of Washington, and buildings that ‘might almost rival the ‘skyscrapers’ of Chicago’.31 Melbourne was a mega-city in which lived 41 per cent of the Colony of Victoria’s population.32 Arriving at Flemington racecourse for the Royal Review held on 10 May 1901, the colossal dimension of the stand astonished him.33 First glimpse of Melbourne’s Exhibition Building (where 15,000 guests 27

Part One: The New London (to 1906)

were seated) reminded him of London’s Crystal Palace, but approaching closer to the building he admitted ‘that perhaps patriotic Australians are right in thinking that the original has been improved on.’34 The magnificence of Government buildings in Brisbane and the other Australian capitals astonished London County Councillor Edward Collins when visiting in 1909.35 As a general measure of the high estimation held for the city, the eleventh Encyclopedia Britannica waxed lyrical about Melbourne’s fine public buildings, noting that its suburban cities and towns each had a town hall, and many of the commercial buildings were of architectural merit.36 Praise also came from New-Zealand born town planner and journalist Charles Compton Reade (1880–1933) who was active in the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association of Great Britain; he became acting secretary and editor for its magazine in 1913.37 He travelled to Australia beforehand to study Sydney and Melbourne as cities of world importance, each with more people than in Bristol, each with over half a million inhabitants. Reade noted how dissimilar Australian cities were to those in Britain. ‘Melbourne is essentially a city of right angles, of long unbroken streets, where in some cases the view extends for over a mile without any architectural creation to arrest the vision.’38 Scale in Melbourne attracted him. ‘The principal streets are 100 feet wide, and the architecture reaching in some cases to 10 and 12 storeyed buildings, aspired to dignity and effect … the congestion, the squalor, the predominating note of disorder and ugliness which vividly impress themselves upon a Colonial imagination in cities like Leeds and Manchester, do not exist.’39 Reade also considered as almost phenomenal, in extent and character, the suburban growth and civic development of recent times in Sydney. ‘It was the inauguration of the Commonwealth at the beginning of this century and the festivities associated therewith which brought to Australian cities the realization of civic dignity and importance.’40

28

PART TWO

Location (to 1908)

CHAPTER 5

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’ If all the colonies were banded together they would be like a number of bricks welded into one substantial building. One brick lying by itself is of no use,but when put into structure and cemented it becomes a mighty edifice.1

‘I’ll shake fossildom to its foundations’, promised King O’Malley to voters who elected him to the House of Representatives in the first Federal Parliament.2 On many counts, O’Malley attracted a hearing. Standing over six feet tall, he was of striking appearance with a colourful personality and O’Malley had a flair for dramatic language. Melbourne journalist George Cockerill, who covered the Federal Parliament in its first decade, later described O’Malley as resembling something between a desperado from the cattle ranges, a spruiker from Barnum’s Circus, and a Western American Statesman.3 Cartoonists delighted in depicting his moppish head of thick auburn hair: unruly strands defied being combed back, slipping over his brow, mocking his trimmed red beard. Customarily he dressed in frock-coat and baggy trousers, with an outsize ten-gallon caboose tied to his coat button with red ribbon; at times his shirt-front sported a flaming opal, as big as a shilling, in a setting of rubies and sapphires. O’Malley hated swank and ostentation.4 His flamboyance and jovial manner were assumed, calculated so that he could not be ignored in the skirmishing that was going on within the parliament, the parties and their factions from among the six federated States.5 Always in command of himself, O’Malley took a deliberate approach to seeing through his well-considered views which, once formed, he would not budge from.6 ‘An opinion is formed after deliberation,’ he said. ‘One gets it after sifting all the evidence.’ 7 No stranger to controversy, O’Malley earned the ire of the hotel trade with his condemnation of ‘stagger juice’ and those who supplied ‘hell’s broth’ (alcohol).8 The trade stressed O’Malley’s non-British nationality (which should have disqualified him from becoming a parliamentary member). Most-likely 31

Part Two: Location (to 1908)

American-born, he retorted that he was born in Canada, fifty yards from the United States border.9 Unperturbed, O’Malley boasted: ‘That fifty yards, brother, was all there was between me and the Presidency of the United States.’10 Before moving to Australia in 1888, his life was crammed with experience: as a cowboy in Texas, a rancher on the Mexican border, an insurance canvasser in Chicago, a banker in New York, an electioneering agent (allegedly campaigning for Presidents Garfield and Cleveland).11 Always on the move, from Kansas to Oregon, California to Chicago, O’Malley’s flair for dramatic language had one West Coast journalist report that ‘there is not a more glib, single handed talker on the coast’.12 If something of an opportunist in America, O’Malley arrived in Australia on the Queensland coast allegedly with tuberculosis and hence travelling with his coffin.13 He thrived, travelled the country, and was a notoriously popular insurance salesman before entering parliament.14 The Honourable King O’Malley stood in the Victorian Legislative Assembly building in Melbourne’s Spring Street to address the Federal Parliament’s Committee of Supply. In August 1906, compulsory military service was being advocated in the House (this training for home defence was introduced in 1909).15 For O’Malley, the £750,000 annually spent by the infant Commonwealth on military and naval defence was pure waste. The country needed no more ‘gildedspurred rooster officers’; the only utility for an army for Australia was rabbit destruction.16 More pressing concerns required attention. The new combined Ministry of Federationist Prime Minister Alfred Deakin (formed in July 1905 with Labor support) promised to resolve earlier parliamentary strife over fiscal issues. The day before, following the Budget Speech, discussion in the House dwelled on how to deal with the financial issues facing the Commonwealth. Public finances and financial reform particularly concerned O’Malley, as did delays due to changing administrations with the proposed High Commissioner Bill. He considered plans for Commonwealth representation in London were among the most significant measures before the House and intended raising a motion which would be regarded as utopian.17 The seeming eccentricity and progressive outlook of this go-ahead Yankee distinguished him among his parliamentary peers as the ‘character’ in the House. There were those in the spacious Chamber who wondered how ‘this Yankee bounder’ with his ‘crazy Yankee ideas’ got there.18 Others were beguiled when he brightened the proceedings. O’Malley reflected the changing social and economic relations that were being forged at the turn of the century. Many of Australia’s working men found, as the nature of work altered and relied less on unskilled and casually engaged manual labour, that they could no longer maintain the itinerant 32

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

roaming from station to station by which they were accustomed to pursuing ‘Dame Fortune’, with a ‘swag’ on their back (like their fathers). Increasing mechanization and urbanization, and the compartmentalization of modern living, required different skills. The growing number of professional Institutes and Associations were measure of the ever-accelerating division of labour. The times were becoming one of greater specialism. Ever-increasing areas of life were turning over to disciplinary expertise and to managerial techniques, like Taylorism. Changing circumstances (let alone eight successive dry years of the Great Drought (1895–1902), the worst since settlement) put a brake on the desire to wander afield for adventure. Conditions called for the ‘New Man’. The typical Australian was an urbanised creature (despite a literary tradition and popular culture that emphasised ‘Outback’ resilience). In many respects, having lived a roving existence himself, O’Malley was no different to the many men at that time who congregated in Melbourne, ‘living by their wits rather than by their labour’.19 Registering change, he stood out in the Federal election of 1906: the only candidate with the candour to name his occupation as a ‘politician’.20 If thought political small fry by some, O’Malley became a significant reform leader in the Australian Labor Party, in existence for barely more than thirteen years. He represented the revolution in social and political attitudes that was under way. ‘The rate at which we have advanced has been like the speed of an electric railway or a motor car’, observed Alfred Deakin in 1903.21 Deakin himself embodied the change, as the first Australian-born Chief Secretary of Victoria in 1885, when few Australian-born citizens held high office. Upon federating Australia’s communities, great strides were made towards new political and administrative organization. While a mythology developed around O’Malley, who was a clear self-promoter, he typified the cast of the early Commonwealth’s leading parliamentary members and public officers. ‘Notable fighters’ is how Henry Gyles Turner, former London banker and Melbournebased editor of the Melbourne Review, referred to them.22 They were undeterred by the ambition of their Commonwealth undertaking, the magnitude of which Deakin summed up. The Commonwealth was a continent of 3,000,000 square miles, containing nearly four million of people scattered in a fringe upon its outer rim – a country whose increase in the matter of population is extremely small, a country whose birth rate at present is low; a country which we hold, but of which we only occupy a fraction, and of which we as yet use but a minute fraction, these are fundamental facts to be 33

Part Two: Location (to 1908)

burnt into our memories and maintained there for the purpose of interpreting what the Commonwealth is, and suggesting what Australia ought to be … we have now entered into a political union, which we are trying to make, and mean to make, a real union.23 Deakin reminded electors that it had taken forty years to achieve Federation and he pleaded for co-operation, mutual aid and unity of purpose in the Commonwealth. The Australian community was yet to appreciate the reality of ‘union’. Provincial interests held sway. State loyalties and party divisions made governing difficult in the Federal Fray. ‘We can never disentangle our common interests,’ Deakin urged, mindful of the rancorous party strife that had faced Barton.24 If some thought O’Malley’s earlier addresses in the House were alternately tirades of abuse, American vulgarisms, and coarse clownishness, for O’Malley, existing circumstances, with the immense reality facing the Commonwealth, called for a raised tone in political life – as he was about to propose. O’Malley took particular pride in having the distinction of never having missed a meeting of the House since it was first opened in 1901.25 He stood in the fifty-year-old spacious Chamber with its serried Corinthian columns, each a single piece of Tasmanian freestone. Above him, sculpted figures hovered in the ceiling spandrels of the coffered barrel vault. He looked across at the Speaker’s chair, with its richly decorated Royal Canopy behind it. The Press Gallery above spanned the width of the Chamber. The Chamber, and the grand Roman Revival building housing it, testified to the achievements made in his adopted country. To him, the building signified that Australia was where things got built and got done. But, with change wanted in the country, he was concerned that the Members of the House were marking time and Australia was not progressing as it should.26 Ever a democrat and a patriot, O’Malley stood with Deakin on Commonwealth union. Yet real union remained hard to achieve while a fourday sea voyage, much of it beyond the sight of land, was needed to reach the Eastern States from Western Australia. O’Malley spoke there in 1897 in favour of adopting the Federal Constitution. Establishing railway communication between Eastern and Western Australia was essential. (Western Australia, with a population of just over 184,000, entered Federation on the basis that a promised railway would be established.)27 O’Malley appreciated that unification brought advantages, having experienced the prosperity that followed reunion in America after its civil war. And the reforming impulse, that characterised the times, ran strong in his 34

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

veins. ‘All our experience is based upon the country in which we live,’ O’Malley announced to the House. ‘If we have lived in a small country our ideas are small and parochial, and vice versa.’28 Like Deakin, O’Malley held visions of Australian’s possible future greatness. O’Malley believed firmly in Australia’s capacity. His travel gave him a wider outlook than he considered was held by many of his parliamentary colleagues, even in the Labor Party which he joined in 1901. Rather than dwell on parliamentary precedent they should be forward looking, he thought. To him, their patriotic enthusiasm in Australian potential was wanting. ‘They’ve got hindsight instead of foresight. They can’t imagine a thing’s possible until it’s happened. Most of them can’t get the hang of the simplest explanation about the power Australia has within her grasp.’29 O’Malley reflected the heightened national sentiment that came with Federation. Self-assertive citizens were proud of what they had achieved in making Australia their home (if only a part of Greater Britain). Just over ninety-five per cent of the little more than four million men, women and children counted in the census of March 1901 were born either in Australia or of parents of British or Irish origin. This gave them twinned purpose to advance their new nation while to the United Kingdom they remained bound with sacred ties, as Deakin put it: ‘Of one dear blood, one storied enterprise.’30 Federation was the chief national plank of the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA). Its belief that ‘Union is Strength’ became a national force when allied to Federation. Begun in 1871 as a homegrown Friendly Benefit Society, its branches became a common meeting ground for the native-born (seventy-seven per cent of citizens were Australian-born). It saw itself as a National Club, where nativeborn Australians between the ages of sixteen and forty met to exchange ideas and gather information ‘regarding all questions affecting themselves and their country, and to foster in the breast of the Australian-born a sincere love for his native land and fellow-countrymen.’31 It was strongest in the State of Victoria with 20,000 members in 1904 (Deakin among them). The progressive-minded Association ardently fostered ‘Australian’ sentiment and supported national expansion. ‘Our aspirations of a national character must necessarily raise the standard of public life, and so ensure the welfare, prosperity, and happiness of the people’, read its constitution.’32 It advocated for the encouragement of, and preference for, Australian-made goods and preference given to Australians in public appointments.33 O’Malley shared the ANA’s nationalist stance. To him, big ideas were essential to gain necessary infrastructure for the fledgling nation. Advocating 35

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Government ownership of land before Federation, O’Malley promptly moved the motion within weeks of the new Parliament sitting that secured 583,000 acres of inalienable land for the site of the Federal Capital Territory (with a deepsea harbour at Jervis Bay). The Federal Constitution stipulated that the seat of government be on Commonwealth territory, and it was O’Malley’s self-proclaimed vow to ‘help to carry out the compact which is embodied in the Constitution.’34 O’Malley envisaged a capital that belonged to ‘the whole people, and not to a few comatose monopolists’; a capital that ‘will rival London in population, Paris in beauty, Athens in culture, and Chicago in enterprise.’35 The federal capital that he envisaged should avoid ‘the ideas of inartistic vulgar savagery’ that were inherent in the ugliness that he saw in most modern cities of the world.36 All its buildings were ‘to be erected under strict Government regulations, and with due regard to … architectural beauty’ so that they would stand ‘in harmony with the artistic spirit of progressive civilization.’ To build a ‘model city’ was the ideal expressed at the Congress of architects, engineers and kindred professionals convened in Melbourne in May 1901 to discuss the Commonwealth’s future federal city.37 After all, Melbourne had been laid according to a preconceived, grandiose plan (if though, famously, a compromise) drawn up in 1837 by pioneer surveyor Robert Hoddle, with streets 99 feet (30 m) wide and areas set aside for reserves and public buildings. Building the Commonwealth’s federal city was seen to be a unique opportunity, allied to that of the founding of ‘the city of magnificent distances’ as Charles Dickens called Washington DC in his American Notes (1842). Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s Washington was O’Malley’s example.38 L’Enfant’s vision, mapped out in 1791 and laid down in about 1800, is one of the great achievements of town planning. Nearly every author of a book or article on town planning in the first quarter of the twentieth century cited Washington, with its central mall, a combined diagonal and grid street system, numerous civic squares and plazas, and L’Enfant’s farsighted system for orderly growth.39 O’Malley knew Washington well. His sister lived there, as did relatives nearby in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where they ran a prosperous building company as merchant builders. In the boom of the mid-1880s, O’Malley subdivided new building areas for them.40 This experience, coupled with admiration for L’Enfant’s plan, kindled in him interest in property and urban development. His interest was further sharpened during his travel through Britain, France, Germany and Russia in the late 1880s.41 From this experience O’Malley gained a developed sense of urban structure and potential. At the start of the twentieth century, Washington marked its centennial as 36

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

America’s capital. It was growing rapidly and undergoing review for the United States Senate. The Senate Park Commission (established in 1901) was to resolve competing visions for the city’s development. The resulting McMillan Plan (published in 1902) envisioned redeveloping Washington’s Victorian shape. It was an ambitious scheme to transform the capital into the ‘City Beautiful’. It was one plan of many schemes then in train, on the crest of the City Beautiful Movement, in other fast-growing cities around the world.42 In Australia, ‘Public Works’ were a key economic policy tool, and were funded by the States’ borrowings. It was over this that O’Malley took a stand. At the start of 1901, O’Malley outlined his belief that public works ought to be undertaken out of revenue and not loan funds. As Deakin (whose governments prepared the budgets) reminded electors, Australia owed £200 million through the States in 1903 (reckoned to be among the highest level of public indebtedness existing in Britain’s Dominions).43 Minds in Australia fixed on fiscal concerns because the Commonwealth took over from the States their public debts upon Federation.44 It was required in the first decade of federation to pay to the States three-quarters of the net revenue from customs and excise duties. The Commonwealth deducted interest owing in respect of the debts from the portions of the surplus revenue that it returned to the several States. The Commonwealth Government initially prided itself on its frugality. Public mood feared Government expense, the depression of the 1890s having suspended the unrivalled prosperity of the Australian colonies. The extra cost to be entailed by federal government was vehemently discussed in the pre-federal conferences. Although it had not yet borrowed, federal administration costs became greater than anticipated as all federal departments expanded. Opinion held that consolidated debt, involving a lower cost of finance, would benefit Australia.45 Interest might be saved by consolidating the various State’s loans into uniform Commonwealth consols (consolidated stock), thought to command a higher price than matching State stock. Centralising Australian borrowing might overcome the debt burden, and help ‘bind the States to the chariot wheels of central government’, as Deakin put it.46 The Empire’s self-governing colonies were represented in London by a High Commissioner in the case of Canada (from 1880) and New Zealand (which established a High Commission in London in 1905).47 In the case of the six Australian States and the Canadian Provinces of British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, as well as the Cape of Good Hope and Natal, each had their own Agent-General to promote their special requirements. The main 37

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duty of an Agent-General was to act for the different Government departments of his own territory; he was, therefore, called Agent-General (Agent to Government departments generally). Duties entailed liaising with the British Government, supervising colonial purchases, co-ordinating the recruitment of emigrants and managing relations with the all-important London capital market. The intention to see through legislation required for the appointment of a High Commissioner stalled in the Federal Parliament when Bills were withdrawn, laid aside or lapsed with the changes of government. O’Malley fixed on Australia’s credit and banking needs. In his view, finance and government were inseparable. In 1903, he raised in the House his concern over the weight of debt, the size of the annual interest bill to meet it, and the lack of a sinking fund to redeem the debt.48 O’Malley understood finance, appreciated that Australia needed to recover its wealth from the losses of the 1890s, and loathed wastefulness. As he told the House in 1906, ‘I am going to stop extravagance in this country. I think I know something about finance, although I am a Labor member.’49 O’Malley gained commercial experience living for eight years with an uncle who owned a small bank on Wall Street, and for whom he worked.50 Melbourne’s usually unforgiving Punch considered that O’Malley was never one to let the grass grow under his feet where dollars were to be made, unlike his fellow Labor colleagues who were generally thought to have a weak grasp of basic finance. (Alone among his Labor colleagues, he developed the idea of a ‘People’s’ central bank, which he promoted.)51 O’Malley calculated savings that could be made. Britain was the world’s largest lender, with by far the greatest share in foreign investments. Every demand for money was, in the first instance, always supplied from the gold stock in London, because London was the only free market for gold in the world.52 The need to service existing debts, aside from fresh capital, saw Australia bound to London’s capital market where the high costs of financing government operations through private financiers were burdensome. O’Malley wanted to see the Commonwealth freed from being tied to their interests. With Captain Muirhead Collins in charge of a Commonwealth Office in London, O’Malley urged that the Commonwealth take charge of Australia’s affairs there. He told the House, ‘the Commonwealth should borrow its first £500,000 for the purpose of erecting a Commonwealth building of steel in the heart of London … It must appoint a High Commissioner, and the sooner it does that the better.’53 O’Malley stressed that the Commonwealth should erect offices in London, where the future High Commissioner could manage its financial arrangements. 38

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

‘Everybody knows that finance is the basis of government – that government rests upon finance – and that unless our finances are sound, our whole super-structure must fall.’54 Coming out of the worst drought in living memory, and buoyed by the Royal visit, Australians in 1906 enthusiastically looked to opportunity. To his mind, the Commonwealth had to establish an office in London where economic prizes awaited. Australia had to be part of the competitive expansionism that characterized current commercial life. O’Malley’s view matched Deakin’s vision of future Commonwealth prosperity that representation in London could offer. ‘There is a golden opportunity presented to us such as has never been presented to Australia before’, Deakin announced when referring to a Commonwealth office in London.55 It promised the opportunity to express Australia’s political views, keep in touch with financiers and manage debt-control, and attract immigrants to Australia. While the States already did some of this separately, Deakin saw opportunity in Australia presenting a concerted face. It needed immigrants. With the long drought now over, the country needed agricultural workers, so that (as Deakin put it), ‘We will have more exports, to send to London, instead of sending our money there.’56 O’Malley looked beyond Deakin’s desire to attract immigrants. In O’Malley’s opinion, the nation would benefit from having its own building in the world’s leading metropolis. ‘London is a great city. It is the centre of the earth, and a structure such as I suggest, erected there would be the pride of the Commonwealth.’57 With its own building in London, ‘… Australia would receive an advertisement for all time. Then whenever a man visited London and was asked to view the building of the Commonwealth there, it [the Commonwealth of Australia] would mean something to him.’58 A building to ‘raise the thought and touch the heart’ of all who look at it would make Australia known, be a standing advertisement for the nation, a billboard to do business in, and advance Australia’s interests. It would advertise to Britain, and to British investors, the substantial assets held by the continent. ‘This would be one of the soundest investments that could be made by the Commonwealth,’ urged O’Malley.59 O’Malley spoke with authority because before entering Parliament he was agent for the American company Equitable Life Assurance headquartered in New York. Known as The Equitable, it became the largest life insurance company in the world in 1886. From its outset, The Equitable was associated with building architectural mileposts. The Equitable built in unison with English banker George Rae’s way of thinking that a significant building assured some minds of corresponding wealth and stability within.60 39

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The first Equitable Life Building, at 120 Broadway, New York, was a Baroque building (1868–1870, George Browne Post) that was a major breakthrough in the development of the skyscraper. It stood at the then record height of 130 feet (40 m) and featured the first passenger lifts in Manhattan. The building was a public relations triumph for the Equitable; it became the epicentre of the city’s Financial District and most of its wealth in the Gilded Age.61 Equitable Life Assurance was established in Australia from the mid-1880s, where it was very successful. The Equitable held more assets in freehold property in Australia than any other office transacting the business of life assurance. Erecting significant buildings was central to its marketing method: it knew the public relations value of a prominent and handsome home office building that would ‘establish in the public mind not only [the individual company’s] name but also a favourable impression of its operations.’62 Architecture that conveyed durability and command encouraged a reading of Equitable Life Assurance as a trustworthy, authoritative company. The Commonwealth Government’s Official Year Book for 1904 singled out the Equitable’s ‘magnificent buildings in Sydney and Melbourne [which] stand as lasting monuments to the Society’s stability and prosperity and afford eloquent testimony of the confidence of its management in the future of Australia.’63 Commonwealth financial necessity underpinned O’Malley’s argument. Warrants for the payment of interest passed through the London banks, which (in O’Malley’s opinion) may advise their clients to hold back a loan to the Commonwealth in order to obtain a higher rate of interest. O’Malley argued that an Australian building in London could free the Commonwealth from unsustainable interest burdens. All the rotten financing which is now done through the banks – I call it ‘debauchery’ financing – would be dispensed with, and the work which is now performed by those institutions would be done by the High Commissioner. The latter should have with him what is known as a ‘credit’ man, whose business it would be to hunt up the investors in Australian stocks. I do not say that the gentlemen at the head of the banks in London are not above suspicion, but I do maintain that they have the interests of their clients at heart. It is not their business to look after the interests of Australia, but to conserve the interests of those who buy Australian bonds.64 In his opinion, Australia should look after its own interests, rather than be beholden to London. After all, Australia’s potential wealth resembled the ‘legendary 40

‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

box of jewels!’65 Most likely he was aware that the Canadian High Commissioner in London had negotiated loans for the Canadian Government and the Canadian Pacific Railway at favourable rates of interest, independently of the London firms.66 A month earlier, Deakin received from London the opinion of Timothy Coghlan, the newly-appointed Acting Agent-General for New South Wales (and formerly its government statistician) that debt would curtail Australian expansion. ‘Australia cannot be itself entirely independent until it is free from the load of debt which it has to carry,’ Coghlan told Deakin.67 O’Malley agreed. He argued, ‘If the office of the High Commissioner were established in our own buildings in London, he would be able to inscribe our own stock.’68 Australia would benefit from the interest earned on its stock, and money upon deposit at the High Commissioner’s office could be utilized in Australia. In his Yankee twang, O’Malley outlined a blueprint for the Commonwealth building in London. In his estimation, half a million pounds could buy the Commonwealth a new building to stand close to the financial heart of the Empire. ‘I claim that for £500,000 we could purchase the necessary ground, and erect the building, not far from the Bank of England.’ Continuing, O’Malley described the building that he envisaged. The structure should be ten or twelve storeys high. The basement should be reserved for Australian wines, spirits, &c. The next floor might be let as offices for insurance companies and various other mercantile institutions. Upon the next floor we might establish a restaurant, in which only Australian produce should be sold. The top storey might very well be utilized as a show-room by the six States of Australia, and the New Zealand Government would willingly establish its offices there. It would be a location where Australian business would be conducted. Turning to the role of the Agents-General in this regard, he added, As each of the States intends to maintain a representative in London, every one of those representatives might have an office in the building, and the Commonwealth might also have its own offices, and its own bank there … The High Commissioner will perform different functions from those discharged by the representatives of the States.

41

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Thus, he envisaged an ‘Australia Centre’ that would be a hub for Australian trade and commerce. As such it should be a significant building, one in which Australians took pride: ‘a structure something like some of the American States have in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, to be a sort of rallying place for Australians.’69 Perhaps O’Malley had in mind buildings which he knew in America, like New York’s Produce Exchange (1881–1884, George Browne Post). It was a magnificent brick structure that could not be missed, as an 1888 guidebook to New York City illustrated. ‘It fronts 307 feet on Broadway and Whitehall streets; has a tower 225 feet high, with a clock whose face is 12 feet in diameter, and the main room is 220 by 145 feet.’ 70 The booming city of Philadelphia, which considered itself the ‘workshop of the world’ in the 1870s and 1880s, erected the largest municipal building in the United States. City Hall was America’s finest example of the Second Empire style, with a City Council chamber larger than London’s House of Lords. The building’s 548-foot tower was the world’s tallest masonry structure without a steel frame. Built with brick walls up to 22 feet (6.7 m) thick, Philadelphia’s City Hall was famed the world over as the world’s tallest habitable building (from 1894 to 1908).71 Australian newspapers took much interest in it from the 1880s, regularly reporting on the scale of the building and its features. News of its aluminium dome even reached the ‘Women’s Gossip’ page of Goulburn’s Herald (along with the ‘rage for lace’).72 O’Malley’s blueprint for London could similarly take Australia to the world. The building would stand for the Commonwealth union that Deakin pressed for, and for the independence that O’Malley and Labor caucus, and ANA nationalists, wanted to see for Australia. Given that the Commonwealth Government was without a federal legislature or offices of its own and had yet to build the promised trans-continental railway, let alone a national defence system, it is little wonder that O’Malley’s vision of a Commonwealth building in London was looked on as grandiose. However, it was not far removed from expanding Commonwealth initiative nor motions that the Labor Party raised in the Parliament to push Australian development. These included establishing a government-owned iron and steel industry, and a Royal Commission whose Labor majority reported in favour of a Commonwealth-owned shipping line.73 O’Malley envisioned a financial centre in the City, London’s financial heart, because he appreciated the interdependency of finance and government.74 With the Commonwealth Building in London, the country would have a seat of power in the first city of the world, and one that was empowered by capital. To his mind, power and national identity were all tied in one in architecture. Simply put, erecting an Australian building in London was in the national interest. 42

CHAPTER 6

Representation in London And now we have one of the most advanced democracies in the world. Things are being done there which are the shadows of events which will become realities in older communities.1

In London, Captain R. Muirhead Collins took an office at Belgravia Chambers, 72 Victoria Street in Westminster. Victoria Street ran south-west from Westminster Abbey to Victoria Station. It was the centre of a mixed commercial and residential area that was opened up in 1851 when the Westminster Improvement Commission drove through a slum known as ‘The Devil’s Acre’, which Gustave Doré famously illustrated in his account of the deprivation and squalor of mid-Victorian London.2 Most of the offices of the British Empire’s self-governing territories were situated on Victoria Street which consequently became known as London’s colonial quarter. In his book Imperial London (1901), Arthur Henry Beavan, pictured walking up the street towards the Abbey where ‘one is struck, if it be a fête-day, by the number of offices flying the distinguishing flag of the colony each represents.’ This would have made an impression in the somewhat cavernous street, where buildings upwards of eighty feet high overlooked the eighty-footwide street. ‘It seems as if British delegates from every quarter of the globe had settled down there,’ Fulham-based Beavan noted.3 He lists them all, with South Australia alone not in Victoria Street (its offices at that time were in the City of London). Blocks of flats occupied the street. Modelled on Parisian dwellings, and novel for London when built, they were somewhat derogatorily known as ‘French Flats’ because they housed residents across a spectrum of social classes, many of them office and retail workers serving Londoners. Flats and offices were similar in their planning (both being served by a common staircase) and increasing demand for office accommodation saw many of these flats let and turned into offices. When this happened, generally each floor would be let off as two suites of offices. Collins established a small office here with two accountants. Frank Savage, head of accounts for the Commonwealth Defence Department and formerly 43

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Inspector of Defence Stores in Melbourne as well as an accountant from the Office of the Agent-General for Victoria in London.4 A clerk and a typist made up their number. The Commonwealth Year Book for 1908 shows that their temporary London office, through 1906–7, cost £1,559 over salaries of £1,500.5 Collins’ office with a staff of 5 was the smallest of Australian government offices in London bar that of Tasmania with a staff of 3. (The largest office was that of New South Wales with a staff of 16, annually paying wages of over £4,000 alone.) Space in the small office on the third floor was tight. Beavan thought that all the offices of the Australian Agents-General in Victoria Street were ‘cramped, and altogether unworthy of the vigorous young communities they represent.’6 Australian visitors shared this opinion, particularly in light of the change seen in office accommodation in Australia’s largest cities where a building boom followed recent economic progress. In 1904, the Official Year Book of Australia noted the increased number of ‘huge buildings, frequently of a palatial character, and invariably displaying considerable architectural taste which have displaced the old-fashioned and incommodious structures, with which Australian business men were formerly content’.7 In Melbourne, the federal government’s priority for the moment was to provide buildings across the country for increased postal, telegraph and telephone facilities and for trade and customs purposes. Commonwealth government officers were temporarily housed in offices scattered about the centre of Melbourne until an administrative building could be built to house them. Not until 1912 would the six-storey Commonwealth Offices building be erected in Treasury Place. Compared to Melbourne, office buildings in London inadequately considered the comfort and convenience of tenants. A gas explosion wrecked the Victoria Street office of Sir Andrew Clarke, the Agent-General for Victoria, in February 1901.8 Water which came through the roof of his offices after a rainstorm in 1903 destroyed financial records.9 The Times exhorted architects to design safer structures; it urged that money would be better spent on safety arrangements than on ‘pseudo-decorations and the latest fashionable plagiarism from medieval art’.10 A great advocate for town planning and architectural change was Progressive leader John Burns who represented Battersea in the House of Commons and was one of the most active figures on the London County Council (as Council Member, 1893–1907). President of the Local Government Board in Britain’s newly formed Liberal administration from 1905, he criticised the deficiencies in central London’s office accommodation. Arguing that physical surroundings bore directly on work produced, he blamed the stagnant ‘rabbit-warren habitation’ of 44

Representation in London

the War Office for the ‘mazy conduct of that department, and the hazy sense of duty it has towards the country.’11 Arguing that any organization and the quality of its work was affected by its environment, Burns called for buildings having prominent sites, adequate space, handsome exteriors and internal attractiveness. He wanted buildings which stimulated ‘a joy of work in staff, an order in business, and a supreme command of organization impossible in low, mean and disorderly habitations’. Captain Collins saw that he would have to look to architects, as Britain’s influential weekly the Builder noted, ‘for the various improvements in the way of mechanical, sanitary, and domestic equipment that are still so much needed for office buildings in this country.’12 This was also the concern of Melbourne architect William Tappin when he visited London just ahead of Collins’s arrival. A principal of Melbourne’s oldest architectural firm, Tappin later remarked to his colleagues at the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects in Melbourne’s Collins Street, that Australia’s modern buildings mostly held their own in design and workmanship.13 To Tappin’s mind, London’s architects lacked adaptability to current times. Not far from where he addressed his Australian colleagues in 1904 stood the twelve-storey Australia Building, acclaimed as the world’s tallest building when built in 1889. Along from it stood the Equitable Building (1896). If only seven storeys (138 feet high), it was built of steel columns and girders and held the fastest elevators in Melbourne, the first permitted to run at a speed of 300 feet a minute.14 By-laws which restricted the speed of lifts to 200 feet per minute were amended to accommodate the faster ‘4½ Otis’ machines in the building. Up to 1895 electrically powered elevators were still governed by the parameters of the steam age, winding rope onto a drum. Two hundred feet was the maximum rise, the longest amount of rope that could be safely wound onto a single drum. By early 1899 high-speed electric elevators were developed that ran from about 500 feet. Australians expected that such advanced buildings would go up when the times were rich with innovation and complaints about the English disregard for consumer demand were voiced to those on the Royal Tour in 1901. They remarked on how Australians puzzled over this indifference to public expectation. As Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace reported, In commercial circles we find here, as in places previously visited, that those who have at heart the interests of British trade bewail the British manufacturers’ apathy, spirit of routine, and haughty indifference to the tastes – reasonable and unreasonable – of the 45

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consumers, as compared with the enterprising spirit and readiness to supply what is wanted, which characterise the Americans and the Germans. Why will British industry not supply us with what we want, done up as we want it? That is a question that we often hear asked, but never satisfactorily answered.15 The difference in approach in Australia and England to buildings and urban environments was understandable to Australian author John Abbott. Working in London as a freelance writer for the Spectator and Daily Telegraph (1903–9) he put the difference down to an Australian liking for the New. He considered the difference in scale and attitude in Australia and Britain: Here in these little islands [Britain], which would be lost in Queensland, one city alone holds more human beings than the number making up the whole of the Commonwealth, – which governs itself with no less than seven parliaments! It discomforts you to reflect what a little and new people your own is. But you are consoled by thinking that you like to be new and would not change the Future for all the old-world Past. You glory in your brazen modernness.16 It surprised him, as it did Tappin, how ‘in some matters where we [Australians] equip ourselves with the latest and the best, the English are astonishingly content with the obsolete and the inconvenient … It is because they instinctively distrust the Entirely New.’17 The Commonwealth Government intended to immediately establish an Immigration Office in London, to counter the fact that some States in Australia had gone into reverse migration.18 The system of general and assisted immigration needed reinvigorating. It had been suspended since 1887 and Australia’s share of British emigration had dropped to a mere eight per cent.19 The State of Victoria experienced the greatest reversal in net immigration, losing some 13,000 people in 1903. Overall, just under 160,000 immigrants reached Australia in 1900; in 1903, this figure dropped to just under 4,000. The Commonwealth planned to encourage immigration in association with the States by acting from the proposed High Commission. Until this was established, Prime Minister Deakin asked Captain Collins to secure a building to house the Commonwealth Government’s staff in London, as well as offering space for any immigration agencies that each State might require.20 The Commonwealth wanted a conspicuous position on a 46

Representation in London

good thoroughfare for their central immigration offices, somewhere to which Collins could move for about a year while permanent arrangements for the anticipated High Commission were being set up. Effectively, Collins was looking for different premises: one to suit short-term purposes, the other to be permanent. Although unoccupied space was available in the building where Collins took rooms in Westminster, he did not consider the location suitable for the High Commissioner nor for Commonwealth plans.21 In his opinion, Victoria Street had ceased to be of any great value as a location; it had a somewhat makeshift nature, and its reputation was less respectable than Collins thought appropriate. Proximity to the Colonial Office (about which Deakin was ambivalent in any case) and other British departments of State was not worthwhile sacrificing to the commercial ambitions held in Melbourne. These would be better achieved by a more prestigious position in London. Tactfully handling the Agent-General for each State was vital. In Australia, relations were strained between the Commonwealth and the States which saw the not yet seven-year-old Commonwealth as a group of equal states (and could not see themselves revolving around the central sun). Each were a self-governing colony before Federation, with Governors appointed by the Crown. Holding a direct relation to the Colonial Office, no State was prepared to merge their separate identity in the overshadowing representation of the Commonwealth.22 Some Agents-General believed that more would be accomplished for Australia by keeping the agencies separate. However, in London, competition among the various Agents-General for the six States damaged public perceptions of Australia. They caused confusion – each State promoting its own interests – with English critics finding it was difficult to discern the real mind of Australia.23 Owing to the political stalemates in Australia’s federal parliament with frequent changes of government, deliberations dragged on there about how the High Commissioner could be selected. The six Agents-General were at sea over their position in London; they became increasingly restive while their impatience grew with the delays in appointing a High Commissioner. They were uncertain what changes a High Commission would bring to them; even fearing that their positions might become obsolete. A widely-held opinion was that with Federation, better representation of the various Australian States in London could be achieved by replacing the Agents-General with the High Commissioner who would do their work in addition to his own Federal duties. Collins was aware of the desire on the part of the Agents-General to elevate their status and consequence, although doing so would only be at the expense of the Commonwealth. 47

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Uncertain about their future, they grouped into a committee ostensibly to deal with the various statements which appeared in the English Press about Australia’s fiscal position.24 This committee reflected the interest of their unofficial spokesman, Timothy Coghlan, the Acting Agent General for New South Wales. A native of Sydney, born to Irish parents, Coghlan was a noteworthy public servant, formerly Government Statistician in New South Wales, and a Vice-President of the Royal Statistical Society, London. A recognized problem-solver, he was sent to London in late 1904 on a temporary basis to reorganize the office of the AgentGeneral for his State. He knew that change was inevitable and it was rumoured that he too harboured ambition to be appointed as first High Commissioner.25 Speculation also had Lord Jersey, formerly Governor of New South Wales (1891– 2), as the likely High Commissioner.26 Sir Victor Child-Villiers, the 7th Earl of Jersey acted as Agent-General for New South Wales in London (1903–5) ahead of Coghlan’s arrival. Jersey was a prominent banker, being principal proprietor of Child’s Bank. Dating from 1690, it held the longest continuous pedigree of any English bank. In 1880 it opened a new Banking House to much acclaim, built to stand where Fleet Street and the Strand joined and Temple Bar once stood. Jersey was an active Freemason, being Senior Grand Warden of England; chairman of the Light Railways Commission (1896–1905); an honorary member of the Surveyors’ Institution; active in local government, being a substantial landholder; and avidly played the turf, where he amassed large debts. Given Jersey’s deep connections in the City and Westminster, Collins enlisted his help.27 Collins looked into possible locations for a temporary immigration office in the City and the West End, while also looking out for where the High Commission could be housed. He faced greater difficulty than anticipated. At the end of November, he penned a report to Melbourne signalling the possible delays in setting up in London. ‘It is almost practically impossible to procure premises in any central position for a reasonable sum of money and for a shortdated tenancy’, he wrote.28 There were often problems with buildings that he saw. To give an example: one building with four floors and an attic above the ground floor faced the General Post Office at the western end of Cheapside. However, ‘the whole building would be required to give sufficient accommodation as it is very narrow and only admits to two good offices [rooms] on each floor. It therefore would be, from an office point of view … rather inconvenient in working.’29 No. 1 Cheapside, within a few yards of St Paul’s Cathedral, fronted Cheapside for 30 feet and was just over 54 feet deep on Panyer Alley. The average size of City office buildings was 30,459 square feet in the fifteen years up to 1914.30 Collins also found that leases held many sub-tenancies; to lease a building free from them 48

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would involve negotiations that required expensive lawyers or agents, besides buying out sub-tenants.31 Coghlan’s committee favoured the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square as the most suitable place for a Commonwealth Immigration Bureau because of its centrality. Locations surrounding the Square were very desirable at the time with the ongoing development of the square, following the demolition of Northumberland House for the opening up of the Embankment, and the new War Offices going up on Whitehall. Development brought to the area new buildings for shipping lines and the Canadian Pacific Railroad (1903) and the Canadian Trunk Railway (1909). Coghlan thought that premises there would be obtainable at a rental of about £1,000 a year for a short term.’32 Collins found that prices were higher: about £2,000 a year was needed. ‘I do not think that you can find Office accommodation in the situation that is required for any less rental,’ he told Atlee Hunt.33 At the time, Cornhill in the City was reputedly the highest rented spot on earth, where a single room was let from between £2,000 and £3,000 a year.34 For a more permanent location for Australia’s High Commission, Collins thought that offices in the City would be a mistake from the point of view of making Australia known. He advised Deakin, ‘The large stream of visitors constantly pouring into London would never know of the existence of your Offices – if in the City … When the Commonwealth undertakes loans it will be necessary to have Offices in the City to deal with stock. But they might have an Office for this purpose in the City and the rest of the Offices dealing with emigration, exhibition of industries etc., and general work in the West End. The emigration Office of Canada is at present at the corner of Trafalgar Square.’ Nothing could beat a location in Trafalgar Square, or its immediate vicinity, in the way of advertisement and catching the pubic eye. ‘There, any Offices could be seen; in the City it is difficult to see anything owing to the narrow streets and congestion.’35 He therefore advocated that the Commonwealth should put up a building of their own. It made sense, he told Hunt.36 A purpose-built building, sympathetic with its site and surroundings, would be less troublesome than an old one needing modification. If the Commonwealth obtained a reasonable lease and put up a proper building, it could largely reduce the annual cost by sub-letting offices in the building. He wrote to Hunt, There is no doubt that Trafalgar Square is being rapidly seized upon by all the leading shipping Companies and Railway Companies such as the Grand Trunk Pacific of Canada which has 49

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newly acquired a lease there and is putting up a building … I am more convinced than ever that the proper location of the High Commissioner, and of any future central Australian Offices would be in this locality.37 Close by were the attention-grabbing premises of the International Mercantile Marine Company (Henry Tanner, 1904–5) erected with hitherto unknown rapidity by the new Waring-White Combination (as it advertised itself) of British builders and American engineers that promised a new era of building enterprise.38 Oceanic House at the junction of Pall Mall East and Cockspur Street housed the offices of the transatlantic shipping firm, the White Star Line where £1,100 was needed to rent a single floor annually.39 And nearby, would stand a building for the Hamburg America Line, at 14–16 Cockspur Street (from 1908).40 Leading passenger shipping companies like these embodied the competitive intensity of the day; their cutting-edge technology provided the mobility that characterised the times. Record-breaking land values were being set in London: its County Council paid a record price for a freehold strip of land on Piccadilly of £34 3s 4d a square foot.41 The Criterion, multi-purpose buildings on the south side of Piccadilly Circus, with a basement theatre and lofty second floor, was one proposal under offer. Unsurpassed for centrality, situated at the junction of Piccadilly, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Haymarket and Coventry Street, the prominent Criterion was considered the finest work by the eminent South Kensington architect of the Victorian period, Thomas Verity (1837–91), one of the most skilful planners of his day.42 With a façade that featured spandrels carved with draped female figures, festoons and foliage, it offered three floors with a grand banqueting hall (that was ideal for receptions), but the cost for it would run into between £200,000 and £300,000.43 His ear alert for any signal of property moves, Collins advised Hunt, ‘All good Offices in good positions get snapped up very quickly, and the only thing that we shall be able to manage would be that when the Government is in a position to move to some permanent location or some other Offices to await the first opportunity of some suitable offering.’44 Meanwhile, he kept his eye on the large empty area in the Strand belonging to the London County Council. Victoria’s Agent-General brought the site to his notice before Collins reached London.45 Investigating it, he learned that the site’s eastern end had been auctioned in 1902 and 1904, both times unsuccessfully. It remained unused space in the centre of London, equidistant between the Bank of England and Westminster. 50

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The States disliked the idea of centralizing immigration offices.46 They feared losing their identity and objected to Deakin’s proposal. Coghlan saw himself as the general Australian representative in London since he represented the oldest and most populous of the Australian States. He was prickly, telling Deakin, ‘… the Agents-General have not been informed of the position you desire Captain Collins to occupy … Would you mind telling me confidentially if it is your wish that everything pertaining to Australia generally should be left to Collins.’47 That September, the Prime Minister dismissed the objections from the Agents-General to centralizing immigration. Deakin told them that no good practical work could be accomplished unless the Immigration officers of the Commonwealth and States were under the one roof, as without doing so ‘any work to be undertaken by the Commonwealth would be, if not profitless, at least difficult to either trace or test in its results.’48 Generally speaking, the States recruited their immigrants through agents employed by the shipping companies in return for a capitation fee in respect of approved applicants, and they made direct contributions to the cost of fares of these applicants. The Commonwealth was not prepared to take control of the existing immigration machinery in England without the cooperation of all the Australian States, something which it was unable to secure.49 Deakin reiterated, It is proposed, if Parliament sanctions the vote which is now before it, to engage suitable premises, not necessarily on a long lease, and appoint an officer in charge to act for the Government in superintending and directing its efforts to attract emigrants to Australia generally. It will then remain for the States to arrange for their separate representation in the same building if they desire to take advantage of the opportunities of coming into personal contact with the inquirers whom it is hoped to attract … The concentration of effort, saving of time, and the fact that everything concerning immigration from preliminary inquiries to engagement of berths can be definitely dealt with in the one building represent advantages which it is hoped will be so apparent to the States’ Governments and their representatives in London that they will lose no time in cooperating in the manner indicated. The third General Election in Australia in December 1906 delayed arrangements for a High Commission; it returned Deakin to form another 51

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minority government (but lasting just short of twenty-four months). The Agents General in London seethed over Deakin being given the right of representing the States as well as the Commonwealth at the looming Imperial Conference to be held in London during April the following year. They construed that they would be expected to defray the cost of maintaining a central immigration bureau. They retaliated by writing to their state governments via Coghlan to allege that the Commonwealth was going to build an expensive building in London costing up to £160,000 on land rented for £18,000.50 Their letters only inflamed antagonism between the State and Federal governments and allegations of audacious extravagance were made against Collins by the Australian Press.51 Deakin, who also earned the ire of the press over the allegations, defended Collins. ‘All sorts of localities have been mentioned and looked at – The Strand, Waterloo Place, Trafalgar Square, and places in the heart of the City of London – but the idea is that no site should be selected now,’ said Deakin.52 Collins waited for Deakin’s arrival in London, when it was expected that he would select a site for a permanent Commonwealth office.53

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CHAPTER 7

‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ ‘Architecture,’ he said, ‘was cosmopolitan and universal in its language.’ 1

‘Where is modern architecture?’ asked British Architect, in early 1906. The journal asked the question because in mid-July of that year, London hosted the Seventh International Congress of Architects. The first event of its kind held in the United Kingdom, it was seen as an opportunity to showcase building in Britain, and British Architect highlighted architectural work in the country alongside activity internationally. It spotlighted prime examples: the municipal buildings grouped in Cardiff’s Cathays Park, Cardiff City Hall and Crown Court (designed by Edwin Alfred Rickards and completed in 1904); Colchester Town Hall by John Belcher, A.R.A. (opened in 1902); Westminster College at Cambridge by Henry Thomas Hare; commercial buildings in Glasgow by John Burnet. It also highlighted a half dozen country houses in what was often thought of as ‘Queen Anne’ Style by R. Norman Shaw, R.A., ‘which the world over cannot be beaten’, judged the journal.2 Reports in Australia noted claims made that the subject of city beautification was first seriously mooted in England at the architectural congress, with the Builder and other journals subsequently upholding the drive to improve city streetscapes and built form.3 Sir Edwin Cornwall, chairman of the London County Council, proposed an annual congress of representatives of capital cities for the purpose of considering municipal problems, especially those arising in large centres of population. With some thirty-six cities having a population of half a million, nine of them Bntish, such issues already preoccupied those concerned about future city life. By highlighting them at the congress it vividly brought them to wider public notice. Talk of modernising city space thus gained momentum. Roughly one-sixth of Britain’s population lived in London and many Londoners, who were critical of their city’s state, regarded the congress as timely. They wanted to shape London into a more sociable city. ‘How could a man or woman live a happy life in the miserable surroundings which they saw all round London multiplied by miles 53

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and miles every year?’, asked the pre-eminent architect Sir Aston Webb.4 Not only architects were concerned. Typical observations were those made by historian and journalist J. Ellis Barker, author of Drifting, On the State of England (1901) and a perennial spokesman, among others, about Britain’s decline owing to its complacency. London, with its splendid situation on the Thames, its vicinity to the sea, its picturesque surroundings, its numerous parks, its magnificent public buildings, its many fine theatres and shops, and its great historical past, might be the residence of more wealthy people who have retired and want to live at their ease than Paris, if London were made more attractive, if the arts were more encouraged, and if the town were a little beautified. Then it would reap a large part of the great golden harvest which now goes to Paris, Rome, Florence, Dresden, and other towns; and millions of capital would be attracted thereby, and would remain permanently in this country, benefiting the community and the whole nation. Why need our beautiful streets be made hideous by barrel-organs, costers’ stalls, fried-fish shops, railway smells, ankle-deep mud, littered vegetables and paper, flash-light advertisements, and the disgusting protrusion of vice? Should London be managed for the benefit of costers, organ-grinders, publicans and prostitutes, or for the benefit of the whole community and the Empire?5 An unprecedented number of nearly seventeen hundred delegates gathered at the Congress, of whom seven hundred came from beyond the British Isles.6 Their number indicated an awakening to the importance of the built environment to physical and moral well-being. It showed an increasing appreciation for the significance of town planning just as modern town planning took form and came to be recognised as an activity of international consequence.7 The related compound terms, like ‘town-planning expert’ came into use that year when first cited by The Times in covering papers presented at the congress.8 Customary ceremony accompanied the opening of the Congress, which took place in the Guildhall, on 16 July in the presence of her Royal Highness the Princess Louise, and her husband. A reception at the Mansion House followed, then a soirée at Burlington House with the academicians. The King’s favourite sister was a spirited woman with an unaffected personality; a sculptor, she lived for art. Her Boer War memorial, the bronze group 54

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‘Colonial Soldiers’, was unveiled in 1905 when erected on the south transept wall of St Paul’s Cathedral. Princess Louise long represented the new order of things, being the first royal princess to attend a public school when she studied modelling at the National Art Training School in Kensington in 1868 when aged twenty. In 1871 she became the first royal princess for over 350 years to marry an aristocrat, marrying John Campbell, marquess of Lorne, later ninth duke of Argyll. In his welcome to the crowd in the Guildhall, John Belcher, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), discussed how architecture was both Science and Art. The scientific and artistic elements (meaning the structural, technical and aesthetic, stylistic elements) in a good building were inseparably connected as mind and body. The object for architects was to lift the functional purpose of buildings (that which would otherwise be blankly material, utilitarian, and commonplace) into the region of the beautiful, the elevating, and the inspiring. ‘Architecture,’ he said, ‘was cosmopolitan and universal in its language.’9 Mirroring this sentiment, guests in the crowd included world leaders of contemporary architecture. Among them were Otto Wagner from Austria, Cass Gilbert from America (a leading exponent of the City Beautiful movement, who was interested in the harmonious arrangement of building groups), influential Dutch architect Hendrik Peter Berlage, and German architect Hermann Muthesius (whose three-volume Das englische Haus appeared in 1904 and 1905).10 Australians present included the energetic (Sir) Talbot Hobbs, soon to become first president (in 1909–1911) of the ten-year old Western Australian Institute of Architecture (and later, Lieutenant General). Royal Academician, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, designed the cover of the menu card at the Congress’s farewell dinner which was held in the Hotel Cecil’s Grand Hall. His design represented Architecture with her sister arts of Painting and Sculpture.11 The Congress discussed architectural questions of the moment: the planning and laying out of streets; steel and reinforced concrete construction; the statutory regulation of architects; the nature of architectural training; the education of the public in architecture; to what extent should the architect have control over other artists (like sculptors) or craftsmen in the completion of a public building. Edward Riley, the London County Council’s Chief Architect, was on the general committee of the Congress; he was a well-known public speaker, and many delegates wanted to hear about the Council’s work on shaping London in response to new and changing conditions.12 At the time Riley was overseeing the opening of new fire stations. Just a few months earlier, in December 1905, the Wapping station in Red Lion Street opened, the first equipped with motor traction appliances only.13 The most urgent and dramatic of London’s street 55

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services remained largely reliant on horse-drawn steam fire-engines. Eight years on, in 1914, John Kenlon, chief of the Fire Department of the city of New York, noticed the difficulty with which London met change. Somewhat charmed by old practices observed in London, he remarked, ‘Not many years ago it was customary for firemen, proceeding to the scene of outbreak, to herald their progress by shouting ‘Hi Hi Hi! … Some five years ago this was discontinued and a brass bell substituted.’14 Surprised to find that one of the London Brigade’s steam fire-engines had been in use since 1878, for over a quarter of a century, he learned that London’s built legacy, particularly in its central parts with its labyrinthine conditions, caused problems in providing for modern requirements. It proved difficult for the London Fire Brigade to match motorised transportation to central London’s maze of narrow lanes and tortuous streets. Seeking to find suitable ways of converting horse-drawn equipment to motor traction, it changed to motorised vehicles in 1911. The quick growth of motorised transportation in the early years of the new century brought much disruption to London. Narrow thoroughfares in central districts afforded little room for the new motorised machines. Streets were dug up and altered, to become new arteries for traffic. The Royal Commission on London Traffic, appointed in 1903, recommended that London’s streets be widened but found that much of the recent building undertaken took little account of traffic needs and obstructed various highway improvements of the kind contemplated by the Commission. ‘The position is a lamentable one,’ it concluded.15 In his monograph on the Age of Hurry, Accidents will happen, the cartoonist W. K. Haselden portrayed Londoners as victims, helpless in the face of ever-increasing traffic.16 The disruption on London’s streets, and the changing aspect of the city, called for urgent action. Even T. Raffles Davison, who drew London’s historic fabric and so resisted any of its demolition, considered that making new open spaces and new arteries of traffic was necessary. He came around to regarding the disappearance of old landmarks and places of interest as inescapable. ‘And the wider areas of open space [meaning, larger roads], the increasing height of buildings, with the varying character of their designs and the novelty of their purposes [meaning, offices such as those which the shipping lines operated] are things which are, of course, also inevitable to our time.’ A collection of his drawings of the ‘New London’ formed a supplement to British Architect in 1906. ‘We see, day by day, the gradual unfolding of a New London, whose variety and extent we cannot adequately realise, and whose future development we can but partially anticipate,’ he said. Like the Traffic Commission, Davison urged that further changes made to central London be more thoroughly planned. He undoubtedly expressed the 56

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thoughts of many when he added, ‘London is full of the most grievous mistakes in its thorough-fares, open spaces, and building arrangements, and some of them have become so serious as almost to be worth the immense sums that would be required to put them right.’17 Movement to better realize streetscapes in a more pleasing manner was seen in the formation of the Architectural Vigilance Society. Influential members included Viscount Windsor, Tory politician and first commissioner of works in Arthur Balfour’s government (1902–5); Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy (and an architect’s son); sculptor George Frampton (art advisor to London County Council, and knighted that year); architects William Douglas Caroe, Henry T. Hare, and A. Beresford Pite (formerly in partnership with John Belcher, and Professor of Architecture at the Royal College of Art from 1900); Marion Spielmann (art advisor and editor of the Connoisseur); and H. Heathcote Statham, editor of the Builder (who weighed into the ongoing public debate on how to improve Trafalgar Square).18 On 14 January 1905 they wrote an open letter to the editor of The Times calling the public to support their appeal that authorities who erect buildings in London go beyond the commonplace. Spurred by The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company’s plans to build a new façade to Victoria Station, they complained about the architectural ordinariness, ‘unhappily too familiar to us’, that resulted from buildings going up without artistic input.19 Not another façade designed by railway department engineers, they bemoaned. Instead, let us have an artist to design the fronts of prominent facades like those to railway stations. Take the opportunity to make an important addition to the architectural embellishment of London. They saw a moral obligation to call for such an addition – as would be compelled in Paris. Their reaction to plans for Victoria Station’s new façade was part of the growing unease that was felt about the ugliness of the environment inherited from the industrial nineteenth century when engineers forged railway lines, bridges and tunnels across towns and cities. And so, the coming together at the Congress of the illustrious and of the many who followed the function and formation of cities and their architecture was in many ways a timely event for London. Delegates to the Congress took in London’s architecture. Visits were arranged to historic landmarks like Westminster Abbey and to leading enterprises engaged with the city’s new architecture. One such visit was to the riverside works and offices of notable London builders Holloway Brothers. In operation from 1882, their riverside works on Belvedere Road, Lambeth (adjacent to Westminster Bridge) was one of others they operated in London. It faced Westminster, from which their name, advertised across their site, could clearly be seen. They 57

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specialised in office construction and enjoyed public prominence because they were contractors for the New Government Offices across the Bridge (designed by John McKean Brydon and completed by Sir Henry Tanner). Theirs was reputedly the first builder’s yard in London to use electricity to drive machinery, yet their riverside depot showed to what degree building and its logistics was labour-intensive.20 Smiths, masons and joiners worked on the site, which was an example of streamlined efficiency in processing building materials, from raw to finished state, for delivery to the buildings being erected in London for which Holloways were the general contractors. The works enjoyed a right-angle river frontage of thirty-seven feet (known as Victoria Wharf). Ocean-going vessels delivered stone there for the mason’s workshop, which was fitted with traveller lines and trollies for handling the stone. An electric-powered gantry, able to lift ten tons, lifted the stone onto the yard or direct onto the moulding and stone-cutting machines (such as fast-cutting saws). As many as up to three hundred workmen worked in the masons’ workshop. The London County Council (LCC) sought to show delegates the prime location of the site on the river’s south bank, adjacent to where the Council proposed to build their new County Hall. The high value of council-owned lands elsewhere made them prohibitive for the purpose.21 It was also thought prudent of the LCC to take the lead in developing the relatively undeveloped south side of the river. While the LCC hoped to impress delegates with their choice of location, the visitors took more interest in the organization of Holloway’s works. A showpiece of a builder’s works, it was frequently admired because it offered a complete lesson in building construction, observed the British Architect.22 The visitors were so absorbed that they were only persuaded to leave the works as the last boat to take them across the river was departing. *** The delegates visited Kingsway, London’s newest thoroughfare, open for just nine months. Heading there from the Strand, they reached the new Gaiety Theatre. The theatre (with its adjacent Gaiety Restaurant and Hotel with a Masonic Hall) towered over its location on the corner of the Strand and Wellington Street, at the western edge of the land cleared by the Council for its regeneration of the district. The circular loggia above the theatre’s main entrance, supported by a solid mass of wall banded with green marble and crowned with a round dome, stood out with telling force before the church of St Mary-le-Strand. The entire complex with its clean-lined walls was a bold expression of street architecture, far removed from the neo-Gothic structure that Brewer proposed ten years earlier. Raffles Davison depicted the theatre’s ‘three-decker’ appearance among his 58

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New London drawings, showing how the Gaiety complex made an emphatic corner feature. It signalled the new architecture hoped for in the soon-to-berevamped district. In this respect the Gaiety complex stood like a gateway to the ‘New London’. This was undoubtedly what the Council intended the building would convey with regard to the Strand and its adjacent streets, some which were being (and others were to be) improved. The Illustrated London News hailed the new Gaiety as one of the ‘Great Buildings of the Present and the Future’ in the journal’s feature on ‘The New London’.23 The refurbished theatre, designed for an audience of 1,300, was initially designed by the architect Ernest Runtz. A surveyor, before taking up architecture from 1897, Runtz held wide building experience. Londoners knew him for for well-received changes he undertook to theatres on the Strand and Aston Webb proposed him to Fellowship at the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA).24 In April 1900, about the same time that Runtz was appointed as architect of the new Gaiety Theatre, the LCC nominated him and three other architects (together with four nominated by the RIBA) to prepare suggested designs of elevations for proposed buildings in the new crescent road of Aldwych and the widened portion of the Strand between Wellington Street and the Law Courts. The purpose of the designs was to guide the LCC in its control of the architectural features connected with the Holborn to Strand Improvements to ensure uniform planning.25 The Council intended to have frontages on Kingsway developed as a single architectural entity. Designs came from Reginald Blomfield, William Flockhart, (Sir) Ernest George, Henry T. Hare, Mervyn Macartney, E. W. Mountford, Leonard Stokes and Runtz. Arguably a fairly representative sample of prominent architects, their suggestions were exhibited at the gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, Pall Mall, in October and November. The veteran architect R. Norman Shaw, accepted an invitation from the LCC to advise upon the designs together with Edward Riley, the LCC’s Superintending Architect. Shaw was Britain’s most famous architect. He had been G. E. Street’s assistant, defined the Embankment skyline with his work for Scotland Yard in 1890 (which British Architect held up in 1906 as London’s finest modern building), and was enormously influential.26 The grand old man of British architecture, Shaw had been reducing his workload since 1892. He had maintained a busy architectural practice for almost forty years from 1863 to 1896. At 61, he was feeling his age. By 1901, Shaw was in poor health, suffering from jaundice. Writing to the Royal Academy he said, ‘For some years I have been ‘slacking off’ as I began to feel that the strain of constant traveling – business engagements and the many anxieties incidental 59

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to practice, were getting too much for me. I have now arrived at the enviable position of having no office, no assistants, no clients, and no work! This means that I am no longer engaged in the practice of my art.’27 Shaw sought to retire from his position as a full member of the Royal Academy. ‘The Academy is for men who are practicing their art and not for men who have given it up.’28 However, Shaw did a little work occasionally from his Hampstead home, as a consulting architect, ‘just to keep myself out of mischief’.29 One such exercise was for the Royal Insurance Company’s new head office in Liverpool which he designed with a prominent tower, 150 feet high, surmounted by a gilded copper dome that was visible miles away. Shaw agreed to advise the LCC in their selection of invited competitive designs for buildings at the southern end of Kingsway, where the Council sought a general uniformity of style and material. Shaw was keen, he said, to place his services ‘at the disposal of a body engaged in the congenial occupation of beautifying the architecture of the city in which one dwells.’30 Each of the eight invited architects who submitted designs received a fee of £250; Shaw would not accept a fee. He also had his hand in the Gaiety. Edward Riley, the Council’s chief architect, deferred to Shaw whom he called on to adjust Runtz’s elevation, perhaps in an effort to establish architectural unity in the new Aldwych. Shaw added to the original designs for the theatre.31 To the dome on the curved corner (which Runtz designed) Shaw added the high loggia of paired columns. Runtz was architect for the client (the LCC), but in its general lines, the new Gaiety Theatre was Shaw’s design. Adaptations made earlier by Runtz to theatres on the Strand aroused little comment indicating their widespread acceptance. However, in a sign of what was to come, the scale of the new Gaiety Theatre, with its recessed three stage round tower crowned by an attic and dome, was heartily condemned by ‘the man in the street’. Riley admired Shaw, his friend and senior, who frequently helped Riley.32 He relied on Shaw’s imprimatur with the Holborn to Strand improvements and Shaw’s oversight of the design for the Gaiety Theatre was wellknown.33 They shared artistic interests: Shaw was an outstanding draughtsman, and Riley, a keen watercolourist, was thought of as a ‘first-rate artist’, and both enjoyed sketching outdoors.34 Both advised younger architects who responded to their leadership: Shaw upheld the Royal Academy’s tenet that architects were members of the artistic community and mentored many younger architects who worked in his office, and Riley chose his friends from the younger generation of architects some of whom worked in his office. Both were good conversationalists 60

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and genial companions. Both did much to reclaim London from the jerry-builder and to regenerate the city. ‘I do like good looking things. We have so much jerry looking stuff,’ said Shaw.35 ‘What we want,’ he declared, with reference to London rebuilding, ‘is stateliness for an Imperial city.’36 This ambition was conveyed to King Edward VII at the opening of Kingsway. The Council addressed the King when he opened the new street, which would be the LCC’s showpiece. The Gaiety signalled what lay ahead for London’s architecture and Kingsway was regarded as the essence of the Modern Times. ‘We look forward’, the King was told, ‘to the immediate future when those two great thoroughfares [of the Strand and Kingsway] will have realised our intention and form one of the most beautiful features of Your Majesty’s capital.’37 Here was the opportunity of a century – the largest scheme of town improvement that had ever been placed before Parliament – to open up facilities for traffic and provide for modern needs. The LCC claimed ‘a special degree of success’ for Kingsway. At once the most extensive improvement since the construction of Regent Street in 1820, it involved (the LCC claimed) no great charge upon the ratepayers of London. The King received assurances that the architecture of the new streets would receive the most careful consideration. Kingsway connected north and south London at that part of the west central district which most needed improvement. It introduced a new, model thoroughfare that would make the development of its locality one of the finest features of modern London.38 … The new street, with its 60 feet of roadway and its broad and handsome footways, each 20 feet wide, running through a district already stamped as the home of business to a marked degree, where the banking, legal, insurance, shipping, and other businesses have long been located, and connecting two such commercial centres as the Strand and Holborn, must develop the commercial activity of this portion of London. And the opportunity it affords for architectural effect will make it the standard for rebuilding in London for years to come.39 When work began on the scheme in 1901, much store was set on the promise that the LCC put before King Edward VII. He expressed his belief that the improvements would form a perpetual memorial of the capacity and enterprise of the LCC. Designs for its public space and buildings for it, as were exhibited by architects invited to plan for it by the LCC, reflect the aspirations held for both 61

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Kingsway and the Strand. Hopes for a bettered city centre were pinned onto both streets. One design proposed directing Kingsway so that the front of Somerset House should lie opposite to Kingsway’s debouchment into the Strand. Here a square might be formed, symmetrically placed opposite the front of Somerset House, and with St Mary’s Church aligning with one of its sides. (How traffic would be dealt with was not made clear.) Needless to say, the LCC overlooked these proposals. The Illustrated London News hailed the Aldwych (the new arc cornered by the Gaiety Theatre that led from the Strand to Kingsway) the ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’.40 Using an archer’s reference, the magazine likened Aldwych to the bow, the Strand was the string, and the new thoroughfare of Kingsway the shaft, for targeting commercial results. Perhaps the intended message was what the prominent landscape architect Thomas Mawson noted in his seminal Civic Art, Studies in Town-planning, Parks, Boulevards and Open Spaces (1911), that improvements that accompanied road-making, with the necessary street lighting and sewering, were, as in the past, the pivot on which economic development hinged.41 It failed to be the case. Photographs taken in October 1905 show the lack of building on both east and west sides of the new street where vacant blocks were fenced off with advertising posters plastered over hoardings.42 Development was slow to follow. The LCC found that blocks in the area were difficult to let. Architects who had held hopes over planning for the zone were disappointed that traffic engineers held sway; they felt marginalised and were angry about a lost opportunity. ‘This scheme seems to have been determined by the questions of cost, convenience of local proprietors, gradients, traffic &c., and then to have been turned over to the architects to be made the most of. It was already too late. The best architecture cannot be produced like this.’43 Nine months after the King opened the new street, little further development could be seen there. In October the following year, the Gaiety Restaurant and Hotel building shut down. The cost of the property was believed to be no less than £170,000. When auctioned in October 1907, the fully-licensed property was withdrawn for lack of interest.44 Beyond the Gaiety Theatre complex, to the east, the LCC’s large, island site stood vacant, screened by hoardings over three-stories high plastered with advertising posters, so that the Strand resembled some of the shabbiest thoroughfares where bill-posters slapped up advertisements.45 The size of this site, and so the scale of what might be erected there, worried some Londoners, particularly those who were unnerved by the scale of the Gaiety Theatre.

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*** Where the Gaiety Theatre cornered the Strand, the visiting architects, verging north, walked up the arc of the new Aldwych to get sense of London in the making. Construction centred on the new crescent’s northern side, where four buildings caught attention, two of them theatres. Ahead of the visiting architects stood the newly opened Waldorf Theatre, designed by Ballarat-born theatrical architect William Sprague (1863–1933), which opened in the summer of 1905; and further to the right, the Aldwych Theatre. Opposite the Gaiety, on their left, on land abutting on Aldwych and Exeter Street, a building was rising that would further change that corner of the Strand. An elegant Beaux-Arts building with a steel frame – new premises of the Morning Post – was being erected to designs by the flourishing Anglo-French architectural partnership of Charles Frédéric Mewès (1860–1914) and younger architect Arthur Davis (1878–1951).46 Davis trained for five years (1893–98) at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, the world’s pre-eminent architectural school in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Students worked in the studio of an architect, developing designs for hypothetical projects of monumental scale. Davis and Charles Mewès studied in the Atelier of Jean-Louis Pascal (1837–1920).47 Pascal was appointed the head architect for the National Library of France upon the death of its architect, the highly innovative Henri Labrouste. Pascal was an influential teacher under whom flourished Scottish architect John Burnet, the French American architect Paul Philippe Cret, and Mewès and Davis. The pair formed a partnership and when Mewès came to Britain in the summer of 1898, they introduced London to the qualities of eighteenth century French classicism developed at the École. They built firmly in Beaux-Arts classical style, an approach that favoured axial composition, symmetry, and heirarchy.48 The Gallic restraint of their Beaux-Arts compositions – with emphasis on order, balance and classical forms – tempered the eclecticism of Edwardian free classic and brought a new note of architectural distinction to London. The New Gaiety was thought ugly but the Morning Post offices were admired: Londoners knew the buildings as ‘Beauty and the Beast’.49 Mewès and Davis gained prominence with their design for the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly (just-opened in May that year). The peripatetic Swiss-born César Ritz, famed as the world’s best hotelier, worked closely with Mewès. Together they built Ritz’s dream hotel (his own) in Place Vendôme, Paris. Opened in 1898 with reputedly all the refined comfort that a prince could desire in his own home, it was also the last word in modernity with features that Ritz insisted on such as

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concealed electric lighting and built-in cupboards.50 Likewise in Piccadilly, where the new hotel ushered into London the Mewès-Ritz mix of classical elegance with modernity. While under construction, the building attracted attention because it was built faster than was customarily the case: like the Morning Post offices, it was built with the relative novelty of a steel frame. London building regulations required that walls were load-bearing, however both buildings were built by the ambitious Anglo-American combine, the Waring-White Building Company. ‘Combined efficiency and speed is a force which is revolutionising the building and its allied industries’, it advertised.51 Arthur Davis and structural engineer Sven Bylander (one of the 1,000 civil, mechanical, electrical and hydraulic engineers on the White payroll in 1907) smartly adopted a form of honeycomb construction for the walls of the Ritz building that complied technically with building regulations yet accommodated using the steel frame.52 Such frames enabled speedier and more economical construction and employing them signalled that ‘men of push and go’ heeded complaints made by the likes of J. Ellis Barker that England was losing competitive edge.53 Samuel James, Baron Waring was keen that Britain adapted to modern needs and become more competitive. Lord Waring waged war against the commonplace and the incongruous in interior furnishings in his initial enterprise, the interior furnishings firm of Waring and Gillow, and he did so equally in building. He criticised ‘the better class of British buildings’ for being ‘too often associated with leisurely methods, out of touch with the progressive and expeditious spirit of the twentieth century.’54 He established a partnership with American engineer, contractor and investment banker James Gilbert White (1861–1942) whose management was impressive. In 1907, White headed contracting companies that operated on five continents, their nearly one hundred projects having an aggregate value of US$70 million.55 Lured by the call for pioneer inventors and contractors in the new field of electrical railways, White first distinguished himself with his design and construction of electrical railways. Subsequently capitalising on the era’s expansionism, his firms built power plants, bridges, railway lines and harbour improvements. Regarding speed as co-equal with stability, Waring introduced American building methods to London so as to be able to build in half the time of English builders.56 He disregarded British suppliers who were uncompetitive. Belgian Steel used to erect the Ritz building was more competitively priced than British steel. The Ritz went up in sixteen months and opened shortly after with interiors fit for the King. Among the transatlantic influences that were dominating the West End, Waring-White Building Company were also building further along the Aldwych, 64

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on a site that the journal British Architect thought was magnificent.57 Between the Waldorf and Aldwych Theatres, they were erecting the Waldorf Hotel, to open in January 1908. Costing £300,000 to build, it was designed for 400 visitors, with the hallmark feature of luxury: 175 en suite bathrooms.58 Architects for the Waldorf Hotel were the partnership of Scottish-born A. Marshall Mackenzie and his son Alexander (‘Alick’), who (like Arthur Davis) also spent time working in Paris. Hotels like the Waldorf and the Ritz met London’s desire for distinction and entertainment, as befitted a metropolitan capital. As the author Compton Mackenzie put it, they were the centre of international life.59 They were embraced as signposts on the road to greater prosperity and greater modernity. The Ritz Hotel was thought one of most beautiful buildings in London, being an example of Louis Seize decoration.60 Furnished by Waring and Gillow, its interior, ‘where an air of luxury pervades’, was regarded as ‘second to none in London.’61 The Ritz Hotel; the offices of the Morning Post (completed in the latter part of 1907); and the Waldorf (with sculpture by Emil Fuchs, the AustrianAmerican artist favoured by Edward VII and London’s high society) introduced cosmopolitan Parisian style to London.62 When thoroughly rebuilt under Napoleon III, Paris became the model for urban style in Europe and around the world. The influence of French style was most marked from 1900 in the wake of the Paris Exposition, after which the elite turned to Parisian models and French style swept across the world. Architects world-wide found eighteenth century French classic style suited the quest by their prominent clients for the ‘grand manner’. Not only did their rich private clientele like Parisian models, but French classic style also suited public buildings. More than reflecting economic success, French style pointed to the advance of civilisation, so was considered to be the most appropriate idiom for public buildings. Just as the Gothic had once become a universal expression, the elite now adopted French style globally. Regarded as the epitome of Taste and the height of Civilization, it become an ‘international style’. Edward VII’s Francophile influence also bore on London taste. In London, showman Imre Kiralfy reproduced a number of notable features of the Paris Exposition as a highlight at the 1902 Earl’s Court exhibition.63 The entente municipale of 1905, when the Mayors of Paris visited London and were received at Buckingham Palace, suggested that London and Paris might be similar beautiful cities. So it was hardly surprising that four years after the Entente Cordiale was signed, when London was in the grip of French mania, the LCC granted to a 65

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French-led syndicate the option on the central portion of the crescent site between Aldwych and the Strand (opposite Kingsway) that stood vacant. An area of about 124,000 square feet, original plans had the LCC erecting its own offices on that site. The Illustrated London News depicted the importance of this location, in scale and centrality, when reporting on the Royal Opening of the new AldwychKingsway link between North and South London.64 The Syndicate proposed building a Palace of French Industry and Arts. Acting for it were the Bedford Row architect W. Gillbee Scott, a RIBA Associate, and the Strand-based Parisian architect Ernest Gérard.65 Scott was ardent about the advance of architecture and expressed his views forcibly; with over twenty-five years of wide practical experience he was frequently engaged to arbitrate in building disputes and to be an expert witness in legal hearings (like rights of light cases), so was well known at the LCC.66 Gérard’s office was in 167 Strand, overlooking the site, where architects assisting him were young London architects Joseph Vermont and William Harold Williams, both RIBA Licentiates.67 The LCC’s Improvements Committee granted Ernest Gérard an option on the Island Site where he planned to build a centre to promote products of the French world and its colonies.68 Gérard explained that he planned a showcase centre that was to be a monument to the fraternity of England and France, to further promote the Entente Cordiale. The idea was not to have a temporary exhibition and then to use the buildings for other purposes (as happened at Earl’s Court), but to establish a permanent exhibition and vary the products exhibited.69 This would occur in a central building sixty feet high with two entrances, one facing Kingsway and one on the Strand.70 Two wings were planned for the central building, with a theatre in one and an exhibition building in the other. A wide promenade would connect the buildings and display sculpture and works of art. The buildings would be surrounded by a garden, where an open-air summer theatre was intended to form part of the attraction. Shops with ceilings twentyseven feet high would enclose the garden and front on to the Strand. Gates to the entrances of both wings, adorned by monumental archways and illuminated at night, would evoke the Paris Exposition of 1900. A sculpture group over the portal to the Kingsway entrance of the central building, representing the meeting of King Edward VII and President Loubet, would testify to the intention for the complex as a monument of the Entente Cordiale. As a multi-purpose public centre, in part a trade-mart and also in part a people’s palace, Gérard’s scheme received wide publicity in London and in Britain’s colonial press. Of appeal to Londoners who followed this development were the proposed open-air French 66

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café, a novelty for London, and an elite French restaurant, to be approached through a triple stone archway on the Strand front.71 Gérard proposed to give permanent shape to the Entente Cordiale; the building he designed for the Strand ‘Island’ site was intended to be a monument to the new-born Anglo-French spirit of cooperation. In it, French manufacturers could exhibit their products in the centre of London (unlike the remote locality of Earl’s Court, where French exhibitions were hitherto held).72 French productions would be performed at the theatre, and the French restaurant ‘of the highest class’ would further offer experience of French finesse.73 The French Palace Development (as Gérard’s scheme was known) planned to open early in 1913. The £800,000 centre for French products (the building was estimated to cost around £300,000) met with general approval. ‘A mega-French centre, a mega-embassy mixed commercial and cultural island in the centre of London,’ enthused The Times.74 The Syndicate’s plans were well-timed for the LCC. It thought that the ‘Paris in London’ centre was perfect for the empty Strand–Aldwych island where development was yet to come.75 Public interest shown in the scheme can only have heartened the LCC, which was otherwise damned for their indecision over the empty site.76 Responding to such criticism, one of the newly elected council members suggested that the valuable island site would never be properly developed whilst the church of St Mary-le-Strand remained; it should be moved to a position elsewhere.77 An island in a sea of swirling traffic, the church remained the central and only unchanging feature of the Strand. St Mary’s was a typical London feature even to countless people who never actually saw it.78 It figured prominently in the cover design of the Strand Magazine ever since that popular periodical was started in 1891. The LCC faced more problems than solutions over their Strand-Kingsway project. Developing the new avenue of Kingsway had not gone as anticipated. Passers-by remarked that its bare, windswept spaces and its arching sky, unpunctuated by building, were hardly worthy of the first city of the world.79 Far from being a modern showcase in the city’s centre, Kingsway shamed London’s standing as the world’s foremost metropolis. Prospective developers resisted the terms insisted on by the LCC. They disliked what they viewed as its costly requirements imposed on the style and finish of building that could be erected on Kingsway, such as stipulating that buildings be faced in Portland stone (because it withstood London’s polluting atmosphere). Building by-laws further added to the cost of building. Steel-frames meant that buildings could be built much faster than before, but building bylaws ignored this advantage and insisted that walls carry the weight of a building. 67

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Consequently, builders were required to erect walls from around five feet thick around the steel framework; this added an additional twenty per cent to building costs, apart from the loss in ground rents owing to the unnecessary delay in building.80 Ratepayers on the Strand side of Aldwych felt abandoned, believing that all attention went to Kingsway as the LCC neglected to improve the Strand. They were angered by the state into which the southern side of the Strand had been left. Their shops and businesses on that side of the street now faced the vacant island site at which weeds multiplied where buildings once stood. Wild overgrowth mocked visions of betterment. They were further embittered when the LCC announced its plan to build a palatial County Hall for London on the south side of the river (where land was half the price), not on the Strand as was anticipated.81 Complaints reached Laurence Gomme, the likeable Clerk of London’s County Council (from 1900 to 1914), about advertising on hoardings that walled up the Strand’s empty island site.82 A former statistical officer of the Council, Gomme took pride in its pioneering work to bring order to London’s inherited chaos. A well-known archaeologist, he studied the history and associations of London in his leisure time, and there was a practical direction to his antiquarian interest.83 A winning personality, he inspired others by his enthusiasm and was ambitious that the LCC should become the most perfect example of municipal administration in the kingdom.84 His enthusiasm came from grappling with legislative requirements and having to know their historical origins. Principles of ‘scientific’ management were being applied to local government (as they were brought to everything at the time) in order that solutions to local government problems met modern requirements and procedures. ‘Everything is now governed by the cast iron mould of legislation … [which] … comes to us from the centuries gone by,’ noted Gomme, as he unravelled basic principles of the function of local government, property ownership and taxation.85 Fascinated by the continuous historical associations found across the city, he wrote his book The Making of London (1912) to stimulate the study of local history among London’s citizens. No doubt he wanted to counter the general civic apathy found among them. Architect (Sir) John Simpson (who himself took much interest in architectural history, particularly that of France) considered that it would be rare to discover an inhabitant of London who held pride in his Borough. ‘Were it not for the unwelcome solicitude of rate-collectors he might be ignorant of its very name; he knows, and cares, nothing of its government, its resources, its history, its records, or its arts.’86 68

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While immersed in developing a bettered ‘New London’, Gomme strongly supported preserving aspects of old London. To him, London lost much by its magnitude; he delighted in local particulars of London’s districts and their histories. In 1901 when the Society of Arts handed the LCC the task of perpetuating memories by placing plaques on the houses where distinguished people once lived, this duty went to him because he was thought to be ‘the man who knew most about London’. He named Kingsway and Aldwych.87 To upgrade the area, the LCC imposed conditions on the Strand’s shopkeepers, who could only erect buildings and advertising that it approved; accordingly, shopkeepers believed that the LCC should do its part to improve the Strand. Its eastern end, to the corner opposite St Clements, was marred by hoardings plastered with large-scale posters which offended Strand shopkeepers and office tenants occupying premises facing them.88 They argued that not only did the scale and character of the advertisements disfigure the Strand, but they distracted passers-by, slowed them down, obstructed pedestrians walking to shops and offices, and interrupted business. Costs mounted arising from claims for compensation from individuals and businesses who were displaced from their properties or businesses by the LCC. One much publicised dispute came from prominent London builders Holloway Brothers, whose works and offices, near Westminster Bridge, were included amongst the properties that the Council planned to take over compulsorily to build the proposed County Hall. Lengthy arbitration proceedings followed when Holloway Brothers claimed £200,000 for compensation for being removed from their works before their lease expired. The LCC argued that only a quarter of this amount was payable. The arbitrator found that close to £100,000 should be awarded. Claims like theirs, and the publicity attending it, added to bitterness over the LCC.89 Strip cartoons by W. K. Haselden, which the Daily Mirror featured from 1904, attacked the LCC for being improvident with managing costs and stirred impatience with it among Londoners over its handling of the vacant island in London’s centre.90 Originally a political cartoonist, Haselden’s trenchant portrayal through 1906 of LCC officers as the ‘Bandits of Bumbledown’, portraying them as rapacious thieves, grown fat at the expense of London ratepayers, bit home. Public perception was that the powers given to the LCC were not intelligently exercised. Anger with the Progressives in the Council was so strong that the election of March 1907 was fought with great rancour. Elected on a manifesto that pledged rate reductions, the Municipal Reform Party unseated the Progressives who had held charge from 1889.91 The Conservative Municipal Reform Party of County Hall took control of the LCC in 1907, authority which they retained for the next twenty-seven years. 69

CHAPTER 8

Competing Dominions We are privileged participants in an age of extraordinary inventions and world-wide discoveries, a time of wonderful activity and prosperity, in an era of great industrial, commercial and financial progress.1

A common and burgeoning temper for advancement affected how the Empire’s self-governing members conducted business. The London offices of Australia’s State governments, for the most part situated in Victoria Street, were run on generally similar lines and each had the same aim to develop the resources and trade of their State (and part of Britain’s Empire). In actuality though, they held little position in London. With the GovernorGeneral the political representative of the imperial government, the AgentsGeneral were only, in the main, immigration agents. Arthur Beavan made their position clear, They can initiate nothing, any official proposition made to them having to be referred to … Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide etc … .and in most instances it would be cheaper to go straight out there than attempt to transact any Government affair through London. The position of Agent-General is necessarily a much-coveted one, as it carries with it considerable social advantages, invitations to state functions, conversaziones, and many privileges denied to ordinary civilians. But they have little power.2 An idea of the business they conducted could be gained from the offices of Natal’s Agent-General at 26 Victoria Street. It served as poste restante, with visitors from Natal encouraged to call and collect mail. As at the other AgentGeneral offices, a book was kept in which visitors could record their London addresses so that communications and enquiries for them could be forwarded. A 70

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library containing the parliamentary reports, statutes, government publications, and other books relating to the colony was at their disposal, and available for anyone seeking information about Natal. Its promotion was genteel, more a case of hospitality, than serious marketing. Before 1901, Australia’s colonies had offices in London for many years. Victoria’s office was established as early as 1869, with Crown Agents in London acting for the colony beforehand. When the Australian States federated in 1901, the State of Victoria was represented in London by Lieutenant-General Sir Andrew Clarke, aged 77.3 A former Royal Engineer, surveyor, and colonial administrator and governor, he had been an agent for Victoria several times and was more recently appointed agent-general in 1899, at times serving in the same capacity for Tasmania. He died in office in 1902. The Agent-General’s office for Victoria offered all the facilities for visitors and callers available at the other London Agencies, including a library where officials could be consulted by Victorians visiting London or by anyone intending to go to Victoria. Clarke thought that the subjects he had to deal with were too varied and numerous to be explained succinctly. ‘Hundreds of visitors come here yearly from Victoria alone,’ he said, ‘the chief months for arrivals of those on pleasure being March, April, and May. People on business are arriving all the year round.’4 Sir Julian Salomons, the Agent-General for New South Wales (briefly in 1899–1900), agreed on the similarity of their work. Of course, the Agency is there for commercial people as well, to utilise as a means of obtaining needed information; and it is, accordingly, like the other Agencies, the recipient of thousands of letters per annum on all subjects. Like the other Agencies, too, it does the financial work here for [my] Government, negotiating loans and paying off liabilities; and it purchases stores for [my] Government Departments – railway and telegraphic materials, arms and ammunition for defence, etc., etc.5 Reporting to his Government of Queensland in 1900, Sir Horace Tozer compared the work of his office with the work of the other Agents-General and hinted at their rivalry. Each of the Colonies is transacting the same kind of work, and I have not been able to discover that the number of people, the wealth of any particular colony, or even the quantity of material 71

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purchased for railway construction, are a basis for the quantity of work done by the several Agents-General in the metropolis. I rather am inclined to judge that Queensland, whose system involves the purchase and inspection of all its material and of stores by its own officers and not by commission (as is the case with some other Colonies), and whose policy is to actively attract emigrants and capital, and which alone employs lecturers in this kingdom, and exhibits at all shows, especially agricultural, has at present the lion’s share of the work.6 They competed to promote their State and the opportunities to be gained there. Critics in Australia viewed their work as inadequate for the more competitive tempo of the times. Melbourne’s Age newspaper repeatedly criticized the costs of the Agents-General in London as unproductive public expenditure, and called for the office of Agent-General to be revolutionised or abolished.7 In 1905, the findings of the protracted Victorian Royal Commission on the Butter Industry made for unpleasant reading. Fraudulent practices materially endangered Victoria’s third principal industry, after gold and wool. The value of butter exported in the year 1900 exceeded £1.5 million, which was nearly half of the value of the wool exported in the same period, and larger future butter exports were expected.8 The Acting Victorian Agent General appointed after Sir Andrew Clarke’s death, whose purpose was to promote exports of Victorian butter, complained that he was overworked; he was retired in 1904, his government intent on reducing costs.9 The Hon. John William Taverner followed as the thirteenth Agent-General for Victoria. Taverner was a bullishly-built police sergeant’s son in Victoria’s Legislative Assembly. Enterprising and hard-working, he quickly took to senior ministerial responsibilities in Melbourne and was tipped to be a likely Premier. A liberal federationist, Taverner believed that centralising meant better efficiency. In 1895 he urged for the establishment of a central Australian depot in London for the butter trade and in 1899 of a central depot for all Australian products to be erected there.10 In 1904 he advocated that should an Agent-General for each state be retained in the event of the appointment of a Federal High Commissioner, the High Commissioner and the states’ representatives should work under one roof, for purposes of both efficient and forceful advertisement.11 John Taverner was appointed in 1904 with a reduced salary of £1,000 (not £2,500 as was paid before to Victoria’s Agent-General), and expenses limited to £1,000.12 The downgrade of the Agent-General’s position indicated the importance of the expected High 72

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Commission and it also signalled that the Agents-General should adopt a more commercial role. Taverner’s instructions were to reorganize the Victorian Agent-General’s office on a commercial basis. Markets for Victorian produce should be developed, useful knowledge about the State disseminated, misinformation as to its people and resources corrected. The Agent-General’s office should now devote itself to promoting Victorian trade in England.13 With emphasis on building markets rather than on immigration, Taverner set up office in the City with a staff of seven. Anticipating a High Commissioner’s arrival and fretful about their purpose when that might occur, the Agents-General were also preoccupied with the location of their offices. The shake-up to London property that was occurring saw new, hence costlier, buildings follow once leases expired. For example, by 1910 most of the original 99-year leases would be coming to an end along Regent Street, where comprehensive rebuilding would occur.14 With their leases expiring, the Agents-General considered options and looked for sites. The Press closely followed as the individual agencies from the Empire’s Dominions reached out for something new. Wealthy railway magnate Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, the most important figure for nearly two generations in the public life of Canada and the first Canadian to be honoured with a peerage, was Canada’s third High Commissioner to London. He was established, with his chief administrative officers, in the secluded atmosphere of Victoria Street. It was a backwater, thought London’s Evening Post (just as Captain Muirhead Collins believed). Its only attraction to colonial visitors was its proximity to Westminster Abbey which they wanted to see. ‘The Government offices are there, I believe, [said the paper] because it is convenient for Parliament, and for the departmental offices. It is not a shopping street, it has few attractions for the public, and it is a mile or more distant from the business and financial centres of London.’15 Victoria Street led to Victoria Station, the starting point of the London, Brighton and South Coast and London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Companies, and one of England’s busiest passenger centres. The Station and its surroundings remained unimproved disgracing London according to newspapers like the Morning Leader. The station itself is a sort of gateway of empire … the point at which an immense number of our foreign visitors get their first glimpse of London … [yet] our southern railway stations have long presented 73

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a miserable contrast to the noble buildings which Frenchmen and Germans dedicate to the purpose. If judiciously brought up to the same level it [Victoria Station] would, we think, do much to relieve Londoners of what is really a national reproach.16 The ramshackle surroundings of Victoria Street did not concern the Canadians. They occupied prominent shop-fronts elsewhere to feature displays promoting Canada and its opportunities. Their windows at the corner of Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue, facing Trafalgar Square, were invariably surrounded by a cluster of people from among the crowds moving to and from Trafalgar Square and nearby Charing Cross Station, another of London’s key railway terminals. A million pedestrians were estimated to pass this window every twenty-four hours.17 Of these, thousands stopped to view the display who would not have troubled to otherwise. ‘This is probably the spot in London where oversea visitors from all parts of the world most often find themselves in moving about sight-seeing,’ wrote London’s Morning Post. The Canadians deliberately picked this position, as the paper noted. ‘But Canada probably benefits more from being somewhat in the track of the artisan and country classes from the south of London.’18 Canada, like Australia, wanted to attract British migrants. Strathcona’s association with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the unifying transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway opened up Canada. Now he aimed to populate the Canadian North-West more densely. Then known as British North America, Canada was fast becoming the destination for the largest number of Britain’s immigrants. Forty thousand Britons migrated to Canada in 1913, while that year only 15,399 went to the United States, and just 3,280 migrated to Australia.19 The Canadians were impresarios of public attention with shop-fronts scattered across London and the provinces. They had to be assertive publicists in view of what was being done to promote emigration from Europe to South America (Chile offered very liberal inducements to attract emigrants). For Edward VII’s coronation in July 1902, the Canadians erected a coronation arch in the centre of Whitehall. It stood fifty-six feet high, sixty feet wide, with an archway twenty-five feet across, and was capped by an open lantern with a roof of crown formation. It was thatched with wheat sheaves from Manitoba, and Canada’s national emblem, the maple leaf, was interspersed with the yellow grain. Brilliantly lit with electric lights, messages on both sides of the arch were visible night and day. ‘Canada, Britain’s Granary. God Bless Our King and Queen’ appeared on the side facing Buckingham Palace. The message on the 74

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other side read ‘Canada. Free Homes for Millions. God Bless the Royal Family.’20 Canada’s Wheat Arch overshadowed other coronation displays. Photographs of the arch and its celebration of Plenty appeared in newspapers throughout the Empire. According to one Australian newspaper, ‘all eyes in Whitehall turned towards it at the neglect of everything else.’21 The other Dominions had to compete with the Canadians to gain attention in Britain. Their imperial bioscope thrilled crowded and enthusiastic houses in the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square with pictures of a train passing through the Rockies, of the diverse processes of lumbering in a Canadian forest, and of the Fraser River salmon fisheries that the London Times thought were especially good.22 James Cuming, Jnr., a former president of the Society of the Chemical Industry of Victoria, upon returning from travel abroad, warned his Melbourne colleagues of Canada’s promotional success. ‘Outside of the United States, Canada was showing Australia how to advertise,’ he said.23 He found that while illustrated pamphlets dealing with Canada were freely distributed in England, Australia was hardly known. He lamented, ‘To go from the Canadian offices in London to the Victorian Agent-General’s office was like going from a home of industry into the desert.’ Australian journalist, John Abbott, freelancing on Fleet Street, agreed. He was struck by the lack of general knowledge in England of life and conditions in Australia, ‘It is not too much to say that, to the great bulk of Englishmen, Australia is practically a terra incognita.’24 In his view Australia was unknown to the mass of Englishmen, and of very small account.’25 By contrast he found the English public possessed general knowledge about Canada. The fact is that Canada, besides being much closer [geographically] to England than Australia, has been for the last few years ungrudgingly and adequately advertised. You see posters on hoardings, and expensive advertisements in newspapers, and elaborate offices in such places as Whitehall, with shop front windows, where productions of the Dominion are boastfully displayed. We have nothing to resemble such advertisement of Australia … Perhaps in time we will learn to do likewise … and then it may be possible that to even the leader writers of great London papers Australia will not always remain so comparatively unknown a country as it is to-day.26

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Like the Australians, the Canadians were self-assertive and impatient of England’s handling of Canadian affairs beyond Canada. The Canadian Government determined to send Canadians to other countries to secure and expand markets and to advise businessmen on trading conditions (a decision that partly influenced the creation of the Canadian Government’s Department of Trade and Commerce).27 Promoting Canadian trade was considered one of the primary duties of Canada’s High Commissioner in London. Canadian emigration agents in the United Kingdom (then part of Canada’s Department of Agriculture) also fostered Canadian trade and sought markets for agricultural products. Australians were familiar with Canadian commercial representation abroad. Canada’s first Trade Commissioner despatched abroad was appointed following a successful trade delegation to Australia led by Canada’s first Minister of Trade and Commerce, (Sir) Mackenzie Bowell, in 1893. John Short Larke (1840–1910), a former proprietor of an Ontario newspaper and an excellent communicator, was Canada’s commissioner at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago before taking responsibility for Australia and New Zealand. From January 1895, Larke promoted Canadian trade and worked in Sydney for fifteen years (until his death in 1910). A second trade commissioner, D. H. Ross, with prior successful business experience in Australia, opened an office in Melbourne in 1903, where he worked until he retired in 1934.28 Ross became the Laurier administration’s ‘man in Australia’ in dealing with the Commonwealth government while the Canadians pressed for a trade agreement with Australia. Larke promoted trade in New Zealand and in the two large eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, while Ross looked after Victoria (and South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania). Canada’s exports to Australia increased tenfold, and Australian exports to Canada more than doubled. By 1911, Australia was Canada’s fourth largest market.29 The nine Canadian provinces, confederated in 1867, also competed with each other (like the Australian States did). British Columbia was a relatively new province, only named by Queen Victoria in 1858, with its capital named in her honour. Linking British Columbia with overland communication to the rest of Canada was the determining factor when Canada federated in 1871. British Columbia entered Canadian federation on the promise of a railway, much as Western Australia entered Australian federation. In 1885 the first trains travelled the railway which became the Canadian Pacific and united the Pacific seaboard with Canada’s eastern railway system. Opening the railway connection with the East set British Columbia on an era of prosperity. The fifth largest Canadian province (when measured in total 76

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square miles), British Columbia was an under-populated area of natural beauty with a considerable variety of natural resources. Billing itself as ‘Britain of the Pacific’, it aggressively promoted the richness of its territory to lure the migrants it needed to develop its sparsely populated province. The eleventh Premier of British Columbia, The Hon. John Herbert Turner, a former wholesale merchant and successful mining speculator, was Agent-General in London for British Columbia (1901–15; 1917–18). He vigorously promoted the resources of the province, which he described as sufficient to meet the wants of the world. He stressed the potential of British Columbia’s extensive territory, as large as the whole of modern Germany with resources that were potentially as important. In 1904, with British Columbia coming into its own as a province, its sixteenth Premier, The Hon. Richard McBride, K.C. instructed the province’s Bureau of Information and Immigration to revise their illustrated bulletins issued as part of a concentrated push to attract farmers to settle in the province. McBride promoted its potential when visiting London every year. British Columbia, he said, with a ‘… population not yet half a million, [it] has to-day the second largest revenues of any province in the Dominion of Canada … [and] so much territory pregnant with all kinds of natural wealth.’30 Canadian corporations largely did Canada’s advertising and canvassing, with subsidies from Canada’s government. The Canadian-Pacific Railway, the Allan Shipping Line, and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, to name three, occupied London offices in prominent positions where they kept Canada before the public. In 1909 the European Traffic Headquarters of Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway System and Grand Trunk Pacific Railway opened in Cockspur Street, near Whitehall, on Trafalgar Square’s western corner and commercial side. The building (designed by Sir Aston Webb) was an instant draw-card and made Canadian business intent clear. ‘This will be a meeting place’ noted The Times, ‘for visiting Canadians as well as a Canadian Commercial Embassy and an Industrial Information Bureau supplying the British public with accurate and complete information concerning the Dominions of Canada and the opportunity which it offers to British capitalists and to British men and women whose only capital is brains and energy.’31 All this bore directly on Australia. The British world was linked closer together through Canada becoming a central imperial highway. As conceived by Kirkaldy-born Sir Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and Canada’s voice on the world stage for half a century, the submarine telegraph cable from Vancouver to Southport in Queensland opened in November 1902. It completed an all-British telecommunications link that was 77

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begun thirty years earlier when the London to Darwin cable was connected to South Australia’s overland telegraph line.32 The governments of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand jointly bore the cost of laying the 8,000 miles of cable across the Pacific under the aegis of the Pacific Cable Board. (Lord Jersey acted for Australia on the Pacific Cable Board from 1903.) The new telegraph cable circling the globe enabled information to be sent by Morse code in ‘dot-dash’ electrical signals. It represented Canadian hope that, with the Canadian Pacific, the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern Railways, Canada would become a thoroughfare instead of a side street.33 It ended Australian isolation from the rest of the globe. Edmund Barton asked Canada’s Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier about Canada’s experience in London, and Laurier outlined to Barton the extent of the Canadian High Commission’s involvement in London.34 In Laurier’s report on the Canadian High Commission, Barton saw that advertising Australia was essential.35 Australia particularly needed improved promotion. Investors fared badly when Australian banks crashed in the financial crisis of 1892–3, after which the British press portrayed Australia poorly.36 Australian journalist James Hogan, and the Member for Tipperary in the House of Commons, took the Canadian route to return to Australia in the 1895 Parliamentary recess. Hogan wanted to investigate reports of ‘lurid and sensational accounts of the ruin and desolation that had been brought upon Melbourne by the land-boom mania and its after-consequence.’37 The Financial Crisis of 1892–3 resulted in, as James Hogan found, ‘Melbourne’s retrogression, stagnation, collapse.’38 Melbourne endured watching, as Hogan saw, the comparative ‘ascendancy of Sydney in respect of population, commercial pre-eminence, and shipping activity.’ Victoria, a State of merchants, directed its office in London to devote all energy to business and promoting Victorian trade in England. Depression in Victoria spurred its freshly appointed Agent-General in London, John Taverner, to market Victoria more aggressively. In 1898, when Victoria’s Minister of Agriculture, he oversaw the production of An Australian Colony, The Government Handbook of Victoria; it was directed to overcome ‘the absence of knowledge by a large number of residents in Great Britain and Ireland of the Agricultural, Pastoral and Mineral Resources of Victoria.’ Taverner’s handbook was a substantially illustrated compendium of facts and figures that largely celebrated Victoria’s agricultural character and favourable prospects. One of many such promotional publications issued at the time by provinces of the Empire, it promoted opportunities to be found in Victoria. 78

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Taverner’s restless energy appears in a series of photographs taken of the Victorian Executive Council meeting in Melbourne in 1903. He is one of twelve Victorian politicians including the Premier and Governor, sitting around a horseshoe table strewn with executive papers. Framed images of agricultural scenes hang on the wall, including one from the Canadian Pacific Railway.39 Taverner could say that he built Victoria. He presided over Victoria’s Board of Land and Works (while also commissioner for public works and minister for agriculture) in Premier George Turner’s progressive government (1894–1899) that pulled Victoria out of the 1893 crash. Both men were proudly Melbourne-born. Turner, as Victoria’s first Australian-born Premier, was determined to redeem Victoria’s financial disgrace.40 Similarly, Taverner set to recover commercial opportunity for Victoria; he aimed to recover Victoria’s reputation, and so, by association, the reputation of Australia, for financial chicanery. Later, between 1902 and 1904, Taverner was again commissioner for public works, vice-president then president of the Board of Land and Works, commissioner for crown lands and survey, and minister for agriculture in the Irvine government (1902–04) that was intent on reducing government spending. It might be said that Taverner took to heart the motto for Victoria, taken from Virgil’s Aeneas, ‘Vires Acquirit Eundo’, which translates as ‘strength by going’.41 Taverner took other roles in the Victorian Government’s attempts to advertise the resources of the State. He was Commissioner of the Victorian Court of the 1899 Earl’s Court Exhibition in London where he personally superintended the collecting and grouping of displayed exhibits.42 Taverner, a preferentialist regarding trade, proposed to run the London office of the Victorian agency in a more assertive manner (on Canadian lines). In April 1904, he rented space at 142 Queen Victoria Street in the City of London (a relatively new street, created as part of the Embankment development). His seven-year lease for £650 per annum was a ‘repairing lease’ under which £500 had to be spent at the start.43 He enlarged the ground floor windows to better display Victorian products and directly introduced Victorian products to London-based agents and distributors.44 Taverner quickly found that his City premises were inadequate to give visitors an idea of Victoria’s possibilities. As in many of the city’s locations, London’s past pressed in on future ambitions. While antique structures appealed to topographical artists (like Hanslip Fletcher) seeking picturesque settings to portray, antiquated conditions were ill-suited to modern needs. In 1926, English topographical artist Donald Maxwell observed how extremes met in the City nearby where Tavener rented. ‘Here in modern ware-house London, in spite of the 79

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change introduced by electricity and steam, we find conditions similar to those that existed in a mediaeval city,’ wrote Maxwell in his book on London at night.45 Consequently, Taverner, like Collins, was on the hunt for a more favourable location. Shortly after arriving in London, Taverner, attended the inaugural banquet of Australian merchants in London.46 This association expressed the desire for better commercial representation and was among similar groupings that came together in a bid to improve commercial opportunity. In late August 1904 Taverner wrote to Thomas Bent, Premier and Treasurer of Victoria from February that year. The State’s economy was picking up. Bent, who labelled his team as a ‘reform’ ministry (in keeping with public demands for public economy), was good at getting things done. Taverner suggested that Bent should ask the Commonwealth Government to consider the question of acquiring a site in the Strand as the future official headquarters of the High Commissioner and for the State Agents.47 Taverner asked Bent to use his influence, with the object of inducing the Commonwealth Government to consider a proposal to erect a building to be designated ‘Australia House.’ Taverner proposed that this building should consist of seven suites of offices, one of which could be set apart for the High Commissioner, and the others for the Agents-General of the various States.48 The idea of a single building was not new, as the Melbourne’s Argus newspaper pointed out. ‘Many times within the last 20 years suggestions have been made for the concentration of Colonial Office interests, in London under one roof.’49 In October, Taverner sent the Victorian Government particulars of five sites. Taverner favoured a block on the eastern horn of the London County Council’s (LCC) island site. This horn of land ran out into a point opposite St Clement Danes Church, before which stood the recently erected National Memorial (1905) to William Gladstone, a Free Trader and four times Prime Minister.50 Gladstone’s bronze effigy gazed over the eastern end of the newly-created Strand Aldwych arc which remained vacant, bar the Gaiety Theatre and its adjacent restaurant complex at its further western end. Taverner favoured the position immediately opposite Gladstone’s statue. At this point, the new thoroughfare of Aldwych debouched into the Strand. The LCC divided the land it owned at this location into four plots, and Taverner liked the plot on the south-western edge of the site. Here was a corner of the Strand in a rectangular block of 1,439 super feet, opposite Surrey Street (that led down to the river). The British Architect described the block as an ideal site, commanding the whole of the large open space between Aldwych and St Clement Danes Church.51 80

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It was close to Fleet Street, the Law Courts, and Somerset House. Nearby was the new avenue of Kingsway. Taverner suggested that if an Australian building were erected, the AgentsGeneral should have the ground floor, the High Commissioner the first floor, and the other floors should be let as offices. To his mind, this would be an admirable location for an Australian centre. Indeed, he thought, why not enlarge the scheme to include all official colonial and dominion representation of British possessions and territories? While this grander scheme would be a costly venture, so too was the annual rental currently paid by the colonial and dominion representatives in London for very inefficient and unsatisfactory accommodation. Taverner thought it probable that the aggregate rental paid by colonial agencies exceeded £15,000 a year. It would not be far-fetched to build a larger ‘Empire House’. His proposal gained attention in Britain’s press and in Australia. The press favoured his proposal to bring imperial interests together as it would ‘do much to impress upon the people of Great Britain the magnitude and greatness of the British possessions besides affording opportunities for consultation and cooperation among the colonial representatives.’52 The opinion of Joseph Chamberlain was sought. Chamberlain, formerly Secretary of the State for the Colonies (from 1895 to mid-September 1903), was campaigning in 1904 for the newly formed Tariff Reform League, extolling Empire and Imperial Preference. To Chamberlain, Taverner’s suggested establishment of an Australia House to accommodate the Commonwealth and States’ representatives in London, resembled the Canadian example where their High Commissioner kept their representatives on a tight lead. Chamberlain thought it was a matter for the Australian Governments to determine whether Australia established an Australia House in London, to be maintained by the combined States of the Commonwealth. Certainly, he welcomed closer union between them for practical administrative purposes.53 Australian Imperialist, William Finucane wrote to the editor of the Argus. Finucane’s voice was an experienced one. A polyglot, his fluency in Mediterranean languages saw him appointed as special commercial agent for Queensland in 1896. Recently retired in 1902, Finucane exemplified the reach found among those who took up life in Australia. One of Queensland’s pioneers, he combined organizational ability, gained from military training, with creative flair as a sculptor, collector of art and indigenous artefacts, besides work as a viticulturalist and newspaper owner. Over six years following his appointment, in response to the Queensland Government’s desire to attract emigrants and develop its agricultural resources, Finucane opened up links and established direct trade between Queensland and Southern Europe and Turkey. 81

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He liked the suggestion that Australia should buy land in the Strand in London for federal and state offices but cautioned that doing so was more than simply an issue of relocating premises. ‘That the departments of the Australian Agents-General require re-casting with a view to making them much more useful than they are, I noticed during the time that I occupied the position of Commercial Agent for Queensland.’54 The much-travelled Finucane was no commercial or political novice, and was well aware of difficulties facing plans made for overseas agencies. While to his mind, the Strand fell outside of what he called the mercantile part of London, the practicality of a single Australian centre appealed to him. However, he warned, ‘It needs to be worked out in such a manner as to reconstruct the whole of the machinery of the present London representation, a matter which I fear could not be arranged by cablegrams.’55 As it happened, Taverner did not find agreement about Aldwych amongst the Australian Agents-General, who looked to the West End or the City as their preferred location. All the while, Captain Muirhead Collins was considering the four plots which belonged to the LCC on the eastern end of their Strand–Aldwych void. In November 1906, he wrote to Atlee Hunt about this area ‘at the junction of the new King’s Way with the Strand.’ He told Hunt, I find that Mr. Taverner has had this site under notice and that he is very favourably struck with the position and with the probable future development. I believe also that plans and particulars were furnished to Mr. Coghlan. On Lord Jersey’s suggestion I had an interview with the London County Council valuator, as to whether the London County Council would be prepared to place under offer to the Commonwealth a suitable site in this locality.56 He hoped to gain an option on the land while the Commonwealth Parliament deliberated over the High Commission. Talking to Taverner about this land, Collins learned that London architect Alfred Burr, F.R.I.B.A. had prepared plans for a proposed building of Commonwealth Offices on one of the plots. A civil engineer’s son, London-born Burr, at 52, had run his own practice from 1877 (at the age of twenty). With offices in Gower Street, Burr was well known at the LCC having undertaken many negotiations in Spring Street. He specialized in sanitary practice, which put Burr in the front line of thinking about architecture afresh in response to growing calls made to build in a healthier 82

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fashion than was done in the close-knit cities of Victorian times. Burr was reputedly a member of the Sanitary Institute, a composite body, representative of all professions connected with sanitation and public health, and with a membership of over 4,000. Established in 1876, and known as the Royal Sanitary Institute from 1904, the Institute became the leading public health organization in the world (today it is the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health). Created during a period of great change within the areas of public health provision and sanitary reform (to which it contributed significantly), the Sanitary Institute was renowned for events and conferences on pioneering and topical issues. In all likelihood, Burr also followed the allied Institute of Sanitary Engineers. Calls for healthier buildings, allied to a burst of new technologies, meant that buildings were more complex to erect even if this complexity remained largely hidden behind plaster, tiling or carpentry. It was Burr’s job to thread the conduits carrying electric service to outlets for tenants through the interior of the building and to built-in equipment, steam pipes feeding radiators, ducts carrying fresh air to interior spaces, and pipes to supply and service restrooms. Preoccupations with hygiene, sunlight and ventilation at the turn of the century called for transformed buildings, and modernizations that a mid-nineteenth century builder would be astonished to see in 1914.57 Not only was Burr caught up in the issue of what form buildings should take, but he appreciated that a building was far more complicated than a simple enclosure of space. Burr was responsible for the design and layout of piping, plumbing and ventilation in a number of important buildings, among them London’s Ritz Hotel for which he designed the building’s complete sanitation system.58 The hotel’s first sales brochure advertised that the attention given in the hotel to the important question of sanitation came from the most celebrated experts, with the result that these arrangements left nothing to be desired.59 Earlier, Burr had worked on Walsingham House Hotel in Piccadilly; this large red-brick block of service flats soon turned into a hotel deemed by Compton Mckenzie to be the most attractive in London at the end of the nineteenth century.60 It was demolished in 1902 to make way for the Ritz. Most of Burr’s practice was commercial and included the design of many warehouses and office blocks. Restoring and adapting private houses and clubs was another of Burr’s specializations. He modernized the premises of the Ranelagh Club and refurbished premises rented by the Imperial Colonies Club.61 Burr’s experience was wide and he was much in demand. When they met, Burr gave Collins a copy of his plans and memorandum for the Council’s block, 83

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setting out details of measurements, possible useable areas, and building costs. Collins immediately sent this to Hunt in Melbourne.62 It gave a useful guideline to what would be involved in acquiring the site and building on it. ‘If favourably considered, any one of the schemes in Mr Burr’s memorandum or a modified scheme should be drawn out by Home Affairs Officials in Melbourne,’ suggested Collins. There is no doubt that if the Commonwealth can see their way to acquiring a site in this locality and put up a building that it would be a safe and profitable investment for all time, that the money in fact would be extremely well expended as the value of the property will increase as fine buildings are erected on the large area now at the disposal of the London County Council. It is right on the stream of traffic, and it is easily accessible to both the city and the Government Offices and West End … there is no doubt that if a fine building was erected we could easily sub-let any office accommodation not immediately required. Taking all circumstances into consideration I do not think at present there is any better proposal for the future.63 Anticipation over the Aldwych-Strand location led Collins to re-cast the offices in Victoria Street in a new light. A ground-floor corner suite became available short-term for about £650 which might suit temporarily. Writing to Melbourne, he recommended that his present offices be maintained as a temporary measure. ‘This building is an extremely good one. The Natal Offices are in the same street … and the Cape of Good Hope Offices are just below us.’64 He concluded … One thing is absolutely certain that it is quite impossible to obtain suitable Offices without great difficulty and some considerable period of waiting, and therefore a building which would certainly not take more than twelve months to erect appears to offer the most satisfactory and permanent solution to the question of Commonwealth Offices. You would not only then get the design exactly suitable to your needs, but you would also get better return for the outlay of the money.65

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PART THREE

Foundation (1908–1910)

CHAPTER 9

‘At the Fore’ His place was at the fore, O – That celebrated, Cultivated, Underrated Nobleman, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!1

‘The invading army of colonial Premiers is being reinforced by the arrival of the Hon. Thomas Bent’, announced London’s Daily Chronicle in mid-1907.2 Bent, the Premier, Treasurer, and Minister of Railways of Australia’s State of Victoria, made his only visit to England that year for the Conference held at the Colonial Office from mid-April. The Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Elgin chaired the Conference, and Prime Ministers attended from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Natal and the Transvaal. Quickening colonial competition meant that even Colonial Conferences were undergoing reinvention. At first they were incidental to Imperial celebrations – held on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1887 and in connection with King Edward VII’s coronation in 1902. By 1905 the Colonial Office recognized that regular discussion should replace intermittent exchange of views. In 1907 the Colonial Office created a Dominions Department and renamed the Colonial Conference as the Imperial Conference. Introduced as a meeting of an ‘Imperial Council’, it would be held every four years. The change was a response in part to the restiveness shown by the self-governing colonies, with Australia demanding that representatives from all parts of the Empire should have a voice in Imperial foreign policy. Government leaders from the Empire’s self-governing territories assembled in London for the Imperial Conference (it was convened as the Colonial Conference of 1907). At this conference the expression ‘Dominion’ came into general use to describe the self-governing colonies. 87

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Bent embodied the advantage that Taverner was keen to show could be gained in Victoria. Bent gave evidence that Australia was a place where those of humble birth enjoyed abundant scope for their ambitions, and where there were opportunities for making the most of their abilities. No-one knew better than Premier Bent the advantages of bold advertising through holding public attention.3 Care has to be taken in properly reading Bent because he has been seen in opposing ways. Both versions of his story see him as self-made, with one version regarding him as one of the most lovable public figures in public life while the other version has tarnished his name. The Australian Dictionary of Biography sees him as an apostle of progress who developed the Melbourne bay-side suburb of Brighton. Allegedly, starting out as an illiterate, ungrammatical market gardener, he was ten times its mayor. A publican’s son, Bent was a local boy made good who held weight at the big end of town. He amassed wealth and influence through speculating in property (first buying up Brighton and developing it). In 1871, aged thirty-three, he entered Victoria’s parliament in a shock win that unseated his illustrious opponent (George Higinbotham, a former Lincoln’s Inn barrister, who Alfred Deakin thought possessed the most commanding influence of any public figure in Victoria, and a future Chief Justice).4 Bent became Speaker of the House and was for thirty-seven years a member of the Parliament of Victoria. He achieved his ambition to be ‘primeer’ (as he called it; Victoria’s 22nd Premier) when he was 65.5 Inevitably Bent and Higinbotham collided over railways, over which Bent exercised influence for almost three decades. For Bent, railways, property development and material advancement of the community were one. Victoria’s citizens liked his earthy ‘Australian native’ and ‘man of the people’, plain-speaking manner and conservative ideology; his opponents fostered an image of him as being ‘Bent by name, bent by nature’. Much associated by rumour for jobbery as a ‘boss-boomer’ (speculator) in the bullish atmosphere of boom-time Melbourne, and with a tenacious capacity to stay beyond the reach of the Insolvency Court, his opponents dubbed him ‘Honest Tom’. They accused him of manipulating public funds which were allegedly siphoned off for his own speculation. It is not hard to see how this version gained currency. For forty years up to 1891 Victoria only knew remarkable expansion, the State’s population and economy growing over 1,300 per cent.6 A block of land in central Melbourne was bought in 1886 for £48,000 on which to erect

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the Federal Coffee Palace (a temperance hotel); when the building opened in August 1888, the land on which it stood had risen in value to £150,000.7 And, because it demonstrates what Melbournians grew accustomed to architecturally, it is worth noting how the 165 feet (50 m) high building (by Melbourne architect William Pitt) was the most lavish of Melbourne’s temperance hotels. It stood as an exemplar of the so-called Boom-Style displayed in Melbourne, where late nineteenth century exuberance outdid itself. The building’s seven storeys held over five hundred rooms, six Waygood lifts, and an ice-plant. Plaster decoration abounded everywhere. Entry through an arcaded loggia led to a four-storey high vestibule, all paved with black, white and red marble. From a central pediment above rose a life size figure of nude Venus drawn on the waters in a cloud chariot by four sea horses and accompanied by several other figures, the whole representing the Aurora Australis. If Bent’s political rise might have offended social pretensions in a newly-rich centre like Melbourne (where the native-born were slow to rise in Parliament), his electrification of Melbourne railways accrued great benefit for British shareholders in the Melbourne Electric Supply Company (which in 1912 paid an enormous dividend of 8.5 per cent, plus a 1 per cent bonus).8 Such was his reputation that James Hogan speculated in 1896 that W. S. Gilbert’s comic baritone the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers sprang from stout, bullet-headed Bent. Victorians knew Bent as their singing Premier, because he occasionally introduced snatches of song and ‘coo-ees’ into his speeches (what the New York Times described as ‘illustrative vocalism’). In every doughty deed, ha ha! He always took the lead, ha ha!9 The Gondoliers parodies the limited-liability company and floats the idea of a gullible public. The fading fortunes of the Duke of Plaza-Toro prompted him to form himself into a limited-liability company; he pretends to have selfless motives to ‘help unhappy commoners and add to their enjoyment.’ First performed in London’s Savoy Theatre in 1889, The Gondoliers was popular in London where it ran for 554 performances and was chosen for a royal command performance before Queen Victoria at Windsor. It opened in New York a month after opening in London, but American audiences disliked it. In the grip of their own financial scandals at that time of buccaneer capitalism, when magnates took advantage of low interest rates, cheap labour and a largely unregulated market, they renamed it The Gone-Dollars.10 89

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The truth probably is, as historian Geoffrey Serle believed, that Bent had no political beliefs except devotion to progress and development, and that scandal hung around him but he kept within the law.11 Bent was a ‘New Man’, of the type represented by members of the ANA, many of whom rose to lead from humble origins. Bent was intent on the prosperity and self-sufficiency of Victoria. His preference for local financiers, to keep the interest on loans in Australia, was respected.12 As Serle, and historians of the Gilded Age point out, the ethics of using political knowledge for private gain were relatively loose in the late nineteenth century’s rush after material well-being. Bent merely typified Victoria’s go-ahead native sons, when other Belle Époque politicians, who were similarly caught up in the creation of a modern industrial economy, demonstrated greater financial audacity. Bent’s bluff manners, frank opinion and domineering power polarised opinion. ‘How dare such a creature presume to speak for Australia?’ railed Perth’s Sunday Times after Bent maintained that Boer hero Louis Botha was too warmly regarded.13 Addressing a large audience in England, Bent criticized the enthusiastic demonstration there in General Botha’s honour, saying that Australians would not have shouted themselves hoarse, or have fluttered white handkerchiefs, but would have remembered the sorrowing widows and the wooden-legged and armless men in their midst. Bent was respected in Victoria for encouraging local finance rather than depending on British financiers, and thus was called Richard Seddon the second; he was likened to ‘King Dick’, as Richard Seddon, the longest-serving and autocratic Liberal Prime Minister of New Zealand, was sometimes derisively known. (In office from 1893 to 1906, Seddon was much admired for financial acumen by King O’Malley.)14 If scorned as the ‘Dick Seddon of Australia’, Bent also brought a welcome freshness to public life. Either view of him is encapsulated in the ditty ‘after’ Bent – whether jeering at him or celebrating his breeziness. It was published to report on his being presented to Edward Vll (the most popular King in England for over two centuries) at the King’s dinner for the members of the Imperial Conference, Two little monarchs in motor-cars, Enjoying two little good cigars, Two little Kings by right divine, He in his way, and I in mine. He has his Crown. What matters that? I have my old black battered hat.15 90

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As the Manchester Guardian said of Bent, he was one of the most interesting figures of Australian politics.16 As Premier and Treasurer of Victoria from February 1904, Bent would settle the question of the State’s offices in London. When there, he robustly rebutted allegations of his State’s grandstanding and of its financial instability. ‘There was no reason to be afraid of investments in Australia’, he assured guests at a dinner held in his honour.17 Hours spent looking on at social events, like the banquet given in honour of the dominion premiers in the glamorous setting of the Imperial Institute, gave Bent time to ruminate on how Victoria could best succeed in London. Premiums demanded by holders of property around Trafalgar Square, in addition to rent, were fearsome. As Bent exclaimed, ‘They wanted it covered with sovereigns on edge.’18 Wherever he went in England he heard nothing but ‘Canada, Canada.’19 Yet Victoria had yielded a bumper year for gold.20 It mattered little to Bent that his opponents criticized him for his proprietorial tone, ‘speak[ing] as if he ruled Victoria by right of conquest’.21 At the time, Taverner made the news when officiating at the laying of the foundation stone of a new Gramophone factory in London with the most famous living Australian Nellie Melba, another formidable Melbournian, promoter of Australia, and imperial patriot.22 Bent, with Deakin and Sir William Lyne, Australia’s Minister for Trade and Customs (1905–7), converged on the Council’s island site on the Strand. Deakin and Lyne agreed that its eastern horn opposite St Clement Danes, just outside the confines of the City of London, was the best site in London for the Commonwealth office. However, they needed parliamentary approval to purchase land for the Commonwealth and to erect a building. To Bent, surrounded by the noise and rattle of modern London, the Strand was the great artery of traffic between the business centre of the City and the social and amusement centres of the West End. Many were drawn to its theatrical attractions. Every newcomer to London very soon finds himself or herself in the Strand, he thought; hundreds of thousands of people pass through it. He could justifiably be said to be standing at the centre of London, where the West End’s theatres and hotels linked to the newspaper world of Fleet Street, and where the Law Courts and the historic Temple met the archives housed in Somerset House. Bent looked at the western corner of the sizeable block that Deakin and Lyne focused on, and he could not look past it. To his eye, the western corner was a plum position. Bent had a lifelong obsession with buying real estate and a quick eye for profit; he understood real estate cycles and recognised the opportunity that London presented. Victoria always prided itself on being a progressive State 91

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and Bent could see his State promoted by a building commanding that position, right at the heart of the Empire. Bent liked making impressions, and Victoria could give the overseas dominions an object-lesson in the art of advertising a country’s resources. Taverner appealed to Bent’s compulsion to buy property and Bent fully approved of Taverner’s plans. His spectacles pushed up on his forehead, Bent grunted in the back of his nose, as was his habit. He could act directly, and he did. He made up his mind on the spot to secure the site. Bent took a ninety-nine-year lease on the corner plot. It offered a frontage of twenty-five feet to the Strand with sixty-five feet facing west onto an intended thoroughfare. Alfred Burr helped Bent and Taverner negotiate their lease. Burr prepared plans and elevations for the Government of Victoria’s site, which were acceptable to the London County Council (LCC). His drawings for the Victoria Offices were certified on 21 June 1907, two days after Deakin and Lyne landed back in Australia. Bent gained the lease on the plot from September 1907, and on 31 December Burr submitted drawings to the LCC for Victoria’s building.23 Reports spoke of Deakin and the States uniting with a view to maintaining one good building in the Strand for agency purposes.24 As yet, Deakin’s hope for such union was far from real, but Bent’s decision was convenient because it identified the Council’s trapezoidal-shaped block with Australia. It left the Commonwealth with three lots on the block to consider. Each measured about ten thousand square feet with differing Strand frontages that ranged from seventy to one-hundred-and-forty feet long.25 Before leaving England, William Lyne met with the County Council’s Valuer, Andrew Young, and began negotiating for a part of the site. Lyne needed time to return to Australia and to put the proposal for the block with a frontage to the Strand before Parliament. Young gave him an option on the site up to 20 July, while he sought from the Improvements Committee a price which they would recommend the LCC to accept for the land. Meanwhile, he sent Lyne a copy of the LCC’s Building Conditions and Lease.26 Yet while Lyne and Young both worked in the public interest, they were poles apart in personality and experience. Andrew Young, a Fellow of the Surveyors Institute, the first Valuer to the London County Council (1889–1914), and head of the LCC’s Surveying and Valuing Department is portrayed in a memorial plaque on the Strand, which reads that he worked to beautify London. It reflects the high regard for Young and his role in the Strand’s redevelopment. With Gomme and Riley, Young was among the officials who played a leading part in implementing Council policy. Valuation was considered a branch of the surveyor’s profession, and a valuer was required to 92

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be well versed in planning, construction, estimating and the building laws and by-laws.27 Young valued innumerable properties and street improvements, and was called upon to deal with the acquisition and development of the tramway system. He was respected as one of the oldest and most trusted advisers to the LCC and a foremost public servant to London.28 Tasmanian-born, William Lyne began his career when aged twenty by crossing Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria, where he became a pioneer settler. A big man, he was an expert horseman and cricketer. Formerly Premier of New South Wales (1899–1901), Lyne was known as a bull-dog politician. Deakin found Lyne slow and secretive, and referred to him as ‘a crude, sleek, suspicious, blundering, short-sighted, backblocks politician’.29 This was because Lyne resisted Federation and his language was less fluent than Deakin’s cultivated rhetoric. However, he was one of the framers of the Commonwealth Constitution and he was the Government’s broadsword. He was of a forceful and resolute temper, impatient of opposition, and determined to break down all resistance. When asked about opposition, Lyne said, ‘If anyone opposes me I will give him a blow that will knock him senseless, and then I will give him another that will knock him to his senses, so that he will not try it on again.’30 If blunt and pugnacious, Lyne was also extraordinarily effective. Immediately upon his appointment as Premier of New South Wales he pushed through significant progressive legislation. This was needed so that what was an outmoded political and industrial economy would better match more advanced conditions. In six months, no less than eighty-five Acts passed the Legislative Council. Reforms included the early closing of retail shops, old-age pensions, graduated death duties, and municipal reform in Sydney. On Federation, Lyne pushed through the Commonwealth Electoral Act (enfranchising women) and established the Commonwealth Public Service. ‘Action with Sir William followed decision like its shadow,’ said William Morris Hughes (Australia’s seventh Prime Minister, 1915–1923). ‘He delivered the goods.’31 Hughes believed this was the reason why Deakin entrusted Lyne with the onerous task of steering the first Federal Tariff through the House of Representatives in 1906. Young’s agreement gave the Commonwealth the option on about ten to twelve thousand super feet existing on three individual blocks of different dimensions and estimated rental costs on the LCC’s land.32 The Government needed to get a commitment from Parliament to build offices on the site. Australia required an area of 5,000 to 10,000 super feet, and different sized frontages to the Strand were available to the Commonwealth.33 At this point they were not negotiating for the whole area. Prices on the blocks remained 93

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to be determined by the LCC on recommendations from its Improvements Committee. Collins pressed the Government to make a definite offer as he considered that the Committee was unlikely to state their price merely on the chance of business. He believed that the Committee would agree to more favourable terms if the Commonwealth made some firm offer. Alfred Burr offered to help Collins negotiate with the LCC.34 It was customary for an architect to assist with negotiations for a site, which, if successful, the architect would hope to develop. From his experience with the LCC Burr believed that negotiating for the site would be possible, given the difficulties the Council faced with developing the area. The cost of street improvements was sometimes recovered from tenants (as the Metropolitan Board of Works achieved when upgrading nearby Northumberland Avenue in 1876). The LCC hoped to recover the cost of executing the Holborn-Strand scheme by developing the new building sites in Kingsway and Aldwych, but lack of interest in taking the available lands on building leases thwarted this ambition. The Builder was among critics of the LCC for its slow development of the new streets. It estimated that the net cost of the Holborn-Strand improvement, including interest and other charges, would not be far short of a million sterling.35 Stringent conditions laid down by the LCC deterred interest. In 1908 the Builder fancied that London’s businessmen would never ‘become enthusiastic adherents to the betterment principle, and that the future Hausmannising of London will necessarily be an expensive matter.’36 Rather caustically it noted that London property owners customarily needed ‘a somewhat prolonged period for deliberation before building on the frontages of new thoroughfares.’ It tried to picture the new area north of the Strand as a success, saying that ‘the number of premises completed, under construction, and projected makes a fairly important show.’37 In truth, Kingsway and Aldwych, in existence for less than three years, were slow to develop.38 Buildings stood on the north side of Aldwych, but the south side remained a void. The Commonwealth’s search for offices in London was well-known by now. Many properties in central London were offered to Collins for his consideration. None matched the block on the Strand. By late May Burr had discussed it with Andrew Young.39 Young sent a plan of the building sites available on the block which Collins forwarded to Atlee Hunt in Melbourne. Collins reiterated Lyne’s confirmation to Young that nothing would be done without parliamentary approval from Australia. And, disunity among the Australian Agents-General 94

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had to be overcome. It seemed to Collins that the Council were playing off the Commonwealth, with the Victorians seeming to have received preferential terms.40 This was not the case: Bent paid full price for Victoria’s plot. Decision on the Strand site was deferred until Bent, whom the Government wanted to consult, returned to Melbourne via Canada in mid-August.41 Collins was satisfied that the best way to get the most favourable terms would be to approach the LCC through Burr, as they had accepted his design for elevations on the site (for Bent’s offices for the State of Victoria) and Burr was in close touch with the members of the Committee.42 Lord Riche, chairman of the Committee, whom Lord Jersey consulted on the matter, agreed that Australia would stand a better chance of getting favourable terms by operating through Burr. ‘His professional experience and special knowledge as regards the Committee and the site would ensure no points or detail advantageous to the Government are overlooked,’ Collins relayed to Hunt.43 Acceptable to the Council was a building six stories high (like Burr drew for the Victorian Offices). Burr would receive no commission; he would receive a gratuity for his services if negotiations were satisfactorily concluded. Mid-July, Collins cabled Hunt that he was confident that Burr could obtain reduced terms of 13s. a square foot for any area 10,000 feet or less either adjoining Bent’s lot or occupying the entire site’s East corner.44 Collins suggested that Burr could plot out the exact area that the Commonwealth needed. Hunt cabled back from Melbourne. He opted for lot one: a somewhat L-shaped block offering an all corner frontage of 10,000 square feet, with one hundred and twenty-five feet on the Strand and a short Aldwych frontage. Collins was to ascertain the lowest possible rental for this single lot. He considered that Burr’s suggested price of 13s. a square foot was a realistic value for it and estimated £90,000 as the probable cost of constructing a building equal to Burr’s design for Victoria.45 Collins advised Young that there was little doubt that the Commonwealth intended acquiring the land once terms were agreed upon. He asked that the Committee fix a definite price for the whole of the Strand frontage, eastward from the boundary of that taken up by Victoria, with a depth of seventy-seven feet. He would be prepared to make an offer at 13s. a square foot. The LCC could not accept this; they required 18s. per foot square because the Improvements Committee attached considerable importance to the Eastern portion of the site. That prominent corner was of greatest value to the LCC. Other plots measured on the block were available, Young told Collins. His Committee had an offer for a site on the corner block, and so wanted to know at an early date which of the alternative plots Australia’s Government wished to acquire.46 95

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The new chairman of the LCC’s Improvement Committee was ninetyyear old Francis Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas, styled Lord Elcho. As with other individuals in this history, Elcho’s influence bore upon perceptions and therefore on events. Apart from energetic activity in late-age, Elcho was well-known in Britain and Australia in connection with the National Rifle Association, a mutual defence association which he had been instrumental in establishing. Following fears of invasion from France in 1859 Elcho advocated that Britain’s military defence capability should be better organised, and that citizens should take up rifle practice. Volunteers (including in Australia) formed rifle clubs and trained in the effective use of the rifle. In Britain, units of volunteers ultimately became part of the Territorial Force in 1908; rifle association units in Australia underpinned the recruiting for Australian units that served in the Boer War (as did Australian bushcraft skill). As it happened, in 1902, Burr designed and built the clubhouse for the National Rifle Association at Bisley in Surrey.47 Competitions at Bisley for the Elcho Shield (with rifles at 800, 900 and 1,000 yards) figured prominently in Edwardian calendars. So much so that W. K. Haselden took aim at their popularity. By 1908, close to fifty-two thousand entries competed that year in over one-hundred and fifty competitions for more than £11,000 in prizes.48 The art-loving Elcho also kept a watchful eye on London’s public buildings. An accomplished sculptor and painter in watercolours, he played a large part in preventing the removal of the National Gallery to Kensington Gore in 1856. A libertarian, he established and backed the Liberty and Property Defence League in 1882. His enthusiasm during his long parliamentary career distinguished him. In the popular mind he stood out for wearing old-fashioned Piccadilly weepers (long, bushy, carefully combed side whiskers, popular between 1840 and 1879). He wrote to Lord Jersey (a fellow wearer of Piccadilly weepers) stating that the Improvements Committee hoped to come to satisfactory terms with the Commonwealth Government. Details of the site which Collins sent to Hunt shows how the corner position was a cornerstone to Kingsway’s development. Filling that corner position of the vacant site opposite St Clement Danes would anchor the Aldwych wilderness, at Kingsway’s southern end, that was a sore-point for many Londoners. At this point the LCC could believe they would see success with their Strand-Holborn Improvements, due to interest from the Australians plus another scheme that emerged for the vacant Aldwych–Strand island site. On 24 July, The Times illustrated a building planned for the site, to face onto the Strand opposite Somerset House, this time to house the offices of the Dominion of Canada.49 96

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Unbeknown to Ernest Gérard, the French architect of the Palace of Industries proposal for that site, Canadian interests with connections with British Columbia had the area under offer. The British Columbia Development Association (BCDA) was submitting a speculative scheme to the Canadian Government to centralize the Canadian Offices in London on that location. It hoped to develop the Strand site and put up the buildings for the Canadians. The Association was a joint-stock enterprise in England formed to invest in development opportunities on Canada’s North Pacific Coast (British Columbia, Alaska, and the Yukon). Comprised of European aristocrats, diplomats, and businessmen, the Association invested in several British Columbia properties despite its chequered history.50 If Gérard’s plan was grand, this scheme was grander. The proposed Canadian building was estimated to cost £400,000.51 Elevation drawings were prepared. These depicted a Renaissance ‘palace’ to be named Strathcona Hall, in order to acknowledge the position held by Lord Strathcona, then aged 87, as the senior figure in London from the Dominions. As one of the best-known figures in London’s social life, Strathcona ‘from the English point of view, at least … seemed to be Canada personified’.52 The Builder illustrated the scheme for the proposed Canadian Offices on the Strand again, this time in August.53 Architects A. Marshall Mackenzie and his son, Alexander (‘Alick’) G. R. Mackenzie designed a crescent-shaped colonnaded building, 416 feet long on the Strand and 176 ft deep along each side street, which was intended to ‘surround’ James Gibbs’ fine church. Square towers, as high as Gibbs’ steeple, flanked the proposed building, at its East and West ends. Above both rose a dome, fronted by pedimental doorways and surrounded by volutes. The Mackenzies’ vision for the Strand was grand. As grand as the vision being conceived by the LCC for London’s County Hall (as we shall see). Recently the Mackenzies were among five architects selected to a limited competition for the design of the university college of North Wales, Bangor. They were in the running for the Bangor project because they were experienced with the needs of large educational establishments. Many first-class architects were excluded because they lacked this experience. Competing architects were instructed to note that the material to be used should be of quarried stone from the neighbourhood or from adjacent counties. Expense was to be kept down as far as was consistent with efficiency, and ‘architectural effect should be sought rather in harmony of proportion than in elaboration of detail’.54 Though the Mackenzies’ proposed building bore some similarity to the National Library of Wales, it was considered too grandiose for the site for it would have overwhelmed the small cathedral town; the commission went to Henry T. Hare. 97

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Enthusiasm naturally followed in London for an important new structure to go up on a spot that had for too long been an eyesore to passers-by. W. K. Haselden’s cartoons in London’s Daily Mirror fanned resentment over what was a sore-point for some Londoners.55 To have an ‘Empire House’ in the middle of London was an attractive idea said one newspaper. It was suggested that the idea for the development to centralise the Canadian offices may have stemmed from Lord Elcho: ‘It is obvious that all those who are concerned with Colonial matters would find it of immense convenience if we had a sort of Empire House in the very centre of this Metropolis, where all the business of all the Colonies might be transacted under one roof.’56 Collins sent a copy of the report of this development from The Times to Melbourne.57 There, an Independent Tasmanian Senator, who had been government whip in the Senate in the first Barton and Deakin governments, foreshadowed the building that Australia proposed to erect in London. No site in London was yet confirmed on which the building contemplated for Australia’s High Commission would stand, but its structure was taking shape in the imaginings of some in Australia. Senator John Keating, the youngest member of the first Commonwealth Parliament, was now the Minister for Home Affairs (January 1907–November 1908). As leader in Tasmania of the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA), and in anticipation of a High Commissioner Bill yet to be put before the Parliament, Keating envisioned the building as showcasing Australian products. ‘It is to be an original contribution to London architecture … distinct in character, design, and materials of construction … Everything about it is to be characteristically Australian’, he declared. ‘Marble, slate, timber, and all the other building materials are to be brought to London from the Antipodes.’ Melbourne’s press hailed him for his proposals. He promoted facings for the façade of Benambra marble (from remote north-east Victoria); West Australian jarrah for the interior; busts of worthy Australians to form part of a statuary group over the main entrance. All were acclaimed for catching the spirit of an advertising age.58 Keating made clear that Australia would put up a building that not only met the LCC’s requirements for the site but met Australia’s ideas of what constituted an important building. ‘The edifice is to be a permanent memorial of the importance and the potentialities of the Commonwealth, and a worthy and effective representation of Australia in the heart of the Empire,’ he stated. He echoed King O’Malley’s vision laid before the Parliament two years earlier.59 Patriotic sentiment pushed by the ANA fanned strong feeling that the building called for an open competition for its design. ANA members were 98

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convinced this was the most desirable course to take for the proposed building. In London, Collins became concerned that a competition might entail further delay. Progress stalled. Public life (and the strain on him when in London) took its toll on Deakin who fell ill. Lyne served as Commonwealth Treasurer from July 1907 and Acting Prime Minister from September. He prepared his budget (in which he proposed a government bank of issue, a treasury note). He was also in the process of selling his pastoral property of about 60,000 acres (24,281 ha) in central New South Wales. Hit hard by the depression of the 1890s he was rumoured to be staving off the bailiffs. Lyne was preoccupied: in April 1908, he made an attempt for Prime Ministership. All hinged on the view the House would take of the Commonwealth putting up a building in London. Lyne did not anticipate much difficulty in passing the vote of £1,000 for preliminary expenses in connection with Commonwealth offices in London. The sum appeared in the works estimate to be considered when Parliament closed budget discussions toward the end of September. Hunt feared this would test the Parliament.60 On 24 September Lyne commanded the Parliament’s attention. Appearing the consummate statesman (as he did), he announced that he wanted to make a statement with regard to the establishment of a High Commissioner’s office in London. He wanted to see Australia properly represented. He was disgusted when he was there to see pigeon holes all over London used as Australian offices. Captain Collins had so managed Commonwealth funds that they were earning interest. The Commonwealth proposed to erect suitable offices, built on the same scale as that which Bent proposed to put up for Victoria, at a cost of £60,000 on a leasehold site belonging to the LCC, which was under offer. The site was the cream of London. Lyne wanted the authority of the House to open negotiations. The Government sought to have a grand central building, which people could go to. ‘The Canadians advertised their country, and Australia should do the same. The building should be a great advertisement for Australia.’61 The question was whether the House would grant the Commonwealth the money. The Opposition was sceptical about the possibility of a six-storey building being erected at the price. They scoffed that the cost would be more like a quarter of a million. Labor leader John (Chris) Watson argued that a High Commissioner should be appointed before parliament dealt with the building. Despite their scepticism, the initial vote for the purpose of acquiring the leasehold was passed in September 1907.62

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CHAPTER 10

Emporium of the World … the great emporium of the world, London.1

Nothing quite like it had been seen in Britain before. Within sixteen months, a City of Twenty Palaces sprang up from a gloomy stretch of mud and rank grass at West London’s Shepherd’s Bush.2 They were among four hundred buildings that delighted millions throughout the summer of 1908 at the Franco-British Exhibition, which became popularly known as the ‘Franco’. The exhibition showground of one hundred-and-forty acres was seven times as large as that covered by any exhibition previously seen in Britain. The Times declared it ‘the most remarkable exhibition ever held in the British Empire.’3 Though not a universal exhibition (London’s last universal exposition was in 1862), the ‘Franco’ was of even greater significance because it marked a new era of understanding between Britain and France. When Edward VII became King, European affairs and fear of growing German expansionism brought home to statesmen in England and France the need to end the friction rising between them and to draw closer together. It was popularly believed that King Edward sought to end the Anglophobia that had reached a crescendo at the turn of the century. A rising tide of anti-British feeling in France followed the outbreak of the Boer War in the summer of 1899. French newspapers attacked British policy in South Africa. Mounting indignation in Great Britain at the French attitude came to a climax when a Paris newspaper published a cartoon revealing the exposed limbs of Queen Victoria as she hid Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain under her skirts. The French mood was so hostile to Britain that the Prince of Wales, an eager patron of cultural and technical exhibitions, felt unable to fulfil his role as Chairman of the British Section of the 1900 Paris Exposition and to attend its opening. As Sovereign, Edward VII’s sense of reasonable compromise led to Britain and France signing an agreement, the Entente Cordiale, on 4 April 1904. To

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guard against Germany, France’s foreign minister Théophile Delcassé sought to patch up colonial disputes and urged cordial understanding whereas King Edward ‘the Peacemaker’ himself led a charm-offensive in Paris where he won over Parisians. Britain and France put aside the spirit of jealous rivalry that traditionally characterized their relations. They adopted a new-found friendship, became allies and entered a ‘new diplomacy.’ With the Entente Cordiale signed, French authorities mooted the idea of holding a bi-national exhibition to promote and strengthen Franco-British friendly relations. Meetings about it followed in the House of Commons, Mansion House, and the Hotel de Ville in Paris. Both countries had long used the idea of a major exhibition as a shop window for new industries and a symbol of national prestige. The French Chamber of Commerce and the British Empire League agreed to erect an exhibition in London where Britain and France should display, side by side, their best in the world of art, science and industry. Distinctive features of the enterprise were its bi-national character and a belief that commerce would ensure peace. Announcements declared that it was the first time in history that two nations agreed to encourage the arts and commerce of their respective countries by holding the exhibition. Exhibiting countries included the British Isles and France and the colonial territories of both nations. Hopes were held that the exhibition would strengthen the cordial understanding between the French and British peoples and increase commercial intercourse between them.4 The exhibition stood for mutual appreciation and good-will, and King Edward welcomed President Armand Fallières to London and the exhibition. On 14 May 1908 Imre Kiralfy, the Exhibition’s High Commissioner, was poised to open the gates to the show. It was a miserably wet day, but Kiralfy, a child performer on the stage by the age of four, was a seasoned showman of spectacle able to entrance millions. Kiralfy participated in the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, staged to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America, and to signify Chicago’s remarkable recovery from the fire of 1871. On coming to London, Kiralfy had rebuilt the Earl’s Court exhibition grounds in 1894 as a small-scale version of Chicago’s White City. This was a mere dress rehearsal for when he presented London with its own White City. He staged a tableau of twenty palaces and one-hundred and twenty exhibition halls built of concrete and steel sheeted with ornamental white plasterwork. Kiralfy brought his genius for theatrical spectacle to architecture, at what was properly called the Exhibition of Palaces and Pavilions. Kiralfy at once celebrated the Entente 101

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Cordiale and fully catered to his era’s mass market of consumers hungry for amusement. Fairy palaces with towers and minarets each thought to be an architectural triumph went up in an ideal urban complex of canals and gardens with broad avenues and classical vistas. The exhibition was a dazzling aggregate of white and cream-white buildings, of temporary rococo fantasies that took 50,000 tons of steel to build. When the rain ended, and the sun broke, highlighting the multivarious forms among the eclectic buildings, Kiralfy’s exhibition resembled some brilliant Oriental fantasy – ‘a dream of a virgin city bathed in light.’5 A dazzling contrast to dingy London, the vision of Kiralfy’s virtual city could be seen as an arresting master plan for London. More than being a temple of the Entente Cordiale, Kiralfy’s city of white palaces provided what London lacked.6 It was systematically planned with the exhibition showground intersected by thirty miles of roads and miles of waterways. It was ordered, with the site divided into themed areas.7 Much of it was devoted to grand areas where large crowds could enjoy leisure time in attractive public space. Novelties such as the Flip Flap, the Spiral, and the Canadian Scenic Railway stood alongside the Temples of Industry and the Palaces of Art. The Flip Flap was Kiralfy’s invention: two giant arms one-hundred-and-fifty feet long propelled ninety-six people skywards in twin cars to a height of nearly two hundred feet above the exhibition. Together the cars rose atop the pair of crossed arms, passed, and descended in under three minutes, allowing an overview of the Great White City. Just as Chicago’s White City presented architectural visions of future cities to Americans, so Kiralfy’s White City presented architectural models to London. The arrangement of the principal buildings of the Chicago Exposition of 1893, a monumental grouping of neoclassical buildings around a lagoon, presented as an experiment in creating an idealized city, stimulated the City Beautiful movement which it kick-started in America.8 Equally, the potential of steel impressed visitors to the Machinery Halls of the Franco-British Exhibition. They thrilled at the might and majesty that steel construction could offer. Advances in industrial design generated the largest movable objects that man ever created. One gateway visitors walked through was an exact-sized replica of one of the turbine drums of Cunard’s giant passenger liner, the Lusitania. Made of hollow forged steel with a diameter of nearly twelve feet, it weighed twelve tons. Making her maiden voyage six months before, in September 1907, the world’s largest passenger liner held the Blue Riband for its record-breaking Atlantic crossings. Competition for this national honour, for 102

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which the foremost shipping lines vied with one another in the performance of their Great Ships, made ocean liners like the Lusitania a national status symbol. The White City Stadium erected alongside the showground for the modern and international Olympic Games represented further possibility. The Olympic Movement, inaugurated in Athens in 1896, was part of the new internationalism of the day which came with the boom in commerce that was gathering apace. World trade tripled in volume between 1870 and 1914 on the strength of better communication; though depressed in the 1890s, it quickened at the start of the century. Commercial growth followed expanding railway lines (with transcontinental systems like the Canadian Pacific, and the Trans-Siberian Railway of 1905). Increased world shipping and faster navigation, besides cable linking continents followed by telephones (with international lines from 1887), all quickened commercial activity. The Exhibition demonstrated the command held by the new Franco-British bloc, which like rival economies (particularly those of Germany and the United States) chased markets for products and profitable investments. These national blocs binged on global expansion at the turn of the century.9 Reading the buildings of the Franco-British Exhibition as the visible embodiment of the brotherly feeling established between France and Britain, The Times expressed the thought that the London Olympic Games might be remembered for giving ‘a powerful impetus to the brotherhood of the world.’10 Here was a new momentum, one that recognised that bringing people together through commerce, art, and sport could insure peace. Kiralfy’s city went up under the oversight of its managing architects, Londoner John Belcher and Parisian D. Marius Toudoire. Buildings they designed embodied the trend of the times to integrate modern life and the historical past. Belcher was attuned to a Baroque use of sculpture, shown in his building for the Institute of Chartered Accountants at Moorgate (1893) and Colchester’s new Town Hall (1898–1902); Beaux-Arts trained Toudoire was responsible for the railway stations of Bordeaux, Toulouse and Gare de Lyon, Paris (1895–1902). Like these, the buildings of the Franco reflected the architectural eclecticism that marked the times, when various historical styles mixed with newer, contemporary elements. Combining assorted styles, in order to employ their individual virtues, was a feature of the architectural ferment then going on in London. The one advantage of this all-embracing mix was that connection to tradition was not severed nor forgotten when new materials were used. The Chicago Fair of 1893 was the start of this eclecticism: anything could be built and expressed in the Age of Excess, enthused young American architect 103

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and future architectural educator Harold Bush-Brown. ‘For a generation or more thereafter, there was not just one style or even two, but all styles from which to pick and choose.’11 He was apprenticed to McKim Mead & White, the foremost American-based architectural firm dedicated to classicism inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Historicist forms, such as they and others (like Belcher and Toudoire) designed, tempered the heady excitement of modern life making it possible for those who missed the slower pace of a vanishing past to enter the speedier world of the present. They could enter the new, accelerating world through the familiar portals of classical architecture. In England, the eminent English architectural educator, Professor Sir Charles Reilly, likened McKim Mead & White to the American-born novelist Henry James. Both were responsible for introducing the older world to the new and did so in such a way that ‘the new was able to enter for the first time into its full inheritance’.12 Classical architecture, understood world-wide, was a means by which elements from the past, older world could be ushered into the new era. The seeds of change being sown were apparent in how the buildings of the ‘Franco’ were built. The page was turning once more, much like when iron ousted stone in the hands of civil engineers Thomas Telford and Isambard Brunel. This time, steel would replace iron, to inevitably alter architecture so that it better matched the faster tempo of a new age. When the exhibition closed on October 31 nearly eight and a half million visitors had entered its gates.13 None of the buildings were designed to stand permanently in Kiralfy’s ‘City of Pleasure’, but their steel skeletons partnered with concrete made for sturdy durability.14 Many stood for some time, with the last building demolished in 1984.15 The governments of Australia and Canada were among those which participated in this exhibition. Australia’s six States came together to erect a building on the site and share space to display their products, at a total outlay of £150,000, mostly arranged by the agents-general. The Australian Pavilion was among the buildings in the Grand Avenue of the Colonies where halls and pavilions displayed the products and arts of places such as India and Canada. It stood on the outer zone of the exhibition ground, at its north-west corner. Its position placed it behind all of the larger buildings, gardens and principal amusements, but its domed entrance faced the gardens behind the Flip-Flap ride, one of the most popular attractions at White City. Australia’s single-storey building was framed throughout by steel. Concrete and steel sides, enclosures and partitions anchored it, as did a six-inch-thick concrete floor.16 Corrugated iron and glass roofed it. Its outward appearance was .

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relatively simple compared to the more flamboyant buildings surrounding it. It had a long front, across which ran blind ‘alcove’ windows that were set in bays broken up by shallow piers. The building was not quite square, 281 feet long and 200 feet wide. A central square-shaped block, with a sixty-foot dome and cupola above it, marked the entrance across which the name ‘Australia’ was emblazoned. At night, electrically-lit signs beamed from the dome, to announce to the crowds that the Australian building was to be found below.17 Inside, a central hall ran east and west, off which were courts given over to the different States. Drawings for the building went to Edward Riley in January 1908. At the same time, Riley received Alfred Burr’s drawings for John Taverner’s Strand building. He approved both.18 He also approved plans for a separate annex at the Exhibition, a pavilion erected for Western Australia.19 A purely temporary structure, built of wood and plaster with a cement floor, it featured a pair of Doric Pilasters at either side of the central door. Walls of wood framing were covered externally and internally with plaster. Corrugated iron sheeting and glazing covered the timber-framed roof. The pavilion was designed to sit as a separate structure standing alongside the right-hand side of the Australian building. Thus, rather than the Australian States pulling together, as the Australian Pavilion suggested, a parochial separateness still prevailed. Display specialists, Sage and Co., with experience installing displays at the exhibitions of Paris, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, fitted out the interior of the Australian Pavilion under the supervision of Joseph Davies, Director General of Public Works for New South Wales.20 Sage and Co were an English success story. Begun by a Suffolk joiner, the specialized business house concentrated upon the requirements of displaying objects and became one of London’s premier shopfitters and shopfront builders. They branched into the fitting up of stands and the loan of show-cases internationally, a sign of the increasing sophistication of merchandising and the ever-increasing importance of the merchant community.21 The Australian building was ready ahead of other showground pavilions. Australia’s first consignment of exhibits arrived in Britain by early February; subsequent shipments followed into late June (following the Exhibition opening).22 When Queen Alexandra visited the Exhibition in April, the exhibition ground was in a state of confusion, with unfinished pavilions. Timbers were laid over the mud so that she could get through the ground.23 Australia’s colonies had taken their products to the world since exhibiting at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1855, and again in 1867.24 The catalogue to 105

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the Greater Britain Exhibition, Earl’s Court in 1899, described the Queensland Court to the exhibition as ‘one of the most impressive object lessons for those who take an interest in the Empire’.25 The Queensland Government presented close to 2,500 exhibits displaying the mineral and other resources of Queensland in an area of 30,000 square feet. Among photographs and maps covering the walls, one gigantic map, occupying the gable end of the hall, illustrated where the industries of Queensland were located. A gold model of Temple Bar, thirty feet wide, represented the more than 837 cubic feet of solid gold mined in Queensland over forty years from 1858. Displaying their products and examples of their resources was a means for Australian communities to advance their economies, and therefore their communities. Australia hosted international exhibitions in 1879, 1880, 1887 and 1888, to which came exhibitors from around the world. On federating, Australia’s Chamber of Manufactures pushed Australianmade products. Lantern slides publicised the quality of local goods. The great drought of 1902, the worst drought that European settlers in Australia had ever known, was over. It pushed alarmed farmers to greater productivity who rewarded the country with a record harvest up to that time. Prime Minister Deakin promoted Australia’s capacity. Australia still sold little else but precious metals and primary products (wool, wheat, mutton, butter, fruit and wine), however its manufacturing activity was beginning to grow. Factory employees were rising in number, as were wages paid to them, and annual manufacturing output almost doubled.26 Australian exhibitors at the Franco-British had every reason for their buoyant spirits with 1906 a record year for Australian trade. The catch-cry ‘Advance, Australia’ shone out with good reason in gold letters over the entrance to the creamy Australian Building, as it did on Australia’s first official Coat of Arms which the King authorized that May. However, though the shell of the Australian Pavilion stood for collective representation, symbolic purpose mattered little to each State. While the building was intended to advertise Australia, each State exhibited within it as a separate entity, displaying its own vision of the good life. Displaying and promoting the resources and opportunities of their territory mattered more than any United Australia. Seven years into Federation Australian sense of union remained tentative. Provincial focus diminished the representation of Australian progress as a whole. Critics questioned why similar exhibits, like wheat, were presented several times over. They contended that such an illustration of Australia’s primary industries would not attract sufficient attention to justify the aggregate outlay for the display which the States incurred between them. 106

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The States were criticized for having separate representations. From experience gained from lecturing around England, one official who was employed in the emigration branch of the New South Wales Agency in London thought it essential that the States should show together under the one name of ‘Australia’. It was common knowledge that contemporary populations were largely ignorant of overseas territories.27 ‘The English people know Canada, and they know something generally about Australia,’ he said. ‘But ordinarily you cannot get them to distinguish between the States of Australia, especially as there is a general likeness between their aims and their chief industries and exports.’ A far more, striking effect could have been produced by combining the principal exhibits in the Australian building. ‘Canada long ago realised that spectators at any great English exhibition are only capable of receiving broad impressions. A multiplicity of small things leaves them with a vague and blurred memory.’28 Perceptions of Australia in England were poor, if they existed at all. Australia – so remote in the minds of most – held fearful connotations. It was seen less as a place of opportunities than of difficulties, despite settlers freely migrating to it for nearly a century.29 Australians themselves expressed their concern over the image they saw presented of their country. One, writing aboard a ship to England carrying four-hundred Australians bound for the Anglo-French exhibition, complained to the Press about the need to correct such poor impressions. ‘Australia is looked on by many as a land of droughts, floods, bushfires, and tramps … when it is a land throbbing with the vigour of youth, and [could be] a land of Promise for the … millions of Europe.’30 A private letter that Taverner sent to Melbourne was leaked to the newspapers there. Taverner’s letter, written to correct the view presented by Australia’s press of Canadian representation in London as ‘One man, one office’, gave details of how extensively Canada was represented in London Taverner pointed out that as representatives of Canada there are the High Commissioner, with staff and office in Victoria Street; the Commissioner of Emigration, with staff and office in Trafalgar Square; and a Trade Commissioner with staff and office in Basinghall Street. They have a permanent show room at the Crystal Palace. There are also five Agents-General in London representing various provinces and four representatives, with offices in four of the principal provincial towns. It must be remembered that the emigration and trade offices communicate direct with their respective Ministers. If you could get at the facts, I venture to 107

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say you would find that Canada’s representation makes a big hole in £100,000 a year. Taverner’s letter indicated the concerted action required for effective representation in London. Australia’s Press overlooked the fact that more united action as well as increased spending was needed in London, indicating that insufficient understanding existed in Australia (at least among its Press members) of British, and rapidly changing commercial, conditions. Taverner’s account of Canadian representation in London generated customary criticism in Australia of Federal Government wastefulness. This criticism conflated with the pending appointment of the High Commissioner. A refrain, that newspapers Australiawide expressed, read that in the light of Canadian experience ‘the advent of the new and more exalted official [the anticipated High Commissioner] will not be any saving of expense after all.’31 This was short-sighted given lessons learned from the long Depression and financial crises throughout the greater part of the world that showed few countries remained isolated with growing international cooperation a feature of the time. ‘Commerce is the real pioneer of peace,’ David Lloyd George, President of the Board of Trade, emphasised.32 Increased regard for the importance of commercial competition besides greater competition among nations forced change upon the sedate existence of the Agents-General (as it forced change to the Foreign and Colonial Office). Appreciation of the value of supporting mercantile and commercial entrepreneurialism grew. Change pressing on trade relations was reflected in the Imperial Institute and what followed from its misfortune. Despite a fifth of the world’s area being British, with 26 per cent of the world’s population British subjects, fears that Britain’s economic and perhaps military superiority may be diminishing led to establishing the Imperial Institute on Queen Victoria’s Jubilee at the instigation of the Prince of Wales to promote pride in the Empire and to underpin the concept of a ‘Universal Britain’. Behind it was the idea that worrisome foreign competition would be overcome by progress found through dredging wealth from underdeveloped natural resources in the Empire’s colonies and India. The Institute was a rally to push Imperial resources and to capitalise from them. To-day we seek to bind in one, Till all our England’s work be done. 108

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Our great world Empire’s every part, Deep pulsing from a common heart … So rang the Ode written expressly for the laying of the foundation stone of the Institute’s building and performed to the musical score of Sir Arthur Sullivan.33 The Institute was located in a purpose-built centre erected by voluntary contributions from around the Empire to the winning competitive design by Thomas Edward Colcutt. Formerly chief assistant to G. E. Street, like Norman Shaw, Colcutt discarded Gothic lines. He played freely with the early Renaissance manner to which he added French detail in terracotta ornamentation. Prominent for designing London’s Palace Theatre (1889) and Wigmore Hall (1890), he was distinguished as one of the two Englishmen awarded the Grand Prize for Architecture at the 1890 Paris Exhibition (the other was Norman Shaw). Completed in 1893, the Institute was housed over five acres in South Kensington, in an opulently ornamented building with pinnacle domes, a central tower rising nearly three hundred feet high, and galleries and loggias. Its grandeur was thought to be emblematic of the riches of the Empire and to affirm imperial cooperation. The Imperial Institute was at once a museum and an exhibitor of colonial and Indian raw materials and primary products. It promoted emigration, offered a reference library, and was a meeting place for those interested in the Empire. Fundamentally it was an information centre established to assist in building up Imperial trade. Too much capital lavished on the building left insufficient funds to cover running costs so that the Institute had difficulty proving its usefulness. Advancing American, German, and French technology meant that England lost its earlier monopoly of machinery that allowed it to manufacture and sell goods globally without competition. Complaints (such as were heard by the Duke of York in Australia) about the apathy of English manufacturers and their indifference to consumers hit home.34 Concerned at falling export levels, and to meet the altered conditions of the world, the British government took action. It removed general commercial work, and collecting and disseminating commercial information, from the Imperial Institute in 1903. This work became the responsibility of the Commercial Intelligence Branch of the British Board of Trade. It set up a trade information centre near the Guildhall at 73 Basinghall Street. There information on all subjects of commercial interest was collected to assist enquiries received on commercial matters.35 Information supplied included commercial statistics, matters relating to foreign and colonial tariffs and customs regulations, lists of firms abroad engaged with sources of supply, and regulations concerning commercial travellers. In addition, samples from the Imperial Institute, 109

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India or the Colonies were occasionally displayed. The Commercial Intelligence Branch encouraged the opening in its ground floor premises of Trade Enquiry offices, which were opened by the governments of India, Canada and Queensland. Queensland’s representative supplied information to enquiries regarding trade, mining, and all enquiries in connection with Queensland. It displayed some articles that typified the products of Queensland’s pastoral, agricultural, and mining industries. The object was to promote trade to businessmen seeking information about business openings whether in Queensland or Britain. The India Trade Enquiry Office did likewise, as did the Agent-General for Prince Edward Island, Canada. Information bureaux like these, directed at trade enquiries, were known as Commercial Museums. The City of Brussels opened one in late 1882 under the control of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. It exhibited samples of raw materials and manufactured items ‘of all countries’ received from Belgian Consuls and Foreign Agents so that Belgian merchants could ‘practically study the requirements and necessities of foreign customers.’36 Attention went to raw materials that Belgian industrial establishments might use. Similar trade information centres opened in Milan, Buenos Aires (where the Italian Chamber of Commerce displayed 4,000 samples of Italian manufacture), and Constantinople (where the products of Turkey and samples of foreign manufactures were displayed in order ‘to promote the improvement and development of native industry, and to contribute towards the extension of the commercial relations of the country with other States’).37 Best-known was the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, visited by delegates from sixty countries attending the first International Commercial Congress in Philadelphia in late 1899.38 Impressed by Philadelphia’s Commercial Museum, Henry Sell, London publisher of Commercial Intelligence, a free trade journal, established a Commercial Intelligence Bureau in London with offices in Eastcheap in the City of London. It aimed to ‘be a national organization devoted to the exchange of British trade and commerce.’39 Support for the venture came from Sir Robert Herbert, first Premier of Queensland, who subsequently became Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (1871–92, 1899–1900).40 Sell’s business undertaking was absorbed by the London Chamber of Commerce (established in 1882; they occupied the same Eastcheap premises with Sell, before shortly moving to Cannon Street).41 The Chamber found that the Imperial Institute’s Kensington location was too remote from the City where there was call for a central office providing trustworthy commercial information. With an average annual membership of 3,500, the Chamber promoted International commercial relations in a variety of 110

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directions. This was important for, as none other than the future King, George V, announced, We live in an age of competition. The struggle between nations is one not of arms, but of trade; and it is to Chambers of Commerce, the eyes and ears of our national commercial system, that we turn for help and guidance. They it is who can collect and promptly distribute information, stimulate the home manufacturer towards meeting the wants of the consumer, watch over and protect their local interests, and bring to the solution of the vast and complex problems of international trade their knowledge, experience and counsel.42 In this competitive commercial climate, desire for self-sufficiency was increasingly expressed in Australia, as in Canada. Like in Canada, Australia’s pastoral industry remained one of the chief sources of Australian prosperity; also like in Canada, Australian manufacturing industries were on the rise with urban growth. In just four years to 1908, the number of hands working in factories grew by twenty-six per cent and industrial production grew by forty-four per cent.43 The Australian Natives’ Association (ANA) vigorously promoted greater self-sufficiency in the continent’s defence and in its manufacturing and mercantile activity. It championed the production and use of Australia’s products. Responding to these developments (and in light of the success of the Franco) Taverner planned to display the resources of his State in a permanent exhibition of its products on the Strand. After all, the Strand was named ‘The Most Interesting London Street’ from a canvassing of public opinion, which a Canadian journalist summed up. ‘If Fleet Street be the brain, and Piccadilly Circus the heart, then surely the Strand is the face of London.’44 This sentiment fitted with Taverner’s aim that the State of Victoria, and its resources, should figure prominently in London’s features. When the Franco-British closed in October, Victoria would bring into London, the world’s emporium, a continuous exhibition of its products and resources in a building that would showcase Victoria. By the start of April 1908, Taverner had tenders from builders to erect the new offices for the Government of Victoria, and he instructed Burr to accept the tender from London builder contractor James Carmichael to complete the building within forty-two weeks.45 As with the growing regard for the value of current information, and the lead taken by shipbuilding from advances made in engineering, material science, and factory management, so building construction 111

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also had to offer competitive edge. For this reason, James Carmichael was engaged to erect Taverner’s building. Carmichael was a notable and experienced builder, and former president of the London Master Builders Association (in 1904).46 While overseeing the rise of the Victorian building in 1908 he presided over the Institute of Builders. He built a large number of London’s important public buildings including the Strand’s Gaiety Restaurant and Hotel and the frontage to the Hotel Cecil, as well as the West End offices of the London and Lancashire Fire Insurance Company in Pall Mall (1906, E. Guy Dawber). In October 1908, Carmichael would be appointed as contractor for John Burnet’s British Museum extensions. In 1911 he would be awarded the tender, for £73,360, for the reconstruction of the Guildhall at Westminster.47 Between 1908 and 1910 Carmichael had eleven Scottish derrick cranes erected and working on various jobs in London. He introduced this type of crane, a forerunner of the present tower crane, into London.48 Carmichael was licensed under the new Hennebique system of reinforcing concrete with steel.49 The system was patented in 1892 by French artisan François Hennebique, a stonemason and a builder, who saw in 1879 that embedding steel rods into concrete gave it tensile strength. (His discovery was among several similar discoveries made independently in France, Germany, and the United States.) Hennebique established a patent in Brussels in 1892. Six years later, in 1898, Louis Gustav Mouchel, an enterprising and energetic compatriot who lived in Wales, obtained a licence to be Hennebique’s British agent for the new technique of reinforcing concrete. Like steel, reinforced concrete construction transformed building. It was quickly adopted, because it allowed all loads to be taken by columns and beams thereby freeing walls from carrying weight. Girders with long spans between supports reduced the number of interior columns, thus opened up floor areas and greatly increased space for actual use. Sir Henry Tanner’s three-storey General Post Office Extension (1907–11) at St Martin’s-le-Grand, London’s largest reinforced concrete frame building at the time, demonstrated this attraction. Holloway Brothers who built it claimed that no less than 50,000 square feet of floor space became available through using ferro-concrete in place of conventional brickwork.50 This building, with Burnet’s British Museum, were showpieces of the Hennebique system. Hennebique’s system saw a rapid uptake because it combined the permanent durability of the most lasting type of stone and the elastic strength of steel. It also offered durability against fire, as events in 1906 with San Francisco’s devastating earthquake demonstrated. And as Mouchel

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pointed out to the Institute of Architects, whom he addressed in 1904, it lent itself to ornamentation as well.51 The rapid uptake of reinforced concrete and the success of Mouchel’s agency for Hennebique’s system in Britain was evidence of the new world in the making. When Mouchel first undertook to represent Hennebique’s system no example of a reinforced concrete construction existed in Britain. Between 1897–99 seven Hennebique-framed buildings were commissioned in Britain. A decade later, Mouchel and his partners demonstrated its wide application in their handbook for engineers and architects, Hennebique ferro-concrete: theory and practice. Of the more than fifty different patented ‘systems’, or methods of reinforcement that were available by 1904, Hennebique’s system dominated in Britain.52 In 1909 alone forty Hennebique-framed buildings were commissioned in Britain. As Mouchel’s handbook shows, the hardness and impenetrability of reinforced concrete attracted those who appreciated Hennebique’s assertion that ‘reinforced concrete is the art of doing large things with small means’.53 There seemed to be nothing that could not be built. Example of this was given at the Franco-British Exhibition with a remarkable spiral staircase. Rising to the height of twenty-seven feet from a foundation of only sixteen feet square, the staircase was an elegant vertical ribbon of elasticity and strength.54 Its simple emphasis on structure heralded future architectural directions. By 1910 ferro-concrete was ubiquitous and applied widely in all classes of building.55 Erecting Taverner’s building with concrete was of the moment. Building by new methods was in keeping both with Taverner’s novel approach to the building’s intended purpose and his readiness to press ahead and adopt new ideas (which his history bore out). As Taverner’s building went up, he was in Rome for the opening of the International Institute of Agriculture, to which Britain (and Australia) subscribed.56 It was one of the many international bodies that came about after the turn of the century when the growth of electronic communication introduced a ‘new sense of unity’ to the world. Historian Stephen Kern counts the number of international organizations that were begun as a result: 119 from 1900 to 1909, with an additional 112 in the five years before the war.57 Most remarkable was the International Institute of Agriculture. The Institute’s Palace of Agriculture was opened by King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. An idealist, the King picked up the call for cooperative action among nations with regard to agriculture that came from David Lubin, a Californian merchant with the long-range vision of a statesman who promoted public welfare projects.58 Lubin proposed that world agricultural interests be solidified by international 113

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cooperation at establishing a live crop-reporting centre based in Rome under the auspices of all the adhering governments, to be in constant telegraphic communication with the producing and marketing centres of the world, and to issue data of commercial, price-fixing value. The Institute resulted from Lubin’s persistent effort and the sympathetic support of the King who, at his own expense, erected the building to house the Institute in the grounds of the Villa Borghese which were lent by the City of Rome. The King also endowed the Institute with 300,000 lire – $60,000 per annum. The pomp of the building’s architecture and decoration were ‘expressions of distinguished regard and appreciation’ for the significance of agricultural trade.59 The Institute was another bureau of economic intelligence. It existed to function as a research and service organization, operating in connection with and through its adhering governments, to report for the countries of the world on acreage sown, crop conditions, harvest yields, and numbers and kinds of livestock.60 Its main activity was statistical and informative: to collect, study, and publish, as promptly as possible, statistical, technical or economic information concerning farming, trade in agricultural products, and prices prevailing in various markets. This information was to be communicated as promptly as possible: to be of use, much of it was collected and disseminated by cable. This live feed of information was what was significant about the Institute, as was the cooperation of forty-five States in establishing it. Lubin believed that federated interests were a directing power of potent strength.61 The representatives of all the adhering governments were brought together in a permanent, deliberative body. They were in direct touch with the governments from which they came; while the Institute’s Assembly provided the means of keeping this Permanent Committee in contact with, and under the control of the living agricultural forces of a country.62 The Institute was to act not only as an international crop-reporting bureau, but it was recognized as the legitimate organ through which the agricultural interests in each country could voice their wishes in the international sphere. And it was empowered to formulate them as draft conventions and to submit them to the several governments for approval. This was seen as the first attempt in history to create an international parliamentary body. ‘The protocol signed by the plenipotentiaries of the forty governments represented at the conference on June 7, 1905 was seen to have created the first League of Nations, a League of Nations for economic betterment.’63 International associations like this Institute (and the Olympic Movement), that emerged at the turn of the century, were new models for cooperation by members and nations. 114

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Contrasting with this participation was the State rivalry observed at the six Australian courts at the Franco British Exhibition.64 The official programme of the Royal visit allowed a quarter of an hour for a tour of the whole Australia Building, with each State anticipating their visit from the King. The King and the French President and the rest of the Royal Party spent more than that time in the Western Australian Court. Impressed with the gold exhibits, His Majesty stopped to take in three gold nuggets. Presented just as they were found in Australia, these natural specimens were shown as representing Australia, England, France. ‘A great deal having been lately heard of the ‘entente-cordiale’, it may be interesting to direct attention to the Geographical Nuggets, which give a somewhat unusual expression to this sentiment,’ one observer remarked. ‘One of them is an almost facsimile of the map of the Commonwealth of Australia, another of England, whilst the largest resembles very closely the configuration of France.’65 All three were discovered in Western Australia. The ‘Commonwealth Nugget’ weighed 14 ounces, the ‘England Nugget’ 31.5 ounces, while the ‘France Slug’ weighed 284 ounces. It was purchased for the Exhibition for the sum of £887. The King’s interest in the specimens frustrated the plans made to lead the Royal Party through each of the States’ pavilions. Events in London also gave sense of the necessity for more concerted action among the seven governments of Australia. The Commissioners for New South Wales at the Franco-British Exhibition entertained guests at dinner at the Trocadero. Guests included the Earl of Jersey (who was on the British Delegation to Rome, and to whom David Lubin explained his views to secure Britain’s support for the International Institute of Agriculture); the Australian Agents-General, Captain Collins and Imre Kiralfy. At the large gathering, the Franco-British Exhibition was hailed at the finest advertisement Australia ever received.66 Unfounded abuse of Australia used to be common in England, crowed Australians at the dinner. They extolled the work of Coghlan and Collins in changing attitudes in England towards Australia (somewhat prematurely, as will be seen).67 Speaking at Imre Kiralfy’s luncheon to the juries of the Franco British Exhibition, Taverner spoke of Australian and French trade in England being complementary. He received hearty applause when he added that London without its White City would not be worth calling London.68 In Glasgow, that September, Taverner said that it was little use talking Imperialism unless the Imperial Government co-operated with settling Britain’s surplus population in the sparsely settled oversea dominions. He suggested that the Government’s assistance to the unemployed would be better utilised in assisting emigrants. He 115

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advised the Imperial authorities to treat the colonies with more confidence as an integral part of the Empire, thereby strengthening and consolidating the whole.69 Discord among the Australian States was remarkable given the need to counter English press reports which Australians viewed as slanderous. In articles through 1908–9, London’s influential Investors’ Review (read by the audience of bankers, financiers, merchants and ship-owners to which Taverner promoted Victoria’s prospects) laid bare the reality of Australian financial problems and prospects. The paper’s editor, A. J. Wilson, a financial editor of great integrity known for his probity, scoped the shallowness of Australian ‘prosperity’. He alleged that Victoria was stagnant, ‘but yet its debt has risen within the same period by over 22 per cent against an increase of less than 9½ per cent of its population.’ 70 Taverner refuted this as ridiculous and declared that Victoria’s liability to English investors had been reduced by £7 million in three years.71 But the damage from A. J. Wilson continued, and gave concern to all the States and the Commonwealth alike. In reality, therefore, the Australian colonies are not stronger than they were before the great banking crisis of 1893. They are weaker because their population is not expanding nearly so fast as their debts, and because they have laid the charges of an additional government upon the taxpayers and burdened them still more grievously with a childishly severe Customs tariff.72 Known as ‘the knight, without fear or reproach, of City editors’, Wilson contended that it is only ‘by help of the money provided by the English moneylender that the Australian Commonwealth has been able to make a show of prospering.’73 As for Australian desire for her own self-defence ‘it is not love of England but pride and vainglory springing from an imagined state of wealth and independence which has no real existence, that makes the people willing to entertain projects of this description.’ 74 The issue of 4 July 1909 featured the lead article in which Wilson stated that the financial problems of the Australian Commonwealth ‘will strain the ill-knit fabric of the Commonwealth almost to breaking point.’ 75

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Victoria House It is a common assumption that a steel-frame building is necessarily a ‘sky scraper’.1

Taverner’s day came when Victoria House, as the new building for the offices of the Government of Victoria came to be called, was officially opened on Tuesday 30 March 1909. The first building erected on the Strand’s empty ‘island site’, it loomed up in splendid isolation between the Strand and Aldwych. Taverner presided over the opening proceedings. Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, Earl of Crewe, bug-eyed and aloof in manner, formally declared the offices open before about one hundred and fifty invited guests. The Earl of Jersey, Lord Strathcona, Captain Collins, and other Dominion representatives mingled with invited bankers, financiers, merchants and ship-owners. They heard Lord Crewe congratulate the Government of Victoria on the building, erected, he said, in so favourable a position. Crewe was at the heart of London’s elite: his father-in-law was the Earl of Rosebery (who served, if ineffectually, as Prime Minister from 1894–5), and his wife was the grand-daughter and heiress of merchant banker Baron Mayer de Rothschild who built the sumptuous Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. But he was among the younger faces of government from the Liberal Imperialists like Prime Minister Asquith, David Lloyd George and Richard Haldane who pressed for reform. Crewe was Secretary of State for the Colonies (and helped appoint their Governors), and Leader of the Government peers in the House of Lords. Crewe was also the Sovereign’s confidential adviser. This mattered to Taverner who publicly expressed his wish that the King should receive the Agents-General. Not that he would. King Edward took greater interest in European affairs than in his overseas dominions; he received foreign royalties but disliked receiving Colonial Governors. A nervous and not eloquent speaker, Crewe expressed the hope that the Commonwealth and other States would build on the adjoining sites in the Strand. 117

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In reply, Taverner highlighted Victoria’s success. From the time of her constitution in 1850, Victoria had close to doubled her population to over a million people; her trade with the United Kingdom grew from £9  million in 1903 to more than £18 million in 1907.2 He stressed that the Victorian Government erected the building because the possibility of still further expansion in trade relations between the State of Victoria and the United Kingdom was so great. Victoria’s new building stood on the south-western corner of the roughly triangular block at the eastern horn of the London County Council’s vacant land where Aldwych and the Strand met. At one hundred and twenty feet high, it fronted the Strand for twenty-five feet, and ran sixty-five feet deep along a new street that separated Victoria’s block from the Council’s larger, central island site (which still lay empty) to its west. Melbourne Place became the name of the new street leading from the Strand to Aldwych on Taverner’s suggestion to Westminster City Council.3 Built to Alfred Burr’s design and under his supervision, Victoria House was a six-story building with entrances from the Strand and Melbourne Place. Three distinct parts of the building (the ground space, the office space above and the upper roof section) expressed its intended purpose to serve as a showcase and meeting place as well as house offices. The basement was used for storage, the ground floor was an exhibition space for Victoria’s products. Administrative offices occupied the next three floors. The Agent-General used the second floor; the third floor held an office and a Board Room. The fourth floor displayed Mining Exhibits. The fifth was devoted to reading rooms and served as a rendezvous for Victorian visitors to London. The sixth floor held storerooms and could be used for additional displays and other purposes. The building was said to cost approximately £16,000. The British Architect acclaimed Burr for his design and Victoria House was universally regarded as a fine structure.4 That evening, Taverner hosted a reception for some two-hundred guests in the new building. He had not lost sight of his idea for an ‘Australia House’ or ‘Australian Centre’ in London (for which he saw more reason owing to accelerating trade activity, that the growth of commercial museums and the activities of the Board of Trade reflected). Burr gave a short speech about the new building. He announced: ‘The building has been designed to form part of a complete scheme, for it is hoped that other buildings would follow on the rest of the block, that would either be those of the Commonwealth or two of the other States.’5 By this he meant that if the Commonwealth reached an agreement with the London County Council (LCC), it was envisaged that it would erect a single building to extend from, and include, Victoria House such as Burr designed. 118

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Failing that, other Australian State Governments might take Victoria’s lead and similarly build on the site along the Strand (so there was talk of Australian ‘buildings’ for the Strand). In 1907, Burr initially designed a large building to span the entire block (occupied today by Australia House).6 A tower at each end was capped by a dome; mirror images of each other, they anchored the building which was simple in its elevation. It consisted of three sections. Large plate glass windows between stone piers ran across the ground level. Three storeys above defined the middle section in which a suite of three levels of windows were featured between paired Ionic columns. The roof made up the third section: with two levels, a flat roof line, the domes at either end and a pediment in the middle. The base read like a horizontal band (the large windows appear surprisingly modern). The middle of the building gave vertical expression to the building. The roof carried windows in line with those rising in the mid-section while its flat line echoed the horizontal band of the base. Sculpture appeared in the pediment and around the bases of the domes. The Daily Telegraph reported that the Victorian Government especially desired that a dome should crown their new building. Domes typified ‘Edwardian Baroque’ style; thought to assert institutional and financial stability, they were often used to give ‘importance’ to buildings and their corners. The ubiquity of domes was seen in the new War Office Buildings in Whitehall, completed in 1907, with four corner domes and a colossal group of statuary on each side. Another example came from the copper-roofed dome that towered over the principal entrance of the new Central Criminal Court (1907, E. W. Mountford). On the site of Newgate Prison, this was the most important municipal building erected in London for some years. As Taverner knew, Peter Kerr’s Houses of Parliament in Melbourne were intended to feature a two-hundred and fifty foot high dome, but this was never built.7 However, in 1906, extensions to the Melbourne Public Library’s reading room were being planned with a dome designed by the Melbourne engineer (and future General) (Sir) John Monash which was claimed to be the largest reinforced concrete dome in the world when completed (in 1913).8 Riley reportedly overruled the Victorian Government’s desire for a prominent dome to crown their building, perhaps finding overblown domes to be too bumptious.9 A modest dome features on the building which he oversaw on the corner of Holborn and Southampton Row, for the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the London Day Training College. Long and narrow, these were two contiguous multi-purpose buildings for the professional training, in teaching, of students at the University of London at King’s, Bedford, and other 119

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Colleges.10 Here the dome was utilitarian, being a skylight for the artists’ training rooms beneath. It is unlikely that Riley was sensitive to the criticism of the Gaiety Theatre’s design; most likely he ignored the sarcasm directed at the Gaiety cupola. Dubbed ‘the pepper pot’, it was said that some people ‘professed to see a resemblance between it and the new Central Criminal Courts, in Newgate Street’.11 Norman Shaw’s imprint as consulting architect became notable in Victoria House because the LCC’s Improvements Committee obtained Shaw’s oversight over Burr’s initial design for the building.12 As happened with Runtz over the New Gaiety Theatre, Riley invoked Shaw’s help to exercise his authority which Riley drew on to override a plan that Riley disliked, and so get what he wanted. Altering Burr’s towers, Shaw came up with a pair of gables to front the Strand corners. These were, according to the Telegraph, a sufficient basis for mutual agreement. ‘The new design with Mr Shaw’s gables, subjected to some variation by Mr Burr, was accepted … Mr Riley declared his objections met; and the differences between the Government [of Victoria] and the County Council were definitely settled.’13 In October 1907, the Council accorded its thanks to Shaw, who wrote back, expressing his appreciation and his willingness ‘to help the good work the Council are doing’.14 Like Victoria House, the proposed building was envisaged in three sections. Rusticated arches featured on the ground floor. Banks of paired columns fronted the middle section. On the building’s top tier, roof elements included prominent dormer details and banded chimneys. A balustrade ran across the façade between two gables at each end and eight obelisk-shaped finials rose from piers in the balustrade. Architect and architectural draughtsman Charles William English, one of the leading perspective artists of the day for coloured architectural drawings, illustrated Burr’s proposed building.15 Architects engaged English (and others like T. Raffles Davison, William Walcot and Arthur C. Fare) to prepare presentation drawings, as were made for Norman Shaw, a masterful draughtsman himself but aged over seventy when he was asked to act as consultant architect for the Office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues (today The Crown Estate).16 Shaw’s work entailed designing the exterior of the block of hotel and shops to form part of the rebuilding of Regent’s Quadrant.17 The Piccadilly Hotel (now the Le Meridien Piccadilly), which fronts Piccadilly and Regent Street, opened in May 1908, in what was part of the remodelling of the Quadrant after Shaw’s design. (The architects of the hotel, Woodward and Gruning, followed Shaw’s design.) English illustrated Shaw’s design for the Regent Street Quadrant (it featured in the Builder 120

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in May 1906).18 The perspective of Shaw’s proposal for the Quadrant was drawn to impress; and, drawn in grisaille (in shades of grey), it was also intended for publication.19 So too was his perspective of the building that Burr proposed for the Commonwealth. This design for a single building on the entire block of LCC land appeared in an issue which Architectural Records published to mark the opening of Victoria House.20 The LCC approved this complete scheme with a frontage to the Strand of just under 196 feet between Melbourne Place and the site’s eastern corner where Aldwych joins the Strand. London’s Daily Telegraph endorsed the approved design, saying that if the Commonwealth built on this location ‘the transformation of the Strand will be carried a step farther.’21 Victoria House, as it appeared in Burr’s elevation for the scheme (with Shaw’s input), was the western corner of this larger single building to extend eastward along the Strand and to face St Clement Danes. Victoria House was the keynote for the, as yet, unbuilt composition. For now, Victoria’s building (like Taverner’s ambitions) merely signalled possibility. Burr submitted a new design to the Council which bore Shaw’s stamp. Burr’s domes were reduced to cupolas and pushed back behind the gables. His pediment was removed. In the centre of the block, on three upper floors, the front wall was re-cessed. Windows on the second floor were opened to balconies. Tall finials intersected a balustrade above the Ionic columns. Prominent chimney stacks dominated the roof line. On the ground floor, Burr’s large glazed windows appeared in arched openings. Shaw’s touch as consulting architect can be seen in a number of elements at Victoria House. These are also apparent in Burr’s design for the proposed Commonwealth building and should be noted because they bore on what was eventually built. Shaw’s signature features of Dutch gables and bold chimneys are prominent in the design for the proposed Commonwealth building. Shaw paired the gable of Victoria House at the opposite end of the proposed building above its front east-end corner. The front entrance features square edged blocks around columns (these appear in the Quadrant). Dutch gables and arched windows are some of the details that Victoria House shared with Shaw’s contemporary building at Piccadilly.22 Both buildings also shared a base with prominent arches (it was more developed on the Strand); a band of small oblong windows immediately above; and a cornice that defines the lower section of the building. One feature from Shaw, common to both buildings, is a window with a balcony on the first floor. One overlooks the Strand, and a similar window appears in Piccadilly. 121

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Burr’s building carried Shaw’s stamp, but was free from the weightiness of his Quadrant proposal. Burr tempered the face of Victoria House, minimising the play of decorative effects and contrasting textures and shapes. With the commercial purpose of the building foremost in mind, Burr avoided superfluous ornament and kept the façade clean. Fashioned in the ‘English Renaissance’ style, detail on Victoria House was trim, perhaps to echo Wren’s church along the Strand. By 1907 Shaw hankered after simplified elevations.23 Where decorations appeared, these were carvings emblematic of some of the produce of Victoria. Stone carvings by architectural sculptor and modeller Charles Mabey represented wheat and fruit.24 Familiar with LCC requirements for the site, Burr faced the building’s façade with Portland stone (the stone most capable of withstanding London’s atmosphere), and covered its roof with light green slate.25 The roof carried a shortened tower on its deep side; it surmounted the west-facing gable and was capped by a cupola. It was compact, like the scale of its building. A gilded bronze figure surmounted the copper-covered turret on the Melbourne Place gable. Representing ‘Progress’, it was modelled by London stone carver and sculptor Frederick William Pomeroy. This was a master stroke for Victoria as Pomeroy’s gilt bronze of ‘Justice’, twelve feet high, crowned the prominent dome of the new Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey). Pomeroy’s figure gleamed above London, atop the dome which stood one hundred and ninety-five feet high from the ground to the ball on which it stood. The Burlington Magazine considered the building to be among the most striking of London’s recently erected public buildings.26 Pomeroy, who was then an Associate of the Royal Academy, was also prominent for four bronze statues, each about twice life-size, which adorned the piers on the upstream side of Vauxhall Bridge in what became the only British river-crossing to feature sculpture. Installed there in 1907, each figure represented different aspects of the economy (namely, Agriculture, Architecture, Engineering, and Pottery).27 No doubt Pomeroy’s sculpture atop Victoria House was intended to counterpoint Binney’s trumpeting figure above the Gaiety Theatre. Arches were a structurally important component of the building. The ground floor arches housed large, prominent metal-framed windows. Rustication highlighted the arc of each arch and the Strand corner of the building. Stone blocks were carved to make each block more pronounced, echoing classicallyinspired precedents like Renaissance palazzos. Blocked columns, which have every other block larger and square, were a common baroque device to add interest and variety. Shaw applied this feature to Piccadilly. Victoria House reflects this, as the Westminster-based Melbourne-born architect William Lucas, a Fellow of 122

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the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, observed in the journal the British Architect.28 He admired Victoria House but it astonished him. Registering the stature that Shaw commanded, he wrote about the building without mentioning Burr, of whom he seemed unaware. ‘The whole design is so Shaw-like, and yet so unlike the treatment of Shaw; due in all probability to the handling of the architect [Alfred Burr] engaged in carrying out the design,’ wrote Lucas. To Lucas, the verticality of Victoria House seemed so unlike anything that Shaw designed before. Yet greater height was an increasing feature of building, such that regulating building height limits would be an object of the Building Act of 1909. Indeed, Shaw resisted pressure to extend the height of the Quadrant buildings when designing them. A building over eighty feet high was considered to be a ‘high building’ requiring the LCC’s special consent.29 At the time, the controversy that erupted over Shaw’s designs for the Quadrant tarnished his reputation. He was also beset by the fiasco that ensued in 1900 after the LCC asked him to judge the designs submitted by eight architects for the architectural treatment of Kingsway and Aldwych. Hence the storm of criticism which raged, as the Builder observed, about ‘Norman Shaw’s work in Regent-street and the design for the offices of the Government of Victoria [which] marked the period of this talented architect’s decline’.30 Victoria House was Shaw’s swan-song. His influence was waning, as events in Regent Street would show, giving further sign of changing tastes and needs. Commercial clients were not getting what they wanted from Shaw. They disliked his use of mullioned glass in rusticated arcades. They demanded large plate-glass windows. They wanted commercial functionality. ‘Shaw was nothing if not versatile’, said Lucas, who read Victoria House as ‘the final tangible embodiment of any expression of Shaw’s masterful mind.’ Yet he remained surprised that this example from Shaw came in so forceful a manner for one of the Australian States. (He failed to appreciate that Shaw’s wife was Australian-born.) Victoria House harmonised with Shaw’s design (as did Burr’s proposed Commonwealth building) to meet the LCC’s condition that building on councilowned land must conform with Shaw’s design. To Collins, looking at things from the perspective of the Commonwealth, Shaw’s fall from favour would benefit Australia; he considered that the LCC’s Improvement Committee would not find another purchaser on their block owing to the condition that building there must harmonize with Shaw’s design.31 Guests at Taverner’s opening reception heard him address them in the building’s entrance lobby under a carved mahogany shield with the crest of Victoria 123

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surmounted by an Imperial Crown. The Imperial Crown was incorporated in the design of the wrought iron balustrades of the staircases and gates to the two electric lifts within. Notable too in the lobby was Siberian Green marble and Silician Marble tile flooring. From the Franco-British Exhibition came chimney pieces which were shown there, as did salmon pink and dove grey marble that was used for all the hearths and fenders for the building’s fireplaces. Hidden from view were more distinctive features of the building. It boasted the latest in fireproofing. Concrete slab partitions were installed. The floors were also of fireproof construction, consisting of rolled steel joists and clinkerbreeze concrete. Rolled steel stringers ran through the ballast concrete core of the staircase. The roof was constructed of Cokebreeze Concrete and rolled steel joists with expanded metal lathing of three-inch mesh with tension and compression sheets of reinforcement. Roof skylights were formed with Luxfer Roof Glazing, a product found among the plethora of new products that appeared in the everthickening pages of builders’ catalogues and in the pages of journals like the Architectural Review.32 This product came from the Luxfer Prism Company which in 1897 hired the unknown architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design its popular prism tiles.33 Burr’s sanitation expertise qualified him to adopt fast-changing approaches. Victoria House was an imposing presence on its site on the Strand (as photographs taken in 1909 show).34 ‘Very like a sky-scraper,’ is how the New Zealand Herald described it. The paper’s report catches the significance of the building in terms of when it was built. The name ‘skyscraper’ comes from the name given to the tallest sail on a ship, the mainmast, and was first applied in the context of building in Chicago in 1892.35 Burr’s building went up when buildings were racing to the skies. Chicago’s Masonic Temple (1890–2), built just fifteen years ahead of Burr’s building, was briefly the tallest building in the world at twenty-two storeys. The record holder in 1908–9 was New York’s Singer Building. Only seventy feet square, it rose to a height of 612 feet (forty-seven floors). Four years later, Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building (1910–13), stood almost thirty per cent taller. With fifty-seven floors at 792 feet, it was the tallest building in the world, and remained so until 1930.36 Because building regulations in London strictly controlled height, Burr’s building could not match these buildings in height, but it was advanced. Victoria House went up when technological breakthroughs and advances in material science made it possible to achieve height. And because of such advances, construction was on the verge of enormous change as new buildings could turn the old rules of architecture inside out. Rather than resting their weight on thick external walls of masonry, new buildings placed 124

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their weight on an internal framework – a ‘skeleton’ (or ‘birdcage’) – of steel columns and beams (as in Victoria House). The steel frame brought efficiency and economy to construction. Walls were still necessary for weather protection and ornamentation but were no longer structurally significant. Taking high-rise building for granted, as we do today, we should not underestimate the boldness of the race to the skies made by the first high-rise tower buildings in the early years of the past century. They were as revolutionary as were Gothic constructions that transformed architecture in the twelfth century.37 Burr’s building seemed a towering form, a ‘cloud-presser’ or ‘elevator building’ (as the new high-rise structures were known), when it soared high above the LCC’s empty Strand land. Its upward thrust was in marked contrast to the vacant space spread out beneath it. ‘The new ‘Cornstalk’ building that has arisen out of the Aldywch’ is how the building’s steel frame appeared when the famed draughtsman and drypoint artist Muirhead Bone drew it while under construction.38 Initially trained as an architect’s apprentice, Bone lived nearby and followed the building’s progress. He drew the three-legged ‘Scotsmen’ cranes used to erect its steel superstructure, which appears ‘conspicuously alone’ (just as The Age relayed English comments on it).39 Tall shafts of buildings, like Victoria House, appealed because they could be erected on a comparatively small area (a significant attraction where land costs were high). Additionally, with a suite of offices on each floor, occupants gained light and air. This was unlike larger, deeper buildings without light-wells, where rooms were huddled without access to windows, where the air was stagnant and the light deficient (like the ‘rabbit-warren habitation’ of the War Office that John Burns criticised).40 Burr’s receptivity to meeting demands for better ventilation and lighting and to using new materials and construction techniques matched Taverner’s disposition to advance with the times. Steel was in general use as an economical and practical type of construction (as Kiralfy demonstrated at Shepherd’s Bush), though it was yet to be widely applied in building permanent structures. It was mainly used in architecture for internal pillars in the way that cast iron was used to give support. Yet advances made in steel production ensured that cast iron construction ended. Beyond Britain, innovators like contemporaries Gustav Eiffel and William Le Baron Jenney explored building with steel and demonstrated its structural potential. Eiffel built the archetypal steel tower in 1887; and in Chicago between 1879 and 1884 Jenney used metal beams and columns instead of stone and brick to support a building’s upper levels.41 Steel was cheap between 1902 to 1908: 8s. per ton delivered, with up to 30s. per ton charged for erection in London.42 Low-priced steel encouraged its use in building construction. The steel frame system not only 125

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opened up floor space, bringing light into a building, but it also offered faster construction hence cheaper building cost. In addition, when San Francisco’s vast City Hall was destroyed following the disastrous 1906 earthquake, its after-shocks, and ensuing fires, the seven-year old building’s steel frame tower withstood the devastation that befell the city. It proved steel’s durability and fireresistance and steel frame construction developed quickly. In London, council building requirements lagged behind these developments; they could not keep pace with changes to building that steel introduced. Steel’s capability was being put to the test (in terms of how it could be used in architecture) when Taverner’s building went up. While the 1909 LCC (General Powers) Building Act allowed for buildings of skeleton-framed construction and of reinforced concrete, District Surveyors assessed the quality of metal applied to building using handbooks which recommended loads for office buildings: of 80 lb per square foot by steel makers Dorman Long & Co, and 70 to 80 lb per square foot in Appleby’s Handbook of Machinery, when the LCC required floors intended for office use to use loads of 100 lb per square foot. It became necessary for the LCC to obtain further powers to deal with metal-framed buildings and reinforced-concrete construction as building construction advanced rapidly in London. In turn, over time, building costs increased as the span and loads of steel members grew, needing heavier cranes; and as speedier construction was desired. It was not until 1915 that the first regulations for reinforced concrete were made by the LCC.43 Through Taverner, the State of Victoria led the Dominion and Colonial representatives in London, being the first of them to build a permanent office there. Victoria signalled to them (and to the LCC) what could be done. Unlike the short-lived structures in Kiralfy’s White City, the State of Victoria now possessed its own showcase for its products which it could advertise on its own terms on the Strand. The exhibition hall that it opened in the ground floor of its new building was a prototype for the Dominion and Colonial representatives in central London. Glass-fronted exhibit cases were built-in along its walls. Standing in the hall were display cases, glazed and framed in mahogany. They comprehensively displayed samples of the ‘many valuable commodities’ that Taverner wanted London to appreciate abounded in Victoria. These included specimens of birds, native game, edible fish, and a kangaroo and an emu.44 Though this display was not novel in its style of presentation, it brought into central London exhibits that ordinarily appeared in massed arrangements at exhibition centres like Earl’s Court or the Imperial Institute. Displays at exhibitions, like the Franco, were visible for a limited 126

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period only. In its new building, the State of Victoria displayed its wares on its own terms continually. Unsurprisingly, many press reports of the building’s opening expressed their hope that the London offices of the Commonwealth would arise alongside it. The Daily Telegraph carried a leader, two columns in length, devoted to the opening of Victoria House. It suggested that the Imperial ideal was at last finding expression in London architecture: ‘The Commonwealth, New Zealand and South Africa must follow with edifices expressive of the greatest factor in modern political life [the Empire], as the medieval cathedrals were of the life of their time.’45 The State of Queensland endorsed Taverner’s choice of site by moving onto the Strand into new offices to the west of Victoria House.46 Unable to obtain premises anywhere on Trafalgar Square or Cockspur Street, Queensland’s agentgeneral took a thirty-year lease on the middle of the Strand, nearby the Adelphi Theatre, nearly opposite the Hotel Cecil and Savoy Hotel. He rented what had been a restaurant with a ground floor space of polished Aberdeen granite columns. Few structural alterations were required to convert the building into a set of offices, for a rent that was rumoured to cost over £1500 a year. It would give Queensland a ground floor showroom in the Strand – which press reports said ‘probably bears a heavier traffic between 8 a.m. and midnight than any other street in the world, and much effective use can be made of that space.’47

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CHAPTER 12

‘Doomed to Disfigurement’ The Aldwych end of the Strand is, it would appear, doomed to disfigurement.1

‘The desire of my Government is to erect an impressive and attractive building,’ Captain Muirhead Collins told the London County Council (LCC).2 He explained that the Commonwealth was determined to call for competitive designs in Australia. Collins understood from the Council’s Valuer, Andrew Young, that scope existed for variation in design if the proposed Commonwealth building preserved harmony with the elevation of the Victorian Government’s building. From Melbourne, Atlee Hunt confirmed that the Commonwealth disliked the general design approved by the LCC and wanted the freedom to build to a design that it approved. Commonwealth designs would meet the Council’s general requirements as to height and harmony with neighbouring buildings, but the Commonwealth would object if absolute conformity with the forwarded design was essential.3 In late 1907 Collins fretted that negotiations with the LCC were not making headway. Little progress had been made. Sir William Lyne, Commonwealth Treasurer, threw the whole responsibility for the failure of the negotiations on what he called the Council’s ‘Shylock demands’.4 The greatest obstacle was that the LCC would not part with the freehold of the land. Lyne thought the LCC’s terms were excessive and broke off negotiating. As a result, the option obtained on the eastern horn went nowhere. Misunderstanding had developed. Lord Elcho, chairman of the Improvements committee of the Council, denied in The Westminster Gazette, the most influential Liberal leaning newspaper, that the Council promised Lyne the option of the Strand site for Commonwealth offices at 13s. a foot.5 It was only understood that the Council would not let the site until Lyne had conferred with his Government. Elcho announced that the Council was now negotiating with other parties over the land.

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Collins gained some measure of building in London by observing plans fixed for the LCC’s new County Hall for London. The building was envisaged to measure 750 feet long with an average width of 310 feet and an approximate height of 90 feet above its Thames-side raft foundation. Designs for this resulted from a competition over which there was much controversy. An open competition attracted ninety-nine designs, the work of one hundred and fifty-two architects. They were the crack designers of the time, some working independently, others in collaboration. At the start of September 1907, Edward Riley and Norman Shaw narrowed the field to twenty-three schemes and eventually shortlisted three London-based architects: the established firm of A. Marshall Mackenzie and Son; the short-lived partnership of Samuel Russell and (Sir) Edwin Cooper (c.1904–12); and a young, virtually unknown architect named Ralph Knott. These contenders had until the end of December that year to send in their designs, with Sir Aston Webb to join Shaw and Riley as the third assessor.6 The Mackenzies submitted two similar plans for a building flanked on either side by crescent wings which projected forward to the Embankment. One showed a lofty central tower (with a cost of over £837,000); the other was without the tower (which they considered was optional, and this plan offered a saving to the Council with a lower estimation of under £738,500).7 The LCC plans for its offices were widely criticized when they announced that the winning design was by Chelsea-born Ralph Knott. Aged twenty-nine, an assistant of Aston Webb for whom he worked for eight years, Knott sprang into fame. His design, prepared in three weeks, resembled work by Norman Shaw.8 The judges announced that it was a forcible and artistic suggestion which conveyed the purpose for which the building was to be erected. They also stressed that Knott’s design lacked costly and unnecessary features, that its estimated cost was fair, and that the building would probably be erected within the sum of £850,000. Economic conditions for property in London dipped in the wake of the 1907 market crash, requiring grand dreams to be curtailed. A condition of Knott’s win was that he would work under Riley’s supervision. It was no secret that Riley had hoped his department would design the building, for which he drew the first indicative perspective sketch himself.9 It featured a square centre with a dome resembling that of St Paul’s flanked by oblong sides with archways and pediments; a balustrade above carried large sculptural groups. Riley’s sketch indicated the capabilities of the riverside site (both in relation to its immediate surroundings and to Norman Shaw’s New Scotland Yard across the river).

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Before the competition the London County Council had faced mounting criticism for failing to invest central London with a civic hall of sufficient municipal splendour as could now be boasted by some of the twenty-nine townships that London was divided into by the 1894 London Building Act. At Lewisham, south of the Thames, stood the hall built for Deptford, with a population of not much more than 110,000 people. Deptford Town Hall (1903–5), though small and squeezed onto a tight site, was distinctive. Baroque features, statues of naval heroes, and a splendid central staircase with a fine ironwork rail brought grandeur to the town. Deptford’s Town Hall came from the architects who were behind the more extravagant municipal buildings erected in Cardiff for £200,000 (Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards, 1900–4). Towns across London, in keeping with towns across Britain, built vestry halls and town halls in the first decade of the twentieth century.10 Example came from Woolwich: its main hall sat 750 visitors (A. B. Thomas, 1903–6). Municipal buildings went up at Lambeth (Taylor & Jemmett, 1904–8). Chelsea’s vestry hall was extended (Leonard Stokes, 1904). Holborn (Warwick & Hall, 1906–8) provided another example (even if this was another building squeezed into a cramped site). Because Ralph Knott was an unknown architect (he still remains littleknown today), critics were uncertain whether London would receive what the city deserved. Knott’s selection appeared to be another Shaw and Riley compromise and fellow architects (perhaps slighted) warned that Knott should beware; his fee could be a poisoned chalice. The statement that the architect’s fee will be over £38,000 is duly repeated, as if the amount were paid straight away in cash, like a lottery prize. Before the money is all received the architect will have done some ten years arduous and responsible work, with considerable expenses. Ralph Knott will be fortunate, too, if he is not, like Wren, Barry, and Street, worried almost out of, existence by a cantankerous or meddlesome committee.11 An unusually large body of architects turned up at the Institute of Architects’ rooms to hear Riley speak on the architectural work of the LCC.12 Kingsway and Aldwych were the largest and most important reshapings of a central London zone undertaken since Regent Street was constructed in 1820. The improvement had not been handled by the LCC in a comprehensive architectural manner, which many in the restive audience regarded as the loss of a great architectural 130

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opportunity. Critics deplored the lack of harmonious proportions between different buildings. Lessees of the building sites resisted LCC intentions to impose uniform elevations on the new streets. The Council struggled to withstand the financial consequences of delayed development there. Many criticised the LCC for favouring the prospect of a quick commercial return over its responsibility to the true interests of the city and its public. Too little attention went to the needs of a growing city, with architecture sacrificed on the altar of economy. Reflecting these opinions, the Builder argued that nothing great architecturally would be achieved in London ‘until it is recognised that there are other things to be thought of than getting the quickest commercial return on a site.’13 It would later say that Architecture at the time was rendered stale by the ennui of prosperity rather than producing work that was artistically virile.14 Into 1916, the Builder described Kingsway as a street massed by a confused assemblage of buildings due to the apathy of the LCC.15 Many in the audience considered that the LCC was short-sighted. Had it demanded that tenants on the two new streets conform their frontages to a general design, as was initially intended, it would have taken a leap in the architectural improvement of London. ‘That such an opportunity should have been lost is in an architectural sense deplorable,’ lamented the Builder.16 Many of the assembled architects harked back to the exhibition of selected competitive designs for elevations for buildings to be erected at the southern end of the area.17 Here too, in 1900, Shaw advised upon the designs with Riley. One plan, by Leonard Stokes, a former President of the Architectural Association (1889) and a future President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1910–12), had found favour with architects who thought it presented a unique opportunity for raising the whole character of London street architecture. It met the conditions set by the Council that the material for the buildings erected on the north side of the Strand should be faced in Portland stone, in a style that was Palladian or classical, in keeping with the Italianate Somerset House. Yet this plan had been overlooked. So too was another, more recent proposal. The newly elected County Council rejected a scheme to further improve the Strand put forward by the Further Strand Improvement Committee, a group of concerned citizens headed by Pall Mall architect and activist Mark Judge.18 This committee argued that the eastern horn of the Aldwych Crescent needed correction. They wanted a deeper setback to the Council’s block, to further widen the Strand. They wanted to open up the view down the Strand, so when buildings were erected on the vacant ground it would be possible to look down the Strand beyond St 131

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Mary’s Church to the Law Courts. They offered the Council £50 to erect on the last block of the Strand frontage a hoarding twenty-feet high in order to demonstrate how buildings on the present frontage would mar what might be a handsome thoroughfare. Needless to say, the offer and their argument were rejected. The restive assembly aimed to be heard. With a newly elected Council they held hopes that the representative working authority of London might take note of their complaint. But there was no turning back from changes made. By now, the size of the Council had more than doubled; its total expenditure, of little more than £750,000 in 1889–90, was now £15 million. The LCC’s permanent staff had risen from just over one-hundred-and-sixty to close to two thousand employees, and it had thirty thousand tenants in its municipal dwellings.19 Riley knew there was disquiet among architects but disagreed with them. New building enactments meant that installing a brass-plate to a suite of rooms was no longer enough to be an architect. He concurred with Norman Shaw who described grand urban schemes as being by ‘tin-pot professors’.20 Many regulatory bodies were now part of any rising building. Architects had to be more than civic dreamers; increased regulation required that architects work in tandem with regulatory authorities. From Riley’s perspective, architects had to cultivate broad backs.21 At the Admiralty, Riley undertook complicated negotiations. In Malta he successfully negotiated the Admiralty’s interests, which were often at variance with those of the Maltese, on work that was part of ongoing construction which Britain undertook to ensure that Valetta’s harbour was ‘the ring which bound Malta to England’.22 Extending Valetta’s port and building larger docks followed the revolution that steam propulsion brought to the Mediterranean. Work at Malta included altering the shape and function of a site with megalithic ruins. Similarly, London was being transformed. At the LCC thirteen main Committees dealt with constructional works (each divided into thirty-five sub-committees).23 Riley’s responsibility for the LCC’s operations ranged in scope from the construction of generating stations, to three-roomed cottages, or even a structure of less importance. In the past decade, under his watch as the Council’s Superintending Architect, the LCC sanctioned about 143 miles of new streets and 81,870 new buildings were built. Riley was aware of the pressures under which architects were working and of the transition that architecture was undergoing. Being an architect was a gentlemanly profession. In the hierarchy of the building professions the architect occupied the apex. However, the nature of building itself was altering and consequently the mutual 132

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exchange of professional knowledge connected with the building process was atomizing into different sectors amongst the increasing specializations associated with erecting a building – engineers, surveyors, quantity surveyors, building contractors, besides architects. In a private letter, he wrote about the true reason behind architects’ disaffection. It had become an article of faith with a great many … that the architecture and work done by the employees of corporate bodies was a fair target for criticism and that the work done by private architects was superior to that of official architects. This claim I challenge absolutely. The reason for the discontent may perhaps be found in realising that the profession itself is overloaded by a substratum of incompetent members who cannot obtain employment, and the competition is therefore most acute and reaches that section of the profession which really is competent and able to do first class architectural work … there is no case and never has been for a persecution of a section of the Institute which has always done honour to its profession and who ought to be able to claim the same protection and the observance of the same professional etiquette which is the unwritten law of every such society and which never ought to have needed to be invoked by a Society calling itself ‘Royal’.24 He disagreed with the view that architects engaged in private practice should be preferred, as the Royal Institute of British Architects promoted. This body wanted no street improvements made by Central Authorities unless ‘considered by a committee of experts to be agreed and who are duly qualified in architecture’ [in other words, Institute members].25 Naturally Riley was at odds with them over this. He was proud of the achievements of the LCC’s architectural office, which needed no architectural watchdog. ‘Had architects forgotten how Aldwych was improved?’, Riley asked. Gone from the district were the noisome courts and evil-looking alleys which intersected the area, and the squalid poverty which reigned there for many years. ‘One can scarcely credit to-day that many such places existed but recently in the immediate vicinity of St Mary-le-Strand,’ he remarked.26 Interest on the debt incurred by the LCC for the Holborn to Strand Improvement had not been intended. With a slump in the property market, the

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LCC made it known that it was not averse to considering offers for the freehold interest of the Holborn to Strand land it held.27 Few buildings were as yet erected on the east side of Kingsway, with one exception being a block of offices by Edwin Lutyens with a façade of Portland stone as required by the Council.28 In October 1907, the illustrated newspaper weekly, the Graphic, noted (just as disgruntled architects grumbled), ‘The Aldwych end of the Strand is, it would appear, doomed to disfigurement.’

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PART FOUR

Anticipation (1910–1911)

CHAPTER 13

Pulling Together When should we learn to act, as well as think imperially?1

Divisions in Parliament in Australia, with consequent changes of government, stalled progress on London during 1908 and 1909. Dissension marked Australia’s third parliament (from December 1906 to February 1910) with all three parties disagreeing over issues and leadership. Prime Minister Deakin relied on Labor Party support. When this was withdrawn in November 1908, the Sixth Commonwealth Ministry, that of Ayrshire-born Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, and his Ministers from the Australian Labor Party, was sworn in on 13 November 1908. Complicated negotiations between the three non-Labor groups led by Deakin resulted in their ‘fusion’ when Parliament assembled in June 1909. The Labor government was defeated, and Deakin was again Prime Minister. Shortly after, on 6 August, the Minister for External Affairs, (Sir) Littleton Groom, introduced the High Commissioner Bill into the Commonwealth House of Representatives.2 Urging that the Office of High Commissioner could no longer be delayed, he moved for a second reading of the Bill. Advertising and publicity questions occupied an important part in the debate over the Bill and reflected the commercial and financial preoccupations of the Commonwealth. It was argued that any delay was Australia’s loss and Canada’s gain: ‘Australia must have its flappers in London.’3 Others contended that the position should not become an asylum for effete politicians.4 ‘The appointment of a High Commissioner in London with a well-equipped office will be necessary for, among other purposes, our financial interests, the supervision of immigration, and co-operation with the Inter-State Commission in fostering trade and commerce,’ Deakin stressed.5 (This Commission was yet to be established; it was set up in 1912. Its purpose was to regulate trade and commerce inside the Commonwealth, and to act as a fact-finding organization for the government on trade matters and fiscal questions, including tariff reform.) 137

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Anticipating that the Bill would pass both houses, Collins admitted to Groom, ‘I have had a difficult and trying time here [in London], and I don’t think the work that has been done is quite understood in Parliament.’6 Collins met the new Chairman of the Improvements Committee, Lord Thynne, appointed in March 1909, and the LCC’s valuer Andrew Young. Press reports of the Victorian Government’s offices and Burr’s drawing for a larger Commonwealth building (extending from Taverner’s Victoria House, as the Daily Telegraph illustrated back in 1907) led Young to gather that Australia’s government was again considering the question of building offices. Young saw opportunity when otherwise a lull had occurred in London’s building activity. As the Brief history of the London Master Builders Association noted, a great trade depression momentarily muted building activity.7 Young told Collins, ‘As you are no doubt aware, Builders just now are prepared to undertake contracts at very low prices, and I would add that I am sure my Committee would endeavour to meet your Government in order to have their offices on the surplus land of this important improvement.’8 Young suggested that the Improvements Committee would come to an agreement with the Commonwealth Government.9 However, if Young was disposed to meet the Commonwealth, the new Improvements Committee proved to be inflexible. Collins reported to Melbourne that the Committee refused an offer of 18s. per foot for 5,000 super feet of the eastern corner of the site.10 He found the LCC was stiff-backed; it refused to negotiate. By now, Burr believed that the Commonwealth should disregard the portion of the triangular site that Atlee Hunt had earmarked. Drawing up plans, he found it awkward to squeeze a building of the size and type that the Commonwealth specified it needed into that plot. Burr recommended that the Commonwealth should occupy a larger block on the eastern site for practical reasons. Collins relayed Burr’s opinion to Hunt. ‘I am informed by Mr Burr, the architect, [this option, of Site ‘C’] would prove a difficult site as regards light, and therefore, is not desirable.’11 The scale of the block that Burr recommended was larger than the Commonwealth thought it needed, giving them surplus space (and therefore likely to be costlier). As Collins put it, ‘If the Commonwealth were to consider the big site, having the whole of the frontage to the Strand and a 70 ft depth … we should have to take the risk as to whether there would be sufficient demand to enable us to let it for offices in the meantime [till the Commonwealth and States need it].’12

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Burr stressed the advantages that the wedge-shaped eastern point of the triangular site offered. Collins reported, ‘By this means, he says, we would have a most commanding site, and whilst we take the most expensive portion, we should, at the same time, be taking in a large portion of the cheaper land with frontage to Aldwych. He is in favour of a site having say 74 ft of frontage to the Strand and with sufficient frontage to give us the necessary area that we shall require.’13 Collins agreed with Burr. ‘There is certainly a great deal to be said in favour of this proposition. It is the best position in this island site but I do not think we should be able to acquire it at less average than 16s. [per square foot].’14 Collins could do little more without hearing from Melbourne. At this point Collins was still not clear about what the High Commissioner’s office would entail and require. ‘The difficulty of judging between the sites arises, as far as I am concerned, from want of information as to the views of the Commonwealth Government as to the area we should take up.’15 If a note of frustration can be detected from the usually circumspect Collins at this point it is justifiable following four years in London during most of which time he could only have felt he was dancing on a pin-head. When the High Commissioner Bill was debated in parliament even Labor members gave it their general approval and the Act was passed in September 1909. In December, the High Commissionership Act received Royal Assent, nine years after the advent of the Commonwealth and intense political contention and manoeuvring. Thereafter, the first Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom was appointed in January 1910.16 When Sir George Houstoun Reid was appointed to the posting for five years, his appointment finally ended the prolonged delay in selecting a ‘man of weight’ to represent Australia.17 A Federation Father, formerly a Member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (1880–1900) and Premier of that State (1894– 99), Reid had also been a Member of the House of Representatives (1901–8) and more recently Prime Minister of Australia (1904–5). ‘From to-day I throw behind me for ever all recollections of party strife or political difference,’ Reid reportedly stated. ‘It is really a very great trust.’18 There was no doubt that Reid was the best candidate to advance the interests of Australia and to ‘voice Australian feeling’. James Hogan praised Reid’s ability in 1896 when Reid led in the constitutional debates: ‘Sir George is a colonial giant, brusque in manner, energetic in action, fluent in speech, frank and outspoken on all occasions, and not unduly sensitive to considerations of cast-iron consistency.’19 The following year saw Reid in England where he represented New South Wales at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations 139

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and at the conference of colonial premiers. He first made an impression on London then, where he moved with ease to cement friendships (with liberals like Lord Rosebery); caught public and press attention; and received the distinction of a privy councillorship. A decade on, in late 1907, Prime Minister Deakin reported that rumours that Reid might be offered the High Commissionership were cheerfully received even among the Free-traders whom Reid represented in Australia.20 Deakin respected Reid’s abilities and political performance (although as a political opponent he deeply distrusted Reid whom he called a prince of opportunists).21 He admitted that in Federal politics Reid was the most fertile strategist, its best-equipped debater and its most effective platform speaker. In Reid he admired, An unwearied vigilance, a resolute vigour in debate, and an almost feline subtlety in Parliamentary tactics [that] were supplemented by the development of a platform power unequalled in New South Wales and unrivalled since in this country. His combination of clear argument and soaring eloquence with humorous digressions, felicitous though familiar illustrations, and a deadly directness of repartee was and remains his own.22 To Deakin, no-one matched Reid in knowledge and experience, in oratorical ability, flexibility of mind, or expertness in political tactics.23 Of the Commonwealth Premiers, Reid was ‘first among them … because of his long public life and the leading part he played.’24 Deakin called Reid the most influential politician in Australia before Federation. Born in Scotland, Reid was seven years old when he was taken to Australia, where he built his reputation as a liberal, a democrat and a pragmatist. In Australia, from 1889, he was the leading parliamentary defender of the principles of social and economic liberalism. Deakin’s offer to Reid stressed the sphere of influence that the new position held. Reid’s purpose ‘at the heart of empire [was to make] … the honourable ambitions of Australia and the ardent spirit of its people better understood.’ Reid was also to promote the strength and integrity of the Empire. ‘Our High Commissioner will be able to take an active personal part in the realisation of those constructive ideals shared by the vast majority of the people of the Commonwealth,’ said Deakin.25 Reid immediately embarked for London, where he arrived on the last day of February 1910. His distinguished political history preceded him and he attracted great interest. His oratorical skill was renowned; a brilliant debater, with a flashing wit which he used to devastating 140

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effect on interjectors, he was reputed to be perhaps the best platform speaker in the Empire. Collins invited the editors of the leading English newspapers to meet Reid at luncheon, so beginning for them, and for Reid, a mutually respectful association. He told reporters that at the age of 65 he was supremely happy to find himself ‘in the greatest of all cities, accredited to the greatest of all Empires, as the servant of one its greatest Dominions.’26 Reid was at once a staunch Imperialist and ardent Australian Nationalist. He said that he hoped he may be better known, not by definitions of the importance of his office, but by really useful service in fulfilling the great trust placed in him. ‘Australia wants you to know something about Australia – to realise the great work of nation-building that is going on there,’ he told the assembled newsmen. Australian cartoonists played on Reid’s monocle, gargantuan waistline (he reputedly weighed eighteen stone), and his penchant for power-naps, to portray him as indolent. If they coloured subsequent Australian readings of Reid (with the result that he has perhaps been less well-regarded historically than he deserves), his English contemporaries thought otherwise.27 If lampooned by Australian cartoonists, Reid was highly respected in London. His focus and wit were hard to fault (he thanked napping for his mental alertness). In the House of Lords, Lord Rosebery welcomed Reid as ‘a man of infinite ability, popularity, geniality – no better choice could possibly have been made [as Australia’s High Commissioner].’28 It was commonly held that while the Commonwealth stalled for nearly ten years over the appointment of its High Commissioner, the delay proved advantageous when Reid was finally chosen. As the Royal Colonial Institute reported, ‘In sending her best Australia has begun well, and the loss of time has been fully justified.’29 The Institute welcomed Reid as a distinguished kinsman at a banquet it gave in his honour in the Whitehall Rooms of the Hotel Metropole. Presiding over the dinner, Lord Crewe acknowledged Reid’s significance, when speaking about the representatives of the Dominions in London. The assemblage included a number of other members of the Cabinet, former Australian Governors, Navy and Army officers, and a host of distinguished individuals who strove for closer Imperial union. As Reid put it, he saw before him ‘many faces associated with the active history of the British Empire.’30 Lord Crewe chose the occasion to announce the division of the Colonial Office into two separate bodies, one for the Overseas Dominions and the other for the Crown Colonies and Protectorates. The change did not give the self-governing 141

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dominions the independence in their foreign affairs that Deakin wanted. One Secretary of State remained responsible for both offices (till 1930). Speaking about the representatives of the Dominions in London, Lord Crewe said that he did not like them compared to Ambassadors, a name which necessarily contained something distant and alien. He preferred to look on them as Imperial statesmen who were in London ‘partly to look after the interest of that part of the Empire which they represented, but also as Imperial statesmen who were able to give us the benefit of their opinion on many subjects with a freedom from the necessary, but sometimes inconvenient, tentacle of party from which those on this side of the water [can] not always escape.’31 To all present on that night, it was clear that Reid faced a big task. Least of which, as the first High Commissioner for Australia, he occupied a novel role that needed to be defined. He held a difficult position because he would be establishing precedents and customs. He knew that it was essential to invest the position with dignity and importance, a task that called for great tact, communication skill and strategic ability. While Britain’s imperial government controlled foreign policy, the Colonial Office held that it was responsible for conducting Anglo-Dominion relations. Australia wanted the High Commissioner to be the main, if not the sole, channel of communication with the British Government which insisted that the GovernorGeneral be the channel of communication between London and Melbourne, thereby limiting the extent to which Reid was either able or permitted to advance Australia’s views. Then there was the question of Australia’s States. They wanted to maintain their separate immigration and financial borrowing programs in London. The Commonwealth intended that the activities of the Australian States in Britain be more efficiently coordinated (in keeping with Canada’s provincial representatives in London, who were kept in check by their High Commissioner). Reid’s political stance in Australia – differences with Deakin, and his hostility to Labor as the leader of the Free Trade conservatives – lent further complication to his position. His political history begged the question: would Reid vent opinions contrary to Australian federal administrations; and would they deal with him in full confidence? If he were to achieve anything in his relations with the British Government, he would, like any ambassador, have to have the full confidence of his own – Australia’s – Government in matters under discussion. Reid made clear that his role was ambassadorial, non-partisan, and in the service of the Commonwealth, and it called for perfect loyalty to the government of the day.32 142

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Reid understood perfectly the delicate status of his position. He saw that it was essentially diplomatic in its duties if not in its substance. He exerted influence in London to Australia’s advantage, despite the limitations of his position, by moving in socially high circles. He met statesmen, high and titled personages and even members of the Royal Family on intimate terms. The future King George V already knew Reid from conversations they had held together in Australia when the then Duke of York diarized Reid’s thoughts as interesting.33 Reid made public speeches on important occasions with Cabinet members present. He held interviews with members of the Government from the Prime Minister down. He kept in touch with the Colonial Secretary (Lewis Harcourt followed Lord Crewe as Colonial Secretary in November 1910; he held the post until May 1915, beyond the average term of two years in office for a Secretary of State at the Colonial Office).34 Reid quickly became attuned to the social complexity of London and of continental requirements in order to discuss questions of major import to Australia and urge an Australian viewpoint on the British Government. This advantage was not always appreciated in Australia where press commentators with poor understanding of Imperial protocols and diplomatic requirements were too quick to ridicule Reid for basking in the high life that London offered. The question of whether problems would come from inexperienced political masters back in Australia without involvement on the ground in London was unspoken. Some sense of this potential obstacle comes from the skilled diplomat Paul Cambon, French Ambassador to London (1898–1920). Cambon recorded how unnerved he was on his first meeting with the French Prime Minister Maurice Rouvier (1905–6). An experienced statesman, Prime Minister in 1887, and Minister of Finance (from 1902), Rouvier assumed the portfolio of Foreign Affairs when Théophile Delcassé resigned in June 1905. Cambon observed, M. Rouvier is very intelligent and has some of the attributes of a statesman ... but he does not grasp the importance of the portfolio of foreign affairs. He imagines that diplomacy is limited to some conversations and to the drafting of dispatches which can be entrusted to the secretaries. In forty-eight hours he has seen that the work of the chief of foreign relations is infinitely harder than that of a minister of finances because it is more personal. It is necessary to read everything, to write a great deal yourself, to know everything yourself. In a word, it occupies a man day and night, 143

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and when one has not lived in this atmosphere, one is overwhelmed by so many questions that he is breathless.35 Reid, without equal as a public speaker, with a positive genius for apt and nerve-shattering repartee and disconcerting quip and gibe, yet who was courteous and genuinely kind-hearted, conquered London.36 Reid employed the two great instruments of government – which his political hero, William Gladstone, respected – namely, publicity and persuasion. For Reid, ‘Publicity – publicity – publicity is the beginning and the end of Australia’s needs in every part of the world.’37 It was his view that Australia was largely to blame for the astounding ignorance which he found prevailed, nearly everywhere, concerning the Australian continent. Australia had neglected to make herself better known. ‘She has often forgotten that, so far from being the centre of things, she is one of the uttermost fringes. Distance has done for her what it does for the heavenly bodies, when it makes majestic suns in the upper skies appear more trembling spots of light to us.’38 He echoed Deakin’s earlier thoughts on the opportunity arising from Commonwealth representation in London. ‘In the past Australia had no voice because she was divided into six parts, each intent upon its own affairs, and fighting for its own interest. The establishment of a Federal Australia, with the right to speak for the whole of the Australian people, has given a chance of securing publicity for our resources which we never had before.’39 His instructions from the Federal Government were to mount a publicity campaign that advertised Australia, and they could not have chosen a better spokesman for this task.40 Intent on overturning misconceptions about Australia, Reid immediately swung into action to sell Australia. Australia, he said, had upset preconceived theories. Wells sunk in arid deserts showed abundant water; the world’s richest mines had been found in places where experts declared that it was impossible for minerals to exist.41 He encouraged future investment in Australia and he highlighted the value of British investment in Australia. ‘In fact, there is unlimited scope in Australia for the investment of British capital with an absolute certainty of a good return so far as public enterprises are concerned. As for private enterprises, there is an element of risk in every country in the world but in Australia that element resides chiefly in lack of information or judgement.’42 He noted that the Commonwealth’s loan expenditure was almost entirely devoted to the creation and maintenance of public works destined to increase further the productiveness and prosperity of Australia’s resources.43 He visualised future commercial enterprise there. He appealed to common ties: ‘The 144

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Commonwealth already had a trade of £200 million a year … Why should the people of this country [Britain] be cribbed, cabined, and confined in narrow places. When should we learn to act, as well as think imperially?’44 Believing that times called for Britain and Australia to work as one unit, he stressed that Australia was the Empire’s only continent.45 Reid reported to Groom that in London ‘Everything is on a very large and expensive scale.’ He pointed to the lead taken by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Railway Companies and Shipping Lines who spent large sums advertising for their own interests. He remarked on the ‘enormous sums’ that they were spending to advertise: ‘They have worked up an enormous broom’46 To be noticed, Australia would have to work the Press, get its stories out in the London and provincial papers, and exhibit widely. ‘I can see already that we must be very ready to take part in all shows or exhibitions that are at all practicable not only because of their merits in themselves and the attendance likely to frequent them, but also because of the immeasurable press that we will get out of them. That must always be one of the chief things to take into account.’47 That June, Reid drove the first two rivets in the keel of the battlecruiser being built for the Commonwealth at Clydebank. An Indefatigable-class battlecruiser, effectively a Dreadnought-light, it signified a Commonwealth change of policy, to share in the burden of the naval defence of the Empire with the beginnings of a sister Navy.48 That suited the Australians, who hankered after the latest technology, and the Dreadnought class of ship (when first launched in 1906) was the most powerfully armed afloat. It revolutionised battleship specifications rendering every other capital ship in the world obsolete.49 As a statesman Reid held his own. In 1910, Reid saw scope for defining a role no matter how uncertain. As Deakin recognized, Reid was astute and saw prospects of rendering great service to an emerging Australia as yet scarcely recognized as such in Britain. Shortly after his arrival, Reid was elected Vice-President of the Imperial Arts League, with Lord Strathcona and those who presided over the League’s respective societies – among them Sir Isidore Spielmann, the Honorary Director for Art for the Board of Trade.50 The League was set up in 1909 to ‘protect and promote the interests of Artists’ and to inform, advise and assist its member Artists, ‘in matters of business connected with the practice of the Arts.’ It was to advance the interests of those involved in the production, possession or preservation of works of art. Reid was respected for the leadership that he took in Australia with educational reform, and the interest that he held in promoting skill-development. As Premier of New South Wales he advocated industrial training, and the 145

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application of ‘scientific’ (that is up-to date, therefore modern) principles to industry.51 His interest in fostering education earned Reid the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, one of the oldest of London’s Livery Companies (first incorporated in 1447) and perhaps the best known.52 He was made an Honorary Member in mid-June 1910. The Company’s interests and Reid’s interests in education were aligned. As part of reform that Reid was responsible for in New South Wales, he streamlined free, compulsory and secular education, established the first high schools there and the beginning of a system of technical education which became a model for Australia’s other colonies. In October 1883 he introduced the bill which inaugurated degree courses for evening students at the University of Sydney. In 1886 the Carpenters Company opened a school at Stratford offering evening classes in carpentry. This developed to become a day technical school – the only one of its kind in Essex at that time.53 In 1893, enhanced property values and railway compensation which followed economic growth in the Victorian era bolstered the Carpenters Company, to enable it to develop its interest in education particularly in technical education. This interest reflected growing concern about Britain’s economic position when confronted by increasing foreign competition. Opinion held that foreign manufacturers, and the Germans especially, were gaining economic advantages because of their superior facilities in technical education. In 1893 the Carpenters developed the training of craftsmen at their Trades Training School in Great Titchfield Street, Fitzrovia (now the Building Crafts Training School). To a man like Reid, progress and breath were one. He knew the great development that took place across the Australian States in the first years of the twentieth century. None more so than in New South Wales, in which Reid took pride. Photographs of that State’s architectural and industrial landscape towards the close of the nineteenth century were collected in a handsome leather-bound volume that Reid presented to the Lord Mayor of London as a souvenir of the visit of the Colonial Premiers to Great Britain to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.54 The photographs showed what Sydney made of its first century: they illustrated the scale of Sydney’s buildings, their decoration and their grace – such as were seen at the Government Printing Office, the Australian Joint Stock Bank, and the Italianate colonnade of Sydney’s Central Post Office (which cost £303,000 when it was built around 1890).55 Architectural excellence embodied the civilized advance achieved since Sydney’s militarized start as a penal outpost. 146

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It marked Sydney’s vitality, with its turn-of-the-century prosperity partly due to the free-trade approach adopted by Reid.56 With Reid established as High Commissioner, the building of a High Commission required action. Growing Commonwealth activity meant that Reid and Collins urgently needed more convenient and suitable premises than the absurdly small quarters of the current Commonwealth Office in London.57 Collins now leased four suites of offices, with leases terminating at different times, two terminable at short notice. On first arriving at the Victoria Street offices Reid considered that ‘One glance was enough to tell me how utterly impossible they are.’58 Reid’s first annual report highlighted the fact that Collins strongly recommended building Australia’s own offices on the Strand.59 If this scheme was approved there would be a delay before these would be built. Delay over a building concerned Reid. Although buildings which had been offered to Collins included the Gaiety Theatre and its hotel and restaurant site on the north side of the Strand, its conversion costs proved uneconomic. This offer was discounted like that on other buildings which Collins also considered.60 Reid thus advised Groom that Australia should build freehold. ‘The values of freehold are going up strongly and will continue to do so barring tremendous convulsions which are less likely here than in any other country in the world.’61 Steep increases in London land values and jumps in rent reported in Australia backed Reid’s view.62 Then, on 6 May 1910, Edward VII passed away. At the King’s funeral, Reid led Queen Alexandra’s carriage with Lord Strathcona; their Imperial rank placed them ahead of progressive American statesman Theodore Roosevelt. Two days later the three of them spent an hour with the Queen.63 Early the following year, the yet-to-be-crowned King George V opened the first Parliament elected in his reign. By his command, Reid was present in the House of Lords with Strathcona and the other two High Commissioners for his Majesty’s self-governing Dominions. Reid sat between Sir Richard Solomon, representing the Union of South Africa and Sir W. Hall-Jones, representing New Zealand. For the first time they directly represented the Empire at the opening of the Imperial Parliament. However, the Commonwealth was yet to sit at the table mastering its own affairs on an equal footing within an Imperial setting, as Deakin, and now Prime Minister Fisher, desired. As Collins did before him, Reid waited for the arrival of his Prime Minister. Another Colonial Conference was approaching, the first Imperial Conference in May 1911 (to coincide with the Coronation of George V). 147

CHAPTER 14

Old and New Orders We lived in troublous times. All things were in a state of flux. The old order had crumbled.1 London minds fixed on city beautification in October 1910 with the Royal Institute of British Architects hosting the first international conference on Town Planning. To it came some 1,400 delegates, thought to be the single largest gathering devoted to town planning ever assembled. Transactions for the conference remarked that increasing interest in the role of cities and their architecture drew together ‘some of the very biggest names within the world-wide town-planning movement … To look at the list of those that attended is to realize just how broad and how deep an interest in town planning had become.’2 Big for London, the conference ran nearly simultaneously with another Town-Planning Conference, Berlin’s Allegmeine Stadtebau-Austellung (General Urban-Planning Exhibition). At both conferences, architects and policy makers searched for ways to envisage and shape the cities of the future and compared possible plans of action. Moving forces behind the conference in London were H. V. (John) Lanchester (who was responsible for Deptford Town Hall and the Hall and Law Courts at Cardiff) with principal organizers (Sir) Raymond Unwin and John W. Simpson. Unwin worked on the novel Letchworth Garden City (built from 1903) and Hampstead Garden Suburb (from 1906) and wrote the widely-read book, Town Planning in Practice (1909); Simpson was a committed internationalist, and future founder of the Franco-British Union of Architects (established in 1921).3 Sir George Reid (who inspected Letchworth with Unwin) was among the patrons of London’s conference and its honorary Vice Presidents.4 The Conference was organized to study questions regarding city improvements with particular focus given to artistic as well as construction aspects of regenerating cities. The conference was held on the heels of the Housing and Town Planning Act (1909) which codified the new building requirements necessary as steel and concrete became more widely utilized. Edward Riley spoke on city development 148

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and on the Aldwych. Architect John Sulman, London-based until he migrated to Sydney for the sake of his consumptive wife, and not long retired from over twenty years of private architectural practice in Sydney, spoke on plans for the Australian Federal Capital.5 A long-time advocate of town planning, Sulman would soon become the long serving president of the Town Planning Association of New South Wales (1913–25). From the large French delegation, Eugène Hénard’s creative approaches to integrating traffic architecture and road planning with new and old buildings commanded attention. The Royal Academy exhibited drawings, models and plans of town planning schemes in various countries. Signifying how important the conference and its architectural focus was thought to be, this was the first time that an organization other than the Academy was allowed to use the exhibition galleries of Burlington House.6 The exhibition, staged in the Academy’s ten galleries, presented a remarkable summary of current building activity world-wide and illustrated work that was recently proposed, under way or completed. Among the displays were aspects of the McMillan Plan designed for the American capital of Washington and details of the new Law Courts about to be built in Kingston, Jamaica, following the earthquake which destroyed the town in January 1907. Many projects undertaken across Germany which were featured were felt to be the most important exhibits, with several galleries devoted to developments in districts across Berlin, besides others showing models, plans and sketches for schemes developed elsewhere in Germany. From Australia came plans for the City of Adelaide, for Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, and those illustrating the results of the Royal Commission for the improvement of Sydney and its suburbs (1909), at which John Sulman gave evidence.7 Also displayed was work by architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham (whose architectural firm D. H. Burnham and Co was the largest in Chicago). Among designs for London there appeared Norman Shaw’s proposed alterations to Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street, drawn for H. M. Office of Woods and Forests; detail of the central portion of the National Memorial to Queen Victoria, being erected in front of Buckingham Palace; drawings by Sir Aston Webb illustrating the connection of the Mall with Charing Cross and perspective drawings by Leonard Stokes, President of the Royal Institute of Architects, of the Strand island site, showing how the approach from Webb’s new Processional Road to the Strand might be made more effective.8 The exhibition at the Royal Academy gave a comprehensive picture of contemporary planning and architectural work in train worldwide, from Pretoria 149

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to Chicago to Sydney. Little wonder that, by common consent, the exhibition was found be the finest of its kind ever brought together; public interest alone ensured that it was extended.9 The changing face of London was remarked on by visitors and Londoners alike. In 1909–1910, Melbourne architect John Little, honorary secretary of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, found that London’s public improvements were transforming the city. To him, owing to the many new Government buildings in central London (like the War Office, Whitehall (completed in 1906) together with municipal and public buildings recently erected in other boroughs, London was greatly altered. Although it was disconcerting to some Londoners, for whom these changes meant the loss of well-known landmarks, others thought differently. ‘England takes pride in her past. We look to our future,’ wrote J. H. M. Abbott, freelance author scouting on Fleet Street.10 He noted his fellow Australians’ liking for the New, ‘For, remember this. We are new. Everything to us lies in the future.’11 At the other end of the globe, King O’Malley, Minister for Home Affairs, drove a survey peg into cleared bushland. The start of the federal capital was part of the building program embarked on by the newly elected Fisher administration. Cameras photographed Prime Minister Andrew Fisher and his ministers. With him and O’Malley were William Morris Hughes (Attorney General), E. Lee Batchelor (External Affairs) and George F. Pearce (Defence). Fisher gained a decisive victory for Labor at the Australian general election held in mid-April 1910. For the first time a single party gained a majority of seats in the Commonwealth Parliament. With this mandate, Fisher’s government could finally progress earlier and as-yet-unrealized plans made to develop the country. As Prime Minister and Treasurer, Fisher reorganized the Government. He formally created a Prime Minister’s Department. The Commonwealth Bank was established, owned entirely by the Commonwealth government, to carry on general and savings bank business. Significant Acts which were passed included those to establish the administrative organization for a separate Australian Navy; to build and operate the ‘all-red’ cable system to Britain via the Pacific and Canada; to take charge of, build and maintain coastal lighthouses; and to construct the longed-for transcontinental railway links. Seven months later Fisher, with a number of his ministers arrived in London for the Imperial Conference held in May 1911 to coincide with the Coronation of George V in June. Notable among younger Heads of Government with Fisher were Louis Botha, Premier of the Union of South Africa; Sir Joseph Ward, Premier

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of New Zealand; and Richard McBride, Premier of British Columbia. In England, Fisher aroused general public curiosity: a workingman who had followed his father into the mines when a boy in Scotland, he now headed one of the most advanced democracies in the world. His achievement pleased some, but disturbed others for whom it reflected what they regarded as the topsy-turvydom of the time. Among the twenty-six federal parliamentarians in London to attend the Coronation with Fisher were George Pearce and Lee Batchelor. Batchelor’s unassuming manner belied his considerable cabinet experience. An antidoctrinaire and popular Adelaide-born politician, he led the parliamentary Labor Party in South Australia (1897–9) before entering the first federal parliament. At the time, detailed information arrived in London, Paris, Berlin and other capitals around the world of the international competition announced that April by Australia’s Department of Home Affairs under King O’Malley’s direction for the design of the Australian Federal Capital. Contestants were to ‘embody in their designs all recent developments in the science of town planning’ and were referred to London’s recently-held international planning conference.12 On May 16, the day after he arrived, Fisher attended a regal event – the unveiling of the Imperial Memorial to Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace. The monument was erected by public subscriptions contributed from all parts of the British Empire, and executed by sculptor Thomas Brock. Standing together before it to honour their grandmother were Queen Victoria’s eldest grandchild Kaiser Wilhelm II alongside his cousin King George V. Emperor Wilhelm had inspected the colossal sculpture group in Brock’s temporary studio at Shepherds Bush when he came to London for the funeral of his uncle Edward VII. He had climbed up Brock’s scaffolding, to the first staging some twenty-five feet up, to give his opinion on the statue of the Queen. He approved of Brock’s portrayal of Queen Victoria. Enthroned with Orb and Sceptre and flanked by figures representing Motherhood, Justice and Truth, Brock celebrated the beneficent influence of the personal qualities of the ‘Mother of her People’.13 Thick crowds of many thousands stretched across Green Park and Constitution Hill to catch sight of the memorial that lay hidden under wraps. Present with the Emperor and the King were four thousand guests, a brilliant assembly of Royalty, Foreign Ministers, Cabinet Ministers, the Speaker and Members of the Houses of Parliament, and permanent officials of the various departments of State. Uniforms and decorations made a vivid display. (Who could know at the time that this was the last occasion when continental royalties and German princelings and their suites would throng London?) The King pushed 151

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a button: the white hanging concealing the statue fell away to reveal Brock’s colossal figure group. Brock was immediately knighted before the distinguished company grouped upon the dais. He was the undisputed leading British sculptor of his day (and first President of the Society of British Sculptors, now the Royal British Society of Sculptors). A little later, the King personally handed Brock the insignia of a Knight Commander of the Bath – the first time such an honour had been bestowed upon a sculptor.14 Brock’s memorial was among the many aspects that greatly altered London and which attracted the attention of John Little and other visitors. Grandiose in conception, it was part of Sir Aston Webb’s ambitious plan to upgrade the Mall. The Imperial iconography around the Queen Victoria Memorial, surrounded by its rond-point of piers and Dominion gates, including the Australia Gate, was part of Webb’s Beaux-Arts re-planning of the Mall. To complement this Webb added Admiralty Arch in 1912 at the opposite eastern end of the Mall, together with Brock’s sculptural figures of Navigation and Gunnery. The sooty blackness of Buckingham Palace that Brock’s white marble memorial emphasised required attention. In just three months in 1913, Webb re-cased its dirty façade in Louis XVI style in gleaming Portland stone to harmonise with the Victoria Memorial.15 When completed, the Queen Victoria Memorial and Webb’s remodelling of the Mall were acclaimed as one of the finest examples of grand axial planning in Europe. Symbols of British self-esteem, they were read as ‘the high-water mark’ of London’s self-confidence and metropolitan aspiration. Webb’s regenerated space gave London a new ceremonial focus. It linked Crown to Town, expanded the Imperial space between the Palace, Westminster and Trafalgar Square, and gave London its Royal Road. Moreover, sculpture was seen as an important component of architecture and city space. The pageantry displayed at the ceremony to unveil the Memorial was of the Old Order. From a time of monarchs and dynastic alliances, protocol and courtiers, formality and tradition, precedent and closed diplomacy. A spectacle of a quite different kind thrilled Collins with Lee Batchelor and George Pearce. Together, they watched the racing spectacles at Brooklands Motor Racing Track at Weybridge, Surrey. Only completed in 1907, the world’s first motor testing and racing track was a roughly pear-shaped circuit of smooth concrete 2.75 miles-long (4.4 km) and 100 feet (30 m) wide. It displayed the unequalled potential of reinforced concrete: its saucer rim, nearly thirty feet high (9 m) at its highest bank, spanned the river Wey.16 Motoring enthusiasts took to it, touching 152

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85 mph on the opening day parade, showing the potential for considerable speed. Before then, those who desired to race had to go to the Continent because England forbade speed above twelve miles an hour.17 Brooklands Motor Course immediately became the cradle and nursery for speed. A research and testing ground for the British Motor Industry, it attracted manufacturers like RollsRoyce, Daimler, Napier and Humber to develop vehicles and components. Brooklands also boasted unique aeroplane sheds, which made it the Mecca of the air-minded. Britain’s earliest flights began there in 1907 and 1908 despite the track authorities being incredulous of flying (like everybody else). The very sight of an aeroplane off the ground was such a novelty that people came miles to see it. Brooklands became the main experimental flying ground for what grew into the British aircraft industry. Batchelor, Collins and Pearce watched demonstration flights. ‘Sometimes as many as five machines were flying round the course at the same time,’ Collins observed.18 These aeronautic thrills were hot on the heels of the success of the Wright Brothers, first in America in 1903 (where their initial powered flight lasted for a few seconds) and their achievements in France in 1907. Within less than five years after their first tentative flights came sustained journeys over distances of fifty miles or more. Interest in the potential of flight saw Collins at a reception for aviation pioneer Claude Grahame-White (1879–1959) given by the Aerial League of the British Empire at London’s Waldorf Hotel. Inspired by Louis Blériot’s crossing of the English Channel in 1909, Grahame-White became one of England’s first pilots, the holder of Royal Aero Club certificate No. 6, awarded in April 1910. Constantly in the news, he competed that year for the £10,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper for the first flight between London and Manchester in under twenty-four hours. Later that year, Grahame-White was applauded for flying his Farman biplane over Washington, D.C. and landing on Executive Avenue near the White House.19 When he carried two passengers for seven or eight miles at Brooklands in his Farman, he showed that flying was more than merely a sport. Speed and distance took on new meaning. Collins and Pearce held a functional view of technology. At Brooklands, they knew they were looking on the future. Alone of the overseas Dominion Ministers at the Imperial Conference, Pearce executed the decision of the Conference to give weight to the importance of aviation in defence.20 Climbing three flights of stairs to the Australian High Commissioner’s Office, Prime Minister Fisher appreciated how inadequate were the cramped quarters from which Reid and Collins dealt with much more than orders for 153

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military and other stores. Besides handling business related to the construction of the growing Australian Navy and Post Office apparatus for the offices being built around Australia, a freshly appointed Marketing Expert coordinated activity in connection with Australian produce in Britain, and a new Intelligence Branch supplemented the office’s advertising activity.21 Meat and butter imports to Germany, France and other European countries demanded attention. Commercial relations in a variety of directions were quickening due to greater facilities for communication (electrical and otherwise) and more rapid means of travel bringing nations closer together.22 Well-established equipment like the telephone, the typewriter, the duplicating machine, and the increasing use of short-hand (especially Pitman’s) sped up business routine. Cables and telegrams constantly came in. Correspondence had doubled, added to by growing Commonwealth activity and related business. The Office issued a weekly newsletter to the Press. Collins received a hundred calls a day in response to notices about immigration. Flurries of telegrams, memos, telephone conversations, and press releases inundated the office where additional staff were squeezed into the confined space. All the while that Collins and Reid kept channels open to the London County Council, ideas about the form and function of the proposed Commonwealth building in London were evolving in Australia. With this in mind, Australian Parliamentarians in London for the coronation inspected the Strand site, as did Fisher and his ministers (they also examined other sites offered to them).23 The eastern end of the Strand corner (with Victoria House located there) now held a history for the Australians. Visiting parliamentarians who inspected the site expressed their view that a large exhibition hall should be the chief feature of the proposed Australian building in order to permanently display Australia’s mineral, agricultural and manufacturing products. Batchelor feared that the LCC might ask too high a price for the site and hoped that other locations offered alternatives. He considered the recently closed Gaiety Theatre hotel and restaurant fronting the Strand.24 Once part of the large theatre complex, this building lay idle for some time. It was in poor condition and conversion costs were prohibitive. Some time later Italian inventor Gugliemo Marconi, Master of the Wireless World, made it the headquarters for his enterprises and renamed it the Marconi Building. From there, he engaged in the commercial development of wireless telegraphy and radio and promoted the wireless world.25 This use for the building was symptomatic of the shift made from the old world of frockcoated, top-hatted dandies who frequented the building’s hotel and restaurant in its Gaiety Theatre days to the faster mercantile age. 154

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Looking east on approaching the Strand, Fisher and Batchelor saw the land cleared of buildings by the LCC. Ahead stood St Clement Danes Church, rebuilt by Christopher Wren (in 1681), with its nave and apse featuring Wren’s original plasterwork. The steeple of St Bride’s, Fleet Street and the outline of St Paul’s shimmered in the distance. Batchelor envisaged a building to occupy the whole of the eastern horn of the site, such as Burr’s elevation scheme from 1907 implied.26 The LCC approved of Burr’s proposal (that Batchelor took up). He met Lord Thynne and reopened negotiations with the LCC.27 Time was at a premium as Batchelor and Pearce were about to return to Australia. Batchelor spoke to Thynne alone and left London believing that Thynne clearly appreciated the Commonwealth’s interest. Batchelor relayed to Collins that he would iron out detail over the proposed building while journeying back to Australia. An understanding with Thynne would allow Fisher time to prepare the Public Works Estimates that would include the figures for building in London to be put to the Commonwealth Parliament by October that year. Collins accordingly asked Andrew Young for the LCC’s terms if his Government were to take the whole of the remaining land on the LCC’s easternmost triangle.28 Two schemes were considered. The cheaper option cost a total of about £368,000 without giving Australia the whole block. The bolder option would cost £587,000 for the freehold of the entire triangle site. In this costlier scheme, Australia would take the whole of the eastern island horn of the Council’s extensive Aldwych-Strand site. Fisher’s Government favoured the larger scheme.29 Burr re-composed specifications and re-drew plans for the preferred scheme.30 These arrived in Melbourne in September with Burr’s report on the proposal. Collins noted that where once they were looking to acquire a plot measuring 13,612 super feet, now they were looking at the entire block of 24,326 ft.31 As planned, the Commonwealth would take the first two floors of the proposed building. The ground floor, to feature an exhibit room, was expanded from 4,945 to 12,325 super feet. Working from Burr’s plans and estimates, the realtors Hamptons drew up a rental valuation. It confirmed rental values, estimated rates and taxes, and indicated that portions not occupied by the Commonwealth would readily find tenants.32 However, Hamptons warned that it may take up to two years after completion before the building would be occupied and thought it practicable to fill the building entirely with firms associated with Australia. Their suggestion that the building’s rents might not yield an immediate return on the Commonwealth’s investment was understandable for by 1911 there 155

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was an oversupply of office space in central London. Statistics on the state of the property market at the time only exist for the City of London yet it is possible to extrapolate from them details of what conditions in central London were like. Overall, it is estimated that the cumulative impact of successive waves of Victorian and Edwardian building between 1855 and 1905 was the demolition and reconstruction of as much as eighty per cent of the building stock in the City – increasing its floor space area by at least fifty per cent. Office uses accounted for perhaps thirty per cent of all buildings in the City property market.33 Allowing for the need to upgrade earlier nineteenth-century unserviceable building stock to accommodate the swelling clerical population that daily flooded into the City, it is most likely that Hamptons had good reason to anticipate a slow uptake on rental even in a new, prestigious building such as Australia planned. Burr’s notes to Collins shed interesting light on the changes made to plans for the building as they were developed in 1911, which became foundational to the building’s final form. The building would be of triangular shape in keeping with the trapezoidal shape of the block. An exhibition hall, covered with a glass roof, would feature in the centre. A central open court was intended, in keeping with the first brief from Melbourne that the building should have plenty of air and light (a very Australian preference), features which would make the building an attractive rental proposition.34 In planning, the States would have offices on various floors with New South Wales and Queensland possibly each taking the best part of one of the upper floors. When assembling detail for the Public Works Estimates to be put to the Commonwealth Parliament later that year, news came of the sudden death, on October 8, of Lee Batchelor, at the age of 46. He was Fisher’s Minister for External Affairs for less than two years. Josiah Thomas, who was Postmaster General, became Commonwealth Minister for External Affairs (to June 1913).35 Cornish-born Thomas, a former miner and union leader and ardent free-trader, hailed from the celebrated Cambourne family of West Cornwall which was noted over several generations for its outstanding contribution to mining, education and public life. Being part of the worldwide story of Cornish mining, Thomas held a global outlook. His father was a power of Cornish mining with connections to relatives in Mexico and the United States, let alone possessing a typical Cornish Methodist commitment to ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’.36 Thomas naturally took an interest in establishing London’s building.37 Fisher presented the Public Works Estimates to the Parliament in November. He announced, ‘It had now been resolved to take this site [belonging to the 156

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London County Council] … and the Council had agreed to break its usual rule, and grant the freehold’ (or so he understood).38 Fisher wanted Parliament to sanction the purchase of the Strand site. When this was done plans for a new building could be prepared. The Sydney Morning Herald illustrated the proposed building (as suggested by Burr in 1907, and on which the Estimates were based). It called the building ‘The Great Center’ and stressed its importance. It expressed a commonly held view: ‘It is astonishing that we should have let more than a decade slip by in inaction, while our rivals [the Canadians] were catching the public eye in a way that could not be denied.’39 Likewise the Sydney Morning Herald echoed the assertions made five years earlier in the federal parliament by King O’Malley about the building’s importance. As O’Malley put it to the parliament in 1906: It should be a prominent land mark, even in London, and set forth the pride and power of Australia in a way that would come home to the most unthinking. There is much more in this than mere Sentiment … a building would be the best investment that we could make, and it would not be long before it was returning its cost to us a thousand-fold.40 Fisher wrote to the States informing them that the Commonwealth proposed to bring a question before Parliament in the coming Session: acquiring a site in the Strand on which to build an Australian building of sufficient size to accommodate the High Commissioner for Australia and the Agents’ General of all the States with their staffs. He assured each that the proposed building would give them show-rooms and all the space their governments desired. The Commonwealth would only require rent to cover a moderate interest on the cost of the site and building, with allowance for maintenance and depreciation.41 That December, toward the end of the Parliamentary year, the matter came before Parliament just ahead of the summer recess. Josiah Thomas tabled a resolution in the House of Representatives in favour of the purchase of the site.42 He spoke of how this had long been under consideration, and pushed that work should start on the building. ‘All that remains is that the London County Council should fix the purchase price of the freehold which has been considered by the Improvements Committee and named at £364,000. The building it is estimated will cost something like £223,000.’43 Those in favour of the building won the day with every state except Queensland endorsing the idea. Approval was given to acquire the site in the 157

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Strand, ‘not quite a square mile in the heart of London’.44 Members adopted the Government’s scheme to acquire the entire Aldwych site freehold at a cost of £364,000 for a building to house the High Commissioner and six Australian States. They welcomed New Zealand, if it cared to come, under the same roof. When the decision was passed in the House it was looked upon as a business proposition. ‘The Commonwealth was going to grow … in twenty or twentyfive years it would be able to double its money on the transaction.’45 Deakin congratulated the Government on the successful conclusion of the negotiation which had taken seven years. In Deakin’s mind, suitable Commonwealth offices in London were essential ‘… not only due to the dignity of the Commonwealth but also necessary for the linking up of the work of the States in London with that of the Commonwealth. It was desirable that there should be some friendly arrangement for closer and better cooperation in this connection.’46 In his view, there was much to recommend the position, being midway between the City, where the commercial and financial houses had their offices, and the West End, which was the centre of political life. Deakin was shocked by what seemed the extravagance of the proposal. However, he conceded that Canada has prospered greatly by its recent expenditure on premises in Cockspur Street for the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway. He acknowledged that Australia should follow Canadian example, agreeing that ‘the proposed Australian building would be a splendid advertisement, both for the Commonwealth and the States.’47 Here, Deakin adopted O’Malley’s view and followed opinion on how influential a building could be to business. In his famous banking textbook, The Country Banker (1885), George Rae, Managing Director, Chairman, and driving force of the successful North and South Wales Bank (known as the Wales Bank), emphasized the importance to business of maintaining presence, and argued how significant a building could be to drawing customers. Some customers judged a bank to a certain extent by its externals, he said. ‘A large and costly building is an assurance to some minds of corresponding wealth and stability within.’48 The case for a grander style of building was argued too by Sir Thomas Salt, chairman of Lloyds, who told shareholders in 1896 ‘that it is an absolute necessity for our business to have good and commodious premises.’49 He expanded on this theme, arguing that ‘if you are to do successful banking, [it is essential] to have expensive and convenient premises. You cannot help it. I could point out places where, with a small bank, we were doing only a moderate business: and when we improved our premises and made them more convenient and handsome ... we increased our business very profitably and very rapidly.’50 158

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A recent outstanding precedent was the then widely-publicised Woolworth building in New York. It was literally built to be a publicity tool. First publicized in November 1910, Frank Woolworth conceived of his building as a giant sign-board to promote the F. W. Woolworth Company’s widespread chain of over six hundred stores. ‘I decided to erect a building that would advertise the Woolworth 5 cent and 10 cent stores all over the world’, he said.51 As a beacon of world-wide publicity that captured global attention before it opened in April 1913 as the world’s tallest inhabited building, Frank Woolworth’s building was a sound investment. In London, Burr informed the Press that it would take about two years to complete the Commonwealth building. He told a Daily News representative that the building would be built in the same Renaissance style as the Victoria Offices occupying a part of the site. Its superficial area will be 24,526 feet, and it will have three frontages, varying from 191 to 197 feet – on the Strand, Aldwych, and Melbourne-place, with entrances in each. There will also be an entrance at the corner which faces the Gladstone statue, and this will lead into a large exhibition hall for the display of Australian produce and the pictures of scenery. Besides the offices of the High Commissioner and the Agents-General, there will be a large lecture room and a reception room, and that part of the building which is not occupied by Government offices will be let to Australian firms.52 He acknowledged that it may take time for all the States to acquit themselves of presently-held leases. Queensland’s lone and dissenting vote described the Act as ‘a display of extravagance … [that] undermines all the tenets of careful and safe finance’.53 At Spring Gardens, the Improvements Committee submitted its Report.54 They were glad that official communication came from Reid for the Commonwealth Government, stating that the Commonwealth Parliament voted to acquire a portion of their surplus land on which to erect the Commonwealth offices. Reid expected to shortly receive instructions finally to arrange terms. He was keen to press ahead with the building.55 By cable, Thomas confirmed that Reid should complete the purchase from the Council of the whole block on the basis of ‘twenty-six years purchase, lowest rental obtainable, not exceeding £14,000 per annum.’56 159

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It was decided not to call publicly for designs. There was now a desire to steam ahead without further delay. Concerns were held about delays that a competition might entail (particularly if controversy should develop). Thomas told Reid that a first-class architect should be employed to prepare designs and supervise construction. Distinctively Australian features for the building were necessary. To realize this, the government suggested that Reid might consult a committee of Australian artists in London and ask them to submit proposals. This would be in keeping with calls in Australia to support ‘Australia’s own’. Thomas cabled to Reid, ‘It will be necessary to arrange cooperation between selected architect and committee to ensure that artists’ suggestions would be practicable and acceptable to architect, who will be responsible for design’.57 He suggested that Reid start consultation about this with two or three artists, naming Australian-born sculptor (Sir) Bertram Mackennal as one to consult.

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Concluding Negotiation Architecture, painting, and sculpture are quite isolated here, and if they are not antagonistic that is the most you can say, whereas in France they are bound together, not merely by combined training, but by the personal friendship of those who practice them.1

Late in 1911, with Coronation celebrations over, Captain Muirhead Collins and Sir George Reid resumed negotiating with the London County Council. The sticking point that had stalled progress up to then was the Commonwealth Government’s desire to acquire the freehold of all of the vacant land on the wedge-shaped block that was the outer eastern horn of the LCC’s Strand–Aldwych island site.2 Photographed by Bedford Lemere that year, the north side of the Strand remained undeveloped; only Victoria House stood alongside the south-western corner of the entire block that the Commonwealth sought.3 Consequently, Reid and Collins believed that the LCC would waive its objection to disposing of the freehold on that area, one which they expected the Commonwealth could buy for £357,000.4 Collins explained the Commonwealth Government’s proposal to Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, to whom he sent a plan and a photograph of the land they wanted. Collins outlined the Commonwealth plans in detail, The building which it is proposed to erect on this site is estimated to cost about £223,000 which will make a total expenditure on the site of a sum of £580,000. The accommodation that will be provided by this building will be not only sufficient for all the purposes of the Commonwealth and also to house the different offices of the State Governments should these Governments decide, as it is hoped they will, to come under the same roof, but will also leave us with a good deal of spare accommodation which it is proposed to let commercially and thus recoup some of the expenditure. On the 161

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ground floor it is proposed to utilize the great space we shall have for some permanent exhibition of Australian produce. As regards the building, whereas the design of this building will have to follow or be in uniformity with the general features of the building already erected by the Victorian State Government, which was part of a general design for buildings to be erected on this site approved by the London County Council, there may, of course, when our architect is appointed, be some modifications and improvements.5 Collins sent Stratchona an illustration of the building’s proposed elevation drawn by architect Alfred Burr. Strathcona was most likely already familiar with it, as the Daily Telegraph had publicised Burr’s concept in November 1907 when it was thought that the Canadian and Australian federal governments would have adjacent offices on the Strand.6 As Collins noted to Strathcona, ‘The photograph which I forward is a photograph of the design as it would be if carried out exactly in accordance with that of the existing Victorian building. Of course, it only shows one frontage, and there would be the other frontage very similar to this along Aldwych.’7 Cartoonists in Australia portrayed Reid as sluggish, indolently corpulent and shuffling in gait, but when he took executive responsibility for decisions carried out in his name he was swift to act. The first week of January 1912, with federal parliament having committed to purchase the site, he met with Lord Thynne, chairman of the LCC’s Improvements Committee, and Andrew Young, the LCC’s valuer. To Reid’s surprise, he found that Thynne and the Council insisted that the option on the area which they negotiated with Lee Batchelor was coupled with the purchase of the site leased to the Victorian Government, an area of 1,437 square feet more than the Commonwealth planned for, at the equivalent of 26 years of the ground rent. Thynne and the LCC would not budge from what they asserted to be their verbal agreement made with Batchelor in 1911.8 Nothing existed in writing to confirm such an agreement. As far as could be ascertained in Melbourne, Batchelor never had any doubt that he was negotiating for the unlet portion of the site without the Victorian allotment.9 Telegrams to Melbourne showed that Reid also believed that the entire block, without the land on which Victoria’s building stood, was under offer to Australia. It was on this understanding that estimates regarding the purchase price of the site had been presented to Parliament.10 Believing that the Commonwealth would not

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pay any sum beyond what had been submitted to Parliament, Reid asked Josiah Thomas, Commonwealth Minister for External Affairs, to authorize him to close the agreement. No other block of land in London was so desirable and Reid feared losing it. Thomas also saw merit in the site. He agreed that Reid should close the matter making the best terms he could. On 17 January, Reid saw Lord Thynne’s committee.11 Reid argued that Australia intended building a great Hall of Empire on the site. He stressed that by accepting Australia’s offer for the area, so that a single Australian building might stand there (like Burr’s elevation showed), the Improvements Committee would facilitate the development of the LCC’s valuable and surplus idle land. Having the eastern horn of the crescent site devoted exclusively to the offices of the Australian Governments would be an arrangement which Reid felt sure the LCC would welcome because it would improve the forsaken space by bringing a prestigious focus to the empty eastern end of the Aldwych. One that would stimulate building on the stalled Kingsway project. The wasteland that lay there would disappear. Thynne’s committee felt the bite of Reid’s argument. They consented to reduce the Council’s asking price by £7,000 so long as the Commonwealth obtained the Government of Victoria’s consent to sell their building to the Commonwealth with the ground rent and freehold reversion at twenty-six years’ purchase. Reid agreed, convinced this was the best that could be achieved. The LCC surrendered its long-cherished leasehold principle on the grounds that they were dealing ‘with a Government representing an integral and important part of the British Empire.’12 It was to the LCC’s advantage to have the Commonwealth occupy this part of their Aldwych land because it guaranteed that the site would be covered by a prestigious building. Eager, like Reid, to see building on the block without delay, they announced that ‘A beginning may be looked for in the early days of the new year.’13 Reid cabled to Thomas: Strand site, payment £357,032 for vacant land, also £22,724 for Victorian building and site required April 1st. Commonwealth taking possession for purposes of preparing for building operations and for advertising February 1st.14 The entire area that the Commonwealth Government proposed to buy measured 24,326 square feet, giving it total frontages of about 633 feet to the Strand, Aldwych and Melbourne Place. Mid-March 1912, the LCC formally 163

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agreed to sell the freehold of the whole of the eastern horn of the crescent site of Aldwych for £379,756. The contract for sale required that the elevation of the proposed building be submitted to, and approved by, the LCC which wanted the new building to accord generally with the design adopted for Victoria House. It expected that the new building would be of similar imposing character. The agreement provided for extending Melbourne Place to Aldwych (where steps mid-way along the street closed this access, blocking any through-way). Once the new structure abutting on Melbourne Place was roofed in, the Commonwealth would pay one half of the cost of making up the road which would offer full traffic facilities between the Strand and Aldwych.15 The agreement for the sale was exchanged and the Commonwealth paid a deposit of £15,000 to the LCC.16 The purchase was to be completed by 1 April 1912, a date which some wags in Australia thought was a curious date to choose. Reid wanted immediate possession of the land, being keen to lose no time with all the necessary preliminary work required ahead of excavating. ‘The contract for excavation has been let and the work already started,’ wrote Collins to Atlee Hunt in Melbourne at the start of March.17 ‘It is expected that the excavation will take about three months, and will considerably aid in getting better contracts for building afterwards, as then the contractors know exactly what they have to do, that is as regards foundations, etc. and do not have to make any speculative provision.’ Reid and Collins aimed to lose no time in erecting the building and Melbourne needed to be consulted about detail. ‘The next step will be the contract for the foundations which we shall also let before we come to the contract for building and this will give us time for the preparation of the designs, which are well in hand, and submit them to Australia to get the Minister’s suggestions and approval,’ Collins told Hunt. ‘I should think we ought to be in a position to accept a contract for the actual building by August or September if all goes well. As you are aware time means money to the Commonwealth now, as all the time they will be standing out of interest on a large sum of money until we are able to actually move in and occupy the building.’ Londoners welcomed the sale as it meant an appreciable saving in rates. A large charge for interest on capital had accrued owing to the Strand–Aldwych island site being unoccupied for so long. The LCC’s eighty years’ lease policy was blamed for the delayed development of that land; interest charges blew out while it was unsold or unlet. Total interest charges since 1890, on the money expended in purchasing the land required for the Holborn to Strand Improvements, were £1,275,000. In 164

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1912 the annual charge on interest alone was about £120,000. The Improvements Committee estimated that by the time the whole estate wound up the interest charges would amount to about £2,000,000. The loss from rates during the nonoccupancy of the land, borne by the County Council, the Westminster City Council, and the Holborn Metropolitan Borough Council, was estimated to amount to at least £666,000, with an annual loss in the past five years of about £107,000. When the Bill authorising the improvement was submitted to Parliament it was estimated that the capitalised value of the surplus lands would be £4,361,950, and that the net cost of the improvement would not exceed £775,000. But in 1912 the cost of acquiring the land for the improvements, the cost of demolition, paving work, acquiring sites for re-housing, interest charges, and estimated loss on rates, aggregated over £6,865,000.18 There was consensus in London that had the Australian Government’s offer been refused the Strand–Aldwych island site would have remained a ‘desert island’ for years unless the Council considerably modified the leasehold conditions they sought to impose on possible tenants. According to the Builder, Australian plans to erect ‘such an important building there will lead to the more speedy development of the rest of the unoccupied sites in this neighbourhood which have for so long been a public eyesore.’19 A general opinion among experts in land and building matters was that in selling the freehold of the eastern section of the Strand–Aldwych site to Australia, the Council had got rid of a costly burden on excellent terms. Little of this was appreciated in Australia where critics questioned the purchase. The question commonly asked was, why, if it is such a good site, has it been permitted to lie unoccupied until the Commonwealth came along as a purchaser? Owing to adverse publicity in the Press over the years about the ‘Aldwych wilderness’, there was a feeling that the Commonwealth had chosen a disadvantageous site on the eastern edge of the blighted ‘Aldwych Island’. The idea that it paid dearly for a ‘white elephant’ would tarnish the perception of the building and influence future views of it in Australia. Calls in Melbourne that it be an ‘all Australian’ building with a competition for Australian architects to design it were heeded but, acting on instructions from Josiah Thomas, Reid instead established an advisory committee made up of prominent artists whose judgement on the building’s design would be consulted.20 Three of these were London’s principal Australian-born artists, each of whom were award-winners at the Société des Artistes Français, Paris. These were (Sir) Bertram Mackennal (the first colonial Royal Academy Associate), John Longstaff, 165

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and Arthur Streeton. With them were younger painters George Lambert (soon to also become an Associate of the Royal Academy), and Fred Leist (on the staff of the Graphic). After settling terms with the London County Council in midJanuary, Reid cabled Josiah Thomas that he would choose an architect to oversee a uniform design for the entire block. Reid consulted the President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Leonard Stokes, about selecting an architect ‘of the first rank’.21 Elected to preside over the Institute’s 8,921 members (27 per cent of the architectural profession), Stokes took care over the smallest detail; one of the more venturesome architects practicing in England, he ‘hated anything in the way of pose or inefficiency and had no use for fools’.22 Leonard ‘Volcanic’ Stokes’s quick temper was due in some measure to the discomfort that he endured while working with the onset of the multiple sclerosis that eventually paralysed him.23 One of the selected architects in the abortive Council-run competition in 1900 for designs for the Kingsway–Aldwych development, Stokes understood what was called for on the Commonwealth site. Best-known at the time as an ecclesiastical architect, Stokes belonged to the Art Workers’ Guild. It sprang from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth century which, in reaction to the deterioration in the quality and design of many machine-made products, promoted traditional crafts and sought to reintroduce the direct relationship between the designer and maker. It applauded the experience of the artisan and emphasised the innate characteristics of materials. A collective group, the Guild took a holistic approach to aesthetic expression. It held that England’s built environment was blighted by the ugliness that its Industrial Revolution and railway engineers had stamped on it. The Guild was committed to breaking down barriers between the fine and decorative arts and thereby reintroducing beauty into building.24 Engaging the Arts and Crafts together would lead to ‘Beauty’s Awakening’, as a Masque that the Guild performed at the Guildhall in 1899 was titled.25 Its idealism was part of the reformist, modern spirit that spread through quarters of the British world from the 1880s. From his office in Westminster, Stokes was responsible for the design of numerous telephone exchanges (his father-in-law was General Manager of the National Telephone Company, then undergoing rapid expansion); in these buildings Stokes showed that purely utilitarian buildings could be made architecturally interesting.26 With his reformist drive, Stokes served as president (1889–92) of London’s Architectural Association. The AA was largely a study group of ‘gentlemen engaged professionally in the study or practice of architecture,’ which Stokes thoroughly 166

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reorganized.27 He laid the groundwork for a more systematic, methodical course of study for trainee architects than the customary practice of being articled to established architects, as well as the eventual founding of a day school in 1901. There he came to know, and develop friendship with, the Aberdeen-born and London-based architect Alexander Mackenzie. Stokes would propose Mackenzie for membership as a Fellow of the Institute of British Architects in 1913. Third-generation architect Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie, then aged thirty-two, empathised with the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movements. He also shared experience with Stokes in designing scholastic buildings, experience which many first-class architects lacked. Stokes designed schools at Oxford and All Saints Convent at London Colney near St Albans (1899), and additions to Emmanuel College, Cambridge (from 1911); while Mackenzie assisted with additions at the University of Aberdeen (1902, 1908, 1911). Designs for most of the public buildings erected in Britain were chosen by competition, and Mackenzie also worked on competition designs for the University College of North Wales at Bangor (1907) and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (1909). These designs were prepared with his father, the distinguished A. Marshall Mackenzie, who ran a long-standing, successful architectural practice from Aberdeen where his buildings were notable.28 In partnership from 1903, Alexander (‘Alick’) Mackenzie managed their London office, and they worked together as Marshall Mackenzie & Son. Stokes commended them to Reid. While officials in Bangor considered that the Mackenzies’ design would be too imposing for a small cathedral town, Reid believed that they were the architects with the credentials to manage such a significant project as was envisaged for the Strand. Advising Melbourne that the work should be entrusted to them, Reid cabled to Josiah Thomas that A. Marshall Mackenzie, with his son Alexander, designed and built the recently-opened Waldorf Hotel, a £300,000 commission, that was a London landmark from its opening on Aldwych’s northside in 1908.29 Marshall Mackenzie was also renowned for his work for Marischal College and King’s College, Aberdeen (1893–1906), for which he was conferred with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Because many threads are woven into the design of a building, it is important to understand the history and viewpoint of those concerned with its design in order to fully appreciate the influences on its eventual composition. In this case, Reid began life in Johnstone, a planned community of the eighteenth century in Renfrewshire, near Glasgow, and as we shall see, eighteenth-century threads were conceptually woven into the Commonwealth building’s plan in substantial ways. 167

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Marshall Mackenzie, an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, was sixtyfour in 1912. Avuncular looking, with a moustache trimmed in American style (to the corners of his upper lip), he wore a pince-nez and Scottish tweeds. A Scot through and through, he took pride in centuries-old Scotch heritage and its highly developed local artistry. His inventiveness undoubtedly partly stemmed from his maternal great-grandfather, William Marshall, a polymath famed as the great eighteenth century composer of Scottish fiddle music (whose name he took).30 Marshall Mackenzie had became a Fellow of the RIBA in late 1896 with the support of the London architects John McKean Brydon (a successful fellow Scottish architect); the redoubtable Colonel Edis (to whom Alexander Mackenzie was apprenticed); and the business-like Alfred Waterhouse.31 Dunfermline-born Brydon left Scotland to work in Norman Shaw’s office in London and later became the architect for the new government offices on Great George Street (built 1898–1912).32 Alfred Waterhouse, one of the most successful architects of the mid-Victorian decades, was highly regarded for his design for institutional buildings like the Natural History Museum, Kensington (1881) and the National Liberal Club in London (1884–7). Designs for both these buildings represented Waterhouse at the Chicago World Fair of 1893. A very skilled, efficient, and practical designer, Waterhouse brought good traffic circulation and much-admired theatricality to public buildings.33 Mackenzie’s endorsement for fellowship by these architects gave some indication of the skills at his command. His wide range of work had attracted national attention in recent years. At a time when British architects had a poor self-image (because the rules of their profession prohibited advertising, with the result that their names were little known) Marshall Mackenzie featured in a series profiling esteemed architects published in the Architect and Contract Reporter in December 1909.34 Hints of what might come from him architecturally could be found in earlier buildings that he designed like the Italianate head office of the Isle of Man Bank at Douglas, the Manx capital (1902). It echoed an earlier notable building which also grandly rounded a corner site: The Northern Assurance Company Head Office, Aberdeen (1883), erected in Kemnay granite quarried northwest of the city.35 At the forefront of Aberdeen’s Arts and Crafts Movement, Mackenzie was respected for the grace and beauty of his design for the city’s Art Gallery (1883) and its later top-lit and colonnaded extension (1903).36 With these he displayed his natural instinct for stone, particularly granite, the most obstinate of all-natural building materials, which he put to superb use in his additions to Marischal College. Respecting the innate qualities of Kenmay Granite led Mackenzie to his design. Marischal’s façade is grand in 168

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outline while shimmering joyously because high amounts of silver mica in the stone’s composition give it a characteristic silver and grey spangled appearance. Mackenzie’s granite-faced building was believed to be the world’s second largest (after the sixteenth century complex of El Escorial in Spain), and with pinnacles that sparkle in the northern sunlight it was a fitting paean for Aberdeen which was then the world centre for the granite trade. With Marischal’s Mitchell Tower, 40-feet square and 260-feet high, Mackenzie erected a structure in ‘Skyscraper Perpendicular’ Gothic manner. As an admiring architect wrote, ‘The Tower soars with a lightness which is an embodiment of flight. Surely granite was never previously treated with more fantasy and grace.’37 Marble, in its fineness of grain, is the exact opposite of granite. At the new Crathie Parish Church near Balmoral the Mackenzies demonstrated the seamlessness of their practice when Alexander Mackenzie designed the marble Altar Table.38 He respected the value found in the ‘figure’ and colour of the white Iona marble selected for the Table, with its light veining in green and black, and so allowed its flat planes to display the natural beauty of the stone. Alexander Mackenzie designed the memorial in keeping with his father’s belief that in architecture and sculpture ‘the design must be fashioned in the spirit of the Material employed.’39 The simply treated Table is backed with a rich tracerycarved oak screen. This memorial to Edward VII (1911) is the focal point to the intimate and dignified church that Marshall Mackenzie built (1895) in silver-grey granite that came from nearby Inver Quarry, found in the middle of the fir woods two miles down the Dee. (When finished, the church delighted Queen Victoria who had laid its foundation stone in 1893.)40 Honesty to material became a modern signature, which the Mackenzies developed from their work in remodelling buildings and protecting their aspects of significance, as well as from sympathy with Arts and Crafts ideals about the interdependency of the arts. Marshall Mackenzie undertook much restoration and conservation work and was a sympathetic restorer when conservation architecture was a relatively new profession.41 He knew Lord Strathcona, a fellow Elgin-native, and Chancellor of Aberdeen University who received King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in the great courtyard of Marischal College. The King came to declare open the new buildings that had gone up at a cost of £220,000 to mark the university’s Quatercentenary celebrations in September 1906.42 Strathcona entertained some 2,500 guests who hailed Marshall Mackezie as the ‘man of the moment’, owing to his extensive additions to the University.43 For this nationally acclaimed architectural work, Mackenzie received his honorary doctorate. He appeared in 169

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the Illustrated London News, portrayed among five distinguished participants in the ceremonies (including Lord Strathcona) to commemorate the event.44 The Mackenzies attracted attention in London in 1907 for designing a speculative scheme for ‘Canada House’, a block of office buildings for the Government of Canada on the Aldwych Island opposite St Mary-le-Strand (the scheme went to Strathcona but never went ahead). This was designed on a grand scale in Renaissance manner, with the front crescent-shaped and colonnaded, to measure 416 feet along the Strand and 176 feet along each of the side streets. While intended to match the scale of the New Gaiety block and balance G. E. Street’s Law Courts standing to the east, the Building News thought it was a ‘great elevational pile’ and feared that it may dwarf Somerset House.45 A copy of this design went to Josiah Thomas in Melbourne. Reid pointed out that it was designed with a view to getting the Canadian Government to build offices on the Strand next to the site which the Commonwealth Government now owned. For this design, the Mackenzies fully explored the rents to be expected against the cost of construction. As a proposal aiming to partially offset construction costs from rental, this scheme somewhat resembled the Commonwealth’s similar intention. To Reid and Collins, this made the Mackenzies familiar with the Commonwealth’s requirements. Marshall Mackenzie’s architectural record demonstrated his ability to cater to a range of clients and to their different needs. The new buildings at King’s College, while dressed in a Gothic skin, to avoid compromising the university’s historic sixteenth-century character, provided Aberdeen with the latest in scientific laboratories. At Marischal, Mackenzie’s Mitchell Hall, with its interior walls of rose coloured granite (dull polished and jointed in gold), heraldic glass windows, and oak ceiling, floor and gallery panelling, showed that he was an architect who could build for ‘Occasion’ and ‘Public Event’. His portfolio of architecture for commercial use, as for the Isle of Man Bank, was impressive; as was his work for wealthy private clients. His versatility was apparent in the alterations, additions, remodelling and reconstructions that he completed for churches, hotels and lodges, the sculpture court of Aberdeen Art Gallery, warehouses, and several castles. One was thirteenth-century Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, which he rescued from disrepair and extended with notable Edwardian interiors.46 In addition, Marshall Mackenzie enjoyed royal patronage having designed not only Crathie Church for the Royal Family, but also Mar Lodge (1895), a shooting lodge at Braemar for Edward VII’s son-in-law, the Duke of Fife; and the Mackenzies were employed by King Edward VII and King George V for work at Balmoral.47 No doubt this counted in their favour as far as Reid was concerned, 170

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for Royal needs required discretion and also suggested that the Mackenzies took their cues from their patrons. Openness to novel approaches was another attraction. After fire destroyed Mar Lodge, Marshall Mackenzie erected a sizeable new lodge with special fireproof, watertight ceilings.48 Expanded steel floors and suspended ceilings were a feature of the extensions at Marischal College. A handbook demonstrating the utility of concrete displayed a circular covered reservoir which the Mackenzies designed and built at a time when many architects had yet to embrace the novel technology of reinforced concrete.49 Moreover, Marshall Mackenzie was known for taking particular interest in eighteenth-century Scotland and France. This mattered because the elite of the day who commissioned architects were infatuated with eighteenth-century style, particularly that of France. Intended to impress, eighteenth-century French style suited the desire for opulence and visible high status possessed by the growing number of new millionaires who were emerging for the first time in the New World. The fashion in the early twentieth century for eighteenth-century French style reflected their disposition toward the antique and liking for the classical. They favoured architecture that drew on past examples to dispel any feeling of cultural inferiority that contact with Europe fostered. Aspiring to build in ‘the grand manner’, nothing delighted newly rich industrial barons and financiers more than architecture that reflected ‘absolute power’. Prime examples of this came from France’s premier architect through most of Louis XV’s reign, AngeJacques Gabriel (1698–1782). With the desire of new millionaires to emulate French style, the Mackenzies’ French connections merited attention. Appreciating these connections explains how deeply rooted were their Beaux-Arts sympathies that would come to be reflected in the Commonwealth building. They worked closely with Parisian architect René Sergent (1865–1927), to whom Alexander Mackenzie was briefly an assistant.50 A sympathetic restorer, Sergent enjoyed international success upon beginning his own practice in 1902. Before that he worked in the architectural office of the eminent Parisian architect of the later nineteenth century, Paul-Ernest Sanson (1836–1918). Trained at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Sanson was steeped in French tradition. He was architect for Sir Richard Wallace (1818–90), the banker Jules Ephrussi (1846–1915), and Proustian dandy Boniface de Castellane (1867–1932), among other blue-chip clients for whom Sanson built palatial homes. A number survive today as Parisian landmarks particularly in the 16th arrondissement of Passy. Sanson and Sergent were the foremost exponents of a neoclassical architecture that the elite embraced on both 171

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sides of the Atlantic and made into an expression of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. They built for wealthy clients who were most discerning or who sought sophistication.51 Sergent acknowledged classical Beaux-Arts influence, but rejected the academicism that typified many Beaux-Arts compositions, to design perfectly proportioned interior spaces of an open character. He trained at the École Spéciale d’Architecture (also known as the Central School of Architecture), which was established in 1865 in reaction to Beaux-Arts academicism. Where the Academy emphasised skill at drawing in the classical manner, the École Spéciale expanded the architect’s toolkit. In a sign of looming architectural change, it taught developments in construction, engineering and hygiene among other practicalities. Sergent also studied architecture of eighteenth-century France and British contemporaries such as the influential eighteenth-century Scottish architect and designer Robert Adam (1728–92). Sergent mixed tradition with modernity. He matched eighteenth-century elegance to the requirements of twentieth-century living, to thus satisfy clients who, while celebrities of the Progressive Era needing modern conveniences, found security in continuity with the past. Sergent introduced the latest functional services (kitchens, bathrooms) within rational, balanced space, to foreshadow some of the functionalism of later classic modernism.52 In Britain, eighteenth-century French style became en vogue because it was closely associated with King Edward VII. A man of great natural taste, he spent spent much of his adult life on the Continent and his outlook was cosmopolitan. He disliked his mother’s homely style and on his accession he overturned the long out-dated early Victorian idiom of the royal palaces in London and Windsor. The King set a trend for French style that was avidly adopted by the day’s most successful entrepreneurs and capitalists. Like the King, these men of new wealth wanted to assert their ‘new’ tastefulness and looked to the eighteenth century in the way that eminent men of that century furnished their homes with objects from ancient Greece and Rome. Sergent was house architect for the Paris-based interior design firm Carlhian & Beaumetz, the foremost Paris-based export commission business that provided interior design and reproduction furniture to the elite across the Channel and the Atlantic who desired French sophistication. Established in 1867, Beaumetz delivered a customized service because the French minister for the arts, who was his brother-in-law, allowed Beaumetz to ‘borrow’ from French properties almost any item that he wished to copy.53 Maison Carlhian provided Edward VII with throne chairs for his coronation and decorated the houses which Sergent’s American counterpart, architect Stanford White, built on Fifth Avenue, and at 172

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Lakewood, New Jersey, for railway magnate George Jay Gould. Marshall Mackenzie’s brother-in-law, Elgin-born George Cooper (1856– 1940), later Sir George 1st Baronet, chased opportunity in America. He became a property magnate and married the Illinois heiress, Mary Smith of Evanston, the niece of Aberdeen-born investor and legendary pioneering banker, George ‘Chicago’ Smith (1808–99), the greatest figure in Chicago’s banking history.54 After success in America the self-contained Smith and the Coopers returned to Britain to live. Smith died in London in October 1899, leaving a fortune of perhaps more than US$50 million.55 As one of two beneficiaries to Smith’s estate, the Coopers embarked on a number of architectural extensions and refurbishments that the Mackenzies supervised. Cost was no obstacle to the Coopers at a time when the typical peer probably had an income of about £10,000 a year (four hundred times the national average), while magnates like the Dukes of Bedford, Devonshire and Northumberland were each able to dispose of over £50,000 a year (two thousand times the national average).56 However, with Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909 and when death duties on estates worth more than £2 million rose to 40 per cent, many estates were being broken up or reduced in size and country houses demolished or abandoned. Hence the Coopers indulged in a style that increasingly fewer could afford, in which art and furnishings were an important part. While Alexander Mackenzie assisted Sergent in Paris, the Coopers bought the lease of 26 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, which they redecorated engaging the London firm of decorators Howard & Sons under direction from art merchants Duveen Brothers, together with Sergent.57 They lived in Mayfair with the finest examples of French Decorative Art of the eighteenth century besides old Sèvres, Meissen and Chinese porcelain, and objets d’art that formerly belonged to the Marquise de Pompadour, Marie Antoinette, and notable collectors like Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, among others.58 In hand with the Mackenzies, the Coopers reconstructed and enlarged an eighteenth-century house on the Hampshire estate of Hursley Park, which they brought into the twentieth century. Joseph Duveen advised on the overall scheme and undertook the ballroom panelled with boiserie. Tapestries from Beauvais, among the most valued French decorative items sought by wealthy Edwardians, were installed with paintings by Hofner, Raeburn, Romney, and Reynolds. Specialist artisans worked on detail in the house: the goldsmiths and silversmiths Mallet and Sons, and artist decorators White and Allom, were among them. A company of gilders were brought over from France. At one point nearly 400 highly skilled craftsmen worked on the house while its renovation was under 173

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way. Photographs from Country Life in 1909 show the great elegance of this quintessential Edwardian house.59 To Reid, judging from this impressive portfolio, the Mackenzies clearly outshone the more utilitarian, although sound, Alfred Burr. Nor should the influence of their personalities, and their common Scotch heritage, be overlooked.60 Their appointment as architects to the Commonwealth was made in conjunction with Alfred Burr as the architect of Victoria House. Announcing the appointment, British Architect illustrated Burr’s 1907 proposal to extend along the Strand from the Government of Victoria’s building.61 A view of the vestibule from the entrance emphasized the grandeur of the ground floor. Australian papers anticipated what would come from the Mackenzies. Reports saluted the choice of Marshall Mackenzie to design the final form of the building. Even the usually unsympathetic London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald agreed. He concurred, ‘What Mr. Mackenzie’s improvements on the plan drawn by Mr. Alfred Burr, will be it is, of course, too early to say [but he] is one of the very best men available.’62 A commission of five per cent, in keeping with Institute rules, would be paid to the Mackenzies. They agreed to pay Burr out of their commission. His elevation for the projected building appeared in Australia’s papers in February 1912 when the announcement was made.63 How were Burr and the Mackenzies to best design for the site, remedy the issues that concerned the Commonwealth (including Reid’s committee of artistic advisers), and meet the conditions required by the Council? They had three months in which to prepare a design that needed ministerial approval in Melbourne and Council approval in London if building was to begin in August as Reid hoped. The block was anvil-shaped, narrowest at its eastern end. Any building for it had to comply with provisions of the London Building Acts. London County Council requirements stipulated that elevations be constructed in Portland stone, in keeping with Somerset House; whatever went up had to be in sympathy with it, so be of classical character. Besides, the new building was expected to be in keeping with Victoria House, to which it would be added. Additionally, the Commonwealth instructed the architects that the building should be of a ‘dignified and monumental’ character as befitting its purpose and that there should be ample light and air in every part. The Commonwealth picked fault over the front entrance shown on Burr’s elevation (despite this being approved in principle by the LCC). Since 1907, negotiations with the LCC made it clear that it attached much importance to the frontage facing the City of London. It ascribed a higher value to that aspect, 174

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looking east to the Law Courts, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and St Pauls, than to a Strand-side position. Burr’s design did not reflect this. Press reports anticipated design modifications. In all likelihood these reports reflected press releases issued from Reid’s office. In the building designed by Mr. Burr (who is to assist Mr. Mackenzie in the work) the entrance was small, although a larger one was contemplated. The great buildings of London, the new opera house [built by Oscar Hammerstein in 1911] for example, are mostly wanting in imposing entrances and stairways; and there is some ground for believing that those who are advising the committee would like to see the entrance of the new building made one of its chief features. There will probably be suggested a fine sweeping stair-case leading up from the entrance, and a great hall, for receptions and lectures, and all the official functions of Australia in London.64 A sense of how the building took shape came from the ever-vigilant Atlee Hunt in Melbourne. He wrote to Collins, ‘Like yourself I am looking forward to a pretty big Annual Bill in connection with the London Offices. The Incidentals and unforeseens always mount up very largely, but the Government wanted to do the thing on as big a scale as possible and they must not mind if their large ideas produce corresponding expenditure.’65 Hunt’s appreciation of the large impending cost came with a knowledge of protectionist lobbyists in Australia and the ‘Australia First’ policy of the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA). Federal politicians could not discount the lobbying by these groups, because their boosterism matched growing nativist sentiment that typified the times. For the ANA, advancing ‘Young Australia’ meant joining forces with Manufacturers’ Associations to ‘Make Australia great by building up her industries.’ To boost Australia’s fledgling manufacturing capacity, the ANA had initiated the Australian Manufactures and Products Exhibition at Melbourne’s Exhibition Building in the summer of 1905 which became a regular event. Alongside participating artists’ groups, artisan ‘industrialists’ like cabinetmaker John (Jann) Kannuluik (1854–1929), a Latvian native, naturalised shortly after Federation, displayed mahogany furniture from his Melbourne factory to demonstrate what Australia made. The ANA’s nationalist push gave opportunities to demonstrate what could be done beyond hewing logs and running sheep, just as King O’Malley had urged of 175

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Australians.66 The ANA joined forces with the Chambers of Commerce to popularize the use of Australian products. They pushed a ‘Buy Australian’ campaign, ‘to make Australians love and think highly of the products of their land.’67 Trades Halls, artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, timber experts, and Federal and State Parliamentarians rallied to this nativist drive. Accordingly, desires increased for an ‘All Australian’ building in London. A large deputation to Josiah Thomas, the Minister for External Affairs, advocated the use of Australian timber, marble and stone in the building. Samples of Australian leather came to Collins from Atlee Hunt. ‘The Minister will be glad if enquiries can be made with a view to ascertaining whether it is possible for some of the upholstering of the Commonwealth Offices in London to be done with Australian leather,’ wrote Hunt.68 The building had to express its purpose as a selling tool to promote the richness of products that could be had from Australia, just as King O’Malley foresaw. Now Minister of Home Affairs (1910–13), O’Malley brought Taylorite efficiency to the fledgling stone industry in Victoria, and to other suppliers.69 Coloured marbles being discovered at the time were thought to be unequalled elsewhere. To build in London with Australian stone would advance awareness of the range of the nation’s resources (and decorative stones). More than a marketing ploy, it would also placate the push to promote the nation that was being exerted on the Government by the ANA and Manufacturers Associations who jockeyed to exert political influence (and grab market share). The expressive importance of materials was key to the Arts and Crafts Movement holding sway at the time. Melbourne architects like Robert Haddon, a fellow of the RIBA (from 1907), a council member of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, and a founding vice-president of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria in 1908, argued that originality in design stemmed from using Australia’s own local materials.70 At Crathie and Aberdeen Marshall Mackenzie showed how the appropriateness of material was key to architectural expression and to setting the tone for a building. Australians favoured the idea of constructing the building from Australian materials; it would give the new offices a much deeper interest to Australians visiting London.71 And Britons agreed with the strong desire that the building should reflect Australia in the materials used to build it. ‘There, is something peculiarly happy in the idea that Australia should build her new offices in the Strand (London) as far as is possible out of her own soil,’ declared one provincial British paper.72 To build in marble was de rigueur for important buildings. ‘When used for interior work I know nothing finer, nothing more precious, nothing more 176

Concluding Negotiation

wonderful, than a well-adjusted and well-disposed marble decoration’, enthused the style-setting Royal Academician L. Alma Tadema whose paintings of classical civilizations celebrated favoured acres of the stone.73 One particularly notable example was London’s Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange, generally regarded as the chief centre in Europe for the buying and selling of grain. Marking the Baltic’s significance, a ‘symphony in marble’ featured in its new building erected in Jeffrey Square, covering an acre of land in the City of London (1903). Veined marbles of various colours finished the walls and columns of its more than 20,000 square foot hall. With the practicality of building in Australian stone and other local materials under discussion, the State of Victoria became the Commonwealth’s first London tenant, paying rent from 25 April 1912.74 Reid introduced the other Agents-General to the building plans, anticipating that their States would rent space in the new building. Although Timothy Coghlan’s Cannon Street lease terminated in February, he vacillated over space that his State might occupy. After examining plans and consulting with the architects Coghlan insisted that New South Wales, as the Commonwealth’s largest and most populous State, should be allotted the eastern corner from the ground floor up (opposite the Strand-side corner position held by Victoria); rightly wanting to promote the dominance of his State, Coghlan saw it as ‘most essential that New South Wales should have the advantage of a position at least as prominent as the State of Victoria.’ 75 A month later, a two-by-three-foot plaster model of the proposed building was despatched to Melbourne for Government inspection. As the model sailed to Australia, secured in the forward bullion room of a P&O steamer, submissions in the international competition for the design of Australia’s new federal capital were judged, with King O’Malley among those who scrutinised and adjudicated the competitive designs. The winner of the competition was Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin, ahead of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and the BeauxArt trained French urbanist and future Brazilian city-planner, Donat-Alfred Agache.76 Burley Griffin, thirty-five years old, who deprecated any attempt to follow or adapt historical styles or conventional schools, and proposed building mainly in reinforced concrete, saw ample possibility to develop architecture in Canberra. When the federal capital began to take form on the banks of the Molonglo river, Canberra was seen – like the Commonwealth’s London building – as a great opportunity for architects, sculptors, and painters to express Australian character.77 The model sent to Melbourne was displayed in Queen’s Hall of Victoria’s Parliament House. Press images of the model (which has not survived) indicate 177

Part Four: Anticipation (1910–11)

that most of the five-year-old Burr–Shaw concept for London’s Commonwealth building remained unchanged, beyond a few modifications.78 Shaw’s chimney stacks disappeared from the roof, which was flattened. Loggias were stepped across two levels, the top loggia being narrowest. Burr’s suite of single columns on the Strand and Aldwych sides of the building were arranged into paired groups along the building. Measuring about half the height of the building, they stood on bases above the arched windows of the ground floor. As was anticipated, the eastern corner showed the greatest changes. It featured a large entrance that resembled a monumental arch by measuring 22 feet wide and 41 feet high (almost as high as the cornice of the building’s middle section). Marble figures on plinths flanked its sides and a sculpted frieze made up its top. Further statuary included an allegorical group representing the Arts. This group surrounded the Australian coat of arms that was positioned on the top of the building. This met the suggestion from George Pearce, the Minister of Defence, that one of the groups of figures to appear on the building’s façade should typify the Australian Coat of Arms. At the opposite end of the building, Pomeroy’s bronze figure hovered above the dome on the Victorian building’s west end, unrelated to and seemingly indifferent to these sculptural additions.79 The massive corner entry led to a round hall, from which a double staircase proceeded to a circular exhibition gallery. To measure 110 feet by 64 feet, it extended through the entresol. Commonwealth officers would be accommodated on the floor above. The other floors were for letting. Overall, the intended structure lacked unity or refinement. If monumental in scale, the scheme appeared clumsy. It suggested what it probably was: designby-committee (and hastily assembled, as well). By 19 June 1912, more than a dozen elevation drawings for the Commonwealth Offices in London, bearing the names of Marshall Mackenzie and Alfred Burr, were lodged with the LCC.80 Without hesitation, the Improvements Committee recommended that the Council approve the scheme: ‘The design is very bold and on a large scale.’81 Early that July, the Council approved these elevations. Plans, drawings, and the model went before the Cabinet in Melbourne in late June, after being exhibited in Queen’s Hall, Parliament House. Shortly after, on 16 July 1912 the Commonwealth paid for the land. That same day Taverner signed over the title to the Victorian block.82 The excavations were reportedly completed and work on the superstructure could begin.83 Within seven months Reid had concluded what had been a long conception and looked forward to the building going up. 178

1 Australian Buildings, c.1890–1892. Melbourne’s twelve-storey Australia Building was claimed to be the world’s tallest in 1889. It marked Australia’s quickness to urbanise and adopt new technologies to advance with the times. State Library of Victoria

2 Parliament House Melbourne, 1892. Built with a grandeur matching Melbourne’s ambition, it was home to the new Federal Parliament until 1927. State Library of Victoria

3 Map of the Strand, 1895. From Herbert Fry’s guide to London, illustrated with bird’s-eye views of its principal streets. State Library of Victoria

State Library of Victoria

4 The proposed Strand improvements. A suggestion to the London County Council, 1896. The centrality and scale of the London County Council’s block between St Mary le Strand and St Clement Danes became a focus for grand concepts. Henry Brewer envisaged Gothic grandeur and gardens to regenerate the Strand. His vision was one of many to be proposed for this location.

5 The Equitable Life Assurance Society’s Building, Melbourne, 1896. The Equitable led in employing architecture as a valuable public relations tool. Built with steel columns and girders, plus lifts of the highest possible speed, the building matched Australian expectations for advanced buildings. National Library of Australia

6 General Post Office, Sydney, 1897. Grand buildings like this represented Australia’s progress. London Metropolitan Archives

7 First Commonwealth Ministry, 1901. Edmund Barton (left), and William Lyne (right) sit either side of the Governor-General Lord Hopetoun. Alfred Deakin stands behind them, third from the right. John Forrest is at the back, far left. State Library of New South Wales

8 The Strand, looking West. View from the Steeple of St Clement Danes, 1900. Vanishing London – Wych and Holywell Streets with dense building along them that restricted the width of the Strand were demolished to make way for the Strand’s improvement. State Library of Victoria

9 The proposed Great Building on the Strand, January 1902. Schemes for the island site on the Strand included this American proposal to build on a scale unprecedented for London. State Library of Victoria

10 Canadian Coronation Arch, Whitehall, 1902. Example of Canadian mastery of publicity, that had everyone talking. Glenbow Archives, Calgary

London Metropolitan Archives

11 London’s New Street, 1902. The new arc to the Strand’s north from the western to eastern ends of the London County Council’s vacant ‘Island Site’ led to Kingsway.

London Metropolitan Archives

12 Paris in London. The French Palace development scheme for the Strand, 1905 (M. Ernest Gérard and W. Gilbee Scott). Development of the empty Strand–Aldwych island was slow even though this scheme for it was popular.

13 Officers of the Commonwealth Defence Department, 1904, headed by Captain R. Muirhead Collins (seated third from left), with arms crossed, before being sent to London. National Library of Australia

14 Members of the Federal Labor Party, 1903. First row, W. M. Hughes, on the right. Second row: J. C. Watson, centre; E. L. Batchelor, second from the left. Third row: King O’Malley is third from the left; Hugh Mahon is fourth from the left; Andrew Fisher is third from the right. Fourth row: Senator G.F. Pearce, second from left. National Library of Australia

15 Premier Thomas Bent (right) in his office, Melbourne, 1905. The New York Times praised Bent’s hard common sense, while describing him as a mixture of Falstaff, Gladstone, Sam Weller, and the German Emperor. State Library of Victoria

16 The Agents-General of Australia, London, 1906. Left to right: Hon. John Taverner (Victoria), Sir Horace Tozer, K.C.M.G. (Queensland), Mr Alfred Dobson (Tasmania), Mr W. H. James, (Western Australia), Mr Timothy Coghlan (New South Wales), Hon. J. G. Jenkins (South Australia). National Library of Australia

17 The Strand, looking east, 1906. The vacant island site behind hoardings plastered with advertisements. Its eastern horn is between the two churches (centre left). State Library of New South Wales

18 The Strand, looking west, 1906. The eastern horn of the Strand-Aldwych island site, opened up after Wych and Holywell Streets were demolished, and calling for development. State Library of New South Wales

19 The Final Word, 1906. Drawn by Lionel Lindsay. Federal politicians could not overlook the insistent opinions of protectionist lobbyists and the Australian Natives’ Association. National Library of Australia

20 The Gaiety Theatre, 1906. The new Gaiety Theatre, the first building erected on the cleared Strand, on the western end of the street’s island site, flagging ‘The New London’, drawn by T. Raffles Davidson. Mississippi State University Library.

21 The Imperial Conference in Session at the Colonial Office, 1907. Seated from left to right are Sir Joseph Ward, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Lord Elpfin, Alfred Deakin, Dr Jameson, General Botha, and Sir William Lyne. National Library of Australia

22 Perspective drawing of a concept proposed by Alfred Burr, with Norman Shaw’s touch, as drawn by Charles William English, 1907. The London County Council and London’s Daily Telegraph believed that building to this design would transform the Strand. National Library of Australia

23 Rebuilding the Strand, 1907. Drawn by Muirhead Bone. The steel frame erected for the offices for the State of Victoria excited Bone who drew the building during its construction. State Library of Victoria

24 Australian Pavilion, Franco-British Exhibition, London, 1908. Intended to advertise Australia, its six states each exhibited here as a separate entity. National Library of Australia

25 Victoria House, New London Offices for the Government of Victoria, Strand, 1909 (Alfred Burr, Architect). Victoria showed the Dominion and Colonial representatives in London what could be built. State Library of Victoria

26 Victoria’s London Office Building with the future Commonwealth Building, 1909. How the Australian Buildings were conceived: housing Australia’s agencies in London together in the one building, with Victoria House at its south-western corner. National Library of Australia

27 Sir George and Lady Reid and family, 1910. The first High Commissioner to London: the right man for the job. National Library of Australia

28 Sir George Reid (far right) inspecting Hampstead Garden Suburb with Raymond Unwin (far left), 1913. Reid advocated the application of modern principles in many spheres including planning. National Library of Australia

29 Stone Masonry Works, Nine Elms, Battersea. Masons dressing blocks of Portland stone at Holloway Brothers’ stone yard. Portland limestone was widely used for significant buildings in London. State Library of Victoria

30 Bird’s-eye view of London showing landmarks and the centrality of the Island Site of StrandAldwych to Kingsway and the city, 1913. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

31 Aldwych, the Strand, the Embankment, 1913. From Earl Grey’s prospectus, showing the position of the Commonwealth Government’s island block at the eastern end of StrandAldwych, next to Grey’s planned Dominions Building. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

32 Bird’s-eye view from Kingsway of the site for Earl Grey’s Dominion House, 1913. This drawing shows the scale of the area remaining to be developed, from Somerset House to the block where Victoria House stands. Adjacent to it, work has begun on the site for the Commonwealth Building. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

Above 33 Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley lays the third stone for the Commencement Column marking the start to building the Federal Capital of Canberra, with Prime Minister Fisher (left), 1913. The beginning of Canberra, when O’Malley expressed the desire that the Capital City should demonstrate the importance of Federation to future generations. National Library of Australia

Left 34 A Marshall Mackenzie, 1913. A forward-looking architect who was open to novel approaches while being steeped in the classical tradition and maintained honesty to materials. National Library of Australia

35 John Smith Murdoch (right), Commonwealth Government Architect with Walter Burley Griffin, winner of the Federal Capital Design Competition, 1913. Responsible for the design of all Commonwealth building works, Murdoch believed that architecture must be the handmaiden of purpose. In London, he ensured that Commonwealth Government requirements for the building were met. National Library of Australia

36 Floor plan for the Commonwealth Building, London, 1913 (A. Marshall Mackenzie & Sons, Architects). The ground floor was designed to lead visitors to the exhibition hall giving a vista, from the entrance door to the Melbourne Place windows, of 200 feet. The building’s design suited the anvil-shaped block and merged seamlessly with Victoria House (lower left). State Library of Victoria

37 Laying foundations on the Strand, the King and Queen arriving at the site of the new Commonwealth Building, 1913. The pomp when King George V laid the building’s foundation stone reflected the excitement about the building. Victoria House overlooks the event. National Library of Australia

38 Erecting the Commonwealth Building, Scaffolding and steel framework beside Victoria House during construction of Australia House, 1914. War delayed plans to connect the two buildings. This was only achieved in late 1916. By permission of Historic England Archive

39 Australia House in 1915. The war delayed construction but Andrew Fisher was determined to complete the building, as doing so would demonstrate Australia’s readiness to play her part for the common cause. The message, ‘It is Australia’s duty to send expedition after expedition and man after man till the end of the war’, ran along the Aldwych side of the building before it rose beyond the second floor. National Library of Australia

40 Commonwealth Building, elevation showing the Strand branch of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 1917. Assistance given to servicemen from this branch was one of the ways in which the new Bank, which began operating in July 1912, contributed to the war effort. By permission of Historic England Archive

41 Model of the east front of Australia House with Bertram Mackennal’s sculpture, 1918. There was a general understanding that both sculptural groups for the building would be in harmony. From 1915 both sculptors worked from each other’s models. By permission of Historic England Archive

42 Entrance to Australia House with Harold Parker’s portal sculpture, The Awakening of Australia (right) and Peace and Prosperity (left), 1918. The policeman indicates the scale of Parker’s figures carved in Portland stone. They were commended as being among the best work of its kind in England. By permission of Historic England Archive

43 Australia House from the Strand, as envisaged in July 1918. With some detail for the building still unfinished when the King opened it, the Mackenzies had T. Raffles Davison touch up photographs of the building to show what it would look like when completed. Mackennal’s sculpture above the east front was not completed and installed until 1924. By permission of Historic England Archive

44 Ground floor, looking to the entrance, July 1918. Australian materials were used, following calls for an ‘All Australian’ building. By permission of Historic England Archive

45 Ground floor, fooking from the entrance, July 1918. Buchan marble shipped from the Gippsland in Victoria finished the grand Exhibition Hall. By permission of Historic England Archive

46 The library, east end, July 1918. Caleula marble from New South Wales and panels of Australian black bean wood decorate this room. Carved in relief are sprigs of wattle, declared Australia’s national flower by Fisher’s government in 1912. By permission of Historic England Archive

National Library of Australia

47 Victory March, London, 3 May 1919. Australia House, at the centre of London.

PART FIVE

Construction (to 1913)

CHAPTER 16

Overseas Dominion Building The difficulty besetting such ideas as Lord Grey’s is always that they are called visionary and so left unconsidered until too late.1

Like bears to honey, speculators were lured to the roughly two and a half acres of the Strand–Aldwych island site, between the Gaiety Theatre and the block which Victoria’s offices partly occupied. Schemes for this central position were so numerous that they became part of travellers’ lore. ‘Don’t negotiate in a hurry with nice strangers at the hotel, even if they do show you … the title deeds’, one guide to London cautioned. ‘The Aldwych site is sold twice daily to unsophisticated visitors from the country.’2 In January 1912, a South American Project was rumoured to be developing it. South American Republics were said to be combining to erect a large building to house their interests.3 They were following reports in 1907 and continuing rumours about Australia and Canada establishing joint bureaux. In keeping with the trend of the day, a great hall would exhibit their products and other floors would offer reception-rooms, lecture-rooms and offices. However, little further developed from this ambition for the site. Then, in early March 1913, The Right Honourable Earl Grey, until recently Governor-General and Commander-inChief of Canada (1904–11), and formerly Administrator of Rhodesia (1896–7) announced his scheme for the location, where he envisaged a monumental centre for the Empire’s self-governing Overseas Dominions. ‘Overseas visitors when they visit London do not find a single thing which speaks ‘Empire’,’ Grey told the Press. He referred to visitors from within the empire. ‘They need some place which they can call their own, and of which they would have every reason to be proud.’4 With the coronation of King George V, Grey saw a revived idea of Imperial Federation in which London would be key. ‘When that day arrives it should find London prepared to justify its natural position as the seat of a Federated Imperial Government,’ agreed the Builder.5 Grey was not alone in viewing London as a federated capital. Regard for 181

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London as the seat of a federated imperial government was in the air. Interest in federation followed from the Swiss Federation (1848), Canadian Confederation (1867), German Federation (1871), and the Federations of Argentina (1853), Venezuela (1883) and Brazil (1889). The more recent Australian Federation, and the Union of South Africa (1910) added to interest taken in the federal principle. Even the Builder, usually conservative, argued that the ruling idea behind any plan for London should be thinking of the city as the future capital of a federated empire, for which building should be undertaken. The first objective for London, it said, must be ‘a Palace of State for the Emperor, an Imperial Parliament House for the deliberations of the Council of the Empire, and a processional way connecting them which would afford facilities for the numerous outdoor State functions which might reasonably be expected to occur more frequently than in the past.’6 With George V, Emperor of India (following the Durbar in Delhi in December 1911), London needed fitting majesty. It was suggested that an Imperial Quarter be developed on the south bank of the Thames. Grey picked up on this grandeur. A crusading imperialist, and a founder member of the Imperial Federation League (formed in 1884 to advance public support for the idea of a federal empire), Grey now looked to a far wider future. To him, London was not only a capital city of eight million, but the centre of consciousness for the whole Britannic system. As a New Zealand newspaper said, ‘The architecture of the Metropolis is, directly or indirectly, part of the education of every British subject.’ 7 Looking on the Strand, he thought, ‘If one of its most vital centres – athwart the greatest artery of its immeasurable traffic – is occupied by a building that writes ‘EMPIRE’ upon the vision of every passer-by, a great stride will have been taken in generating the [imperial] ‘habit of mind’.’8 A portrait after the leading portrait painter John Singer Sargent suggests the complexity of Grey’s character.9 Standing nearly six feet tall, his black hair framing deep-set dark eyes and delicate features, Grey was patrician. Born in St James’s Palace in 1851, his father was Private Secretary to Prince Albert and afterwards to Queen Victoria. The playfellow of princes, Sir Albert Henry George Grey, the Fourth Earl of Grey, was destined from boyhood to inherit a pleasant place in the sun (thought the English journalist and prolific author E. Harold Begbie who wrote a monograph on Grey).10 An omnivorous reader, Grey took his marching orders from the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini whose essay on ‘The Duties of Man’ (1844/1858), deeply impressed him.11 A Victorian Liberal, Grey believed in the principle of association and the wisdom of cooperation. He took interest in consumer and 182

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industrial cooperatives, in the Garden City Movement, and invested in urban renewal. Aghast at poverty and wretchedness in England, he viewed its Empire as a powerful tool by which most social problems might be solved. For more than a decade imperial detractors, critical of the insular character of the Imperial Government, worried about Britain’s relative position in the international economy and its capacity to pay for an adequate defence to control the seas and defend the land borders of its empire, now spanning one third of the area of the globe.12 They cried for reform because while Britain remained the world’s financial capital, as well as its largest lender, by 1913 it lost ground industrially to the United States and Germany. Countering this anxiety, Grey spoke of Britain’s need to more intelligently appreciate that the Empire offered economic opportunity that could remedy the country’s domestic problems. A powerful advocate for federating the Empire, Grey picked up on Scottish political writer Frederick Scott Oliver’s biography Alexander Hamilton (1906) which took the example set by the federalists of the early United States to argue for Imperial Federalism.13 With minds turning on imperial reconstruction, Grey urged that the Ministers of all its various parts meet together in London to advance the prosperity of the increasingly globalised ‘British’ whole. ‘We must have, with full local autonomy for all the parts, an Imperial Senate at the heart of the Empire legislating for the welfare of the whole commonwealth.’14 Grey bid his countrymen to wake from political apathy and rouse themselves to harness the vast magnificence of their imperial inheritance. If we would increase wages, shorten hours of toil, brighten our dismal cities, and sweep away all our hideous and disgracing poverty, we must consider ourselves as part of a vast Empire, whose wealth, if we will but see it, is a magic wand of prosperity. There need be no poverty and overcrowding if we make intelligent use of the Empire.15 A high-spirited, and cheerful-hearted man, with a boundless store of enthusiasm, Grey was well intentioned and devoted to good causes. His nature was unaffected and transparently candid, if idealistic and impetuous. To Henry William Massingham, editor of the Nation (1907–23), considered the leading new liberal weekly, Grey was, as he looked, ‘a Paladin of Empire.’16 Typical of his imperial ‘causes’ were the Tercentenary Celebrations of Quebec City in 1908. From Government House, Ottawa, as Patron of the Champlain 183

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Tercentenary and Quebec Battlefields Association, Grey corresponded with Alfred Deakin over the Quebec celebrations. Grey sought a gift of £20,000 from the Commonwealth ‘to do worthy honour to the Battlefields which have proved to be a cornerstone of Greater Britain.’17 A consummate networker with extensive connections throughout the British World, Grey sought funds from across it ‘so that every patriotic Briton may have an opportunity of associating himself, through the medium of small subscription, with the movement which proposes to do honour to the 300th birthday of Canada by the Consecration of the famous Battlefields, where the corner-stone of Greater Britain was laid.’18 He received funds from Australia for the event which, he said, ‘will strike the imagination of every part of the British Empire and of the world.’19 The commemoration mattered to Grey because it offered an opportunity for uniting the different parts of the Empire in the celebration of events of common interest to every part of it. In other words, he aimed to encourage Britons to see themselves as part of the global family of the British world. He burned with the ideal of a British World-State.20 From the Royal Colonial Institute’s building, Grey mused on the Institute’s future. He was then presiding over the nearly fifty-year-old Royal Colonial Institute (a forerunner of today’s Royal Commonwealth Society). Established in 1868, its credo was ‘United Empire’ (which became the new title of its enlarged monthly journal in 1910). The Institute’s purpose was to stimulate the loyalty of all Britons towards the Empire. Sectarian and non-political, it was largely an exclusive, conservative organisation which believed in Imperial growth to strengthen Britain. Once housed in rooms in an inconspicuous corner of the Strand, it was now accommodated over five floors in a recently reconstructed and enlarged freehold property off the Strand near Charing Cross on Northumberland Avenue.21 Its library of 90,000 volumes and pamphlets was growing. Its reading room offered current issues of over five hundred newspapers and magazines. Readers consulted its unique collection of statutes, law reports, law handbooks, and law magazines of the whole Empire outside the United Kingdom. Its monthly journal was an instrument for promoting Imperial union. With under two hundred members at its inception in 1868, the Institute’s membership in 1912 was over six thousand strong in resident and non-resident Fellows (recently increased with female associates included). The Institute was entirely self-supporting, with a large income and without debt. Chairman of the Council, Lieutenant-General Sir James Bevan Edwards, a senior army officer, and the officials connected with the Institute, were part of a group wanting to make the Institute more representative of imperial networks at the heart of the British World than it had become. 184

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Like Grey, Edwards travelled the wider British World. He played a small part in the progress toward Australian federation. Commander of British troops in China and Hongkong in 1899, the British Government deputised him to advice it on the organization of the forces in Australia and New Zealand. After visiting Australia, he emphasised the weakness inherent in the separate forces of the different colonies. His report led Australia’s politicians to appreciate that combined action for their continent’s defence was essential and only possible through a Federal Government. Grey had followed the progress of the Committee engaged in the task of raising sufficient money to place the Institute upon a sound financial basis in its future operations. He believed it should not be difficult to increase membership of the Institute to 100,000 individuals.22 In six years it would be marking its half-century, and he was confident in the attracting power of imperial loyalties to inspire, popularize and extend the Institute’s work. In the midst of anxious speculations as to the future, Grey more than ever believed that the Empire was an organism which must grow and strengthen the Motherland. He believed in the Institute’s purpose as an inherent Imperial sinew and recognised how influential London’s centrality could be to boosting Imperial growth. He was mindful that the typical citizen of the Empire possessed a double patriotism, being attached equally to his adopted Dominion and to the parentcountry. There could be no better way of unifying the Empire than by attracting its overseas citizens to London, where Empire agencies and institutions, and their commercial activity and social life, could bolster that double patriotism. Complaint was frequently made of the multiplicity of Empire organisations in London. It had been suggested that all, or the majority of them, might be affiliated to the Royal Colonial Institute. Remoteness from the centre of London handicapped the Imperial Institute (with Kensington then thought too distant from central London). The Victoria League (established in 1901) justified its existence by providing hospitality for colonial visitors. The League of the Empire concerned itself mainly with education and with unifying the schools and the colleges of the empire. Other leagues worked in other directions. Nor was the purely social work accomplished by sectional organisations (such as the Canada Club, the Austral Club, the African Society, and the New Zealand Association) inconsiderable. To Grey these many Imperial bodies were key components of Imperial membership and of the centrality of London. Where would the imperial economy be without its networks, and without London as its hub? Imperial networks oiled the wheels of imperial trade and fostered cooperative, collaborative and remunerative forms of economic exchange. More than this, imperial networks 185

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built trust and reciprocity. They were the bedrock of ‘mind’ that was essential to future imperial solidarity. To him they were among the forces in the Empire that at once radiated outwardly from London and centralized there. He considered that in the future, as in the past, the British World would develop through the interaction of its inherent centrifugal and centripetal forces like these bodies. In England, where ignorance about the Empire was abysmal, there was also the need to teach what the Empire meant. England insufficiently understood the value of the Empire and its territories, wrote the well-known political writer and historian J. Ellis Barker (whom Grey read and agreed with).23 A more vivid awareness of the Empire was called for. For this purpose, Grey’s thoughts turned to the future of the LCC’s prominent ‘island site’ nearby. Far from an idle onlooker, Grey was familiar with the site, having played a part in the Council’s temperance plans for the area when the LCC flattened it for the Holborn-to-Strand development. He had also been a member of the American-led syndicate that proposed to build there in 1901.24 As a close friend of Sir George Reid, Grey closely followed Australian plans and activity on the Strand; Grey’s papers contain illustrations of Victoria House with notations of the cost of that building.25 Grey wanted to establish a Dominion House on the Aldwych site. The Dominions were housed in offices scattered around London, with some in inconvenient locations. Grey thought it better that they come together under one roof ‘in the heart of London’, and make one grand imperial centre that would be a hub for their activities in England and for the promotion of inter-Imperial trade. Such a centre would give a more vivid awareness of the Empire both to England, and its overseas members. He saw no obstacle to his scheme for an Imperial Centre. ‘When you reflect that single firms spend £30,000 per annum in advertising, a guarantee of £100,000 should not be beyond the self-governing Dominions, with a view to the establishing in the heart of London of a block of buildings that would impress not only England, but the whole world, with the strength of the Imperial Dominions.’26 With the new King crowned Emperor of India, Grey believed there was no better opportunity for promoting the self-governing Dominions. To advertise themselves, they should grab the opportunity to use the site. Their governments might underwrite the costs, in his view. He formed a syndicate named The Dominion Site (Limited) to develop such a centre. Drawing on his impressive business and governmental contacts, Grey chaired a board comprised of individuals whose judgement he trusted. They hailed from New Zealand, Canada, Australia and South Africa, besides Conservative 186

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politician The Lord Windsor and the public-spirited Duke of Norfolk.27 Both held sense of the majesty that Grey felt was needed. Robert Windsor-Clive, 1st Earl of Plymouth (1857–1923), as First Commissioner of Works between 1902 and 1905 (when he was known as The Lord Windsor), was responsible for transforming the Mall into a processional carriageway.28 He authorised Webb’s plans for the Queen Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. The wispily-bearded, devoted Roman Catholic Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk (1847–1917), was chief founder of Westminster Cathedral (built in 1903), and was the first Mayor of Westminster, besides being several times Mayor of Sheffield.29 As the Earl Marshal, he was in charge of multitudinous arrangements necessitated by the lying-in-state and funeral of King Edward, and the Coronation of King George. Also on Grey’s Board were Lord Chelmsford (1868–1933), formerly Governor of Queensland and of New South Wales who returned to England in March 1913 (to become Viceroy and Governor General of India in 1916); and military administrative reformer, Colonel Sir Edward Ward (1853–1928), recently retired from the Secretaryship of the War Office. Grey and his network of friends were confident of success. They made an agreement with the London County Council. For a payment of £3,000 a year, their syndicate received the option for three years of erecting a building on the Council’s vacant site of 124,000 square feet, and for a lease for 99 years (at an ultimate rent of £50,000 a year). Their syndicate had an option on the purchase of the freehold of the land by the end of September 1913, at the price of £1.3 million.30 As with earlier schemes for this large area of central London, Grey’s Dominion House proposal for the central portion of the crescent site between Aldwych and the Strand was widely reported. ‘The area of the land is nearly four times greater than the Australian site,’ reported the New York Times.31 Impetus for Grey’s scheme came from Australian example. Concentrating the dominion Governments’ offices under one roof beside the new building of the Australian Government would convert the Aldwych site into a material centre of Empire. Here Grey was basically reviving Taverner’s idea of a Dominion centre (an ‘Empire House’) and meshing it with the day’s demands for a useful information bureau (a trade information centre) to facilitate inter-Imperial commerce. The building would be – like London – a focal point for information, people, capital and commodities.32 ‘If I could pull off this “scheme which the action of the Commonwealth, i.e. you”, has made possible, I shld die a happy man,’ Grey scribbled to fellow-Imperialist Sir George Reid. Reid was elected as 187

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President of the Royal Colonial Institute in May 1912, when Grey sent him an advance copy of his Aldwych site prospectus.33 Grey urged that Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland should buy the land on the Strand, and establish their offices there under the one roof. The prospectus that Grey’s syndicate issued for the site stressed the centrality of the position. Photographs demonstrated the significant scale of the block, suggesting prime scope for development. Landmark buildings presented as example were the Gaiety Theatre and Victorian Offices (at either end of the site); Somerset House (opposite); and the coming Australian building (illustrated by an elevation drawing). The immense scale of Grey’s proposed centre was clearly intended to impress. ‘I wanted to set up in the centre of London, which possesses nothing whatever of the kind, a magnificent symbol of the Empire,’ Grey said.34 Provisional plans for the proposed Dominion House came from Marshall Mackenzie. They could hardly be outdone, judging from his elevation drawing. The scheme that he drew arrested attention for its sheer scale to start with. The whole was composed in three successive sections, each rising above the other in skyscraper fashion. Grey’s proposed Imperial Centre would have four frontages, with a total of 1,517 feet, or nearly three acres, including 413 feet to the Strand. The building offered a ground floor area fifty feet greater than the floor space of St Paul’s. It would hold a great Exhibition Hall, measuring 460 feet long by 112 feet wide (nearly twice as large as Westminster Hall), for the display of Dominion products. Similarly, extensive space in the basement would serve as a centre where manufacturers and buyers from Britain and the Dominions could interact, so that the building would serve as a Dominions bourse of sorts. Paired columns were serried along the concave façade; piers at either end punctuated the building’s volume. From this ‘platform’ rose a trio of further piers which formed a ‘podium’ above which rose a central tower. This tower, to be 366 feet high, a foot higher than the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, was intended to be a ‘lighthouse of Empire’ – as inspiring and suggestive as St Paul’s, to record ‘the far-flung dimensions of British power and civilization.’35 Visualising the scheme, Grey enthused, ‘Imagine the feelings of an Englishman standing on Westminster Bridge (after we have cleared away that horrible iron structure of the South Eastern Railway) looking eastward over the beautiful arches of Waterloo Bridge, and seeing in the very centre of that splendid curve a great temple, dominating everything else, which proclaimed to him the majesty and dominion of the British Empire.’36 The grandeur of Grey’s scheme is understandable given ideas in circulation for developing an imperial quarter for London.37 It is understandable too considering the size of the new London County Hall being built for the London County 188

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Council south of the river (and for which the King laid the foundation stone on 9 March 1912 to much fanfare). Perhaps Grey’s sense of scale was understandable too, given that he lived in an epoch which gained new measure of the world – having joined the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and having explored the Arctic and the Antarctic. Grey raised widespread support for the Overseas Dominion Building. The Press liked the concept. So much so that two booklets, each compiling press ‘eulogies’ for the scheme, were issued during 1913.38 ‘A scheme which if realised may not only have the effect of embellishing London by turning to worthy use one of its most central and important sites, but may even produce a political result of the first magnitude’, declared the Financial Times.39 The Morning Post promoted some of its possibilities.40 Placing Imperial offices together, and in so prominent a position, would be unique. It would form a focus and centre for the Empire that would be known to the whole world. It would bring home to the British public something of the greatness, the activities, and the possibilities of the Dominions. It would form an Imperial monument of an imposing and practical kind. It would greatly add to the efficiency and usefulness of the High Commissioners’ offices; time would be saved by both the officials concerned and the general public. It could serve as a meeting centre, where the Imperial Conference might assemble. It could also serve as an information centre, where lectures on the Empire could be held. The Daily Telegraph agreed: it could be, as Grey saw it, an inspiring factor. ‘It would impress millions with the superb fact of the Empire’s reality and teeming activity, producing a uniform scheme of solidarity of the most stupendous political reality, besides being a great factor in spreading the trade of the Dominions and stimulating emigration.’41 To succeed, Grey needed the Canadian Government’s participation in his scheme. With his success as Governor-General in Canada, Grey was convinced this was possible. The Canadians had been unable to find a location in London that suited them for their High Commission. Grey was encouraged when the Premier of British Columbia announced he had secured a position for offices for his province on the island site in the Strand.42 Premier McBride strongly advocated to Canada’s Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier that it should occupy the site where Grey planned to build. After Laurier was unseated in 1911, following fifteen years in office, Canadian business-men in England (as in Canada) petitioned the new Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, to back Grey’s scheme.43 Their advocacy reflected well on Australia’s judgement of their Aldwych location. This appeared sound in the eyes of the Canadians who considered the Strand–Aldwych was 189

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an incomparable London location. ‘To all businessmen in this country engaged in furthering the commercial and financial prosperity of the Dominion [i.e. Canada] the Aldwych site is by far the most convenient that can be obtained, and at the same time it is in our opinion the best for most effectively advertising the magnificent resources and products of Canada and the unrivalled opportunities which the Dominion affords to the settler for the investment of capital.’44 They urged that Grey’s scheme be backed in every possible way. As with other ventures Grey had promoted, his undertaking was proposed as a collective model. It would require some £2.5 million for the freehold cost of the land and the building. However, probable income from the whole building, if fully occupied, estimated an annual return (after deductions for outgoings and management) of £124,000, to pay 4 per cent interest on the purchase price of the land, and 5 per cent on the cost of construction. Three offers were put to the Dominions, under which they might come into Grey’s scheme. They might jointly agree to take over the right to acquire the freehold, in which case Grey’s company would transfer its rights without profit. Alternatively, they may take over the right to acquire the leasehold. Thirdly, they could deal directly with the LCC for the portion of land they might require. If they preferred not to take a sub-lease of the land and buildings when ready for occupation, a separate company could be formed to acquire the Syndicate’s option, and to erect the required buildings. In this event, the Dominions concerned would raise the necessary capital. Grey believed that with Canada’s agreement, the practical details of his scheme could be ironed out. He argued that centralizing offices would benefit the Canadians. He pointed to the success of Cockspur Street which had become the centre for shipping lines, and the Canadian railways, where clients for their business gravitated. He enlisted Lord Strathcona’s assistance. Strathcona had long been Canada’s éminence grise, who moulded the tone of the country’s political life and the character of Canadian legislation.45 On the understanding that Strathcona would back him in getting the Canadian government’s support, Grey secured the option. Meanwhile, Australian moves were of concern to the Canadians. As Collins told Atlee Hunt in 1912, ‘Lord Strathcona was content to stay in Victoria Street but now that it has been decided that we are going to put up a fine building in a conspicuous situation he came along to this office to find out all about it, and I have no doubt that some move will be made on behalf of the Dominion Government [Canada] to put up a similar building either on the block still left with frontage to the Strand and divided from our site by the Melbourne Place [Grey’s block], or 190

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else on the back area by the Waldorf Hotel [on the south side of Aldwych], both of which propositions have previously been pressed on the Canadian Government.’46 For some years the Canadians had been unable to resolve the question of suitable offices in London. At the time, Canada’s withdrawal from its negotiations to buy the site of Westminster Hospital, Broad Sanctuary, gave Grey hope that it was entertaining his project.47 As in Canada, citizens in New Zealand commended the scheme. New Zealand received its Dominion status in 1907, and in 1911 it urged the formation of an Imperial Parliament to ensure defence of the Empire. Like the Canadian Government, the New Zealand Government looked for premises in central London. Grey believed that greatest appreciation for his scheme came from New Zealand’s press.48 Opinion held by New Zealanders in London opposed any such course: to fall in with the proposal would lose New Zealand her individuality. With the eastern end of his proposed building to front onto Melbourne Place (and face Victoria House), Grey conflated his scheme for the ‘united Dominions’ centre with the adjacent block for the Commonwealth building as one unique world site. Though yet to be completed, Grey saw Australia’s building as an extension of his centre. Indeed, designs for it, which Lord Chelmsford took to New Zealand, showed tunnels and bridges connecting both centres.49 The view held in Australia was that the LCC, having sold a big portion of the Strand site to the Commonwealth, was anxious to dispose of the balance of the vacant land there as speedily as possible, and that Grey was grabbing this opportunity. Mid-1914 saw Grey in Canada, talking to its Governments, and believing that he enjoyed Strathcona’s influence at work on them. They did not commit themselves, although Grey’s scheme was widely discussed. As well, the Canadian Parliament, voted the sum of £200,000 towards the supply of an adequate ‘Canadian House’ in London. But Grey was tilting at windmills. Grey found no favour with Strathcona who disliked the scheme. Energetic and fearless, Canadian Liberal politician W. T. R. Preston (1851–1942) knew this. He was appointed as Canada’s inspector of immigration offices in Europe in 1899, working for eight years from London. A journalist, Tory-basher William Preston knew Strathcona, whom he portrayed as crafty and untrustworthy in his first book The Life and Times of Lord Strathcona (1914). According to Preston, Grey secured the option on the understanding he received from Strathcona that he would support Grey in getting the Canadian government to take it off his hands. However, Strathcona wrote to Ottawa opposing the proposal and the option fell through.50 Grey’s failing was that he was blind to Canadian sentiment. He overlooked 191

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that Canada announced that February that it preferred standing alone in London. Prime Minister Laurier stood for ‘Canada before all’, and opposed imperial federation at the 1911 Imperial Conference. Laurier consolidated Canadian autonomy in domestic affairs and in terms of Canadian–American relations (although resistance in Canada to the economic influence of its powerful southern neighbour unseated Laurier). The Canadian Government disliked the idea of sharing a location with the other self-governing dominions. It considered that Canada should possess a site, with an individual building, of her own. A point of Canadian criticism was that by keeping her offices apart Canada would remain in a better position to meet the growing competition from Australia for British emigrants. Canada considered that any attempt to unite the dominions, as Grey proposed, might lead to discord rather than harmony.51 The Canadians also thought that the Aldwych site was too expensive. Sir Robert Borden, the new prime minister of Canada (from October 1911 to July 1920), an intense, reserved man with an aloof and sometimes imperious manner, was convinced that the key to maintaining the imperial relationship was self-government. If Grey hoped that he could form an imperial centre and so give shape to the face of the Dominions in London by the voluntary contributions of the different Dominion States, the mood in the Dominions was different; they did not see London as a new Rome. They saw a modern Empire as the voluntary association of equal and independent States. If London was changing so too was the interdependence of the British World. The centre of gravity of political power was shifting, if ever so slightly. While London remained the hub of interconnected networks through which people, capital and goods moved, the dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) were rapidly evolving. Maturing societies and economies in their own right, they were open to the world beyond their shore and, furthermore, each engaged with other trans-national constituencies (like the United States, France and Germany).52 The ring of Grey’s imperial call fell on deaf ears. Grey also failed to appreciate the evolving difference in assumptions and attitudes between the ‘motherland’ and its dominions, where dominion ‘patriotism’ held firm (like that held by assertive British Columbia to its province, and among protectionists in Australia intent on building local industrial potential).53 While Grey’s scheme highlighted the value of the site on the Strand, many Londoners remained sceptical about what would become of the long vacant block. In the Daily Mirror, W. K. Haselden expressed commonly-held sentiment about 192

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it. Along with other detested aspects of modern London – street advertisements, heavy drays crawling along the middle of roads, public statues, noisome street bands – the Aldwych site was, Haselden suggested, something that suffragettes might blow up.54 Being deliberately ironic, the Daily Express projected it into the next century. As the paper put it, ‘Picturesque City gentlemen of 2014 wishing to negotiate, say, a little starting-price commission with a friend, will rise to the occasion by trysting by moonlight on the Aldwych site with their long conspirators’ cloaks about them, and the silk bat and spats of the Stock Exchange will give place to slashed doublet and hose.’55 As the paper saw it, Londoners suffered from incurable romanticism as a result of the mushrooming of cinematograph houses throughout Britain. The prevalence of fancy dress dances and costume tableaux proved this whimsicality. So too did Grey’s scheme: it was a doomed pipe-dream. Perhaps Grey himself may have had the last word when he said, ‘I have been a rainbow-chaser all my life.’56 He could not have been oblivious to the turning of public mood. One upshot of the long depression of the late nineteenth century was industrial unrest. The industrial world became the main arena for the playing out of social conflict. Once again Grey looked to mutualism and revived Owenite notions of profit-sharing to meet labour problems and industrial upheaval. He believed in mutualism and the co-operative movement and espoused voluntarism (as did Lord Wemyss). As a wide range of businessmen and politicians turned to the question of how to achieve social peace, Grey advocated co-partnership as likely to provide industrial peace and progress. He supported and became President of the Labour Co-partnership Association, a venerable but flagging institution which the new forces decided to capture and rejuvenate. A new promotional committee was created in June 1912 at an impressively attended meeting at the House of Commons; afterwards subcommittees for each industry were formed and with the aid of profit-sharing capitalists, businessmen all over Britain were lobbied to advance the principles of co-partnership.57 However, time moved on from these cooperative crusaders, and their laissezfaire liberal individualism. With the change in sensibilities and the advent of Britain’s Labour Party it was said in 1907 that ‘the tide of socialism is rising ... the old guard of personal rights are, one by one, dropping from our ranks, not by desertion, but by death.’58 Even Labour leader John Burns, President of the Local Government Board from 1905 until becoming President of the Board of Trade in February 1914, agreed with the view that co-partnership ‘is one of the quack remedies suggested by the fact that property is directly mischievous to all except the proprietors.’59 193

CHAPTER 17

‘The Great Centre’ Even the most distinguished architect does not erect his own building; he is dependent on a host of skilled craftsmen and artisans … the finished product will be dependent on the skilled handiwork available in the country and age in which he works.1

The Commonwealth took possession of a surprisingly rustic spot where wild flowers flourished: Rose Bay Willow-Herb (also known as Blood Vine) spread a crimson mantle over the ground. Somewhat like the Foxglove, the stately plant’s erect stems, four to eight feet high, displayed long, opulent spikes of light rosepurple flowers with willow-like leaves. To artists and sketchers their abundant blooms bestowed artistic merit upon the site.2 Loving the novelty of seeing one of England’s handsomest wild flowers abounding in the middle of London, urchins scooped up bunches of the self-seeding blossoms that they gathered from the block. From it, Kingsway showed little sign of progress towards development despite its being built with an underpass to take electric trams. The Holborn to Aldwych branch of the new Piccadilly line ran beneath Kingsway. A station built under Aldwych in 1906 was another example of advanced urban development, although London adopted electric trams later than other European cities (its first electric routes only opened in 1901). Kingsway’s tram subway failed despite being the only link between the London County Council’s north and south London tram lines. To Viscount Peel, the newly-elected chairman of the Improvements Committee, Londoners failed to realise the extent of improvements made to their city in the last ten years through the work of the Council. He defended it and its beleaguered Improvements Committee but admitted that London would have been much more altered were it not for the ‘tremendous incubus and encumbrance of the Holborn-to-Strand scheme’ still plaguing the LCC.3

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As with all construction in London, the Commonwealth building would be built under the inspection of the LCC’s architect, and construction could begin within two months of signing the plans. Edward Riley and all LCC officers authorised by him could enter the lot and inspect any building-work on it. Direction for the building also came from Australia where it fell under the charge of the Minister for External Affairs, Josiah Thomas, whose departmental business was administered by Atlee Hunt. As Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, the establishment of the Australian High Commission in London brought Australia’s dealings with the Imperial government within the ambit of Hunt’s department. When it came down to architectural detail the building also came under the purview of the Department of Home Affairs, of which King O’Malley was now Minister (1910–13). He took close interest in the Commonwealth’s London building, although he was then preoccupied with the future Trans-Australia railroad, building the Kalgoorlie-Port Augusta link across the Nullarbor Plain to connect South Australia and Western Australia, on which construction began in September 1912. His responsibilities also included the planning of the national capital. In mid-February 1913 he drove the first survey peg at Canberra Hill relating to the lay-out of the coming federal city (which he hoped would be named Shakespeare).4 On 5 March, however, the Governor General’s wife named the federal capital Canberra to mark the start of building there. Foundation stones for the Commencement Column were laid and principal engineering works began. Building in London did not proceed as quickly since many opinions about the projected building had to be accommodated. When the model for it was displayed at Queen’s Hall in Parliament House, Melbourne, many there agreed that the projected Commonwealth Offices called for special efforts. One press report imagined the building this way, We are promised that the building shall be distinctive – a rare virtue in the modern edifice. If we could call the bush to our aid we could easily put up something that would make all London stare. From the bark humpy to the slab hut, from the ‘lean-to’ in the wattle-and-dab, there is no lack of distinctive architecture in the wide spaces of our country. A shingle-roof and a colonial chimney, a chock and log fence, and many neat things conjured from the kerosene tin and the gin case, would give an atmosphere even to the Strand. Unfortunately they wouldn’t stand the climate. Something solid of stone, with sculptural designs by Mackennal, 195

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will no doubt meet the case, and so long as it advertises Australia no one will grumble.5 Nativist sentiment influenced Australian ambition though emotional ties to the ‘mother country’ remained strong. But it was not the time for a vernacular idiom with world attention fixed on grandiose architectural statements like the Altare della Patria (the National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II) inaugurated in Rome in 1911 in honour of the first king of a unified Italy.6 Conspicuous pomposity like this, the largest monument in Rome, with a Quadriga on its summit, was the order of the day. Accordingly, one report on the projected Commonwealth Building asserted, ‘When the High Commissioner is lodged in the palatial structure shortly to adorn the Strand with one of the most handsome buildings in London, the representation of the Commonwealth will strike more awe, not to say terror, into the hearts of beholders than any plenipotentiary of the greatest of European courts.’ 7 For, as the London committee of artists chaired by Bertram Mackennal said of it, ‘We are united in the opinion that this building will be a lasting monument to the importance of the Commonwealth and a splendid addition to the architecture of London.’8 Emotions about the envisaged building became heated. Questions over it were parlayed in parliament. Federal parliamentarians urged that none other than local Australian timbers and marbles be used in its construction. It became emblematic of Australia’s recent headway when Labor politicians matched nativist rhetoric to the building. Josiah Thomas assured the House of Representatives that the building would be as high as the London County Council would allow.9 Artists called for a competition for decorative detail. The freshly minted Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (established in 1912 to advise the government on the commissioning of artists to paint official portraits of the Commonwealth’s founding fathers) insisted that artists in Australia should share in the commissions that may be offered. The CAAB expected to be part of the project for the purpose of carrying out the scheme successfully, with half the decorative work for the building to be made in Australia. ‘It concerns us chiefly to give every Australian artist an opportunity to put forth his art to the best advantage’, its chairman argued. ‘Subjects more vital and typical could be obtained from the artists now living in Australia than from artists resident in London whose long absence must have considerably dimmed their recollection of Australian landscape.’10 Into the fray stepped John Smith Murdoch, the Principal Architect of the Department of Home Affairs and senior assistant to the director-general of its public works branch. Good reason for Murdoch’s involvement came from Atlee 196

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Hunt. Writing to Collins he moaned, ‘I cannot tell you how disappointed I am with the plans of the London Offices.’ Hunt listed a litany of complaints about the elaborate plans for the building that reached Melbourne with the model in May 1912. The architects don’t seem to me to have risen to the occasion at all. Everything internal seems to me to have been sacrificed to an attempt at grandeur which in my judgement might have been equally well achieved without the sacrifice of utility which is obvious in the present design. If you look at these sketches you will see that of about one-third of the whole site we get practically no return. It is all taken up with that great doorway and wall at the eastern end. There is not a window at that end or for a considerable distance along either side and the added space which we get by closing over the stair case from the third floor upwards is to be lighted only by the ineffectual means of a small area. That staircase when looked at closely is a very delusive affair. It takes up a tremendous lot of extraordinary valuable space and serves of very little purpose. The idea of the building reminds me very much of the present Parliament House in Melbourne – very elaborate and perhaps imposing in its outward aspect but inside full of inconvenience and wasted space. The amending plans are no improvement on the original ones – in fact they make things worse.11 Hunt induced Josiah Thomas to send Murdoch to London to confer with the High Commissioner and the architects about a number of suggested alterations to the plans. At fifty years of age, Scottish-born Murdoch was an architect with thirty-three years experience, largely in Australia where he possessed authority that ideally suited him for the task in London. ‘Architecture must be the handmaiden of purpose’ Murdoch would later say, and Hunt saw little of this in the building’s design.12 Too much regard went to the building as a public object desired to impress. Insufficient regard went to the commercial imperative to rent space in the building so as to offset some of the construction costs. Hunt wanted it to be more practical and provide more space to lease out. Not knowing where fault lay, Hunt concluded, ‘Perhaps the secret of the whole thing is in the desire of the Australian artists to have a big space on which to erect their masses of sculpture. That may be very well but we are asked to pay a very big price for it in the way of inconvenience and loss of rental.’13 197

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As one of six on the Board appointed to review the designs submitted to the national capital design competition that were judged in May 1912, Murdoch held high principles for architecture. Australia’s new federal capital, he said, should be a city ‘carried out with the highest ideals in respect both of construction and design.’14 In this, he shared O’Malley’s aspirations for the new city. Though somewhat self-effacing in personality, Murdoch became known as the ‘Man who inspired Much of Our Best Architecture.’15 After joining the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs in Melbourne, he led with the design of practically all Commonwealth building works in the decade from 1904.16 He oversaw the first purpose-designed offices to house the Commonwealth Government’s administrative departments. These six-storey Offices in Melbourne’s Treasury Place housed the Government’s departments of Treasury and Cabinet, and a strong–room to hold the nation’s gold reserve. In the T-shaped building, a symmetrical axis of two interconnecting blocks ran north-south and east-west, with central corridors (including lifts and stairs) along these axes, and offices arranged either side of them. Murdoch oversaw the construction of the south block in 1912, and construction on the north block followed during 1912–13. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher occupied an office in the first-floor east wing of the south block, with the cabinet room adjoining. The Attorney General and his offices moved into the first-floor west wing, the Treasurer’s Department occupied the ground and second floors; and the Postmaster General occupied the third and fourth floors. The basement and remaining spaces were used by all departments. Among other schemes at the time, Murdoch followed the course of plans for a proposed Commonwealth Government centre in Perth (which opened in 1923). The nine-storey granite and freestone-faced building, the largest in Western Australia, included the West Australian General Post Office.17 Josiah Thomas had further good reason for despatching Murdoch to London. Federal parliamentarians promoted the idea that Australian materials should be used in the building to the exclusion of all others. It would be a fine advertisement for Australia, said the Labor Party senator leading the large, insistent deputation to Thomas, who pressed their case with representatives from manufacturers associations including those from the Marble and Timber Industries. ‘None but Australian timbers and marbles should be used in the construction of the building … The building of the Commonwealth offices presents an exceptional chance to show a very large number of Londoners some of our products.’18 In keeping with aims to shift perceptions about Australia, and to expand its fledgling industrial capacity, the deputation argued that this opportunity to directly promote Australia’s products should not be missed. 198

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Labor Party Senator for Victoria, Edward (Ted) Russell, led the deputation representing artists, sculptors, architects, engineers, timber experts, and members of the Federal and State parliaments, A.N.A., and Trades Halls. Australian-born of Irish parents, the former dray driver, then office clerk was a nationalist and socialist, a firebrand orator and staunch protectionist.19 Victoria’s Government used Victorian timbers in its public buildings and encouraged the use of Victorian timbers for commercial purposes. It acquired a patent for the quick seasoning of timber so as to advance the timber industry. Employing local materials became de rigueur in government buildings, for it expressed Australian progress and boosted its industries. In Melbourne, Murdoch designed the Government offices to employ local materials. Bluestone steps led to the main entrance, and the ground floor foyer featured three colours of Gippsland marble, with contrasting joinery. Excitement at the time over the recent discovery of a variety of coloured marbles in the Eastern States encouraged their use. Australia was expected to be a large producer of marble, though the industry was practically at its inception.20 No doubt mindful of the self-interest among members of the deputation, Josiah Thomas suggested that the States fit up their offices in the building with marble and timber from their State. The High Commissioner’s annual report that year reflected that British newspapers gave insufficient attention to covering Australia. Sir George Reid succeeded each month in freely getting around 90,000 words about Australia into the press but struggled to gain further publicity for the country. Turning to other forms of publicity, his office staged exhibitions at railway stations, featured displays in window spaces, advertised on omnibuses, and presented lectures. They screened images of Australia in cinematograph theatres and from a ‘biograph motor-car’ (cinema car) touring rural centres. Reid used the Strand–Aldwych corner position to the fullest advantage for advertising purposes.21 Daily messages appeared on the hoarding that wrapped around the building site. Illuminated at night, these messages informed passers-by of some of the facts and potentialities of Australia. They promoted the social advances that were made there, when Australia offered generous welfare benefits while Britain was beset by industrial woes and social upheaval. The Commonwealth’s ‘bulletin board’ relayed Australian confidence and selfassurance with messages that read, ‘Australia’s daily message: There are no suffragists or suffragettes in Australia. Every man and every woman over 21 has the vote.’22 Another read,

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Australia’s Daily Message – We give an honest day’s wage for a fair day’s work; now that no one is crushed down who desires to lift himself up, and thus establish a democracy in fact as well as in name. Mr Fisher, Prime Minister of Australia.23 Reid ensured that the site could not be overlooked even while building on it stalled with industrial unrest. Such delayed progress with the building irked Thomas. He agreed with the lobbyists in Melbourne that building with Australian materials offered an excellent opportunity to advertise Australian resources, but questioned how costs for this would be borne. The Commonwealth would be willing to spend the extra money, and to put it down to advertising, but the States had to be consulted. ‘Their rentals are to be based on cost’, he explained. ‘Therefore, if money is expended in shipping our own material to London, those rentals must be higher … [And] like most advertisements worth having, it must be paid for.’24 All along, it was hoped that the building would contain the offices of the High Commissioner and the Agents of the different States. But, without the general design settled, working plans could not be prepared from which an approximate idea of the actual cost of the building could be formed and therefore the share likely to be paid by each State. Commercial imperative to rent space in the building so as to offset some of the construction costs made the building unusual in Australian eyes, because commercial tenants in Government buildings in Australia were practically non-existent. The States remained rancorous and no certainty existed of bringing the respective Agents General and their staff into the building. While the Victorian Agency would form part of the ‘Australian Building’, the Queensland Government was entrenched in the Strand and the Western Australian Government were moving their Agency from Victoria Street to Savoy House, a five-storey building also on the Strand. Structural alterations needed to house its Agency there were under way. Savoy House was located on the corner of Savoy Street on the Embankment side of the Strand, with frontages of 41 feet on the Strand and 65 feet down Savoy Street. It housed 45 rooms, 2 shops and a basement (an example of the mazy buildings that John Burns criticised). Western Australia’s recently elected Labor Party leader, mine worker John Scaddan, becoming Premier at the age of thirty-five, complained that in the projected Commonwealth building, ‘utility has been made subservient to the outside architectural features.’25 Consequently, it would be difficult to subdivide and sufficiently light the rooms that his State’s agency might need. Thomas

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worried, with good reason, that these States would not transfer their agencies to the Commonwealth building. The question of labour became the tipping point that sent Murdoch to London. In a search for efficiency, O’Malley instituted paying nine shillings per day labourers’ wage in Australia on government projects.26 The Home Affairs Department building, Melbourne (1913) was built by this fixed rate practice known as day labour but London resisted the plan to erect the building by this practice.27 Murdoch, however, was skilled in dealing with contractors. He gained his expertise while establishing Public Works regulations and overseeing the construction of court houses, customs offices and post office buildings Australiawide and his equable personality and benign temperament stood him well in disputes. (Generally speaking, the extent of construction undertaken by the early Commonwealth is under-appreciated, when Estimates under the control of the Department of Home Affairs for new works and buildings in 1912–13 totalled £1,228,224.)28 Murdoch arrived in London in December 1912 to improve the design, reconcile disputes over labour on the site and superintend the work. With him were samples of marbles and timbers with which to resolve the issue about using Australian materials in constructing the building.29 This was an unexpected return to Britain for Murdoch. Thirty-three years earlier he had migrated to Melbourne. Born into the small community of Forres on the Moray Coast of North Scotland, he was educated locally before being indentured to the eminent northern-Scottish architectural firm, Mathews & Mackenzie, in nearby Elgin (with offices in Inverness and Aberdeen). He spent a year with the architectural office of James Mathews (1820–98) and his younger partner A. Marshall Mackenzie. Fourteen years older, Marshall Mackenzie was then aged in his early thirties and responsible for the firm’s design work in Aberdeen.30 When Mackenzie and Murdoch met again in London in December 1912, they could only have been struck by the irony of the situation in which Murdoch was to oversee his former mentor to ensure that Commonwealth Government requirements were met. Burr became involved in a project of improvement near-by. The bicentenary of the birth of celebrated English writer Samuel Johnson was commemorated in 1909. A new window in his memory, with his portrait and those of his close friends Scottish biographer James Boswell and theatrical star David Garrick, went up in April that year in St Clement Danes Church where Dr Johnson worshipped. In September, Lord Rosebery gave an address at Litchfield, Johnson’s birthplace, where a statue to him was unveiled. In 1910 a statue of Johnson was 201

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gifted to St Clement Danes. In 1911 Cecil Harmsworth, a barrister of Middle Temple, the newly elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Luton, bought the house in Gough Square, off Fleet Street, where Johnson lived and finished his famous dictionary. Brother of Lord Northcliffe, Harmsworth bought 17 Gough Square (and the neighbouring house) with a view to presenting it to the nation as a Johnson Museum, or, failing that, a home for Johnsonian and other literary societies. The house was in bad disrepair. Burr was asked to recover it. With Murdoch in London, improvements to the plans for the Commonwealth building were made swiftly. As Murdoch reported, ‘The architects took up the Government’s views with enthusiasm, and in a very few days were able to put modified plans before the High Commissioner, who approved of and procured the Government’s endorsement of them.’31 Drawings for the modifications bear the Mackenzies’ signatures but also carry Murdoch’s influence. Reid reported that Murdoch’s visit proved very useful, adding considerably to the revenue-producing capacity of the building, without destroying the general effect of the scheme.32 In Melbourne, the press reported that Murdoch effected a saving of 12,000 square feet in the plans. ‘He also greatly improved the building in other ways,’ said O’Malley.33 He praised the improvement, which was estimated to increase the rentable value of the premises by about £3,000 per annum. The architects opened up the whole ground floor. They removed the exhibition court from the first floor and placed it on the street level. They rearranged the exhibition space so that, like London’s Baltic Exchange, a large hall became the principal feature of the building. The increased exhibition space assumed a new eight-sided form, and while it occupied a very large proportion of probably the most valuable letting space in the building, all of the frontage space along the Strand was available for letting purposes. Areas designated for shops were increased and widened. Lighting was greatly improved. The main entrance, from the eastern corner facing St Clement Danes Church, remained as the leading feature in the design. Keeping its monumental scale, they took a more open and inclusive view of it. It was designed to lead visitors to the exhibition hall and its display. The vestibule, itself available for exhibition purposes, now led directly on the street level to the large Exhibition Hall, giving a vista from the entrance door to the Melbourne Place windows of 200 feet. The Mackenzies believed this would induce the public to enter the building and pass through it, in the course of which they would see its exhibits. In this respect, the building was designed from the inside out in Beaux-Arts manner, the hall being as grand as the façade and the exterior entrance leading to it.34 The colonnading along the Strand façade was repeated above the entrance porch, 202

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without a pediment in the ordinary sense. This gave a forwardness to the foyer. It was intended to be suggestive, to announce that it would receive all who would enter, besides leading to the ground floor exhibition hall where receptions and similar gatherings would be accommodated. The Great Hall was designated as a place of assembly and ‘a social centre of Australian interests.’35 On the upper floors, suites of offices now followed the angle of the building towards Fleet Street. Rooms were wider and lighting to them and to the staircase was improved. The building was topped by a Mansard-style roof which housed a couple of attic storeys and brought added floor area to the building. The London County Council required that Portland Stone be used for the building’s exterior. Portland stone is quarried from the Isle of Portland, in Dorset, commonly called the Gibraltar of the North. Portland limestone was praised as being best suited for the climatic and other conditions prevailing in London, where it was almost universally employed for significant buildings.36 A marine deposit of the Jurassic period, its beds are full of fossils of marine creatures. Their properties in the stone weathers it idiosyncratically, to create shadows and high lights that brighten London’s complexion. Allowance was thus made to the desire to build exclusively with Australian stone. Part of the building’s frontage would be built of Bowral trachyte, a dark olive green to grey stone resembling granite quarried from Mount Gibraltar 120 kilometres south-west of Sydney. A hard, igneous rock without cracks or flaws, it was considered practically indestructible, therefore desirable for any important building in which permanence might be desired.37 The Equitable Life insurance company had chosen the stone to build its headquarters in Sydney in 1895, believing that its entire trachyte façade would ensure their new building would endure for a thousand years. And Bowral trachyte had been selected for the ‘Federation Stone’, a symbolic obelisk erected in 1901 in Centennial Park, Sydney. So while trachyte for new the building’s base highlighted Australia and its industry on the building externally (where otherwise it was faced with Portland stone), Australian stone and wood were employed on all visible detail for the building internally. A uniform, somewhat stripped, classical style in the Mackenzies’ new perspective for the building reflected Murdoch’s stamp and now bore no resemblance to Shaw’s eccentric, free-style manner. It reflected what had been unthinkable: Shaw (who died in mid-November 1912) was no longer revered.38 It was intended to erect the building following Australian contractual procedures. Murdoch’s Commonwealth Building in Melbourne had been erected under Labor principles established by Home Affairs Minister King O’Malley. Of 203

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particular note was his controversial decision to allow paid wet weather time to workers, a bonus payment. The industrial and political arms of organised labour combined to protect the labour market in the skilled trades, where industrial labour was strongest, and did so most successfully during terms of federal Labor government.39 At the time, labour enjoyed the most enviable position in Australia, where more was done to make industrial disputes a matter of compulsory arbitration than any other country in the world. The operative unions had asked for absolute preference to unionists, payment of the same rates and the cutting of the stone in London. Reid had been informed by the Master Builders’ and Contractors’ Association in England that it was not likely that any large firms would tender if the principle of preference to unionists was embodied in the specifications. They were informed that the Australian system of preference to unionists, all other things being equal, would be observed and that union rates of wages would be paid, although no assurance could be given as regarded stone cutting.40 It appears that Murdoch was not intimidated by the resistance shown in London to Australian labour practice and stared down the London Builders’ Association. On his return to Australia, he reported that the building was future-proof: it would permanently serve ever-expanding Australian interests.41 In late July 1913, Reid signed the contract to construct the building. Frank Savage (who was by now serving as Assistant Secretary in the High Commission) witnessed the signing of the contract with the prominent construction company Dove Brothers Limited. Another federal administration took charge in Australia shortly beforehand when the country’s sixth Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, assumed office on 24 June. After a close election result he held a Liberal Party majority of only one in the House of Representatives (and would be Prime Minister to September 1914). Staffordshire-born, a former Methodist lay preacher and mine worker, Cook liked and admired Reid whom he served as a Minister in Reid’s State Governments. He owed his start in federal politics to Reid who encouraged him to stand for the House of Representatives at the first federal election. Dove Brothers Ltd, based in North London, were general builders and contractors. They built many churches (130 between 1858 and 1900), as well as banks, industrial premises and public buildings, predominantly in London but also throughout England and abroad. The company worked with most of the major architects of the late Victorian and the Edwardian years and were as much at home with delivering large, engineered constructions and industrial premises as they were with erecting and restoring finely-wrought Gothic-revival churches. 204

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A highly reputable small family firm, they were respected for high-quality work in areas of traditional craftsmanship, like wood carving needed in churches. Such was their skill that they were entrusted with restoration work for St Paul’s Cathedral. They were equally respected for building with new techniques involving the use of steel and were early adopters of reinforced concrete.42 Where in Victorian days builders prized putting up churches, Edwardian builders vied to build halls of assembly, commercial ‘palaces’ and government buildings. Dove Brothers built one of the grandest halls of assembly: the Wesleyan Central Hall at Westminster. Designed in 1904, and finished in 1911, it was built for an estimated £300,000, with the third largest dome in London.43 Chronicling the history of their building activity in 1981, David Braithwaite titled his account Building in the Blood to stress that the Doves were gifted by blood inheritance as builders.44 Frederick Lionel Dove (1854–1932) was a third-generation builder, whose family’s construction company operated from Islington from 1781. His father, Frederick John Dove (1830–1923), was governing director of the firm and the doyen of the building trade.45 At 83, he was the last survivor of the four founders of the London Master Builders’ Association (established in 1872), over which he presided for three years.46 The picture of a Victorian patriarch with a chestlength white beard, he took steps toward establishing welfare programs to provide benefits within the building trade, such as with accidents and for orphans. Just as the Dove family itself ran the firm, long service was the norm among the firm’s loyal workers, many of whom were Islington-based; the close-knit organisation and family-run nature of the firm was not unusual among building contractors.47 The firm was incorporated in 1905; leading its expansion, Frederick Lionel Dove became its first managing director. At the age of fifty-eight, having worked with his father for thirty-seven years, he had the skills to succeed as a contracting builder. Of fair complexion, if balding and silvering, his thin upper lip gave him a tight-mouthed appearance, but he was open-faced and clear-eyed. He was a member of the new London County Council that followed the landslide defeat of Lord Rosebery’s progressive liberals. A Municipal Reform member of the Council from 1907, he also sat on the Metropolitan Water Board from 1908. He held a long association with the LCC, being active in a number of its committees which met weekly.48 In 1910 he chaired the Establishment Committee which at the time was overseeing the building of the Council’s County Hall. During excavation for it, he discovered the substantial remains of a Roman boat on the riverside site. Preserved by Thames mud for sixteen centuries it was then thought to be the first ancient boat found in Britain.49 To some this discovery endorsed the LCC’s contentious 205

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selection of their Southbank site, where it pioneered development on that side of the river with its projected million pound riverside embellishment. (At the time, his Establishment Committee were asked to consider the advisability of providing a roof garage for members’ aeroplanes. His response was that he had no doubt that proper facilities would be provided when the science had advanced to such a degree that a landing stage was desirable but for the moment aviation had not yet reached the stage of being an exact science.)50 While Murdoch enjoyed resuming friendship with Marshall Mackenzie, likewise Murdoch and Dove could only have seen eye to eye. The Doves were experts at coordinating the disparate efforts among the different trades required to construct a building into united action. Reid could only have found this reassuring in the increasingly militant climate of the day. In the four years from 1910, the failure of money wages to keep pace with the cost of living could not be ignored by workers. The London Master Builders’ Association declared united action as one of their rules.51 Industrial upheaval marked 1911. Numerous trade disputes followed wholesale stoppages in the transport trades. Early 1912 brought more unrest with the three-month long national coal strike. Lightning strikes in 1913 followed the demand by London’s Building Trade unions for a rise in wages. Strikes reached unprecedented levels that year as militancy increased alongside a fervent campaign for women’s suffrage.52 By the second half of 1913 it was clear that the industrial relations system as a whole was slowly grinding to a halt.53 Selecting a masterful general contractor in this climate, one who could marshal potential chaos into order, was essential. It could only be hoped that the Dove Brothers were aptly named should the need arise to meet militancy in building disputes. Shortly after Reid signed the contract Hanslip Fletcher drew the site at its eastern end for the Daily Telegraph; we see it as it appeared in late July 1913.54 Fletcher’s drawing shows that no time was lost. Ground had been broken by the Hackney excavators and part of the site had already been opened up. Timber was stacked on the site to be used to take up the earth pressure during excavation. A workmen’s shed for tools and machinery stood ready. Rubble had been cleared and loaded onto horses’ drays parked on the street-side of the hoarding that wrapped around the block. Hansom cabs and motor-buses rush past in both directions. Midsummer in 1913, on 11 August, the Dove Brothers took possession of the site. (That month, the London Plasterers Strike began.) They intended to complete the building within fifteen calendar months, by the end of April 1915. It was not uncommon for a first-class City building to rise at the rate of one story 206

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in three weeks.55 Oscar Hammerstein’s Opera House (1911, designed by Bertie Crewe), went up in fourteen months. They were undoubtedly keen to achieve as much as possible ahead of the ‘London Particular’ setting in. Regularly, about November, visibility dulled when a foul yellow fog, pea-soup thick, caused by industrial and domestic soot suspended in the Autumn air, settled over London. Records of the soot which fell during twelve months were recorded from two observation stations in Westminster, one near Victoria Station and the other in Horseferry Road. (The Lancet reported that if soot fell at the same rate over all London as at the Westminster stations it would amount to 53,820 tons in the year.)56 Specifications for erecting the superstructure, as prepared by the Mackenzies, accompanied the Articles of Agreement.57 They completed the drawings that went with the specifications by June 1913, a month before the contract was signed. General drawings besides particulars for work in steel, stone and reinforced concrete were detailed. Decorative work (murals and sculpture), which remained to be resolved, was excluded from this schedule. The contract was for £206,753. It allowed 500 hours for the many trades needed: excavator, scaffolder, timberman, slater, glazier; for a smith and use of fire, and for a smith’s assistant. Each of the works was detailed with 2,000 hours allowed for general labour. It allowed 1,000 hours for more specialised trades: bricklayer, mason, joiner, plumber and his mate, plasterer, and his labourer, the use of crane or hoist, a horse cart and man, asphalt spreader, and potmen. These details in the contract give a sense of the complexity facing Dove Brothers and clearly signals their skill as experienced contractors. Holding together the different building workers and conducting the execution of their trades in their required order of progress on the site, was as much a part of the building’s construction as detailing the structural components used in its architecture. Here the loyalty of workers whom the Doves customarily relied on from among London’s army of 100,000 builders was advantageous, many hailing from their home-base of Islington.58 Logistics have always been the key to the success of large construction projects. A proper plan of construction is essential to avoid wasting time. While designers face well-defined problems, builders have to deal with external conditions beyond their control. The availability of materials, fluctuations in labour and material prices and (most important) transportation, can pose unexpected problems. Materials were delivered to the Strand site largely by horse-drawn wagons, with delivery often scheduled for the dawn or pre-dawn hours, when traffic was lighter.59 The LCC allowed part of Melbourne Place, the roadway alongside Victoria House at the site’s western end, to accommodate the 207

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office needed by the Clerk of Works and other necessary lock-ups like cement sheds. This helped with building quickly as it kept the site free for construction. If unable to meet the schedule, the contractor’s liability was £200 weekly for every week during which the works remained unfinished.60 A thorough plan for construction would be essential for the Doves. Sir Aston Webb, responsible for the refurbished east front of Buckingham Palace, celebrated for his design for the National Memorial to Queen Victoria (1901–11), and known for both his charm and his common-sense approach, was to arbitrate in any dispute.61 Emphasis on quality held throughout, both with all supplies and consultants. Materials specified were to be of the highest quality. The Portland stone was to be the best quality available, specially approved by the architects, well-seasoned and absolutely free of imperfections. No unexceptionable stone would be allowed onto the site.62 Attention to quality in materials used and employing material that was of the very best procurable at the time was standard in significant buildings. Holloways constructed the foundations and structural engineer Sven Bylander, oversaw the fabrication of the steelwork design. Photographed in 1930, Swedish-born Bylander was fair-haired with a square forehead, narrowly slit pale eyes, and a thin upper lip beneath a clipped moustache.63 He came to London, after working in America, most likely with the J. G. White Engineering Corporation of New York. Electrical, civil and mechanical engineers and contractors, they specialised in contracts for large infrastructure and utilities such as railways, tramways, and hydraulic power developments. A global operation, J. G. White & Co were one of the most respected traction engineering and construction firms in the world.64 They built steam and electric railways, electric light and power plants, water power developments, water works and sewerage works in North and South America and the Philippines. In 1900 American electrical engineer, contractor and investment banker James G. White established an English branch of his firm, which set up in Cloak Lane, Cannon Street.65 Their chief engineer, Bylander worked from Cockspur Street. British construction industry from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s generally lagged about twenty years behind developments in continental Europe and the United States which is why enterprising individuals like Bylander saw opportunity in Britain. Likewise, the peripatetic Samuel J. Waring, who was active on the London retail scene, and controlled the Waring White Building Company, a construction firm established in association with J. G. White & Co. Waring wanted to import American know-how and systems into England.66 (Samuel J. Waring’s interest in the venture extended to the building of the proposed store of Selfridges.) 208

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Bylander pushed the limit imposed by building regulations regarding the structure of buildings in London. He tested the elastic limit of steel, believing that it could bear stresses beyond what LCC regulations allowed. Although by now steel was ubiquitous, Bylander pioneered its use at a time when London’s architects generally remained reluctant to take it up owing to cautious building regulations. Since the enactment of the LCC’s (General Powers) Act of 1909, known as the Steel Frame Act, a skeleton framework of metal was permissible. Loads on the floors and the limiting stresses on the structural members were specified, and full details including calculations were to be deposited with the District Surveyor. Council building regulations remained cautious about novel construction techniques like steel frame construction and reinforced concrete, despite the example shown two decades earlier from the United States with the first all-steel framed building, the ten storey Rand-McNally Building in Chicago (1889–1911).67 Responsible for a number of key buildings that were recently built with steel frames, Bylander’s example led to changes in building regulations for London. He designed and oversaw the triangular steel frame for the Morning Post Building (1907) and the interior section of the Waldorf Hotel (it was not a complete steel frame building). Others he worked on were the Imperial Building (1913) and Hammerstein’s Opera House, both on Kingsway. Bylander oversaw Oceanic House (1907), the offices of the White Star Shipping Line, and the nearby Palladium (1910, Frank Matcham). He demonstrated that high and thin party walls were possible to achieve with steel construction, although they would not be widely accepted in London before 1935. Structural engineers Redpath Brown and Company supplied, manufactured and erected the steelwork frame for the superstructure. Established in the days of George IV, five years before George Stevenson built the first steam-driven railway in 1825, the company pioneered in working iron and steel and were part of the success of Britain’s engineering revolution. By constantly adopting new ideas in design, construction and erection, the company flourished further into the twentieth century. In 1900, Redpath Brown designed and erected a furniture store at Stockton-on-Tees, which they prided themselves on building, claiming to have thus erected the first completely steel-framed building in the British Isles. This is a contentious claim. At this time, steelwork was employed without standardised approaches or materials, let alone a standard definition of ‘steelframe construction.’ Bylander observed that when he arrived in London in 1902, builders using steelwork simply piled one piece on top of another, stuck a few bolts in and called it constructional steelwork, a process he contemptuously dismissed 209

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as ironwork.68 Interest in steel-frame construction grew as a result of achievements in America; achievements made in London through Bylander’s efforts stimulated further interest.69 Redpath Brown, being interested in efficient construction, pursued the potential that steel frame construction offered and were actively involved at an early stage in the construction of steel-framed structures. In 1903 the company opened a river-side factory at East Greenwich, from which steel for the Commonwealth Building was delivered.70 Redpath Brown’s company history claimed that by 1911 they had constructed, for a Manchester office building, a framework containing over 7,000 tons of steel, the first 2,000 tons of which was erected in eight weeks. Bylander brought American savvy and push to London when fears were held about the elastic limit of steel. As a structural engineer he was in the business of precision and order, which he approached creatively because he was then working on the cutting edge of building knowledge. He had to assess loads and stresses that structures would bear and deliver within cost. Testing and finding that loads and stresses could go further than building regulations allowed, he questioned how far he could push materials and techniques. Notes that Bylander made for the Australian Building tell us that he contracted a lump sum price for steelwork of £22,000 for the steelwork used, with a total weight of 1,359 tons; his fee of £1,100 was 5 per cent of the cost of steel.71 Of the building he said that it ‘was one of the first for which I designed the steel frame in accordance with the 1909 Act, and this is therefore a complete steel-frame building under this Act. It contains exhibition rooms where the imposed load is 224 lbs per square foot, and the majority of the floors are for offices with 100 lbs imposed-load.’ 72 In a paper read before the Institution of Structural Engineers on the progress made in steelwork in buildings, he singled out two notable features of the building. He illustrated the reinforced hollow tile used to build the floors and pointed to the twenty-four-foot span over the exhibition hall.73 Deep haunches were adopted to gain strength and rigidity. Further American connection came from the firm of structural steel inspectors, Robert W Hunt & Co. They were customarily employed by the Mackenzies for checking the steel at the works, and they were employed in the steel work foundations, their fee being included in the contract with Holloway Bros.74 For Bylander, the curved frontage and unusual shape of the new Australian building meant that a great deal of special setting out was involved with splay connections of girders to stanchion. All joints were riveted on site, to meet the requirements of the Council. In addition to the main frame construction, 210

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specially constructed steel work was supplied to form a backing on which to build or attach the marble cornice work on the ground floor. Reinforced concrete was used to build the upper basement, ground and steps at the centre of the building, the flat roof and staircases. Remaining floor areas were constructed of hollow pot brick with reinforced concrete ribs supplied and constructed by a specialist subcontractor Horace W. Cullum & Co., London. The building began to take firm shape. ‘Its proportions were soon making an effect within the perspectives of the Strand,’ wrote one observer.75 The Times reinforced this on 23 July 1913, illustrating the Mackenzies’ design for the Strand elevation.76 The drawing showed a building in classical style, detailed in three horizontal bands: rusticated archways at ground level supported a mid-level colonnade that is topped by a mansard-style roof. The drawing in The Times, and subsequent reports, conveyed an idea of the building’s external appearance. From its basement, the building would rise ten stories high, the whole height from the street level to the top of the roof being about 100 feet. Although steel-frame construction made it possible to build tall, the London Building Act of 1894 set a limit of 80 feet (24 m), and two stories, on buildings on the widest streets (a limit that effectively remained in force until after the Second World War). The building soon assumed prominence as it rose owing to the absence of development on Aldwych–Kingsway. No buildings abutted it other than Victoria House on its Western Strand corner, to which the new structure eventually became joined in seamless fashion. The two buildings read as one. The future building was already deemed to be upgrading the Strand, making it worthy of its important place among metropolitan thoroughfares And when it is finished what a difference there will be in the eastern end of the Strand! For many years – more years than London ratepayers care to count – this splendid triangular site, with a still greater space to the west of its base, has been a wilderness of old foundations half concealed in Summer time with those English wild flowers which make a magic appearance anywhere and everywhere on the ruins of man’s handiwork, turning the waste of brick, stone and mortar into a huge but much-neglected rock garden.77 Not yet evident at this stage was the role that the Commonwealth’s plans for its building would play in the Kingsway’s development. The Builder illustrated an impression of the planned building in a double-page spread.78 Presented by an 211

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anonymous illustrator in sepia-toned wash, the building stands as a fait-accompli in its Strand–Aldwych location with traffic and pedestrians milling around it. As the building rose, it showed the attraction of its corner location, albeit in an as yet largely undeveloped area. The character of the building, and its favourable reception, developed appreciation for the central position that it held. It signalled others to follow and stirred them to build in its wake (although this would not occur for some time yet).79 In time, the Commonwealth building anchored the development that was needed on Aldwych-Kingsway. From May 1912, press reports were calling the building ‘Australia’s London Home’. ‘It is understood that the building will be named Australia’, read one report (without verifying detail), speaking about the building in the same way that federal parliamentarians and lobbyists referred to it.80 The British Press made much of the anticipated exhibition hall as a novel and interesting feature. This space was viewed (as Reid had assured the LCC it would be) as a Great Hall of Empire. In London, Imperial buildings were about imagemaking, meant to overawe, to be seen from outside, to impress those onlookers unable to enter within with the might of the Empire. By contrast, the Australian building was designed to draw people in and include them. The hall was to be experienced from within. The future Commonwealth Building was clearly a building of the highest class to the government in Australia.81 And on only one count alone the building was highly emblematic: it was an island building, entirely surrounded by streets and separated from other properties, a metaphor for the southern continent it was designed to serve. Neighbours might see things differently, yet New Zealand’s newspapers applauded the form that was taking shape on the Strand. The Auckland Star regarded it as being conceived and planned on a scale ‘worthy of the purpose which it is intended to fulfil, and the idea that will be symbolized by this block, the nobly designed pile which is to be known in the future as Commonwealth Building.’82 The building’s purpose (said the paper) is ‘to represent in the ‘hub of the Universe’ and the heart of the Empire, ‘the might, majesty, and dominion’ of England’s daughter-nation of the far south.’

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‘Australia’s Day’ Australia will now enjoy a living monument in the heart of the Empire worthy of her ever-growing state and substance. The Commonwealth building promises to take its place among the noblest structures in our capital.1 On Thursday 24 July 1913, King George V laid the foundation stone of the Commonwealth Building. Laying the foundation stone for significant buildings was an important function when he could denote the progress made in the country which he followed closely. Usually carefully orchestrated events, a stonelaying ceremony observed traditional stately rituals, as did much in the life of this new King. Almost to the day, twelve months before, on 22 July 1912, he laid the foundation stone for the New University Buildings at Bangor, part of Prifysgol Cymru, the University of Wales, of which he was Chancellor. And sixteen months earlier, the King tested the accuracy of the fixing of a large block of Iona marble, the foundation stone for London’s County Hall. Late morning the Royal Party left Buckingham Palace in an open landau. Escorted by the Household Cavalry, they headed down the Mall, through the Admiralty Arch to the Strand. The King was a modest and unassuming man of forty-eight whose plain nature was not like the cosmopolitan and flamboyant personality of his father. Life in the Navy had made him a creature of routine and a stickler in the matter of clothes and uniforms. The King wore his Admiral’s full-dress uniform and Garter ribbon. The Queen wore pale blue brocade and a hat covered with red roses and clematis. Princess Mary accompanied them – the ‘schoolgirl’ princess, just turned thirteen that April. She appeared in a girlish frock of pale green muslin, dotted with tiny pink rosebuds, a deep green sash, and a hat of white ostrich feathers. With the King just in the third year of his reign, crowds craned their necks to see Their Majesties and cheered as they drove by. The morning’s bright sunshine encouraged the festive mood after what had been a dispiritingly cool 213

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start to the summer. Days before, the thermometer had failed to rise above 15°C (60°F) and grey skies dampened London spirits. As the day progressed the cloud lifted and welcome sunshine brightened the city. The mood on the Strand was further enlivened by a brilliant show of colour from banners and flags festooning the street. Colourful trappings animated the Gaiety Theatre and across Marconi House a large banner displayed the motto ‘Advance Australia!’. Wildflowers gleamed pink, white and mauve from the spread of urban weeds on the adjacent vacant site. Crowds massed on rising tiers of seats, erected at the junction of the Aldwych thoroughfare at the western end of the Law Courts, that offered them their much anticipated view of the Royal Party. The King and Queen approached the block for the Commonwealth building just after noon. A band of His Majesty’s Irish Guards playing the National Anthem competed with the cheering of the crowds. The royal family took particular interest in military music and the Regimental Band enjoyed a high reputation.2 The Drums and Pipes ensemble had proudly returned with a silver cup presented to it by the Canadians in gratitude for their playing in Canada in 1905. ‘Quis Separabit?’ (‘Who Shall Separate Us?’) was the unit’s motto. A new regiment, only formed in 1900 in response to acts of gallantry by Irish units in South Africa, the cadre of the new regiment consisted of Foot Guards of Irish descent. With a band some 65 strong and some of the finest musicians in the army in its ranks, their first ceremonial duties had been to assist in adding colour to the inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth twelve years earlier.3 The Royal Party alighted at a tented pavilion resplendent in striped cream and gold, erected for the occasion at the eastern Aldwych corner of the Strand. It occupied the greater part of the site for the new building. Prominently visible above it was the colossal ‘Go to Australia’ advertisement plastered on the eastern end of Victoria House, reputedly the largest advertisement displayed in London. Sir George Reid received their Majesties and presented them to the AgentsGeneral for the six Australian States and Captain Collins. The King inspected a guard of honour formed by King Edward’s Horse, the King’s Overseas Dominions Regiment of special cavalry. The brigade, raised in Britain, was composed of men from every one of the King’s Dominions overseas. Like with the Irish Guards, the idea for the regiment sprang from the Boer War. It was formed in 1901 to represent the ‘reliance between each far-flung Dominion and the Homeland’.4 Men from the regiment, a number of Australians among them, stood at attention in the Strand, 106 strong. Scarlet flashes enlivened their distinctive khaki uniform. Two narrow scarlet stripes banded round the double collar of their khaki serge tunic, as did four vertical scarlet stripes with gilt buttons on their cuffs, and double scarlet 214

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stripes lined the seam of their khaki cord breeches. Brown boots and matching leather equipment caught the light. Their plumes of cock feathers fluttered in the wind. This was a proud display for the King, their colonel-in-chief. Entering the pavilion, their Majesties were greeted by an assembly of about 2,000 specially invited guests and imperial dignitaries impressive in their golden epaulettes and bright orders. The King’s eyes – wide and light-blue like the ribbon of the Garter across his tunic – held and arrested their attention. The midday sun shot through the roof of the pavilion to bathe the crowd in golden light. ‘Those present included some of the most illustrious of the nobility and statesmen of the Empire, and as full orders were worn, there was such a blaze of scarlet and gold and blue as is rarely seen outside the Imperial capital’, reported one correspondent who looked on the scene.5 Distinguished figures stood out prominently: Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum; Viscount Crewe, in scarlet uniform relieved by the pale blue of the Garter; Katsunosuke Inoue, a director of the Manchurian Railway across northeastern China and the Japanese Ambassador to Britain (1913–16); the ruddy-complexioned Victor Cavendish, ninth Duke of Devonshire, and president of the British Empire League, wearing the deep purple riband of the Victorian Order; the Archbishop of Melbourne, The Most Rev. Henry Lowther Clarke; Sir Samuel Griffith, the first Chief Justice of Australia, and a principal author of its Constitution; Lord Strathcona and Earl Grey; Col. Sir David Burnett, the Lord Mayor of London; the Rt. Hon. Lewis ‘Loulou’ Harcourt, Colonial Secretary (1910–15), cold-blooded and calculating, who knew everyone of importance; and many members of the House of Commons.6 Strains of the German patriotic anthem, ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’, were among the numbers which the Band of the Irish Guards played.7 Within the pavilion, its seats faced west and looked on the dais, before which the stone of greenish-grey Bowral trachyte hung suspended by block and tackle. Dressed on all sides, the stone measured four feet square, eighteen inches deep.8 Assembled on the dais were the Mackenzies and Frederick Dove. Two gilded armchairs, positioned before a bank of cannas, hydrangeas, and lilies, awaited their Majesties who took their places on the dais. When the cheering subsided, the renowned Australian contralto Ada Crossley, lissom, smoothvoiced and a royal favourite, sang ‘God save the King’. The audience joined in the refrain. Reid addressed their Majesties briefly. He said, ‘I hope and believe that this edifice, when completed, will prove worthy of the kindness of Your Majesty, worthy of Australia and of this Imperial city. A spacious exhibition of the resources 215

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of Australia will be one of the chief features of the Commonwealth Building. That display will be a perpetual reminder of the noble opportunities which our Continent presents for vigorous development and successful enterprise.’9 Reid’s speech was to the point: the building at once projected Australian possibilities and reflected proximity. That proximity resided in the King himself who had personally bridged the distance to Australia twice. George V was more attuned to colonial life than was his father. Since his arrival in London, Reid had noted the pleasure with which King George remembered his visits to Australia.10 Reid stressed how the building was about the future while he also spoke of the great satisfaction felt by Australians that their Majesties ‘have a close personal knowledge of them and of their country.’ He thanked them for the constant interest that they took in the continent and reminded them how Australians appreciated their interest. Reid’s high-pitched voice was distinct; for once he was not giving an impromptu speech and the occasion called for formality. However, the atmosphere was noticeably less formal than was customary on such occasions. All stone-laying ceremonies generated anticipation regarding the projected building and its future purpose. The pleasure among the Australians in the crowd before him was unmistakable. They were exultant about the Commonwealth’s architectural undertaking and its anchoring in London on the Strand. The King’s laying of the foundation stone was the first stately ceremony in which the Commonwealth was exclusively associated in London, thirteen years after Australia’s Federal Constitution came into existence. Reid emphasized how navigational distance had been spanned so that Australia’s distance from Britain had disappeared and emigration ceased to be exile. He ended by saying that the new building ‘will proclaim something more than the industrial growth of Australia. It will also testify to the increasing intimacy and harmony of the political relationship between the Mother and the Daughter lands. Some ties have gone, but the ties that really do unite Britain and the Dominions beyond the seas – mutual betterment – pride of race – grandeur of tradition – glory of achievement – loyalty to the Throne – a resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder when our King calls – all these remain and they are strengthened by the flight of time.’ More than an occasion for publicly reaffirming loyalty, it was occasion for cementing unity. In reply, the King summed up the significance of the occasion. He congratulated the Commonwealth on acquiring ‘this splendid site’ and on the ‘noble structure which it is proposed to erect upon it.’ He said that the building would both serve the purposes for which it was designed but also evoke Australia’s 216

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immense opportunities and limitless resources. He added that when built, it ‘will take its place as a worthy and welcome addition to the buildings which adorn the centre of the Empire’. He spoke sincerely. On his coronation route, he was driven along both the north and south side of the Strand, his carriage turning at the weed-ridden site facing St Clement Danes that blighted the grandeur of the procession. Relaxed and smiling, he spoke of his affection for Australia. One correspondent there reported, ‘His Majesty’s voice is harsh and guttural, and his delivery indifferent. But there is no mistaking his deep sincerity, and his reference to his Australian visits was no mere formality.’11 The size of the crowds that welcomed him in Australia had deeply impressed him: ‘I cherish the most happy recollections of my two visits to Australia in 1881 and 1901, and of the warmth of the reception accorded to me in all the States on both occasions. My second visit remains to both of us an inspiring memory.’12 George V said that he had never experienced such enthusiasm as that given to them in Melbourne. For the Queen, their voyage was also impressionable, being the first tour in which she publicly held her own. Their affection for Australia was genuine. In his inimitable way, Reid had further cemented the close personal relationship with Australia that they felt. Less than four weeks earlier, on 30 June, Reid had left Victoria Station by special train with the King and the Prince of Wales for a Royal Visit to Portsmouth. The King inspected the new battle cruiser, Australia, ahead of its maiden voyage. The first Dreadnought-type built for the Australian navy, and its flagship, it carried amongst her crew a large proportion of Australian blue-jackets. He spoke to a number of the men and wished the officers and men a happy commission and a pleasant voyage to the Commonwealth. The battleship marked a new departure in imperial relations: one of shared defence. Journalists and cinematographers were allowed aboard to report on the first Dreadnought-type battlecruiser to fly the Imperial Dominions’ ensign prior to her sailing. It was jointly manned by Britons and Australians, and Reid told the men that he saw no difference between them: ‘They are all children of the same grand old breed [all British], which has stood the test of time,’ he told the Press. He paid a tribute to the King’s interest in the Australian navy. The Commonwealth was building its fleet because Australians were Britishers, responding to the call of the sea. Their object was self-preservation, and ‘When the Empire was endangered Australia would rally to the flag.’13 On the Strand, the King’s next words echoed Reid’s sentiment and drew applause from the audience: ‘Nothing can gratify me more than the testimony which you bear to the growing sense of kinship and unity which pervades the self 217

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governing communities of the Empire, and to those indissoluble ties which knit them to one another and to my Throne.’ When the tumult of applause subsided, he continued. ‘I am well assured that, as in the past, in any national emergency, Australia will be ready to play her part for the common cause, and that the loyalty of her sons will never be appealed to in vain.’ The Archbishop of Melbourne recited a prayer before the King proceeded to lay the foundation stone. Captain Collins took charge of the casket to rest beneath the stone. Into a bronze box he placed plans of the building and a list of members of the Commonwealth Government together with the customary collection of coins. Marshall Mackenzie handed His Majesty a trowel of solid gold with enamel mountings. It, and the other Australian-made presentation tools of solid gold used in the ceremony, were fine examples of the goldsmith’s art. They were figured with the Arms of the different States and the Commonwealth and the Imperial Crown. The trowel’s fluted handle of Australian blackwood was delicately carved with a sprig of wattle entwined in spiral form. Frederick Dove (who had assisted the King at the stone-laying ceremony for the LCC’s new County Hall) spread a bed of mortar on the bed stone. The grey block of trachyte was lowered. From a mortar board handed to him by Alexander Mackenzie the King spread the mortar with the trowel. Dove and the Mackenzies lowered the stone into its position. Marshall Mackenzie gave His Majesty a mallet with which to tap the stone down on to its bed and a level and plumb rule with which His Majesty tested the accuracy of the fixing of the stone. Finally, he tapped it with the mallet, and declared that it was well and truly laid. A flourish of trumpets rang out. Bursts of applause followed. The sounds of ‘a hooting and a yapping [were] heard in the Strand’, as one newspaper described the ‘Coo-ee’ call of demonstrative Australians cheering for the King and Queen. The ‘kangaroo call’, the Australian cry of rejoicing,’ was described as having ‘an unmistakably festive sound.’14 Reid and his office had orchestrated a memorable performance, one of identity in an imperial and national pas de deux. The stylish ceremony declared that Australia was at the heart of the Imperial dance and ready for an entwined performance. It demonstrated how the future building was looked upon as having the power to establish, and to give form and identity to the Commonwealth, therefore to Australia in London. It indicated the future building’s potential as a setting for ceremony and ritual. Later, after these formalities, a telegram from the imperturbable Lewis Harcourt reached Reid. ‘My warmest congratulations on [the] splendid success of the beautiful ceremony today’ he said. ‘The King and Queen were much gratified 218

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by it.’15 The Times observed that the forty-minute ceremony capped a year for Australia that was ‘crowded with signs of national progress’.16 With the coming building, it was said, ‘Australia will now enjoy a living monument in the heart of the Empire worthy of her ever-growing state and substance. The Commonwealth building promises to take its place among the noblest structures in our capital.’ The Illustrated London News named the building Dominion House, with no reference made to Australia and it attributed Earl Grey as its moving spirit.17 Other English papers concluded that the ceremony delineated the Strand– Aldwych as a centre of Empire.18 It was Australia, said the Daily Chronicle, who set the example: Australia ‘led the Dominions in the policy of erecting in the centre of London a material symbol of its progress, and a standing advertisement of its resources’.19

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A National Expression No art, no culture, no culture, no nation.

Federation galvanized artists who argued that an entirely new creativity might evolve from Australian inspiration. Their ambition was reflected in the phrase, ‘No art, no culture, no culture, no nation.’1 Belief in the importance of cultural life to the identity of the nation, therefore to its wellbeing as a whole, underpinned this sentiment. The Australian sculptor (Sir) Bertram Mackennal, working from 1894 in London where he was pre-eminent, expressed the confidence and ambition of his fellow artists, I feel certain that Australia will always produce artists. The climate will breed them; and I think an untamed country where you can see Nature nude, not covered by the obliterating finger prints of man – has a message for the soul ready to receive it. So it is my hope, as we develop, we may raise men who will give us great thoughts, and works, imbued with the instinct of a new people, in a new land.2 Nativists in Melbourne pressed that Scottish architects taking charge of the building were not personally intimate with the plentiful distinctive material found in Australia (like its flora) to inspire the building’s decoration, so should welcome and engage Australian artists to embellish it. In Melbourne, the Government decided that an advisory committee of artists who were prominent in London, be appointed to work with the Mackenzies. It included (Sir) Arthur Streeton and portrait painter (Sir) John Longstaff.3 Sir George Reid appointed Mackennal to head the committee. Appointing Mackennal was astute because he possessed a heroic stature. In the vanguard of sculpture in the 1890s, he was immersed in ‘the New Sculpture’ movement, and responsible for significant commissions like the national memorial 220

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to Edward VII at Waterloo Place (begun in 1910, unveiled in 1921). Mackennal was the first Australian-born Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA, 1909). Favoured by King George V, Mackennal enjoyed the greatest success in London. The new coinage and postage stamps needed for the King’s reign from 1911 bore Mackennal’s portrait of the King throughout the empire. Mackennal received the commission for the tomb of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (1919–26; St George’s Chapel, Windsor). As the son of an architectural sculptor, he believed that, ‘It is architecture which creates the demand for other arts.’4 Plans for the Commonwealth building included sculpture from the outset. Alfred Burr’s elevation envisaged sculpture; initial drawings from the Mackenzies featured ornate figures such as might be found in École des Beaux-Arts buildings. French examples in sculpture were thought best. And just as French example represented the highest architectural aspiration and achievement to many minds, so too with sculpture. But, as with other things, sculpture was also at a turning point. Generally speaking, London had a dismal record with open air sculpture despite recent activity from the so-called ‘New Sculptors’ of the 1880s and members of the Art Workers Guild of the Arts and Crafts movement. ‘Architecture and sculpture must slip into one another like a sword into its scabbard’ wrote the Builder in 1913 in a long critique of London’s sculpture; ‘How badly as a rule this had been realised in London, which showed many lamentable failures’.5 The Builder laid the blame with artists. Mackennal, however, considered the problem rested with architects. Sculpture in our times and especially in this country, appears to me in the guise of a divorced woman. Right back in civilization, and all through the centuries, she was the happy wife of Architecture, contented to adorn the one who supported her. I do not know who came in to spoil this perfect marriage, but I think it was due to the new great industries which grew up everywhere during the Victorian era, and the richer the world grew the less interest it took in sculpture. However, we see the result to-day that an architect designs niches and pedestals on and about his buildings, and knows they will never be filled or occupied. Most of them were never intended to be otherwise than barren. Whenever I see those barren niches I always think the sculptor has a good case of breach of promise against the architect.6

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The Mackenzies’ earlier involvement with stone and sculpture meant that sculpture was part of their scheme for the Commonwealth building. Marshall Mackenzie had designed the Central Sculpture Hall (1905) of the Aberdeen Art Gallery: an Italian-inspired courtyard, lit from above, surrounded by two stories of galleries displaying sculpture of various periods arranged chronologically.7 His sympathies with the Arts and Crafts movement suggested that he favoured unifying sculpture with architecture. He faced London’s Waldorf Hotel (1908) with over a dozen square panels of groups of cherubs engaged in artistic pursuits (sculpture, music, dance) designed by Viennese-born Emil Fuchs, the sculptor whom Edward Vll favoured.8 Once the Mackenzies oriented the Commonwealth building to its east, attention turned to giving prominence to its entrance at that corner. Two groups of sculpture became central to this orientation and integral to the building’s frontage. One was centred at its apex; portal sculpture flanked the entrance. With their liking for classical form, particularly the balance and symmetrical composition advocated by École des Beaux-Arts tradition, the Mackenzies believed that this sculptural emphasis introduced dynamism to the building’s frontage. A total of £25,000 was estimated for the sculpture (and for twelve mural paintings that were also planned for the building).9 Mackennal commended the Commonwealth for its intention that the work would be done by Australian artists whom he felt sure ‘will approach their task with full knowledge of the difficulties to be overcome, and with great enthusiasm.’10 Rapport between architect and sculptor is crucial for sculpture and architecture to succeed together in a building. As C. R. Ashbee, a leading Arts and Crafts architect and designer, put it ‘Whether the sculptor or the architect takes the lead matters little, as long as the relationship is right; and that, like every marriage, is a matter of feeling – and from heaven.’11 Correspondence from Marshall Mackenzie shows his close involvement with the building’s sculpture. His letters give an insight into the process of commissioning sculpture at the time and reveal what the Mackenzies wanted in sculpture for the building. Bertram Mackennal commanded attention; so did Harold Parker, a Britishborn Queenslander working in London from 1896.12 In successive years both had their sculpture singled out by the Chantrey Bequest which bought their work for the Tate Gallery.13 Reid recommended that they both carry out the sculptural work for the building so they were asked to consider a design and estimate its cost.14 Reid and those responsible for the building in Melbourne approved their estimates in September 1913.15 Mackennal would make a large group to go above the entrance, at a cost of £7,500. A smaller group by Parker would 222

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flank the front gates for the sum of £5,000. Mackenzie confirmed with Parker the Commonwealth Government’s approval of the initial proposals submitted by both sculptors.16 In September 1913, discussion about the sculpture began and for the next seventeen months the architects and sculptors fine-tuned design features. Both sculptors made models, to a scale of a half-inch, and then one-inch, to the full size.17 Photographs of an architectural model for the building’s front with plaster sketches by Parker and Mackennal shows that their sculpture groups were viewed as an ensemble.18 Parker understood that he would work with Mackennal so that both groups would be in harmony.19 There was a general understanding that the building’s ‘decorations’ should be Australian in character.20 Mackennal, also, was closely associated with establishing the competition announced in July 1914 to select artists for the building’s painted murals. Specifications for their design were clear. The subjects were to be ‘incidents in Australian history, or features of Australian scenery or of Australian productive activity.’21 The brief issued to competitors for the murals specified they were to represent Australian ‘natural resource and industry’ (in murals for the Exhibition Hall); the ‘fullest symbolic idea of Australian Commonwealth’ (in a painting for the Library), and ‘Historic subjects’ (for the upright Entrance panels).22 Personifications of Australia were envisaged. Parker proposed allegorical figures emblematic of Australian pioneering for his portal group. Pioneering enterprise was the keystone of the arch of Australian success. Parker judged that expressing this subject was fitting for the building. Having settled on his subject, he addressed resolving the composition sculpturally. His groups were to occupy a difficult corner position. They needed to be read in the round, particularly when viewed from the side, as well as the front of the building (let alone looking down on them from the balcony above). And they would be read by both close and distant viewing. He developed his groups in a pyramidal composition, each with a central female figure above two male figures. Mackenzie sent Parker a sketch of a group of figures drawn from the Boboli Gardens, Florence.23 Mackenzie’s sketch has not survived but appears to have referred to one of the best-known spots in the Boboli Gardens: the Isolotto, or little island, in the centre of which stands Giambologna’s Fountain of the Ocean (1576). A commanding figure of Neptune towers over three river gods (representing the Nile, the Ganges and the Euphrates rivers). The pyramidal composition of this single group is similar to what Mackenzie later told Parker that he wanted for the building. He may already have indicated this because Parker’s sketches show that he was considering a similar pyramidal composition when initially designing his 223

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sculptures.24 One depicts the front door of the building flanked by conical form on plinths, each with a vertical column towering above (to resemble the columns either side of the gate to the Isolotto). In another sketch, a central figure stands above two lower figures, one of which is a woman with her arm upraised and torso slightly turned.25 In another sketch, a cloak billows behind a central figure standing above a pair of seated figures.26 Mackenzie told Parker he should reconsider his proposals for his sculpture. ‘Since you are to take three years over it there is no need to hurry the design till it satisfies you and you should try several alternatives.’27 He added, ‘I may mention that Mr Mackennal saw the sketch models yesterday and was to see you on the subject.’ Mackenzie recommended that Parker design allegorical figures. ‘Another idea would be to have a female figure seated with a model ship in her hands representing shipping on one side and a similar figure representing other industries, agriculture etc.’28 Allegorical figures, whether emblematic of navigation, trade or travel, appeared on many London buildings: one by Mackennal (1906) with callipers, globe, and book of charts, features in the pediment of Whitehall’s Treasury Building.29 Across the road from the entrance to Australia House stood Hamo Thornycroft’s bronze statue of Gladstone (1905) in the robes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before St Clement Danes Church. At its base are four bronze groups representing Brotherhood, Aspiration, Education, and Courage. Parker found these suggestions for his group problematic. While Mackenzie wanted his figures to be part of the building, Mackennal thought that Parker’s ensemble needed to thrust forward. Parker told Mackenzie, ‘I have tried the standing figures more forward and found that it spoilt the groups from the side view, without adding to the front view. The seated female figures are already intended to represent shipping or commerce, mining agriculture etc.’30 Parker defended his designs. ‘It seems to me that no one can see in their present state those sketches as I see them myself, because I feel absolutely certain they will work out well.’31 Parker believed that the architects should have more faith in his judgement. After all, The Times had praised his work for scholarship, distinction, and mastery of the figure.32 And his Chantrey sculpture, Ariadne (1908), had been hailed as one of the best works of the century.33 He refused the offer of 100 guineas for this marble from librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert who wanted to buy it for the Savoy Theatre. It was a great honour being a Chantrey winner and that sculpture led to opportunities to exhibit elsewhere including at the 1910 Paris Salon and at the International Fine Arts Exhibition in Rome in 1911.34 It was among several 224

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sculptures that Parker made in which the nude human form emerges from the inanimate stone block from which he carved the naturalistic figure. In doing so, he displayed some of the working processes involved in making sculpture. He thus highlighted the creative processes and suggested that artistic representation went beyond imitation and was about invention and freedom. Parker, ten years younger than Mackennal, and known for experimenting, had also completed portrait busts of establishment personalities, a portrait bust of King George V (1913) among them, which showed that he was capable of dignitas.35 No novice in London, Parker worked as assistant to prominent sculptors, including Hamo Thornycroft, Goscombe John and Thomas Brock. Parker was practical and he worked methodically. Before beginning large groups, he customarily made a thoroughly studied model from life, one quarter the full size of the anticipated larger end work. This model could be inspected by the client before further work began. In 1915, Parker sent sketches to Sydney when tendering for equestrian groups planned to stand before the entrance to the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. He told Gother Mann, director and secretary of the gallery, ‘To make a more finished sketch than this I find hampers me when studying the work out from life. Anyway, it is the finished work you buy and not the sketch. Certain alterations are bound to be made when the work is studied out from life.’36 Parker’s direct way of working matched his personal, somewhat laconic manner. Parker was an experienced carver. The Forestry Department of the State of New South Wales drew on his skill: he made wood-carvings for their exhibition at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In 1900 he distinguished himself when still a student in London, winning first prize in the sculpture competition of the City and Guilds of London School (where a number of prominent sculptors trained) and receiving an award of £50 for two years.37 In March 1902, in competition against 184 candidates he gained a scholarship from the London County Council Technical Education Board.38 That he prided himself on his carving ability is clear from notes that he wrote about his Chantrey sculpture. Parker wrote that the head and limbs of this near life-size figure were entirely different to many other known works. He stressed that he modelled it direct from life and pointed (a method of enlarging from a model) and carved in the marble himself.39 Parker told Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, owner of The Times (from 1908), ‘I am engaged in doing sculpture direct from life in marble without prevailing modelling, also in carving it in marble from a plaster model which I have previously made.’40 He qualified the importance of his way of working. ‘This is the method without doubt which Michelangelo pursued and also the Greeks 225

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used the same method in my opinion.’ It singled him out among sculptors in his view. Any naturalism in his figures differed from the naturalism of ‘factorymade’ productions that he criticized. He distinguished himself from architectural sculptors, who worked for large firms that mechanically manufactured ‘life-like’ works in stone. Parker worked when sculpture was turning from the literal realism favoured in the Victorian era and the symbolism preferred by ‘New Sculptors’ to the naturalism and expressionism of the early twentieth century. In carving, Parker aligned himself with the modern tendency to work directly. Parker looked to wealthy men like Harmsworth who could afford sculpture to raise it from the depths of commercialism. ‘The present system as you no doubt know is for the artist to model it and in most cases to get a workman or other artist to produce it in marble and first pointing it and then carving it in some mechanical way.’ To Parker’s mind, this practice degraded sculpture. Having worked for some time for other sculptors, he distanced himself from mechanicallymade sculpture. ‘A successful sculptor now-a-days in most cases is no longer a sculptor, he is a designer only. He employs other sculptors to model work (under his direction) from his sketch models and still other sculptors to carve it in marble after it has been pointed.’ Parker worked just before direct carving in stone and wood came into fashion in the 1920s. Mackenzie’s view that a harmonious approach should be taken with the building’s sculpture was unsurprising. Thomas Brock and Aston Webb collaborated on the Queen Victoria Memorial. Parker appreciated that the responsible Executive Committee decided unanimously to give the commission to the one sculptor in order to get a work which would have more harmony and rhythm than they could expect if a number of sculptors were engaged on it.41 The terms of the commission for the Commonwealth building were that Parker was to execute the portal sculptured groups to the best of his skill and ability and in accordance with sketch designs that he prepared.42 Parker concluded to Mackenzie, ‘As I am to stand credited with this work (which may do me considerable good or harm) you must see that it is only fair that I should have a free hand. Certain alterations are bound to be required when the work is studied out from life which possibly no one can see but myself in their present state. No one will have cause to complain, I feel confident.’43 In February 1915, Mackenzie asked Parker to bring his small models to one of their meetings. ‘Then we could fasten them on to Mackennal’s model and see the effect of the whole.’44 A month later, Mackenzie again asked Parker for the sketch models. ‘Please send back the top group [Mackennal’s] as he may call here and could you also send your sketch models so as to have the complete scheme here for a day or two.’45 Mackenzie worried that Parker’s scale was larger than 226

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Mackennal’s. He told Parker, ‘Mackennal also says that you did not follow any of his suggestions. I am anxious that we should have his blessing on your scheme before approving. Could you see him again? At present we are at a deadlock. But with some trouble and patience I hope to get you both right. Can you think of another scheme?’ Mackenzie disliked the standing cloaked figure (drawn earlier). ‘The upright figure looks [to be] taking off his clothes to show himself to the public and I fear there may be fun made of this.’46 There was good reason to be sensitive to public opinion when sculpture on public buildings could encounter pitfalls. In 1908, architects and sculptors witnessed an outcry over nude and semi-nude figures carved onto a new building for the British Medical Association on the Strand (1908). Prudish hostility to Jacob Epstein’s ‘rude’ figures depicting the ‘seven ages of man’ erupted, despite their being declared decent by the future Archbishop of Canterbury.47 Mackenzie sketched a design for Parker that showed a pair of robed angels commanding either corner of the portal and overlooking figures on the pedestals at either side of the door.48 While a long tradition of embellishing buildings with allegorical figures existed, Parker had more than token embellishment in mind. Parker disdained much commissioned sculpture. ‘I’ve no use for the mid-Victorian stand of the gentleman standing with carefully-curled hair, in a bronze frock coat, and a roll of music in his hand.’49 He greatly admired the work of Rodin. Parker knew Rodin’s work better than most others within the fraternity of sculptors because he was close to the Chelsea-based sculptor John Tweed who had assisted Rodin, translating for him in London in 1911.50 In 1913 London begrudgingly accepted Rodin’s gift made in 1910 of The Burghers of Calais (1889). Authorities bickering over Rodin’s sculpture, which distressed him, delayed its display until 1915. After Rodin died in 1917, his vindication saw him acclaimed globally as the ‘Greatest of Modern Artists’. Like Rodin and Epstein, Parker thought that it was part of the artist’s function to interpret common human experience.51 Whereas once public sculpture largely expressed mythological figures and idealized figures, approaches to subject matter had changed following the late Victorian trend toward Realism, with sculptors representing ‘everyday’ figures. Hamo Thorneycroft depicted miners, textile workers and workers from the building profession and trades in his sculpted frieze that runs along the façade of Chartered Accountants Hall, Moorgate (John Belcher, 1893).52 New subject matter aside, a work failed or succeeded by its plastic qualities. The sculptor worked in a plastic medium which had to be thought about poetically. ‘You have to conceive the idea poetically of course, only the medium is plastic,’ 227

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Epstein said. ‘You have to think of the balance of the parts, essential rhythms, light and shade – all purely sculptural considerations. I cannot remark too often that the artist is a very practical person fully as much as he is a dreamer. The two must go together.’53 Having worked for Thomas Brock, Parker knew that Brock’s figures for the Queen Victoria Memorial were criticized for being modeled with the elaboration of statuettes. Too much inessential detail disturbed the distant mass and gave Brock’s figures awkward angles rather than forceful silhouettes.54 Brock’s figures disappointed the public while Epstein’s figures revolted them. Parker sought to avoid disappointment and controversy. Chantrey purchases were made to encourage the progress of art made in Britain. Both Mackennal and Parker were justly celebrated for their success and skill in the British school of sculpture. And Australian communities were justifiably proud of the achievements of their artists alongside the best of the world. Their success signified Australia’s advance. Briefly returning to Brisbane in mid-1911, after fifteen years abroad, Parker was honoured with a State reception. The passing of time was keenly apparent to him. While he noted Brisbane’s bullish mood in a State poised to exploit gold, copper and tin, sheeting home the changes made in his absence even more was seeing how his father had aged. Daniel Parker, a Brisbane carpenter, shop fitter, and building contractor was born in Buckinghamshire and moved to Queensland in 1877. He arrived just ahead of the boom that brought 135,000 overseas migrants to Queensland, 5 per cent of all United Kingdom emigration during 1881–90.55 (Among those who arrived in Brisbane were two future Prime Ministers: William Morris Hughes in 1884, and Andrew Fisher in 1885.) Parker modelled a portrait of his father which he titled The Pioneer.56 Parker attended the opening ceremony of the University of Queensland. Plans to erect buildings for the university tangibly demonstrated the progress made by Queensland’s early European settlers with overcoming material difficulties and fierce resistance from the sizeable Indigenous population in the Colony.57 Federation sharpened public awareness of pioneering achievements that opened up the continent. Few had recorded the past in the rush to settle Australia. Many of Australia’s pioneers were unhonoured in the half-century before Federation. Since Federation, only 19 of the 45 legislators engaged in the 1891 convention which passed the Draft Commonwealth Bill remained alive. With Federation Fathers dying off, sense sharpened that colonial history was fast fading. In 1911, the Historic Memorials Committee was established to capture the likenesses of prominent Federationists for posterity.58

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Writers and artists fixed on the subject of pioneers. Books on pioneers or reminiscences by early settlers appeared. Among them were Nehemiah Bartley’s Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences (published posthumously in 1896); Louis Becke’s The Naval Pioneers of Australia (1899); and in the making, to appear ten years later, was A.W. Jose’s Builders and Pioneers of Australia (1928).59 Likewise sculptors depicted pioneers. An outstanding entry in the competition for sculpture outside Melbourne’s Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery (one Mackennal had high hopes of winning in 1891) was Charles Douglas Richardson’s The Pioneer (1906). In painting too, the subject of pioneers was favoured. Frederick McCubbin’s painting The Pioneer (1904) followed his earlier On the Wallaby Track (1896) and Down on his luck? (1889). They became Australian icons. Depicting ‘epochs’ was universally popular at the start of the new century. Sculptors were commissioned to represent the ‘ages of art’ on the front façade of the new building to house the State’s art gallery in Sydney (from 1909); Richard Garbe made his groups, such as The Medieval Age and The Modern Age, for Cardiff Museum (1914–15).60 In late March 1915, Mackenzie visited Parker’s studio. He suggested to Parker, ‘How would it do instead of ‘pioneer’ for [the] central figure ‘Peace’ on one side and ‘Prosperity’ on the other. They might be draped female figures with wings perhaps. The lower figures not to be so much undercut but to seem part of the building and sculptured out of the stone forming the building.’61 Here Mackenzie contradicted his earlier request that Parker’s figures should not lean for support on the building. He told Parker, ‘I am only trying to thrash out the problem which is a most difficult one.’62 Mackenzie’s requests troubled Parker. He penned a reply to Mackenzie for which he wrote several drafts. They give insight into the problems that he faced. Parker wrote, The letter I have from the Commonwealth Government distinctly states that in the recommendation of Sir George Reid the sculpture is to be carried out by Mr Mackennal and myself. It does not state that it has to be done to your approval. Apart from that in one of your letters you state that the design is about right then you write again asking me to alter it. Then you write again stating that Mackennal does not like it. I cannot think otherwise than that you do not want me to do the work and will try to stop it if you possibly can. Then I felt from the very start that Mackennal was interfering without reason. Therefore, it is practically impossible to get up any 229

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enthusiasm whilst these conditions exist and it is in the interests of the Australian Government that I claim a free hand in the matter.63 In another draft, Parker reveals more, … it is hardly fair that I should be subjected to all this criticism as it is very discouraging. The present sketches are the same type of composition as the drawing you sent me as the type you wanted. I have endeavoured to please you and am convinced myself that they will work out alright … I am also equally convinced that if they please you they will not please Mackennal so what am I to do.64 Parker’s frustration was clear in his posted reply to Mackenzie, ‘The only thing to do after all is to please myself. If I try to please everyone it will end in pleasing nobody. I don’t say the design will be exactly the same as the sketches but at any rate I am going to please myself on my own work.’ Also mindful of the time that he needed to make his sculptures, he penned an afterthought under his signature: ‘To save unreasonable delay I am going on with the work.’65 Mackenzie responded, ‘The building is our design, however, not yours, and we must also be satisfied.’66 Later he added, ‘From an architectural point of view I would like two commanding figures [one for each group] and the rest quite subordinate to these.’ (This composition is exactly what it is believed his Boboli Garden sketch indicated, and which Parker accommodated as his early drawn sketches show.) Mackenzie continued, ‘If you could try a figure representing ‘Prosperity’ on one side with large cornucopia with fruit and children and ‘peace’ on the other with perhaps a lion and lamb and children under the desired architectural effect of sentinels at each side of the door it would be accomplished.’ With this he sent an ink sketch illustrating his ideas for the sculpture groups, and wrote, ‘I offer no excuse for troubling you as it is in my duty as an architect to let the sculptor know what effect is wanted so as to enhance the architecture.’67 Parker wrote to Reid, who wanted to see the sketch models. He called into Parker’s studio with Marshall Mackenzie, Captain Collins and Mackennal on 13 May.68 The contract for the commission was drawn up a fortnight later on 25 May, showing the High Commissioner as the client.69 It went to Parker on 3 July, but two days later Mackenzie asked Parker to make fresh models. Mackenzie told him that the contract would not be signed until Parker’s models satisfied him and his son. They specified:

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What he and I wish if we are to approve (and no contract can be signed without our approval of the models): (1) centre figure to stand more into corner of the building … (2) centre figures in both cases to be males; (3) centre figure to be same scale as sitting figures and the rock to be high enough to show his feet; (4) lines of drapery to be designed and shown on model and not to come over the shoulders.70 Parker’s completed sculpture, each group with prominent central female figures, shows that he held firm over his design. Parker worked on his half size plaster models, nine feet high. In November 1915, Parker resisted Mackenzie’s wanting to fix the stone blocks for the final eighteen-foot-high figures.71 Mackenzie took Parker’s advice not to settle the jointing of the groups until Parker had proceeded further with the models.72 In mid-1916, with the half-scale model for the first group completed, Parker could start work on the final full-scale figures for this group. He lined up an assistant, Torquato Carini, to carve and scale point the two full size groups for £600 each. By this technique, measurements taken from Parker’s half-scale nine-foot-high model were converted to the final scale of the figures that were twice the size of the model. This way the stone was prepared (‘sketched’) for Parker to complete the larger eighteen-foot-high final figures.73 Parker’s agreement with Carini was straightforward; he insisted that Carini confirm their agreement in writing ‘to save any horrible misunderstanding.’74 Carini would employ as many men scalepointing as possible. Parker would pay Carini as the work progressed to Parker’s satisfaction. He rented two railway arches at Putney; they were located near where Carini lived and provided space for Carini and his men to work.75 Parker now began working on the half-size model for the second group. One hundred tons of stone were used in making both portal groups. The Bath and Portland Stone Firms Ltd, the sub-contractor for Portland stonework for the building, quarried the stone. Before their first delivery, they cautioned Parker. ‘We presume you are aware that some of these stones will run into quite ten tons in weight’; Portland Whitbed varied in thicknesses from 3 to 10 feet and was obtained in blocks sometimes up to 10 tons in weight.76 They delivered the stone blocks to Putney on horse-drawn timber-sided road wagons.77 They had trolleys constructed to carry various weights; a heavy trolley carried a load of 12 tons or more. Thirteen stone blocks, measuring a total of 1,222 feet, were delivered from mid-August 1916 to the end of February 1917.78

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In April 1917, Parker sent Mackenzie photographs of his plaster model for the second sculpture group. When Carini began scale pointing for this group, manpower was in short supply mid-1917 and Carini had only two masons working. He assured Parker, ‘You can rest quite at ease, everything is going on smoothly.’79 Carini’s books show that he employed up to a dozen different craftsmen at various times to work on the groups and time sheets show that they worked for 59 hours each week during June 1917.80 A further seven deliveries of 17 stone blocks measuring a total of 928 cubic feet went to Parker between April and August 1917.81 In the largest delivery, four blocks measured 210 feet. By early 1918 both groups were in place on their bases before the building, behind hoardings. Each figure is twelve feet high, double life size. Parker worked on them for some six months with hammer and chisel. In February 1918, Parker confirmed to Collins that he was endeavouring as much as he could to get the groups finished.82 They were completed by late July. Parker’s two portal groups, The Awakening of Australia and Peace and Prosperity, flank the building’s main entrance. The group on the right of the doorway, as it is approached from the east, depicts an explorer and a settler surmounted by the female figure of Australia coming to life. This group represents that part of colonial history when European settlement claimed undeveloped country and exploration opened up and charted the continent. Pioneering experience was still part of living memory when Parker hammered the groups into shape. Opening up northerly parts of the continent posed the Commonwealth with challenges after the Northern Territory was transferred to Commonwealth control in 1911. The personification of continental Australia sits upright, hands to her head, with her torso twisting slightly to the right as when stretching on awakening from sleep. Masterfully, Parker brings the obdurate stone to life with this twisting pose: the figure of ‘Australia’ pulses with suggestive energy. The wearied, bearded figures beneath her indicate the strain that European settlers experienced in their pioneering efforts. The group on the left represents the ‘peace and prosperity’ found in the fifth and ‘youngest’ continent. The central figure of Australia is seated in repose, her right arm is relaxed, her palm facing outward, implying welcome; her left hand holds a dove. Figures below of the Reaper and the Sheep Shearer depict settled occupation and reflect Australia’s pastoral wealth. Industry is the keynote to Australia’s prosperousness (rather than lucky discoveries of gold and other mineral wealth). Parker, the English-born Australian expressed Australia’s emergence from the crippling Federation Drought to harness industry toward future growth and peacefulness. The musculature on the two ‘workmen’ reflects 232

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physical wellbeing. Parker infers that Australian success will be maintained by the industries of the Commonwealth and the vigour of its youthful sons. Peace and prosperity were sentiments far removed from the wartime conditions of 1917, when Parker shaped the figures. A close friend of Parker’s was the Sydney-born sculptor William Bowles (1885–1954). Like Parker, Bowles studied carving and modelling at the Brisbane Technical College and went to London on a scholarship from the college. He worked in Mackennal’s studio following his arrival in 1910. When war erupted, Bowles enlisted in the London Regiment. Grateful for assistance received from Parker, Bowles wrote from France in July 1917 to tell Parker that he was still alive. ‘Have managed to dodge the shells so far though I must confess I am not particularly fond of those sort of things … Hope you are getting on well with the groups and that I shall have the pleasure of seeing them complete one day. With the many diabolical methods of warfare at present used, it is considered lucky if one escapes with the faculties intact. I don’t wish to be steered about by a dog & a stick or be wheeled in a chair.’83 Bowles was with the BEF’s nascent Machine Gun Corps.84 This was a front-line fighting force whose men were especially chosen. They were often well in advance of the front line with every assault and remained to cover every retirement.85 The Corps was known as ‘the suicide club’ owing to its high casualty rate.86 This was despite their using what Lloyd George described as the most lethal weapon in the war.87 That the sculptures were completed in such turbulent times is remarkable. A fellow sculptor was not so fortunate. Across Holborn, John Burnet’s King Edward VII’s Galleries were opened by King George V and Queen Mary on 7 May 1914. Two limestone lions flanking the entrance by Sir George Frampton, RA only went up after Frampton agreed to reduce his price when the Treasury decided they were not worth the £2,000 agreed to with Frampton and halved the money. Other intended statues, allegorical representations of Art and Science, were never executed.88 Parker confided to fellow-sculptor Frederick Pomeroy that ‘I have been through it’ (referring to his difficulties with his commission). (Pomoroy’s bronze figure atop Victoria House disappeared with the Mackenzies’ extensions.) Pomeroy executed considerable decorative work in collaboration with architects (including sculpture made for John Belcher at City Hall Cardiff (c.1890) and Electra House, Moorgate (1902); on the spandrels under the central dome of the Old Bailey (1907, E. W. Mountford); and on Vauxhall Bridge (1907). He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1917. Pomeroy replied that hard experience taught him that alertness was necessary when signing any contract. He told Parker,

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In my time I have worked with many architects, most of them kind and intelligent gentlemen, but with little or no knowledge of our art. It is their custom to engage the services of the younger men of our profession (when they don’t go to the manufacturers) in the first place because they can generally mould them to their own way of thinking and secondly because these young fellows are not able to help themselves and thirdly because most of them [the architects] like to get their art as cheaply as possible. It therefore behoves us to be as firm as we possibly can be in our dealings with them. After all it [sculpture] is a splendid experience and some of the finest work in Britain is architectural sculpture. I have no doubt Jean Goujon had very similar difficulties when he was engaged on the Louvre of the Valois.89 Architects can do a great deal to help sculpture and to make cities beautiful but alas they are businessmen first.90 George V knighted Mackennal immediately after unveiling the national Edward VII memorial at Waterloo Place in July 1921, in recognition of personal services to the sovereign. Sir Bertram Mackennal’s own group of sculptures for Australia House was delayed by the war. His bronze group, Phoebus Driving the Horses of the Sun, was only installed on the building in mid-April 1924. Traffic in the Strand was stopped while Mackennal’s statuary of a Sun God driving four horses was delivered to be hoisted up over the building’s front entrance.91 Pulleys lifted the component parts of the group above the scaffolding that was erected over the building’s front. When hoisted into position, individual parts were bolted together on the building’s cornice that forms a platform for the group. The central figure of Phoebus, with outstretched arms, is eighteen feet high, and weighs around six tons. The whole group, sixty feet long, weighs eighteen tons. Mackennal was a Symbolist sculptor who worked on mythological themes so he represented the ‘fullest symbolic idea of the Commonwealth’ in his group. He fixed on the symbol of the sun and the Greek myth of Apollo to express the boundless potentialities and future of continental Australia. ‘The work typifies the dawn or the birth of a new young country – my own’, he said. ‘The symbol of Phoebus and the Rising Sun will be understood by those who recall the rising sun badge of the Australian soldier during the war.’92 Mackennal chose to represent Apollo, the son of Zeus, variously recognised as the God of music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, sun, light and knowledge. The Hellenes identified Apollo with Helios, Titan god of the sun. Mackennal identified his figure with Apollo’s Graeco-Roman epithet, Phoebus (meaning 234

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‘bright’), to emphasise Apollo’s role as the God of light. However, Mackennal also conflated other meanings of Apollo in his figure. Apollo is known as the god of shining youth, which is how Anzac soldiers appeared to Britons during the war, with a generally better developed physique and being taller than the average Tommy. In literary terms Apollo represents harmony, order, and reason; he is the protector of music and culture, of spiritual life, moderation and perceptible order. Popular in the archaic period of the Greek world, the name Apollo is tied etymologically to the Doric apella (‘assembly’) making Apollo the god of political life (thus a fitting figure for Australia’s High Commission). Mackennal’s Phoebus is driving the horses of faith, patriotism, enterprise and prosperity. The sculpture expressed both Australia’s ties to European civilization, and inferred that cultural life and governmental order promised Australia a bright future. Mackennal’s group was in position by 23 April 1924 for the opening on St George’s Day of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. No ceremony marked its installation. While some viewed the group as an architectural masterpiece and an adornment for the building, others regarded Mackennal’s sculpture as more useless expenditure and ‘unnecessary expense’.93 ‘The elephant decorated’ is how Brisbane’s Daily Standard reported on having the group attached to the building.94 On completing his portal groups six years earlier, Parker signed and dated each on the lower right, ‘Harold Parker, 1915–1918’. When asked to comment on them, Parker replied in his straightforward way, ‘You must remember that I am not a critic and can hardly care to venture an opinion.’95 The art historian Kineton Parkes, a regular contributor to Apollo, Architectural Review and the influential monthly the Studio, admired Parker’s groups. In his two-volume survey, Sculpture of Today (1922), he commended the effort that Parker made over them, both with the design of the groups and the care taken when carving them.96 The care that Parker took over his composition and the placement of his figures ensured the physical integrity of his figures. Others, like Epstein, found that London’s atmosphere was cruel to sculpture. His work on the Strand corroded because the stone the figures were fixed to was improperly installed, besides being damaged by water leaking from lead pipes on the face of the British Medical Association building. Kineton Parkes’ final words of praise on Parker’s work warrant quoting: ‘Parker’s two groups in Portland Stone on either side of the main entrance to Australia House, in the Strand, London, are among the best work of this class in England.’

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CHAPTER 20

Displaying Purpose I have made the wide marches unbroken, from shore to the uttermost shore; Lo! Thus be your destiny spoken: One people for evermore!1

‘I suggest that it might be called “Australia House” instead of Chambers, Offices, Buildings etc. which are somewhat hackneyed, as it seems to me that the word “House” carries with it the idea of a “home” for Australia in London, and would mark out this particular part of London as Australian’, proposed Frank Savage, in January 1914 from the Commonwealth’s office in Victoria Street.2 ‘To some extent the work “Place” might convey that idea, but after consideration, I prefer the word “House”.’ The question of what to call the building arose in the early weeks of 1914, upon the drawing up a prospectus to be issued by Estate Agents Hampton & Sons. The tradition existed in London of naming buildings, often after place (such as Victoria House). Identifying a building by name and purpose was essential said Robert Haddon in Australian Architecture: since advertising was so vital a part of modern business a building must have a brand name and provision for its proper and permanent display from the outset.3 Captain Muirhead Collins sent Savage’s view to Atlee Hunt in Melbourne. ‘The Agents are going on with the letter-press part of the prospectus and will await the decision of the Minister as to the name to be adopted, and I shall be glad if you will cable to me when a decision has been arrived at.’4 South Australian lawyer Patrick (Paddy) Glynn was the new Minister of External Affairs for the Commonwealth Liberal administration which took office in mid-June 1913 under Prime Minister Cook. (This was to be another short-lived government, with Labor Party leader Andrew Fisher returned to office a third time in midSeptember 1914.)

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Savage’s idea met with approval in Melbourne and the name ‘Australia House’ was officially adopted in February 1914. The Mackenzies were informed and they notified the various contractors and suppliers about this choice. Collins wanted to publicise the building’s official name. He was talking to potential commercial tenants Thos. Cook & Son, whose ‘Cook’s Tours’ played a leading part in opening up new travel routes off the beaten track, and to the Orient Steam Navigation Company (known as the Orient Line) which was then rapidly expanding. Collins believed that with their interest in developing business in Australia they would find the name attractive.5 Captain Henry Smart from the Publicity section of the High Commission alerted the Press. Reuters telegraphed from Melbourne that the Commonwealth building in London would be called ‘Australia House’. It reported that the name should end the rumour that the building was to be called ‘Canada House’; in the minds of some, the building was attached to Lord Grey’s proposal for an imperial showcase.6 A busy promotional year lay ahead for the High Commission. Customary appearances at agricultural and trade shows in Britain (such as the Royal Agricultural Show, Shrewsbury) were scheduled, as were an important international exhibition across the channel, and a number of cinematograph exhibitions. By now, Europe had become so sated with the trade displays that traditionally crowded World’s Fairs that these exhibitions were becoming specialized. An International Congress on municipal activities – the First International Congress of Cities (at which Edward Riley spoke) was held at the Ghent World Fair (1913).7 The Congress spawned the formation of the Union Internationale des Villes in 1913, whose members focused on the development of cities and activities related to municipal life. The Union of Cities was among the ‘internationalist’ and reformist bodies of the day (like the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome). After Belgian cities federated in 1913 with the Union, it organised a congress at the World’s Fair, Lyons in September 1914, anticipating that French cities would follow Belgian example. The Exposition internationale urbaine de Lyon (Urban International Exhibition, Lyon) focused on city life.8 Lyon, a one-industry town, diversified its industrial base and embarked on a program of urban modernization to meet its region’s growth. Model buildings of a Cité Industrielle (an ideal industrial city) took shape within view of Lyons’ hillside Roman amphitheatre (its spectacular location demonstrated that the city, once an imperial Roman capital, had a centuries-old history of urban development). The new buildings were part of a far-sighted Grand Plan d’Urbanisme prepared by young Lyonnaise architect Tony Garnier with the backing of the city’s entrepreneurial Socialist Mayor. Its 240

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Urban Exhibition established Lyon as a modern city.9 These events give a measure of how far interest in improving city life grew in the years immediately before 1914. Henry Smart installed the Commonwealth Pavilion at Lyons, which measured 150 feet by 20 feet. Then he headed to Bristol which hosted an international exhibition intended to encourage business and trade with the Dominions. It was held from May 28, on a twenty-five-acre site on the banks of the Avon in South Bristol on which over £100,000 was spent, in the largest venture of the kind seen in that city. Some 550,000 visitors attended the Australian Pavilion during the three months it remained open, with an average attendance of 5,000 visitors daily.10 Barely twenty years after cinematography’s first public performance, demand for film was such that Sir George Reid’s office ran traveling film exhibitions. Film became as integral a part of advertising Australia as exhibiting at World’s Fairs. The cinema business boomed in Great Britain. Over 4,500 cinematograph halls in England drew an estimated attendance of more than 3.5 million viewers daily. Roughly speaking, it was thought that half the entire population visited a cinematograph once a week (and statistics, such as they were, were thought to only partly tell the story of the rapid growth of film).11 In April 1914, a traveling film exhibition, showing views of Australia with accompanying lectures promoting the country’s attractions, visited villages in the northern English counties of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.12 Australian cinematographic displays proved popular with remote agricultural audiences with fewer opportunities to view cinematographs than audiences in larger urban centres. Touring these displays mattered: it was hoped that migrants who were needed to develop Australia’s primary industries would come from the rural North. The Commonwealth hoped to attract agricultural migrants to Australia through the screen. Images of Australia were targeted to promote migration to the continent, and investment in its potential. Initially, images likely to be displayed came from fifteen cinematograph films prepared by the world’s largest film equipment and production company, Pathé Freres, Paris, for the Minister for External Affairs Lee Batchelor, in 1908.13 Pathé guaranteed to screen widely the views of Australia’s six capital cities and characteristic views of Australian landscape, with images of the country’s different industries. From 1913, Queensland film-maker Albert Sewell (‘Bert’) Ive (1875–1939) filmed agricultural scenes, and those of mining, livestock raising and sporting carnivals in Australia for the Department of External Affairs; his productions went directly to Henry 241

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Smart in London.14 Like many artists and live entertainers working on stage who came to the film industry at its inception, film’s moving image entranced Ive. He became a traveling film exhibitor, shot his own actuality film and combined film camerawork with film exhibition. In May 1913, the Commonwealth Government appointed him as its cinematographer and stills photographer. (From the early 1920s, Ive established what became the Commonwealth of Australia Cinema and Photographic Branch, making films for the Commonwealth Development and Migration Commission.) The need for better knowledge about Australia persisted in Britain. A letter that appeared in the English Press in as late as December that year, which Australia’s newspaper’s re-printed, reflected this need. Of Australia we know practically nothing since we heard the eloquence of Mr. Deakin in London in 1907. We have a dim idea of men who are great horsemen and vote for the Labour party, while submitting to compulsory training in arms. But we are aware that we have somehow got the whole conception wrong. We do not understand what Australia is driving at, or what her politics mean. We feel that we ought to be better informed. There is some reason for complaint with regard to every one of the dominions, and India too, on account of the meagreness of news. In Australia the defect is glaring. Cannot something be done to keep us from day to day awake to the fact that many millions of our brothers at the Antipodes are human beings, with lives and politics quite as interesting and intelligible as those of the Germans before the war?15 The Mackenzies engaged the firm of Britain’s leading architectural photographer, Henry (also known as Harry) Bedford Lemere, to document the construction of Australia House.16 Lemere & Co. photographed the latest significant new buildings, shops and offices. Engaging them to photograph the building illustrated that Reid and his team were positioning Australia House in this light. Projecting the building’s novelty mattered to intentions that it be central to the Commonwealth’s immigration plans. Established, in 1862 by Lemere’s father, Bedford Lemere, the Strand-based firm of Architectural, Art, and Commercial Photographers, initially specialised in photographing ancestral homes in England with their pictures and contents. They were contractors to H.M. Office of Works, and the Office of Woods and 242

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Forests, as well as to the London County Council, and to leading architects, civil engineers and contractors throughout Britain. Henry Lemere’s success stemmed from his understanding the aims and needs of commercial clients and responding to their briefs. Images from his studio were much sharper than those made by pictorialist photographers whose manipulated images with atmospheric, dramatic lighting and shading reflected the taste of the day for the picturesque. Adolphe Augustus Boucher, Lemere’s principal colleague, frequently photographed the firm’s images of London’s new architecture, and he recorded progress made on the much-anticipated building. His photographs reflect the pride taken in the construction of the building by those at work on it. The most modern expertise was employed. The Consulting Engineer appointed to advise on all mechanical and electrical questions did so at the recently-erected Liver Building (1911), in Liverpool, regarded as the largest and most up-to-date block of office buildings in Britain. And while the Commonwealth building would be celebrating Australian products, it also displayed the handiwork of specialist English craftsmen sub-contracted to give the building its features. When work resumed on the building in 1913, after John Murdoch resolved its early design and labour issues, the architects, engineers and builders, and skilled artisans engaged on the project took pride in their teamwork on the site. They collaborated in the intelligent organization of the job, intending to make fast progress in the building’s erection. Boucher’s photographs diarize its construction and those taken in about January 1914 show the building’s steel frame going up.17 We can see when Holloway Brothers erected the structural steelwork forming the ground level above the foundational steelwork and steelwork assembled for the basement and sub-basement. Their workmen, dwarfed within the rising steel skeleton as it went up, show the building’s immense scale. Blocks of Portland stone delivered to the site occupy the foreground. Boucher later photographed work on the stone walling of the building as it was under way.18 His photographs allow us to follow how the building emerged from its skeleton of steel framing and was transformed into the flesh of solid architecture. It was photographed just before industrial unrest and stoppages suspended the Doves’ building schedule. From 24 January 1914, the London Building Trades Dispute, a prolonged strike, delayed work on the site for seven months.19 Leaders of the major trade unions found muscle upon massing together into what the rail, transport and mineworkers unions called the Triple Alliance. Threats from railwaymen’s and transport workers’ unions delayed and caused worries over the delivery of supplies, with a major strike called for the coming summer.20 243

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Events on the continent were more ominous. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in late June sparked the crisis that gripped Europe throughout July. On Monday 3 August, in the midst of a federal election, Australia’s federal Liberal government of Joseph Cook offered Britain men, money and ships for imperial defence. In the event of war, it placed at the disposal of the Home Government the entire and newly-established Royal Australian Navy and an expeditionary force of 20,000 troops, expediting the formation of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), with Australia bearing all costs. The former Labour Prime Minister Andrew Fisher promised to support Britain ‘to the last man and the last shilling.’21 The pace of events accelerated when Germany invaded neutral Belgium. On 4 August – August Bank Holiday – the British Government sent Germany an ultimatum that it withdraws from its invasion. That hot August night London waited anxiously for a response from Germany. Crowds massed in Trafalgar Square waiting on the decisive hour of eleven o’clock when the ultimatum to Germany was due to expire. James Bone, Glasgow-born London editor of the Manchester Guardian, and one of the bestknown journalists on Fleet Street, left his office and headed west down the Strand for Trafalgar Square. Brother of the artist Muirhead Bone, who recorded the construction of Victoria House, Bone walked by the Commonwealth block where construction had halted months earlier. Mutely waiting for stone and glass to make it habitable, the building’s steel skeleton stood stark under a full moon. Moonlight flooded Trafalgar Square and the myriad faces there. ‘Most of them [were] turned upward, as the fatal hour grew near, as though expecting some message from the skies’, Bone noted.22 For some, memories of the South African War, only twelve years past, remained raw. With war declared on Germany that fateful night, outbursts of patriotic fervour erupted. Public opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of the government decision to go to war. The resignation of two ministers from Whitehall (Lord Morley and John Burns, independent Labour MP for Battersea and longserving London County Council committee member) caused scarcely a ripple of comment. On 13 August war was declared against Austria-Hungary. Europe’s four great continental empires put their attack plans into operation and mobilized their armies.23 Guardsmen massed in London waiting for orders to cross the Channel; many were temporarily housed in the Imperial Institute. James Bone heard Charing Cross Station resounding with national anthems, taunts, curses, and farewells, as Frenchmen and Germans responded to their mobilization orders and departed from the station. Recruits sang on their training marches along the Embankment and the Strand. 244

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Within days of war being declared the cost of building materials rose in Melbourne. Contractors undertook work with difficulty as workers exchanged their mallet or saw for the rifle and bayonet. Troopships carrying the first of about 322,000 Australians who volunteered for wartime overseas service (from a total population of under five million) left Western Australia on 7 November 1914 with a second convoy following on 31 December.24 Members of the High Commission’s staff offered themselves for active service; those who could be spared enlisted. Those remaining in Reid’s office were retained under exemptions on the ground of special necessity. Their services were essential, especially in the work of the Supply Branch. Events overtook the focus in Reid’s office on Australia House. At first, little in London seemed to change. War brought more emotional than practical disruption to London. At the start of the war Britain hoped to meet enemy action with as little upset to British life as possible and the public mood in London gave the sense that it was ‘Business as usual’.25 Up to Spring 1915 the British public suffered relatively little discomfort owing to the war. Unemployment almost disappeared and higher wages generally matched sharp price rises. Salaries shot up for some workers: those of male clerks rose 60 per cent faster than those of accountants and architects, and of female clerks 70 per cent faster than those of teachers and social workers.26 Acute labour shortages by early 1915 made it impossible to find casual labour. W. K. Haselden caught London’s optimistic mood with his popular ‘Little Willie’ series of strip cartoons depicting the Kaiser and his son as hapless. In one cartoon (for November 1914) the strutting Emperor instructs a Division of Cinema Operators to film his triumphant entry into Paris; Haselden ridiculed German inability to reach Paris in lightning speed according to the Schlieffen Plan.27 On 7 August 1914, the Builder ran the editorial ‘War and Work’, which speculated what war might mean. It alluded to the industrial unrest that bedevilled the building trades, saying that with war ‘we should expect to see greater harmony prevail between the rival forces of labour and capital, and so adverse external influence may act in a measure for good.’28 Few foresaw the calamity that lay ahead. The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) introduced the following day aroused little notice. It granted emergency wartime powers to the British government, with powers to commandeer resources for the war effort. The Act allowed the government to bypass Parliamentary approval in prosecuting the war. Britain was effectively put on a military footing. Regulations soon prohibited the carrying out of any building-work involving the use of steel or 245

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iron, or any other work amounting to over £500. In the House of Commons, it was urged that building-work be limited only to urgent repairs or on work of national importance.29 When war broke, Australia House stood with stonework completed up to parts of the third floor. The entire building’s superstructure remained incomplete and it lacked roofing. Dove Brothers, who were bound to their pre-war contract, pressed on to finish building despite losing men to the Front. Boucher photographed an architectural craftsman working on the site, attending to a clay model of a decorative carving for the facade.30 Boucher’s photographs show that by the end of December 1914 some headway was made with stonework on the lowest levels. Structural walls and the stonework of the building fronts were completed up to the third floor.31 The floors were installed to the same level. Work progressed on the four reinforced concrete staircases. Beyond this, the building remained a shell, without interior detail. The intention was to bring the whole to final completion without loss of time.32 In mid-1914, the Mackenzies received tenders for various works in connection with the finishing and decoration of the building’s interior. Tenders came in for the working and fixing of the marble and for working and laying the floors. Three were accepted in early October with contracts issued to suppliers in England and Australia. As with the consultants engaged on the building, all the suppliers and sub-contractors who were engaged were the best available. In mid-December, Goddard & Sons of Farnham were contracted to lay some floors with wood blocks as the architects’ drawings specified.33 A. Pengelley and Co. in South Australia, with yards spread over ten acres, and stock of no less than two million super feet of seasoned timber, was contracted to supply over 70,000 ft. of Australian blackwood and maple timber for use in the construction of the building.34 A successful manufacturer of wholesale furniture and transportation wagons, Pengelleys were regarded as a model business. They delivered many supply contracts to the Commonwealth Government, including those to the Military College, Jervis Bay (1910). In 1913, they brushed off a disastrous fire that destroyed much of their timber stock and still participated in the Chamber of Manufacturers ‘All Australian’ Exhibition in Melbourne’s Exhibition Building. In July 1914 they were contracted to supply Australian Timbers for joinery for Australia House. Farmer & Brindley, a prolific firm of architectural modellers, sculptors and stone and wood carvers whose work included the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park (1872), were contracted to work and fix marble work in the first-floor rotunda and staircases. Notable examples of their work in innumerable buildings in London 246

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included the New War Office and New Public Offices, Westminster, let alone the great Reredos in St Paul’s Cathedral.35 J. Whitehead & Sons of Kennington in South London with branches in Aberdeen and Carrara specialised in high-class decorative marble work. They had provided a considerable amount of the marble work for the recently-built Westminster Cathedral (1903).36 They also executed the architectural portion of Thomas Brock’s Queen Victoria Memorial and were responsible for marble work which they supplied and fixed in the County Hall.37 They were contracted to work and fix the marble work of the first-floor corridors and staircases. Sub-contractors who were engaged beforehand were scheduled to install the items they were to deliver. Richard Crittal & Company of Wardour Street, London, the sub-contractors for the heating and hot water supply were poised to install the boilers and condensers in connection with the heating.38 Chubb & Sons, Manufacturers of Locks, Safes, Strong Rooms, were to supply and fix the Triple Treasuries for the building: the latest design in safe doors, to protect the stock of sovereigns or bullion held to comply with the gold standard.39 The entrance gates were to come from the internationally acclaimed Worcestershire enterprise of Applied Arts, the Bromsgrove Guild. It was acclaimed for the ceremonial Dominion Gates before Buckingham Palace (including for Australia and Canada) and the rest of the metal work surrounding the Queen Victoria Memorial. Famed too was its work in the premier ocean liners. Bromsgrove’s craftsmen produced the bronze metal-work, light-fittings, plaster moulded ceilings and stained-glass windows for the Lusitania as well as the ship’s renowned bronze and glass lift enclosure and staircase. This work was known as ‘the most expensive and most elaborate of any entrusted to any firm in England’; the supervising architect considered that its workmanship and design was ‘the very best that Great Britain could produce’.40 The great pride taken in the building was understandable with suppliers like these specialized firms. Patriotic fervour that was displayed in early August was quickly tested in Belgium and France. By 13 September, German strength and British unpreparedness required the British Government to issue orders raising a third new army of six divisions. The High Commission relayed to Melbourne reports of action on the Front. The pink telegram slips sent from London reported losses on all sides. At the start of November, Britain and France formally declared war on Turkey. Before the Battles of Ypres, Collins expressed the grave situation ahead.

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No one thinks or speaks of anything but the war here. We are absorbed in it. The losses are fearful. South Africa was a picnic compared to this great struggle. It is a symptom of the strain and bloodshed that there are many calls of returned wounded who are demented, whose mental moral balance has been broken by the sight and the terrors. I am afraid it will strain our resources to the uttermost before we can compel Germany to accept our conditions of peace.41 Marshall Mackenzie’s sons abandoned their drawing desks for the Front. Alick Mackenzie, aged 35, enlisted as a private in the London Scottish. Wearing the Elcho Tartan of Hodden Grey colour worn by his regiment (that began as a volunteer rifle force under the command of Lord Elcho), he served in France and Belgium as a Battalion Scout.42 He hoped to transfer regiments so as to be with his younger brother. Before this happened, he was severely wounded at Messines at the first battle of Ypres, in October 1914. He lost his right leg and was hospitalized through 1915. He regained limited mobility with an artificial aluminium leg in 1916.43 Gilbert Mackenzie was commissioned in the First Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders, mobilised on the outbreak of the war, in which he reached the rank of Captain. While serving in France he drew and painted life in the trenches.44 He was with the British Expeditionary Force at Le Cateau, in the retreat from Mons to the Marne, at the battle of the Aisne, before being wounded at Ypres in May 1915. Architect William Williams assisted Marshall Mackenzie. Earlier, he had assisted Robert Edis, and Ernest Gérard, and the Mackenzies. The possibility of a long duration of hostilities became clear to Reid and Collins after a conference with the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, and Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt, and the Agents-General on 28 January 1915.45 That month, members of the AIF began to reach London, presenting Reid’s office with a multitude of unforeseen duties. They faced acute problems in May as scores of wounded members of the AIF arrived from Gallipoli. By November more than 10,000 men were hospitalised or convalescing across the breadth of London.46 Charged with much of the finance and provision of the Troops, the staff in Reid’s office extemporised to meet the men’s needs and their pay when the machinery to account for this was slow to be set up and cumbersome to administer. Such unforeseen administrative work began under Henry Smart’s 248

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oversight, with help from a Warrant Officer whose services were lent by the War Office. Many of the men were without pay books, more often than not left behind on Gallipoli, either shot away or lost from a torn-off tunic. Replacing clothing that many men needed tested Frank Savage’s ingenuity, when no uniforms of an Australian pattern could be found in London. Henry Smart deployed his organizational ability to set up a records office where female clerks processed the detail that was otherwise swamping Reid’s under-resourced team. Further unexpected difficulties that the office dealt with included Red Cross activities; Australian response to assisting Belgium and Belgian refugees; disseminating Official War Correspondents’ Reports; the disposal of ores and metals captured from the Germans; providing a Military Post Office and cable services for Troops; meeting transport arrangements and shipping; and dealing with hospitals and casualty enquiries. Frank Savage’s knowledge of stores and local conditions became invaluable. Military authorities respected his skill in procuring and managing supplies and he was appointed to the rank of Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the AIF. This acknowledged the ‘long and faithful service, rendered in a singularly amiable & unassuming manner’ that he gave to the Commonwealth, for which he had never properly been recompensed.47 His initial appointment to London was made on a temporary basis, and from his arrival with Collins in 1906, Savage served throughout his years in London without any certainty about his position, always half expecting that he may be recalled to Australia at short notice. Savage was a casualty of the frequent changes of Commonwealth administration which overlooked the working arrangements and the standing of some of its London staff, and his long-term uncertain position for close to a decade reflected the somewhat haphazard way in which attention in Melbourne went to the office in London. As all in London were to find, the stresses of the war proved increasingly telling in mid-1915. The sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania by a German U-boat off the Irish coast on 7 May 1915, killing 1,200 civilians, sparked international outrage but did relatively little to dampen London’s spirit. However, the city’s overtly aggressive public mood began turning with the first Zeppelin raid on London on 31 May. Like most, journalist James Bone was shocked at the first appearance of the airships. ‘London was invaded for the first time since the coming of the Danes,’ he exclaimed.48 Like him, bulky engine-men in their blue dungarees rushed out from Fleet Street’s printing houses with incredulous looks on their faces as they swarmed to see a Zeppelin overhead. ‘Christ!’ yelled one of the men, ‘Look at the Zeppelin – going up Fetter Lane!’49 Bone added, ‘It was 249

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the indignity of the thing that struck him. In London! After a thousand inviolate years!’ Aerial bombardment shook the nerve of Londoners as the city came under fire from German Zeppelins. The lights went out on the city, which was shrouded in darkness. Exploding shells – ‘maroons’, fired by the Fire Brigade – warned of approaching hostile aircraft. Without public shelters other than underground stations, Londoners felt very exposed and air raids tested their morale. German bombing raids killed thirty-eight people in attacks over central London in early September. On 13 October a Zeppelin raid left seventeen dead in nearby Wellington Street, a block away from Australia House, at the opposite, western end of the Aldwych Island. Some of its stonework was slightly damaged. Throughout the war, London suffered a total of twenty-five raids, which killed over 500 people and injured over 1,200. More than 170 buildings were destroyed and over 600 were seriously damaged. Into 1915, the exterior shell of the building stood under scaffolding up to the fourth level. The architects’ reported that nine months into the war little progress beyond this was made on the building.50 We see this in a photograph from Lemere’s studio that is dated 29 April 1915.51 The four reinforced concrete staircases were installed and the floors were put in to the fourth level.52 The following month, the Builder published an elevation drawing of the building’s Strand frontage together with other drawings.53 These showed details of columns and arches on the Strand elevation, floor plans, and longitudinal sections. Despite the building’s unfinished state, the Builder described its design as cutting-edge: ‘We think this building one of the most successful modern designs we remember seeing, both because of its refinement of detail and virile strength and expressiveness, and we believe our readers will endorse our opinion.’54 No further progress on the building could be photographed beyond the little external stonework that was completed so far. Estimates were prepared in August 1915 for completing the superstructure. The Doves were under pressure to meet their contractual obligations and Reid’s office badly needed more space owing to the war. Both had every reason to see the building finished as soon as possible, which explains ongoing reports of projected completion dates. In late May 1915, latest advices to reach Melbourne from London indicated that the building would be partly ready for occupation toward the end of that year. Later, it was anticipated that the building would be ready for occupation by the end of March 1916.55 Anticipated completion dates were continually deferred. Shortage of materials and labour brought inevitable delay. 250

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The war took its toll. Britain’s unpreparedness left troops in France short of munitions; the Front seethed with bitter disappointment and black rage over their limited supply. The Shell Crisis of 1915 required greater government control over manpower and resources so as to increase industrial expansion to support military needs. Heading a new munitions ministry in 1915, Liberal politician David Lloyd George rapidly reorganized the war effort, multiplying the output of shells and weapons. He unseated the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in December 1916. With a new coalition government, he expanded government controls over the economy through a set of new ministries headed by leading businessmen. He wanted action for ‘war to the finish’. To that end, everything went to the war effort. The Ministry of Munitions took a grip on the whole industry of the country. Government controls tightened over the distribution of raw materials, which affected the supply of materials. All work was classified and directed with scores of thousands of hands turned from other work onto munitions. ‘The whole country is one seething munition factory, and no man or lathe or tool that can be turned to munition-making is possibly doing anything,’ read a booklet issued to boost morale on the Front.56 This was essential because, wrote Christopher Addison, Minister of Munitions during Lloyd George’s prime ministership, ‘We have suffered in the War not only from old fashioned plant and negligent financial methods but from a serious neglect of research and scientific work as applied to industry.’57 Changing this became the priority. Old-fashioned machinery and slip-shod methods disappeared rapidly under the stress of war.58 The government imposed a general embargo on building projects other than those directly concerned with the war. Building work generally stopped through lack of material and labour. The impact on Australia House was immediate. In unpublished notes, Arthur Mason, a correspondent from the London office of the Sydney Morning Herald and its weekly edition the Sydney Mail, incorrectly believed that the Government’s closure of all building operations other than those directly concerned with the war was waived in the case of Australia House under a licence to carry on granted by the Munitions Department. No evidence for this has been found; in any case the issue of getting supplies remained. Mason thought (correctly) that transport difficulties hindered the supply of material from Australia; labour troubles also brought delay.59 The Mackenzies pictured the situation clearly in 1916. ‘Generally speaking we think the progress of the building operations has been good, after taking into consideration the difficulties (becoming increasingly greater) which had had to be met with in the decreased supply of labour and material [particularly steel]. Many 251

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of the contractors and sub-contractors are now under Government control, and we hold the view that they have tried to give us steady work in spite of the pressure put upon them by war work.’60 One problem that arose reflected the difficulties facing them. The site contained an Artesian Well. Bored to a depth of 400 feet through London’s chalky artesian basin, the deep well would draw over 1,000 gallons every hour, giving the building its own private water supply. Similar wells existed on other buildings nearby like the Savoy and Cecil Hotels, the Morning Post Building, and Oscar Hammerstein’s Opera House on Kingsway. Hammerstein told Marshall Mackenzie that his Artesian Deep Well freed him from water rates giving him a large annual saving.61 In 1916, when a fault was found in the well’s pumping system that required updating, the mechanical engineers responsible could not respond readily. ‘We are overcome with direct War Office work with our mechanics being specially badged [deputised] to execute this,’ they told the Mackenzies, ‘and we have frequent visits from Military Representatives [overseers] to see that the War Work is being proceeded with.’62 Appeals to the Minister of Munitions of War failed. The Mackenzies were told that the well could be completed when the war was over.63 Work continued on the building when possible, despite the demands of the war. By the end of 1916, the superstructure was completed and glass installed in the arched Strand shopfronts. The Mackenzies reported, ‘The roofing of the building was now far forward and would have been finished ere now had considerable delay not been caused by the difficulties met with in obtaining suitable labour and materials, principally steel.’64 All labour was under tight government and military control. Building was subject to restrictions, and so at a standstill, with new buildings generally unable to be built unless essential to the war effort. Sourcing building material was difficult. In its survey of the building trade for 1916 the Builder noted how maximum prices were fixed for articles which in fact were unprocurable and blended articles or substitutes were offered in place of the real products.65 These would not do for the Commonwealth Building which was a prestige building, estimated in 1912 to cost £230,000 to erect.66 To put this into perspective, this was almost ten times the cost of the Commonwealth Government’s recently completed building in Melbourne’s Treasury Place, occupied by the Prime Minister (and into which the Department of Home Affairs moved in 1914). Specifications for Australia House called for materials of the best quality including those from Australia. Initial Commonwealth ambitions for the building 252

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aside, calls that were made during its planning that it be an ‘All Australian’ building and lobbying by the Australian Natives’ Association in support of Australian manufacturers saw Australian materials specified for it. Over 29,000 cubic blocks of Australian stone and marble were specified. Contracts were issued for the supply of stone which was to be periodically shipped to London. Approximately 100 tons of Victorian marble were to be shipped from Melbourne every fortnight.67 Each block extracted from the quarries was cut into sizes as required. Each block shipped was measured in terms of the items to come from it and their position in the building. The Mackenzies measured everything, including the outside dimensions and the sizes to be cut from each quarried block of stone with diagrams of how the blocks were to be cut. They specified that care should be taken to see that the blocks were selected for correct colour matching. Regular shipments were imperative with so much stone to be fixed to the building. Delay caused further setback. The stone was slow to arrive owing to the number of vessels requisitioned by the Commonwealth Defence Department. The first shipment did not arrive until the end of January 1915.68 Buchan Marble came from near Orbost, in Victoria’s East Gippsland, 233 miles (375 km) east of Melbourne (close to Victoria’s border with New South Wales). From near Bathurst, 220 kilometres north-west of Sydney, came dark Caleula marble for the first floor Library, and light Caleula marble to pave the central staircases. Subsequent shipments were delayed with sea-borne transport from Australia increasingly hampered from May 1915.69 The fifth consignment to go to London left Port Adelaide in March 1916 via the HMATA20, the Hororata, one of His Majesty’s Australian Transports leased by the Commonwealth to carry Australian troops to the northern hemisphere.70 It carried 37 blocks, 77 tons, of white Angaston marble, quarried from the hills of South Australia’s Barossa Valley, where Angaston was known in its early settlement by German Lutheran migrants as ‘German Pass’. Fixing of the stone began for the building’s first-floor corridors and its central staircase immediately this was possible. The Mackenzies awaited the arrival of further shipments. In early 1916 far from all the stone was delivered. Further Angaston marble was yet to come. Buchan marble for the exhibition hall was urgently needed. No notice of their shipment came. The ground floor and exhibition hall could not be completed without actual delivery of the marble specified for its use. Six months from delivery was required to finish fitting the stone into the building. ‘The greater part of this material has, however, not yet arrived in this country, and we foresee in this cause for delay in the completion of the work,’ the Mackenzies warned.71 253

CHAPTER 21

Play the Game Cease your wowseristic whining, Tell the Truth and play the game. And we only ask, fair dinkum How we keep Australia’s name.1

‘The whole destinies of the world are at stake in this titanic struggle. Shall the hands of Fate point backwards to universal chaos or forward to lasting peace? Backwards they must not, shall not go. It is impossible!’ declared Sir George Reid, addressing the first of the AIF troops to arrive in Egypt. Australia’s army of largely citizen soldiers were sent first to Egypt for intensive training. They were encamped at the foot of the Great Pyramid, about ten miles outside Cairo, training hard for about sixty hours each week, when he addressed them there on 31 December 1914. In sight of the Pyramids, Reid assured them that they would be cared for ‘throughout the length of this great adventure’. He urged them to be mindful of their responsibility to uphold ‘the fair fame and stainless honour of Australia’ throughout the ‘fearful risks which you are approaching’ and the ‘desperate battles, long drawn out, which you must fight and win’.2 Everyone shouldered the war effort as they could. Artists in London gave the AIF troops from Egypt who encamped at Romsey a concert in Southampton in early April 1915.3 The men were destined for Gallipoli where allied landings were intended to win control of the Dardanelles and secure a sea route to Russia. Artists unable to enlist for combatant units, like (Sir) Arthur Streeton, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as orderlies with the Third General Hospital at Wandsworth where no staff were under the age of forty. Many served in other ways: portrait painter John Longstaff became a special constable in London. His three older sons were in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), with one wounded on the same day that his younger, twenty-year-old brother, was killed in action.4 BEF soldiers halted the German forward advance in Belgium at the Battle of Ypres in October–November 1914, with horrific losses. Grief wrapped London. 254

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Australia House was needed to accommodate the increasing number of staff required to administer the Army’s necessities.5 Yet it was far from habitable. AIF staff controlled by the High Commissioner’s Office worked from that cramped office until they were transferred in October 1915 to ANZAC administrative headquarters that were hurriedly set up at Horseferry Road, Westminster. The war hit hard at Reid who felt keenly the havoc it brought to lives on both the military and home fronts. Reid and his graceful wife, Dame Flora, actively supported every effort they could to help Australian servicemen (in 1917 she was appointed to a senior damehood DCMG for her work on behalf of those convalescing). Their sons, just out of Harrow, enlisted: Lieutenant R. D. Reid had been Reid’s secretary; their younger son was a Private in King Edward’s Horse.6 Reid’s hopes to continue in London when his term as High Commissioner expired were dismissed. Conscription debates in Australia strained the Labor Party. Australia’s Defence policy, including building its Australian Navy, was largely the work of Prime Minister Andrew Fisher’s administrations; at heart, he was against war and against conscription. Under strain, he resigned on 27 October 1915. Labor parliamentarians elected the more martial William Morris Hughes as Party leader. Hughes became Australia’s seventh Prime Minister, a month after he turned 53 and Fisher accepted the position of High Commissioner in London. Reid’s term as High Commissioner ended on 10 January 1916 just nine days short of his serving six years in the office. Captain Muirhead Collins welcomed the new High Commissioner who reached London on 31 January 1916. Andrew Fisher arrived with his young family of six children under the age of fourteen. Ironically, given his opposition to conscription, he arrived just days after the British Military Service Act introduced conscription (the first conscription laws passed in Britain). In force from 9 February, single men and widowers aged 18 to 41 without children were called up. Upon being driven into London, Fisher might well have been struck by its seeming normality (as it was described then). Apart from the street crowds being flecked and tinged with khaki ‘… the people were shopping or walking, or driving in buses or taxis as if they personally had still no more than a newspaper interest in the war, as if fighting or munition-making were matters concerning a certain section of mankind altogether apart from the ordinary life of the country.’7 Any semblance of normality was far removed from the reality in London where conditions through the 34 months of war during which Fisher was High Commissioner were strenuous to say the least. Fisher was tall, broad-shouldered, and distinguished-looking but a cartoon in Melbourne’s Punch depicts him as diminutive in a plaid suit, peering from 255

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behind the legs of George Reid, a gigantic figure resplendently garbed in the crimson mantle and gold collar of a Knight Grand Cross (GCB) – the Order of the Bath.8 Though Fisher had risen as a Labour leader from pit-worker to be three times Prime Minister, the cartoon emphasised that he was of a plain nature. Announcing his appointment to London The Times described Fisher as ‘a typical representative of labour in Australia’, and attributed his influence in Australia to his directness, honesty, and faculty of blunt speech rather than to any conspicuous oratorical gift.9 A downright and decent man, without a formal education, he was cautious rather than imaginative, yet achieved much as Prime Minister in terms of building needed infrastructure and advanced social programs. The war was a time for action not for talk Fisher had said and made it his election pledge that Australia would go all the way. Fisher was now custodian of the London structure whose Estimates, as Prime Minister and Treasurer, he had steered through Parliament. Excavation for the building’s foundations began when he was Prime Minister but he discovered that progress with it had now stalled. His hopes to see the States join the Commonwealth building were disappointed. The Agents General of New South Wales and South Australia disliked the building and intended to lease space in the Strand near West Australia’s Savoy House. New South Wales insisted it required its own entrance. It found other faults with the building: it sat too far East and on the wrong side of Strand, and the rooms in it were dark and inconvenient. In response, Reid had thundered at them in his final report: ‘It seems to me that this is provincialism run mad.’10 Reid reprimanded the State governments for making a serious mistake in establishing their offices away from the Commonwealth building. ‘When completed our building will be one of the finest in London. Its rooms, now described by a careless observer as ‘dark and inconvenient’, will when the rooms are finished and the scaffolding removed, be found to be splendidly lighted, and the spaces capable of most convenient arrangement.’ Prime Minister Hughes now had to fill the building when completed. Hughes and Fisher found that the great dislocation in the building trades caused by the war stalled its construction progress. Fisher spent considerable effort during 1916 pushing along the builders and architects by proposing that the building could be finished in stages.11 When Prime Minister he had pledged Australia’s wholehearted support to fighting the war. In March 1916, King George V voiced his appreciation of the support coming from the Dominions and believed that ‘the Unity of the Empire and faith in God will bring us Victory’12 In the notebook where Fisher penned his thoughts he wrote, ‘The plastic clay of nationhood is ours to shape and mould’, which he headed ‘Empire’.13 To Fisher, the war could not 256

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prevent the building from rising on the foundation laid by the King. The structure, with Australia’s name wrapped around it (on Henry Smart’s message board), gave evidence of Australia’s desire to be represented at the centre of the Empire. ‘It is Australia’s duty to send expedition after expedition and man after man till the end of the war’ ran the message along the Aldwych side of the scaffolded building before it rose beyond the second floor.14 So Fisher soldiered on. He was determined to complete the building because it signified common interests held. To get it up, no matter the difficulties of the war, would demonstrate Australia’s readiness to play her part for the common cause. ‘Our job is not to talk but to act’.15 In his speeches he focused on post-war reconstruction. He urged that more effective organisation of the constituent nations of the Empire was essential (and demanded by the self-governing dominions).16 Because Australia demonstrated its willingness to share in the burdens of the Empire, he stressed that it should have a corresponding voice in Imperial affairs. (Fisher kept in his sights the imperial bargain outlined by Joseph Chamberlain when Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1902. He had said that participating in the imperial policy of the Empire came with a sharing of its burdens.) ‘Australia was now a nation in every sense of the word,’ Fisher said, and insisted that the Dominions be given a voice in Imperial policy. High hopes over the building were such that journalist Charles Bean (Australia’s future Official Historian of the War) thought (incorrectly) that the High Commissioner’s Office moved into the unfinished structure around May 1916, perhaps reflecting Fisher’s hopes that this could be done.17 ‘Australia House nears completion’ read the Christian Science Monitor on 26 June 1916, five months after Fisher’s arrival.18 Here was another example of wishful thinking: the building was still under scaffolding. At its west end, alteration to the upper floors of Victoria House, to join the two buildings together, was not completed until 29 September 1916. Anticipation dulled during 1916 when shortages tightened in the face of mounting losses to submarine warfare. ‘Part of the building we are informed will be ready for occupation by the end of the year,’ read the London Times that October, ‘and it is hoped that the whole will be completed by next April.’19 Hopes that it would be completed in time for the second Anzac Day of remembrance of April 1917 were premature.20 As the war raged, delay dogged every turn of Fisher’s push to complete the building. Strenuous wartime conditions and the consequent difficulties that Fisher faced cannot be underestimated. Every step that he took was fraught with difficulty. Rampant wartime bureaucracy multiplied workloads in his office which 257

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magnified in complexity; undertaking them in congested conditions required dedication. Added to this was the complication that came in 1916 when the portfolio of External Affairs was abolished. The Prime Minister’s Department now took responsibility for functions which involved relations with other countries, including oversight of the High Commission in London.21 This made things difficult due to the bitterness and split in Australia’s Labor Party over the issue of conscription to which Fisher was opposed, unlike his Prime Minister. Hughes took Australia to a referendum on conscription in October 1916 (and a second referendum in December 1917); both failed to support conscription. Tension with his Prime Minister made it awkward for Fisher when Hughes was in London during the first half of 1916. Fisher worked by consensus, whereas Hughes, an abrasive personality, was presidential in style and autocratic.22 He treated Fisher with barely concealed indifference, and their estrangement left Fisher marooned. As well, Collins and Savage retired. Their familiarity with London was not held by the new men who replaced them, E. Allan Box as Secretary to the High Commission and Lieutenant-Colonel George J. Hogben as Assistant Secretary.23 Within weeks of his arriving Fisher was visiting wounded servicemen in hospitals scattered around England.24 Fisher’s steadfastness over the building under the difficult conditions that he faced should not be underestimated. The superstructure was completed in 1916 as war weariness mounted. The first three floors and the ground floor remained unfinished, with temporary wooden windows, bare brick walls and no wood flooring or any stair railings. The building stood empty behind scaffolding and hoardings but at least it was roofed. ‘Today we are leaving 72 Victoria Street for Australia House’, Henry Smart wrote to Atlee Hunt on 27 December 1916. ‘We are occupying a few of the top floors. The floors below, of course, will not be finished for some months. Even the floors we are going into are not completed. The lifts are not working, no light on, and everything is very dismal, but we have to get out of here and make the best of it.’25 Little sense of these miserable conditions reached Australia. Instead, an Australian journalist who interviewed Fisher’s wife Margaret amidst the packing done in preparation for the move reported, ‘Much energy and enthusiasm has gone to the establishment of a worthy building wherein the representatives of Australia may come together and confer.’26 Such optimistic rhetoric bore little relation to the depressing reality endured by Fisher and his staff. Leaving their cramped accommodation in Victoria Street took them several days because they were hampered by thick fog, the densest for many years.27 New Year’s Day of 1917 saw them installed in their makeshift accommodation 258

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on the sixth floor. Only this small portion of the building could house them; no other space was ready for occupation and would not be ready until later in 1917. With the move accomplished, attempts to get front page publicity for the building failed.28 In early 1917, the Press were principally concerned about the conduct of the war. What would change in Russia bring?, they asked. Would the revolutions improve or reduce the Allies’ chances of beating the Germans? Fisher’s office made do while essential construction on the rest of the building proceeded slowly, with work undertaken by workmen beyond military age or disabled servicemen who could be found. In the spring of 1917 wages were not keeping pace with the rise in the cost of living. Widespread industrial unrest followed. Shortages and uneven supply added to difficulties. Price limits were imposed on basic goods. German U-boat sinkings of allied shipping in the Atlantic effectively imposed an unrestricted blockade on Britain. Cuts to supplies brought further shortages that bit hard from mid-1917. Increasing food prices rose by 106 per cent in September. Food queues, some 2,000 even 3,000 people long, were part of life.29 Ballooning costs followed the shortages in basic necessities. The building trades came under attack for ‘profiteering’. As late as 1919, William Haselden targeted this in his cartoon Don’t have anything! Refuse to Pay! I’ ll starve sooner than have food at present prices I’ ll die of thirst before I’ ll buy drink at the price asked today Nothing will make me buy clothes at the prices obtaining Tailors Snip & ... I won’t employ a builder! I refuse to pay anything – I’ ll stay in prison!30 Gotha raids on London added to misery. Pushing builders and architects achieved little when supplies were unprocurable. The Ministry of Munitions, under the Defence of the Realm Regulations (DORA), strictly policed supplies. Application to the Ministry was required for pretty much anything needed for building. ‘War material’, that was restricted for use by the DORA regulations, was wide-ranging in mid-1917. To give example, the regulations restricted not only metals but, All machinery driven by power and suitable for use in cutting, working, or operating on wood, including sawing machines of all 259

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descriptions, general joiners, mortise, tenon, and boring machines, lathes and rounding machines, box and cask-making machines and all machines accessory thereto, scraping and sandpapering machines, wheelwright machinery, firewood-making and bundling machinery, wood wool fibre and pulp machinery, saw sharpening and setting machines, saw stretchers and brazing apparatus, all machines for grinding, planning or moulding irons.31 Rather than be used for flooring and joinery in building construction (as was needed at Australia House), tools and machinery went into manufacturing the boxes and crates needed to ship ammunition, shells and mortars to the Western Front, and to assembling the wagons to transport them.32 Restrictions stalled the specialised suppliers contracted to complete the building, as did calls on their labour. Dove Brothers built War Office Aeroplanes and Aeroplane Propellers in March 1917.33 That year, Muirhead Bone’s munitions drawings pictured the Ministry of Munitions’ grip on Britain’s military economy and the whole-scale effort that the Shell Crisis of 1915 triggered.34 Massive guns – tools of destruction – rolled off assembly lines in cavernous factories that were speedily erected. Only structures like these, considered to be essential to the war effort, were licensed to be built. Regulations prohibiting the carrying out of most building work were strictly enforced. Building was policed, and those who contravened the restrictions were heavily fined.35 Attempts to secure a modification of the Order under the Regulations were fruitless.36 Few occasions occurred when the Licensing Justices sanctioned alterations. Restrictions even excluded the restoration of property destroyed or damaged by fire.37 This applied to repairs made necessary by damage caused by enemy aircraft.38 Coal rationing was introduced in November. The winter of 1917 was bitter with intense cold. Food and coal shortages added to misery. Long queues were part of life. Dissatisfaction with the Government grew. Industrial unrest worsened. The difficulty of securing labour was coupled with the additional cost of paying War Bonuses and War Wages necessitated by the increase in the cost of living and the abnormal conditions due to the needs of war. In July 1916, war bonuses were given by the Works Department of the London County Council under ‘trade agreements’ which saw engineers paid an extra 4s. a week. Machine workers (fitters, turners and smiths) obtained an additional ten per cent on piece prices (set tasks). Specialised trades, like workers within the electrical trades, received bonuses of over 11d. an hour with pro rata advances paid to labourers and assistants. Even casual labour in the building trades saw bonus payments of 260

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1d. an hour. Rising costs were such that bonus payments steadily increased. By 1917, the Trades Unions pressed that 10d. per hour be the rate paid to casual labour in the building trades.39 Between 1914 to 1918 wage rates of building workers rose by 60 per cent in Britain.40 In late October 1917, building trade operatives, when working on munitions work, were advanced an additional 13s.4d. per hour above the time rates of their wages. The advance was regarded as war wages and recognized as due to, and dependent on, the prevailing abnormal conditions caused by the war. Building trade operatives engaged on work connected with Australia House thought they should be similarly paid and sought a war bonus.41 Without a precedent for such a payment in Australia, the Commonwealth government resisted paying the extra amounts. Far from the battlefield, wartime conditions were less severe in Australia, where there was fear of what consequences might ensue from following British practice and making some allowance. However, King O’Malley, when Minister of Home Affairs in 1912, raised the wages of labourers on government works to 9s. per day (the basic wage in Australia in 1913 was 8s. per day), and also introduced a wet weather bonus.42 On the basis of this practice, representatives of the unions whose employees worked on building Australia House applied to the High Commission for payment of a war bonus. Eventually, in April 1918, Lyttleton Groom, Australia’s Federal Minister for Works and Railways, advised Prime Minister Hughes that authority should be given to pay 25 per cent of the increased cost. The Government relented in July 1918.43 The Mackenzies estimated that this added £50,000 to construction costs.44 Lloyd George’s War Cabinet set up a Cabinet Committee on Accommodation to find the accommodation that various war departments needed and commandeered in London.45 It requisitioned hotels, clubs and other buildings for military authorities and government departments – the closer to Whitehall the better. Every foot of available space in nearby buildings was requisitioned for War Office purposes. It occupied the National Gallery of British Art, Millbank (today’s Tate Britain). It occupied and annexed the Constitutional Club in Northumberland Avenue. It took over the Hotel Cecil as additional offices for the Air Board; wooden partitions divided the lounge and dining rooms into staff rooms. Britain’s Office of Works took up every available space in central London for their temporary use as office accommodation for Government Departments. The War Office, among other departments, occupied buildings along Victoria Street. The Admiralty’s newly established Shipyard Labour Department occupied Horrex’s Hotel, which faced Australia House on the Strand, to its south at the corner of Norfolk Street.46 Treasury occupied Danes Inn House, opposite the 261

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building on its Aldwych side. Australian newspapers reported in January 1917 that the War Office notified Fisher that it would occupy space in Australia House directly it was ready for occupation.47 Given Fisher’s dedication to the building, these requisitions forced his move to the Strand. As High Commissioner, he was responsible for the building, a substantial edifice in a prominent central location. Fisher was sensitive to the building’s importance and cautious about protecting the investment already spent in its construction. Occupying it ensured protecting it. He came to an arrangement with Sir Arthur Durrant, Controller of Supplies at the Office of Works. Fisher confirmed with Prime Minister Hughes on 11 January 1917 that the British Government would occupy the building’s first three floors through the duration of the War and for six months after.48 Five days later The Times announced that the third floor was not ready for occupation.49 Fisher reportedly entertained 200 guests at an inspection of the building on 26 January, Australia Day.50 When he was photographed in the building in April 1917, in an article that (incorrectly) announced that the building was completed for occupation, the strain of the past year is clear across his face.51 The architects could only engage in temporary finishes. Even engaging in work of this kind was difficult when obtaining supplies of metal for any work not concerned with military requirements proved impossible. Clearly, Fisher hoped the government occupation could speed up finishing construction. Alterations (mainly partitioning) were made in the building by the Office of Works to accommodate a section of the Department of Inland Revenue who from July 1918 occupied the entresol, second and third floors.52 Fisher insisted that the arrangements were to be made by the Office of Works, with no cost to the Commonwealth Government.53 Scaffolding surrounding the building came down some time around September 1917 when Boucher photographed it free of scaffolding.54 That month, shrapnel from German air raids descended upon central London, and a piece shattered the window in Fisher’s office.55 Building activity did not stop in London during the war. Work was not interrupted at the London Docks, where improvements proceeded on the West India Dock.56 Generally, the few permanent buildings that went up in wartime were largely begun ahead of the war – the New Government Offices for the Dominion of New Zealand being one. After New Zealand gained Dominion Status in 1907, it took the New Zealand Government time to settle on a London office. It approached London’s property market carefully. ‘In distinction to New Zealand’s shrinking modesty is the insistent manner in which Canada and Australia bring themselves under the notice of the British public,’ emphasised the 262

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Auckland Star early in 1913.57 The New Zealand Government elected to lease a building designed by Westminster architects Crickmay & Sons, whose building application to alter the freehold building owned by the Corps de Commissionaires went to the London County Council in mid-December 1913.58 It was approved on condition that the building went up within two years of that date as was customary with such applications. 413–416 Strand, next to the Adelphi Theatre, nearly opposite Charing Cross Station, rose to a six-storey building above a basement and ground floor. With a Strand frontage of fifty feet and a depth of some 150 feet, it was both smaller and simpler than Australia House. ‘The total cost of the building is estimated at about £26,000, and there has been no attempt at lavish decoration,’ reported the New Zealand Herald.59 The building opened on 5 May 1916 when six hundred guests attended an opening reception in the ground f loor premises of the High Commission at which were displayed New Zealand products and pictures of Gallipoli. 60 The Canadian province of British Columbia undertook a more ambitious project. British Columbia’s government gave their Agent-General, the Honourable John Herbert Turner, formerly Premier of the province (1895–8), instructions to close his negotiations with the Crown. He set on a site at the lower end of Regent Street, at the corner of Charles Street. (It was directly opposite a building that Collins had recommended to Deakin in 1906–7, which was then occupied by Cunard, the shipping company, before they decamped to Cockspur Street.) Whereas Collins found the architectural conditions of the Crown too restrictive, Turner found otherwise. British Columbia would lease from the Crown at 1 and 3 Regent Street, where it would follow Australian example and immediately build. A number of prominent Anglo-Canadians petitioned Prime Minister Borden against the plan. They regarded Aldwych as a far more convenient and effective site for advertising and pushed to be part of the Earl of Grey’s Imperial Centre.61 However, the British Columbia Legislature voted £250,000 towards the Regent Street building. And Turner had the architect for it: Alfred Burr. Burr helped Turner and drew up preliminary plans for the Crown to consider. When approved, the well-known London contracting firm of Cubbits were engaged to construct the new building of 36,000 square feet over five floors (with a dormered attic), on a 100 foot frontage on Regent Street, to Burr’s design.62 Construction by notable Wandsworth builder (Sir) James Carmichael (who built Victoria House), began in 1913, and the foundation stone of the new building was laid on 16 July 1914.63 Construction of the £90,000 building advanced quickly so that in late December 1915, the offices of the Agent General 263

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of British Columbia moved into the building.64 Designed in Roman palazzostyle, it is finished in Portland stone ashlar with a prominent entrance bay. A large, enclosed and rusticated porch is a feature of the main central entrance. A semi-circular arched opening and segmental pediment frames the Arms of British Columbia. It is surmounted by a carved group of allegorical figures. A distinctive feature within the building was its ground floor exhibition space where British Columbia products were displayed. If Fisher’s position as High Commissioner appeared marginal during the war years, at least the Commonwealth’s building demonstrated its merit and proved its value ahead of its being officially opened. Four years of war were responsible for an unprecedented volume of work that necessitated a large increase of staff and expenditure. The colossal effort made by Fisher’s staff would have been costlier were it not performed from the Government’s own offices and by its own officers. Alick Mackenzie considered that the building augmented the work undertaken by the High Commissioner’s staff in response to wartime need. To his mind, the building facilitated their efforts, stretched as they were. It demonstrated its capacity to serve and came into its own despite its unfinished state. Like London, the building was overrun by servicemen. Khaki was the order of the day. The Australian War Records Section (AWRS) of the AIF (also known as the War Museums and Records Section) occupied the unfinished exhibition hall. Filling the unfinished ground floor were the Commonwealth Bank and its Military Section. The Commonwealth Bank established a branch on the corner of the building’s ground floor on 1 October 1917.65 Service provided by the Commonwealth Bank to Australian servicemen also contributed to the war effort. (Sir) Denison Miller, first Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, whom Fisher appointed in June 1912, impressed King George V with how ‘he played the game’.66 As a matter of policy, the Bank did all it could to assist servicemen (despite obstruction from military authorities). Large numbers of Bank staff met their banking needs and their business (as it did from branches where troops were quartered). Up to 150 servicemen came to the branch in Australia House each day, where clerks assisted them. Telegraphic transfers were sent freely; notes were exchanged at par, including at agencies world-wide; and help with personal problems was given. A staff of 380 temporary female clerks sorted vouchers, filed letters and dealt with the hefty volume of telegraphic transfers from the Bank’s branch in the City. While serving a patriotic purpose, the Bank, only established in 1911 and which began operating in July 1912 with a staff of twelve, was also advertising to future customers. It had just opened its twelve-story headquarters in Sydney’s 264

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Martin Place, Australia’s first all steel-framed high-rise building. Like Fisher, Miller was fixed on the future while meeting current wartime demands. Miller made this clear to his London manager. As a matter of policy it is most desirable that, at this crisis in the history of the Empire, we should do everything we can to assist both directly and indirectly, without any thought of the present or future gain to the Bank; but, at the same time, there is not doubt that assistance of the nature indicated must leave a very favourable impression in the minds of not only the men themselves but those connected with them, which will materially assist in placing the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the prominent financial position which it must eventually take.67 Nearby, temporary buildings for the War Office sprang up in Victoria Embankment Gardens.68 They were among the improvised structures that mushroomed in London. London County Council schools became military hospitals. Like many estates near London, one manor house at Harefield Park, Middlesex, 17 miles (27  km) northwest of Charing Cross, was converted for convalescent soldiers. Its Australian owner offered it to the Commonwealth Government in 1914, and temporary timber huts occupied by No. 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital eventually contained 500 beds, and accommodated 49,000 soldiers.69 Now buildings of a different kind to the ‘commercial palaces’ that went up before the war began were needed. Like the temporary hutments at Harefield, huts for servicemen sprang up all over central London. In September 1917, the London County Council temporarily granted use of the empty central block on Aldwych next to Victoria House. A use for the block was found at last: the American Young Men’s Christian Association installed Eagle Hut for servicemen visiting London on the still vacant site in September 1917.70 The area surrounding Australia House thus became a hub to which allied servicemen gravitated. It was where they largely ate; they even played baseball on the Strand when fog stalled traffic.71 The prominence of Australia House on the Strand meant that the street became a favorite promenade of the Anzacs (as for many servicemen on furlough in London). It was the place to go to if one wished to meet people from ‘down under’. On the corner of nearby Drury Lane, the Australian YMCA leased the Aldwych Theatre in order to provide a centre where servicemen could enjoy a 265

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canteen and entertainment from 9 a.m. to midnight. Sketchy variety turns and cinema shows played there with a permanent orchestra and constantly changing program. Three shifts of female volunteers manned the canteen which was set up in the pit and dress circle for 200 diners at a time. (As it happened, Mary Pitcairn, daughter of Queensland civil servant William Finucane, managed the team of volunteers.)72 By now, details of architects who volunteered for active service filled the pages of the Builder. It reported that ‘… of architects of military age in this country … something like nine-tenths are serving in arms or in some allied capacity.’73 RIBA members (fellows, associates, licentiates) numbered just over 4,336 individuals in 1918. By April 1918 the Institute confirmed that nearly all men of military age in the profession were either serving in the armed forces or working for the Government.74 More than 1,300 members and students of the Institute served in the armed forces. Serving in France from May 1917 was William Williams (who, up to then, assisted Marshall Mackenzie with Australia House). Aged 41, he was gazetted to the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was killed in action in Belgium on 9 November 1918.75 From the London County Council staff, 10,164 men enlisted, of whom 1,065 lost their lives, roughly 10 per cent from each department. From the Architect’s Department 437 men enlisted, of whom 40 lost their lives.76 Among those who died was Member of the Council, Lieutenant Col the Lord Thynne D.S.O., M.P.77 In early 1916 Gilbert Mackenzie was in the relief force of the Seaforth Highlanders, 1st battalion sent to Mesopotamia to safeguard the oilfields and refineries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. A limited demonstration of strength that began in the Persian Gulf in November 1914 became a full-scale British invasion of Turkish Mesopotamia, as Britain took steps to protect oil supplied from Abadan near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Confident of easy victory, British-led Indian forces sought to advance to Baghdad, just over 248 miles (400 km) to the north, to neutralize the Turks. They were besieged at Kut Al Amara, 100 miles (160 km) south of Baghdad. More than 23,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in unsuccessful attempts to relieve the British–Indian forces besieged in Kut. On Good Friday, 21 April 1916, Gilbert Mackenzie, aged 25, fell at the First Battle of Kut.78 It was one of Britain’s most notorious military defeats of the last century.79

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Take the Strain The fact that the Australians with a total population of less than five million in their Commonwealth should have spent a million sterling on their London headquarters is remarkable evidence of their sturdiness of spirit and of their whole-heartedness in shouldering the responsibilities of Imperial partnership as well as in enjoying its advantages.1

‘The time has now come when we must be prepared to ‘take the strain’, General Sir William Birdwood told his troops in late March 1918. ‘I think I need hardly say more. Everyone fully realizes what this means.’ After costly battles earlier in the war, then a long stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front, disheartening news faced them that Germany was closing in on Paris. The Central powers appeared to be gaining the winning hand early in 1918. Russia’s Bolshevik government withdrew from the war and the peace of BrestLitovsk eliminated the Eastern Front. It freed German forces to pursue one last energetic push to the west. They launched an all-out offensive in France, broke through British and French trenches, and targeted three long-range guns on Paris. A 380-mm Max E Railway gun bombarded Paris from the unprecedented range of 130 kilometres. German artillery fire blotted out more than 1,650 townships and destroyed more than 2,300 others. It reduced a heft of country, 250 miles long and about 30 wide, to a desert. Germany seemed close to winning the war. Every man available was wanted to resist the German offensive. Having commanded the Australians since their first arrival in Egypt, seen them through Gallipoli, and united the five divisions in the Australian Corps, Birdwood believed that no better soldiers could drive to victory. He told them, ‘Remember that personal determination to attain victory at whatever self-sacrifice, by every individual, is what counts, and it may well be that this spirit on the part of even a few men may be the deciding factor of the great battle in which we are now engaged.’ He appealed to each one of them ‘to ‘take the strain’ for the sake of his country and all they held dear. ‘Remember what they are thinking of us all in 267

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Australia now, and remember the lasting tradition which the Force has made for itself.’2 With the German offensive, a sense of national crisis gripped London. Things ‘looked black indeed’, wrote Sir Douglas Haig to the King.3 Like Birdwood, his order of the day to exhausted troops, printed in the London papers on 13 April, said it all. ‘Each one of us must fight on to the end.’ Haig’s announcement shook Londoners out of their mood of disgruntled resignation into one of unity over the ensuing months as they followed the news of German advances. In that grim atmosphere, following earlier Australian resistance to Germany’s Spring offensive at Villers-Bretonneux, the capture of Hamel by Australian forces (assisted by detachments of Infantry from the newly arrived American Expeditionary Force, supported by British tanks) had an electric effect.4 The short battle on 4 July 1918 lasted just ninety-three minutes. It was the first offensive operation, on any substantial scale, fought by any of the Allies since the previous Autumn. The Allied initiative immediately resumed in France. Five days later, on 9 July, King George V gave a dinner for the Dominion Prime Ministers attending the Imperial War Conference. Dominion leaders were now integrated into the policy-making process at the Imperial Conference (as Deakin wanted in 1907). Having the voice of the self-governing Dominions heard for the first time marked a new stage in Imperial affairs. Sir Joseph Cook, formerly Australia’s Prime Minister (in mid-1913–1914), now Deputy Prime Minister and Navy Minister, sat between the King and the Earl of Rosebery. The following morning, the King requested that the Opening Ceremony for the Commonwealth Building take place in just over three weeks’ time on Saturday, 3 August.5 King George had signified his intention of opening the building beforehand. In Melbourne, Minister for External Affairs Hugh Mahon pressed for this in early October 1916.6 Into January 1917, Fisher minuted delaying plans for an opening till a prospective date could be envisaged: ‘The building must be complete in every way at that time.’7 In May 1918, when addressing the Imperial War Conference, the King praised Australia’s commitment to the war effort. He expressed his gratitude to ‘… that great Dominion [which] stands second to none in determination to do all in its power to assist in the tremendous conflict in which the Empire is engaged.’8 Work pressed on in the building through early 1918 in anticipation of its opening. In June, the Mackenzies confirmed that, if pressed, the building could be ready to open by the second week of August.9 The Dove Brothers would concentrate all their effort on essential work. Alexander Mackenzie engaged the architectural photographers Bedford Lemere & Co to supply him with over two 268

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dozen views of the building. He asked T. Raffles Davison to touch up three of them, where aspects of the building were incomplete, so as to have them ready for publicity.10 The King’s choice of day for the official opening was a week earlier than expected and was significant because it had been in the first week in August that Germany declared war on France. The King’s timing was significant too in terms of events that were to come in France. Allied forces were about to launch into battle around Soissons, where the French and Americans were pursuing the Germans to shorten their frontline. The course of events during June and July pointed to the tide turning against the Germans. Decisive Allied counteroffensives recaptured most of the ground lost to the German Spring Offensive. An end to the conflict was far from certain, but a sense of German weakening was in the air. ‘There could be no better augury for the anniversary of war than the recapture of Soissons and the wiping out of practically all the Hun gains of May to July’, wrote the London Times.11 Relief would be welcome after the strain of past months. A good judge of public mood, the King therefore chose to officially open Australia House in this changing atmosphere. The Empire would enter the fifth year of the war on 5 August. Morale was low on the home front. From 1917, Germany’s fleet of submarines tried to break Allied lines of supply and to bring Britain to its knees by attacking vulnerable food imports on which it relied and the continued shortage of supplies took its toll. The first Sunday of 1918 was set aside as a special day of national prayer. The King urged Britons, ‘Let us seek [to be] fortified in our courage in facing the sacrifices we may yet have to make before our work is done.’12 Meat and fats were first rationed in London in February, extended to the whole country in April and full ration books for all meat and dairy produce were issued in July. The wide hardship struck Cook when he reached London (with Prime Minister Hughes and Commonwealth Attorney-General Sir Robert Garran). ‘Everyone I meet gives me some sort of evidence that he is thinner than he was a year ago. The whole nation is rationed in a way that Australia cannot imagine.’13 Resolve weakened in London with the arrival mid-June of the influenza pandemic, the viral infection known colloquially as ‘Spanish Flu’. (Who could have foreseen that October to early November would be the worst months when 5,000 Londoners died in a fortnight?) Opening the building thus gave a highly welcome occasion for King George to offer a brief diversion to weary Londoners. His appearance had reduced tension on earlier occasions, such as during industrial unrest. The war had strengthened his kingship and fostered pride in the empire, and the event would strengthen 269

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and consolidate this. He could personally express his gratitude to his Australian soldiers for their part in securing the turn-around on the Western Front, fighting with all their characteristic dash and spirit as The Times stressed.14 After Hamel, their popularity had never been so high. The King had predicted Australia’s overwhelming response to the cause of imperial union when he laid the building’s Foundation Stone. Five years on, he was almost the only belligerent monarch in Europe to keep his throne. The good will of the people was now the foundation by which the throne would become more firmly established. In the House of Commons on July 8, upon congratulating King George and Queen Mary on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their wedding, Lloyd George paid tribute to the King as a symbol of unity. ‘The war has strengthened the bonds which unite our King and people,’ he said. ‘At a moment like this, the crisis of the war, the unity of the Empire means much … The stability of the throne is essential to the strength of the Empire, for it is not merely a symbol, but a bond of unity.’15 Work swung into furious haste to have the building as complete as could be possible. Photographs from Lemere’s studio show that the front entrance remained to be finished, as did the marble flooring of the exhibition hall.16 Moreover Bromsgrove Guild were unable to deliver the building’s bronze gates. They were not yet made because the war had halted the Guild’s usual metalworking activity. Despite a Royal warrant granted to the Guild, it could not obtain the supplies needed to cast in bronze. The Ministry of Labour refused to lend them men.17 Its workers were assigned to war work. Temporary flooring was quickly installed where flooring remained unfinished in the building. The Exhibition Hall could then receive guests, although it still needed weeks more work. The High Commissioner, Andrew Fisher, who devoted much of his time in London to visiting wounded servicemen, considerately stipulated that 50 wounded officers and 250 other ranks of the AIF be invited to the opening and accommodated in the Hall.18 Feverish activity among Fisher’s staff in preparation for the opening ceremony mounted. Captain Henry Smart took charge of the necessary arrangements. Police Authorities were contacted about a pavilion to seat invited dignitaries. This was erected in the Strand, stretched between the building’s main entrance and the Gladstone Monument, and furnished with necessary linings, gilded staffs, flags and crimson carpets.19 Initially, 2,500 guests were to be invited; this was doubled, such was the interest taken in the building and the event.20 Journalist Arthur Mason, from the Sydney Morning Herald and its weekly the Sydney Mail, summarized the building’s history and features for a souvenir booklet of 32 pages in a standard as well as a deluxe edition.21 Military arrangements were made; 270

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horses were supplied by the Royal Horse Guards, with half the escort to consist of Australian Troops. About 500 AIF soldiers were transported to London from their Salisbury depot to line the streets around the building. A band was provided.22 Men were detailed to take tickets and to show guests to their numbered seats.23 Over three days, thirteen women prepared specially mounted letters and numbers for the pavilion’s gilded chairs. A skeleton guard of honour was detailed to form opposite the entrance to the building two days ahead of the event. The Court Florists Felton & Sons were engaged to prepare a bouquet for presentation to the Queen.24 His Majesty asked that (Sir) Denison Miller, Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, would be presented to him.25 King George would invest soldiers with military decorations in the Exhibition Hall, and whilst there he also wanted to talk to a member of the AIF. ‘Everything except the weather is in good trim, and if the weather be propitious, we shall have a very interesting time,’ mused Allan Box, Secretary to the High Commission, on the day before the event when twenty-seven inches of rain fell over central London.26 This weather was cause for concern. On 3 August, the King noted in his diary, ‘Raining hard again this morning & quite dark.’27 Flags decked the Strand that morning, as guests assembled for their place in the gold and white pavilion. With his invitation, journalist Charles Bean was ushered to his seat, K23.28 Seated nearby, William Clive Bridgeman, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (1916–19) in Lloyd George’s coalition government, and one of the most popular figures in the House of Commons, saw many great and pompous people (as he later wrote to his wife).29 In the crowd were Viscount Milner, Secretary for War; the Marquis of Crewe; the Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden; the Ambassador for Japan; and Sir John Taverner. Along the Strand, crowds with umbrellas and rain-coats lined the street. A British Pathé newsreel filmed that morning as unsettled weather loomed over the Strand and the King and Queen and Princess Mary were borne to Australia House.30 The King wore the uniform of a British Field-Marshal. The Queen and Princess Mary were in mourning, as they remained throughout the war. Their carriage was the first of three to process down the street; their coachmen’s damp raincoats concealed their scarlet liveries. Flags flying from the building introduced some welcome colour to the day’s prevailing grey tones. Flag staffs on its fifth-floor landing flew the Union Jack with the flags of France, America, Belgium, Italy, Serbia and Portugal. Flags of the Australian States flew on the building’s Aldwych side and Commonwealth flags flew from staffs on its corners. 271

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The rain, as if on cue, cleared as Their Majesties arrived at the building. The Royal Party alighted in front of the pavilion as the clock of St Clement Danes struck noon. The church’s bells rang out a peal of welcome. Trumpets gave their fanfare. Waiting to receive the Royal Party were Andrew Fisher with Prime Minister Hughes, and his deputy Sir Joseph Cook and their wives. Fisher towered above the King and Hughes, who were of similar height. Fisher presented them to RearAdmiral Francis Haworth-Booth, Naval Adviser to Australia’s High Commissioner throughout the war and the representative in London of the Commonwealth Navy, and Lieutenant-General (Sir) John Monash. His mind held details of the operations that he had strategically planned in the allied offensive to start in five days time. Preliminary movements of Divisions ahead of battle were taking place in his absence and Monash had a destroyer on stand-by at Dover to rush him to France if necessary (he could not risk flying).31 Five days later, when the push against the Germans began, all five Australian Divisions of soldiers engaged together in battle operation for the first time in the history of the Australian Army Corps. The Canadian Corps and two British Divisions worked with them. Like Birdwood’s appeal in March, Monash imbued them with the spirit of victory. He commanded every man in the Australian Army Corps to carry on to the utmost until the goal was won, ‘for the sake of Australia, the Empire and our cause.’32 The Royal Standard was hoisted and broken over the building when Their Majesties reached the Dais in the ceremonial pavilion. They were presented to Allan Box and the Agents-General of the States. Also presented to the King were General Birdwood; Major-General Sir James Whiteside McCay, the AIF commander of the Australian depots on Salisbury Plain; and Brigadier General Thomas Griffiths who commanded the AIF Headquarters at Horseferry Road.33 Gone was the breeziness that characterized the building’s stone-laying ceremony five years earlier. There was a briskness to the ceremony that was synonymous with the Staff of the Australian Army Corps and its Divisions and Brigades of the past six months which, unlike at the start of the war, now consisted almost entirely of Australians. Many of them belonged to the permanent military forces of the Commonwealth, yet still more were men who held civilian occupations and so lacked military experience before the war. The quality of the work from both steadily developed to the very high standard displayed in recent active fighting. Monash acknowledged their efficiency and how invaluable it was: ‘Had it been otherwise, I could not have carried out either the rapid preparations for several of the greater battles, or the frequent and complex interchanges of Divisions which alone rendered it possible for me to keep up a continuous pressure 272

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on the enemy as the advance proceeded.’34 The King inspected the Guard of Honour of 100 Australian soldiers of different ranks, and three officers. One of the officers was former public servant and diplomat Major O. C. W. (Steve) Fuhrmann, Commanding Officer of the 53rd Battalion. Like King George V, who relinquished the use of all German Titles and Dignities and adopted the name of Windsor on 17 July 1917, Fuhrmann changed his name.35 When born in Australia in 1889, he was given names from German forebears but when war broke out, Otto Carl Wilhelm Fuhrman became Osmond Charles William Fuhrmann. Replying to Fisher’s welcome, the King’s voice resonated in the crowded pavilion. As was customary, he spoke of his pleasure in opening the building, ‘… Australia House, this magnificent building, the future home of the Commonwealth Government in the Metropolis of the Empire.’ He was glad that Prime Minister Hughes was present. He referred to his links to Australia. ‘The Queen and I keenly follow whatever concerns the welfare and progress of the Oversea Dominions, and we are proud to be associated with the peoples of the Commonwealth of Australia, not only in a ceremony of this nature, but in all their interests, efforts, and aspirations.’ By way of example he expressed his pleasure at watching the building’s gradual progress since laying its foundation stone. He paid tribute to Australian purposefulness: ‘True to your indomitable character, you have, in spite of the difficulties of war, persevered in the work begun five years ago, the consummation of which we now celebrate.’36 He spoke of the overwhelming response made by the Commonwealth to the war effort. I have also had several opportunities of inspecting the battle cruiser which bears the name of, and worthily represents, the Commonwealth. The Australia and the other ships of the Australian Navy have shown their sterling worth in the different operations in which they have been engaged. I am confident that, come what may, they will gallantly play their part in the Grand Fleet to which they belong, and share its vast responsibilities of defending the shores of these islands and assisting in the protection of the commerce of the Empire, I have much pleasure in declaring Australia House now open. When thanking the King, Fisher spoke of Australian determination: ‘The most desperate war in history has not prevented this edifice from rising on the 273

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foundation so truly laid by your majesty on the 24th July 1913.’ The building was emblematic of the common bonds shared by Britain and Australia. Speaking for Australians he said, ‘Whatever the difficulties of the war may prove to be, it is their hope steadily to proceed in the same way to overcome them. It is the earnest wish of the Commonwealth Government that Australia House may be a tangible sign to the people of the United Kingdom that their interests and those of their kinfolk in the great Commonwealth overseas are common alike in peace or in war.’37 The official party entered the building through the Main Doorway as Captain William Short, the King’s Trumpeter, accompanied by his quartet of trumpeters, played Australia Will Be There, the marching song of the Australian Forces. Its refrain echoed the ties to which Fisher referred. Rally ‘round the banner of your country Take the field with brothers o’er the foam  On land or sea  Wherever you be  Keep your eye on Germany  But England, home and beauty  Have no cause to fear  Should auld acquaintance be forgot  No, no, no, no, no! Australia will be there  Australia will be there.38  Their Majesties stopped briefly in the Entrance Hall where Fisher presented them to the Mackenzies and to Frederick Dove. About 800 guests awaited them in the Exhibition Hall where Khaki and hospital blue were conspicuous in the crowd. Wounded Australian soldiers and sailors with nurses, and munitions workers, looked on as the King and Queen spoke to Lance-Corporal John (‘Jack’) Carroll of the 33rd Australian Infantry Battalion. Burly Jack Carroll, Brisbane-born, an Irish Catholic and a Karlgoorlie labourer, with blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and scarred across his right cheek and upper lip, earned the Victoria Cross for his fearlessness at Messines Ridge. During an attack he charged at and overtook an enemy trench, assisted a comrade in difficulties, and overpowered an enemy machine gun unit, attacking it singlehandedly and capturing the gun.39 Ignoring heavy shelling and machine-gun fire, he rescued two comrades who were buried by a shell. Severely wounded in 274

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the second battle of Passchendaele, he re-joined his unit in June 1918, but was transferred in July to AIF headquarters in London for repatriation to Australia that August. Carroll pledged to serve the King and to resist His Majesty’s enemies when he enlisted in 1916 at the age of 23. Whatever conversation they had is unclear, for Jack Carroll was humorously known as ‘Referendum Carroll’ because he rarely said anything but ‘yes’ or ‘no’.40 The King presented wounded men from the Forces who had earned distinctions with military decorations. Each one of those whom he decorated reflected the many faces of the war. Each had shouldered the strain of the conflict. Each had experienced a unique moment of war service and shared sacrifice. Each had survived, as official war artist Will Dyson described them, ‘Reborn to iron palpability … Detached among his kind, Along a separate Hell of memory’.41 The investiture in a Dominions Government office was thought to be the first occasion of its kind, although throughout the war the King conferred decorations wherever they were called for, even from his bed in a hospital train while recovering from injuries from a fall from his horse that he suffered when inspecting troops in France in October 1915.42 During the war, he personally gave 50,000 awards for gallantry.43 Several soldiers were awarded the Military Cross, which was established during the War as a reward for service given in action ‘under fire’ by junior officers of the Army. These were men who had been the first out of the trenches to lead their men into the attack. The King pinned onto their chests the three-striped (white, purple, white) ribbon that he designed himself with Lord Kitchener’s assistance. Among those at attention to receive the honour were two men who were decorated for their example on operations east of Ypres in the autumn of 1917. Meeting the servicemen and women in the exhibition hall was a gesture of genuine regard by Their Majesties. The Queen was enthusiastic in her praise of Australia and her soldiers, many of whom she had met at Windsor Castle.44 Wearing the Royal Red Cross, Head Sister Ida O’Dwyer of the Australian Nursing Service, was presented to the King and Queen at their special request.45 They were eager to acknowledge her services with the Armies in the Field. Melbournetrained, O’Dwyer was amongst the first women to enter Bapaume after the battle, and had been in charge of the No. 3 Australian Casualty Clearing Station at Brandhoek, not far behind a section of the firing line, where eight operating tables were in continual use under unremitting German bombing and shelling. She also had the task of writing to inform mothers when their sons died.46 The mood in the Hall could only have been one of highly mixed emotions, all those there having survived the burden of war. For those who, like Jack Carroll, 275

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were about to be repatriated, their war was done. Not so for the King, nor Fisher, who had both visibly aged. From the Hall, the official party took the Lift to the Library on the first floor. Symmetry in the room came from full-height arched casement windows along its sides fitted between Caleula Marble pilasters and glass-fronted booklined cabinets. Richly decorated panels, over four-foot square, carved in relief from Australian black bean wood represented the Arts and Sciences. Sprigs of wattle, declared Australia’s national flower by Fisher’s government in 1912, featured in woodwork panels carved by architectural carvers Wylie & Lochhead of London and Glasgow. The wives of the Agents Generals and a select group of other guests were presented to Their Majesties. They spoke to Sir Robert Garran; Captain R. Muirhead Collins; the High Commission’s Assistant Secretary, LieutenantColonel George Hogben; and (Sir) Denison Miller (for whom the King had asked). Also presented to them was Sydney mercer, Lieutenant-Colonel James Murdoch, responsible for the Australian Red Cross work in London; and Colonel T. S. Woodburn and Major T. Henley, M.L.A., both of whom were in charge of the Australian Comforts Fund (1916–19).47 These businessmen had volunteered their services and overcame military resistance to civilian engagement to support the troops. Their administrative abilities and support became essential cogs in the machinery of war. Their Majesties inspected the High Commissioner’s office where they signed the Visitors Book. The spacious room overlooking Wren’s church impressed them both. ‘Very fine inside, marble & wood from Australia, very good taste’, thought Queen Mary.48 Light from the large window over the main entrance highlighted the warm tone of Australian black bean. Their Majesties stepped onto the balcony above the building’s main entrance. Their appearance gave the signal for a popular demonstration. The bells pealed out from St Clement Danes. The troops below presented arms. The public crowding the streets and neighbouring buildings clapped and cheered. Heard pealing over the crowd at that point was the distinctive bush-call, the ‘coo-ee-e’, with which Australian servicemen greeted the King and Queen. ‘The ‘coo-ee’ is all the rage here, it is our password’, one soldier noted.49 To the press, its whip-crack cry heard above the crowd encapsulated the significance of the ceremony. As they explained it, Australia’s bush call – one that Indigenous Australians used to indicate their position to comrades and which early colonists universally adopted – had travelled as far as London. These ‘cooee-e-e’s’ echoed as the King passed once more into the Strand 276

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to return to Buckingham Palace. The refrain was taken to be as symbolic of the whole ceremony as any phrase expressed in the speeches that day. The King had opened the first Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth; he had laid the foundation stone of the new Commonwealth building; now, by officially opening Australia House, he established that Australia was ‘at home’ in the heart of the Empire. As Hobart’s Mercury newspaper put it, ‘Henceforward the coo-ee lads and lassies have a home in London at last – a few square yards which they can call Australia.’50 With the Royal Party returning to the Palace, the Royal Standard came down from Australia House and Australia’s flag went up. A great concourse streamed into the building. Lunch was provided in the lower hall and at the nearby Aldwych Theatre for the servicemen who made up the Guard and the Band and those on duty.51 Cook and Hughes spoke to the men. Hughes described the building to the assembled troops: about the building. ‘In design, material, and workmanship it is indeed a house of which Australia may be proud – a house pleasing to our eye, satisfying to our needs, a house at once splendid and solid … It stands as a mark of our country’s greatness, and a symbol of the greater things which we must yet achieve.’52 He referred to the building as being a memorial: ‘It will be a monument to our heroic dead, the commemoration in blocks of stone for deeds that will ever live in memory.’ He saw it as a monument more lasting than stone. To the troops he said, ‘It will stir the imagination of generations yet unborn with the memory of what you did and will give fresh impulse to all people who struggle to be free.’

277

Epilogue It is a unique conception carried out in a unique way. It has undoubtedly impressed public opinion in this country. It will, I think, be followed by other Dominions.1

A great building is a mirror of the society that conceived it. A building’s origin and history tell us about the era from which it came. As we have seen with Australia House, a building can have many fathers: client, public authorities, public opinion, activists, architects, builders, artisans. In the case of Australia House, all to some extent influenced the building that went up. Their involvement with aspects of its erection tells us about their times. That is why I set out to consider Australia House in light of the times when it was conceived and erected. It is important to appraise the building by the standards of its own time, and to see the plans for it and its construction through the eyes of those who were involved. It would be inappropriate to judge Australia House by the geometric minimalism that, from the 1920s, became the yardstick for architectural excellence. A building’s history also offers a contextual perspective with which it is helpful to reflect on the present-day. Ideas held a century ago, such as Henry Brewer’s ‘Garden in the Strand’, though largely forgotten, continue to resonate presently when, as I write, proposals to pedestrianize the Strand are under discussion. All are part of the ongoing history of urban change. Fourteen weeks after the King officially opened Australia House, the Armistice on 11 November 1918 marked the end of the Great War. It marked the end of all wars, so nearly everyone then believed. Ending hostilities was like passing out of darkness into light. There was jubilation at war’s end, in celebrations that went on for three roaring days and nights. The Strand, always full, swelled with large crowds again in early July 1919 at news of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Troops marched along the Strand, past Australia House, and crowds of spectators thronged their way in Victory Parades held that Spring and Summer. Australia House stood as a powerful symbol for the optimism and energy of the Commonwealth and its people and Australia’s commitment to the war’s cause.

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Architecture works on several levels. Function may be the primary purpose of a building. However, emotion is also a significant component of a building when the building is intended to ‘raise the thought and touch the heart’ of all who look at or experience it. This is because all good architecture addresses itself to the emotions as well as to the mind. At war’s end the building’s rhetoric mattered. Democratic in essence, Australia House represented the triumph of freedom won through the stress and bitterness of war by the united effort of free people. For Australia and for Britain, separately and together, the building stood as a symbol of faith in the future. As a powerful symbol, it was read through two (often converging) prisms. One was London’s ongoing story, the other was Australia’s need to tell its own story to itself and to the world. Building Australia House began as the fledgling Commonwealth of Australia was emerging on the world stage. By war’s end, the Commonwealth enjoyed a changed position as one of the Empire’s Dominions. Canada’s Prime Minister Robert Borden described the special status of the Dominions within the British Empire as free communities, independent as regards all their own affairs, and partners in those which concern the Empire at large. Britain’s Dominions emerged from the war with a growing self-confidence and with ambitions to be involved in British Empire decision-making when they believed it affected them. This was a view asserted by Australia’s Prime Minister Alfred Deakin when in London in 1907. Australia House reflected the selfassurance then possessed by Australians. Of course, the war’s end was a turning point architecturally. Changed postwar needs, particularly the urgency of more housing, meant getting buildings up quickly after the downturn in construction that occurred through the war years. War-time experience showed that functional buildings, simplified in construction and erected rapidly, like those built for munitions purposes for the war effort, met urgent needs. Naturally, altered conditions changed tastes. In his book Ghastly Good Taste, A depressing story of the rise and fall of English architecture (1933), Sir John Betjeman grouped the Ritz with twentieth-century public lavatories, when in the pre-war years the hotel was applauded as London’s most exquisite building. To men before the outbreak of war, like George Reid and Andrew Fisher, there was good reason for the richness invested in the Commonwealth building and its furnishings. Their pride in Australia’s young Federation was such that it mattered to them that the Commonwealth be housed in a setting that reflected its importance; one that invested the Commonwealth with dignity. Their regard for London’s importance also required that the building, designed to showcase Australia’s resources, would stand with London’s best buildings, as 279

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a key component of the architectural ensemble that distinguished the imperial capital. Self-esteem was to be manifested in the building. As the Royal Institute of Victoria’s architects put it, ‘We don’t want to be told that our Architects are incapable of expressing great emotions.’2 Australia House was important for its location, its treatment, and the symbolism that it expressed. It mattered in terms of its location: within Westminster, being focal to the Aldwych development and the Aldwych Crescent, pivotal to the Holborn to Strand Improvements, and central to London on the Strand and nearby Trafalgar Square. It mattered as a statement of Australia’s solidarity with Britain, as a substantial imperial member in the heart of the imperial capital. This explains the grandeur of the building’s whole composition, its orderly array of columns and windows, and the impression of strength and wealth conveyed by Australian marble and other decoration within. The central entrance hall, built of marble shipped from far-away Buchan in Victoria, was said to be the largest hall of marble in London.3 Materials chosen were handsome and generously used. Nothing was spared to make Australia House imposing, as befitted its position at the nucleus of the Imperial capital. Its treatment was distinctive. In style and structure, and in the materials it used and the components that were employed, the building was at once classic and modern. In time, the grandeur and theatricality of the building’s spaces, and the pomp of its grand hall with fittings of bronze and a ceiling of beautifully moulded stucco, came to be seen as grandiose. Such magisterial style seemed high-flown in the post-war world. Yet, in 1925, the old Union Club premises on the south side of the Trafalgar Square block were pulled down, and on that site Canada put up a replica of the Royal College of Physicians building that it occupied on the north, so that the two would seem like wings of the same building. Canada’s treatment of what became home to Canada’s High Commission reflected London’s patch-work method of growth. Not so Australia House. It straddled two key streets, facing the city confidently and boldly. As Alan Box, Secretary of Australia House (1917–19), observed, Australia House was a unique conception and one that other Dominions emulated. First to follow, was adjacent India House (1928–30) by Sir Herbert Baker, who was also responsible for South Africa House which opened on Trafalgar Square in 1930. The latest of London’s Dominion Houses is New Zealand House (1959, Sir Robert Matthew). Each age views architecture by its own values, yet a century on, Australia House holds its place in history and is regarded with pride. In 1943, architect 280

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Arthur Charles Fare, R.W.A., F.R.I.B.A., one of the great perspective draughtsmen of his time, placed Australia House alongside notable examples of British Architecture in his drawing Fifty Years of Architecture, 1892–1942.4 Fare drew this to commemorate the Centenary of the Builder. His drawing follows the earlier famous drawing which H. W. Brewer, the Builder draughtsman, executed to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1892. In his drawing, Fare ranks Australia House with other notable pre-war buildings like E.W. Mountford’s Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey (1900–1907) and Sir Aston Webb’s Admiralty Arch (built in 1908–13). Fare also ranks Australia House with many later buildings that include nearby Bush House (1921, Helmle & Corbett); the Port of London Authority Building (1912–22, Sir Edwin Cooper, R.A.); Adelaide House (1921–5, Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lome); Britannic House (1924–7, Sir Edwin Lutyens); Broadcasting House (1932, G. Val Myer and Watson Hart); and R.I.B.A. Building (1934, G. Grey Wornum, CBE, FRIBA). The London Master Builders Association also took pride in Australia House when marking their own 75th anniversary in 1947.5 Even Betjeman agreed. He was to present and narrate a film on Australia House in 1977, to a score composed by Malcolm Williamson, the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music (1975–2003). In the proposed Michael Noonan film, to be named Flagship in the Strand, Betjeman was to give a tour of the building and relate its history. Betjeman called Australia House the finest building of its type in Great Britain, saying of it, ‘a prophet is seldom recognised in his own country!’6

281

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Primary Sources Architectural Association Archives (AAA) C205c The Architectural Association Council Minutes

Art Gallery of New South Wales Archives (AGNSW) Bertram Macennal Archive Mackennal No. 2 Folders of Press Clippings Art Gallery of New South Wales Press Clippings Archive

Australia House, London Archives (AH) AH/D1–3 Australia House Publicity AH/D2-3 Sites for Commonwealth Offices in London AH/D2-3 Australia House Transfer of Site to Commonwealth AH/D2–3 Schedule of Sites Australian High Commissioner’s Offices, London, Sites for Commonwealth Offices in London AH/D2–3 A. Marshall Mackenzie, A.G.R. Mackenzie, Specification Erection of the Superstructure of the new Commonwealth Building, Strand–Aldwych Site London W.C. for the Commonwealth of Australia July 1913 AH/D4 Offices for High Commissioner Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4 Offices High Commission Part 2 14/1919 AH/D5–5 Parliament Jubilee Dinner Commonwealth of Australia Jubilee Celebrations 1901–1951, Banquet given by the Ministers of State for the Commonwealth of Australia on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament Parliament House Canberra 12 June 1951 AH/E9–3 Water Supply Artesian Well 1912–1921 AH/G1–2 AH Hand Notes AH/GV4 Street Plan, 1908 AH/GV5 Floor Plans, 1908

Australian War Memorial (AWM) AWM10, 4320/1/16 Official opening of Australia House by HM the King (Apr.–Aug. 1918)

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AWM38, 3DRL 6673/608 [Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E. W. Bean, Official Historian:] Souvenirs, 1915–18; sports programmes, menu cards and invitation cards to the opening of Australia House, London, 1918

British Cartoon Archive (BCA) WH0224 W.K. Haselden, ‘Bandits of Bumbledown’ WH0299 W.K. Haselden, ‘No XVI: Mr Juggins and Kings Way’ WH3007 W. K. Haselden, ‘The public tries to avoid profiteering’ WH5626 W. K. Haselden, ‘More hints to pedestrians’

British Library (BL) Add MS 46282 Burns Papers vol. II (ff.255) Add MS 46304 Burns Papers vol. XXIV (ff.309) Add MS 50089 Hutton Papers, vol. Xll 1899–1920 Mss Eur D686/57 Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood, IndianArmy: papers relating to Australia New Zealand Army Corps Kodak A261 Kodak Historical Archive: An album of Kodak exhibitions 1911–1935 Kodak A1706 Kodak Historial Archive Correspondence regarding contracts and pricing of cinematographic film; correspondence concerning Pathé and Gaumont Kodak A2128 Kodak Historical Archive: Kingsway, London 1910–1944

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Archives (CBS) CBS0059 CBA Property, Photographs, and Realia CBS0065 CBA Documentation

Dove Brothers Ltd., Builders (1850–1970) S/DOV Drawings specification

Institutution of Civil Engineers Archive (ICE) Box 130 Sven Bylander Material

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) A/NFB/01/H/2/1 London Master Builders’ Association Its Objects and Work with Rules 1910 COL/SP/07/039 Australia, Photograph album of New South Wales, Corporation of London LCC/AR/BA/01/076 County of London Steel Frame Buildings 1909– LCC/AR/CB/01/166 LCC Architect’s Department: Council Buildings, Construction and Maintenance LCC/AR/CB/01/170 Work done for LCC by outside architects & criticism of

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Official Architect 1905–1920 LCC/AR/CB/04/011 ‘The Architectural Work of the London County Council’ by W. E. Riley, R.B.A., M.Inst.C.E. LCC/AR/CB/04/011 W. E. Riley, ‘The Architectural Work of the LCC’, Reprint from the Journal of the Royal Institute of Architects (1909) LCC/AR/TH/04/028 Australian Buildings Franco British Exhibition Hammersmith LCC/AR/TH/04/028 Franco-British Exhibition Australian Pavilion LCC/AR/TH/04/028 West Australian Annexe, Franco-British Exhibition Australian Pavilion LCC/CL/CER/2/7 vol. 5c Opening of Kingsway & Aldwych, Oct 1905 LCC/CL/CER/3/4/64 Kingsway and Aldwych; Opened 18 Oct 1905 LCC/CL/CER/3/7 Pamphlet No. 111 St Paul’s Cathedral Memorial Service for those connected with the LCC who fell in the Great War 1914–18 Tuesday February 11th 1919 LCC/CL/Estab/3/5 LCC Question of increases of pay etc during war, 1914–1918 LCC/CL/ESTAB/4/16 List of candidates for senior and special appointments with précis of qualifications, testimonials etc. 1889–1903 LCC/CL/IMP/1/117 Holborn to Strand Improvement (Kingsway & Aldwych) – General papers and maps 1893–1909 LCC/MIN/5042 London County Council Improvements Committee Papers, Sale of Land Strand & Aldwych, 17 January 1912, 86–7 LCC/MIN/5042 Minutes of Proceeding Finance Committee (10 Jan.–3 Apr. 1912) LCC/MIN/6326 LMA [William Edward Riley] application for London County Council post, March 1899 LCC-MIN8007 London County Council Improvements Committee Papers LCC-MIN8010 LCC Improvements Committee Papers LCC/VA/DD/R163/001 Offices of the Government of Victoria (Australia) Stand W.C. CLC/B/002/10/01/062/066 The Architects’ Technical Bureau Association, Limited: ‘The New Offices of the Government of Victoria (Australia) at the Corner of the Strand and Melbourne Place [City of Westminster]’. Architectural Records, No. 1 CLC/B/002/10/01/065/044D Chubb and Son Limited (Locksmiths and Safe Manufacturers) ‘Chubb Collecteana’ GLC/AR/BR/07/3481 British Columbia House, 1–3 Regent Street, Westminster MetB: Building Act case file (Offices) GLC/AR/BR/17/038594 A. Marshall Mackenzie and Alfred Burr, Commonwealth Building Strand GLC/AR/BR/17/040763 Westminster LB: Building Act Case File (Offices) 1914–1965

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GLC/AR/BR/17/040837 British Columbia Government Building, Blue Star Line Limited, 1–23 Regent Street, Westminster LB: Building Act Case File (Offices) GLC/AR/BR/23/062761/01 Australia House, Australian Government Offices, Victoria State Offices, Aldwych, Strand, Westminster LB: Building Act Case File (Embassies) 1913–1967 SC/GL/SAT/028/1902/p5429570 ‘A child in these matters’, Little Miss London

Museum of London Archives (MOL) Accession Fil 82.232 Kiralfy Collection 2622 Port of London Authority Building (Sir Edwin Cooper), Port of London Authority Archive (MOL Docklands)

National Archives of Australia (NAA) A1, 1914/1254 ‘Australia House’ London – Accommodation Orient SN Co 1914 A1, 1914/21243 Bert Ive Rate of Travelling Allowance 1914 A2, 1913/4041 PART 2 Historic Memorials Committee seeking to obtain photographs of Prominent Federationists etc. 1911–1913 A2, 1917/1828 Australia House, London. Architects Commission 1916–1917 A2, 1918/3834 Australia House, Insurance of 1912–1919 A2, 1919/2998 High Commissioner England Australia House. War Bonus to Workmen 1916–1918 A152, G1913/1425 Commonwealth Offices London, Foundation Stone 1913 A457, F508/7 Memorials. Matters for reference to Historic Memorials Committee and Art Advisory Board. Conditions and terms of commissions to artists 1912–1924 A63, A1910/431 Gaiety Restaurant Site, Strand, London 1909–1910 A2910, 405/1/3 Part 1 Australia House, Decorations by Harold Parker 1912– 1914 A2910, 405/1/3 Part 2 Australia House, Decorations by Harold Parker 1913– 1923 A2910, 405/1/41 Part 1 Australia House – Financial arrangements 1916–1920 A2910, 405/1/53 Part 1 Australian building materials for Australia House 1915–1916 A2910, 405/1/78 Australia House Iron Gates 1916–1920 A2910, 442/18/13 Part 1 High Commissioner’s Staff – Prt Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Savage Honorary Military Rank Conferred 1908–1920 A2911, 290/1914 New Commonwealth Offices. Naming of building 1914 A2911, 290/1914 New Commonwealth Offices Naming 156/1/752 Defence File Central Administration A3280 P5087 London Australia House Lease

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A6661, 2 HM King (George V) Laying Foundation Stone Commonwealth Offices Laying Foundation Stone of Australia House, London, 1913 A11804, 1916/138 Commonwealth Offices, London 1916 B2455, Fuhrmann Osmond Charles William [Fuhrman Otto Carl Wilhelm]: SERN Major 1914–1920 

National Library of Australia (NLA) MS 52 Papers of Atlee Hunt, 1900–1930 MS 236 Papers of Sir Littleton Groom, 1886–1936 MS 460 Papers of King O’Malley, 1858–1955 MS 658 Papers of J.H. and D.M. Catts, 1894–1960 MS 1540 Papers of Alfred Deakin, 1804–1973 MSS 1665 Papers of Mary Pitcairn, 1 Mar. 1913–3 Oct. 1933 MS 2212 Papers of Sir Joseph Cook, 1880–1986 MS 2242 Papers of George Houstoun Reid, 1880–1920 MS 5519 A.R. Hoyle, King O’Malley (19--) MS 7842 Papers of George Houstoun Reid, 1855–1989 MS 6335 Papers of Sir Timothy A. Coghlan, 1878–1959 MS 2919 Papers of Andrew Fisher, 1883–1983 MS Acc11.185 Miscellaneous estrays relating to Rex Nan Kivell, 1909–1975 MS 1885854 Biographical cuttings on Osmond Charles William Fuhrmann

Royal Academy of Arts Archives (RAA) 11/4349 R. Norman Shaw RA, Design for The Quadrant, Regent Street London: perspective of west side looking north, 1905 RAA/SEC/4/120 Correspondence from Richard Norman Shaw, RA, 1878–1909

Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) DB/25/1/1 Specification of works by Mackenzie & Mackenzie for a proposed new hall and squash court at Hursley Park, Winchester, for Sir George Cooper, Bt., May 1914 Dove Brothers Collection [Drawings by A. M. Mackenzie (1848–1933)] Ernest Runtz & Company [Collection of drawings] Mackenzie, Alexander Marshall [Collection of drawings]

State Library of Victoria (SLV) MS 8734 Bridges-Webb, Charles. ‘Charles Webb, an early Melbourne Architect 1821–1898’ MS 11680 Papers, 1882–1983 Kannuluik family MS 13774 Perry, Warren, Captain Sir Robert Henry Muirhead Collins (1852– 1927) First Permanent Head of the Australian Department of Defence, 1901–10, 286

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1963, revised and enlarged 1999, Box 4059/5 H84.289/2-22 Collection of perspective drawings of furniture for Australia House  Harold Parker AAA file

Shropshire Archives (SRO) S.R.O.4629 Records of the Bridgeman Family

The National Archives (TNA) BP 2/78 South Africa House, Trafalgar Square: height of new buildings BT 31/21616/130268 Company No: 130268; Dominion House Ltd. Incorporated in 1913. Dissolved between 1916 and 1932 CRES 35/3193 Royal College of Physicians and Canada House LRRO 1/4244 Trafalgar Square: South Africa House: existing building MEPO 2/850 Opening of Kingsway and Aldwych by H.M. The King: 1905 Oct. 18 PT 1/31 Cabinet Committee on Wartime Accommodation (Sir Alfred Mond), 1917–1920 WO 339/9193 Captain Gilbert Marshall Mackenzie. Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany’s) WORK 22/3/12 Cabinet Committee on Wartime Accommodation of departments 1917 WORK 91/105 Contract made between Sir George Frampton and the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Works and Public Buildings for the modelling and stone carving of 2 lions, wreaths and torches, Royal Arms Cartouche and lintel ornament at the British Museum Extension

The Royal Archives (RA) GV/PRIV/GVD/1901 GV/PRIV/GVD/1913 GV/PRIV/GVD/1918 QM/PRIV/GVD/1918 GV15270 King Edward Memorial in London RA PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/15270 RA PS/PSO/GV/PS/Stamp/2090

University of Aberdeen, Special Collections MS 3759/1/1/11/1 Greyfriars Church: additions and alterations MS 3759/1/1/11/6 Greyfriars Church: elevation to Broad Street MSU 1494/3/47 King’s College Library: full-sized details of roof cupolas

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University of Queensland Fryer Library (UQFL) UQFL7 Papers of Harold Parker

Westminster City Archives (WCA) WCA: Commonwealth Building London, Drawings from the Mackenzies (31 Jan. 1913) WCC: Acc0009 Melbourne Place WCC: Acc0040/17 Waldorf Hotel, Aldwych 1903–1967 Set of plans by A Marshall Mackenzie Associates WCC: Acc40/17 Waldorf Hotel Aldwych WD82/TO39 Bush House. Bush Building

Theses Chafee, Richard Spofford, The Teaching of Architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and its influence in Britain and America, Courtauld Institute London PhD, 1983 Pryke, Olwen Valda, Australia House, Representing Australia in London, 1901– 1939, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2006 Rowe, David John, Building a national image: the architecture of John Smith J Murdoch, Australia’s first Commonwealth Government Architect, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Deakin University, 1997 Thompson, J. R., The Australian High Commission in London, Its Origins and Early History 1901–1916, M.A. thesis, Australian National University, 1972

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Bronstein, Jamie L. and Andrew T. Harris, Empire, State, and Society, Britain Since 1830, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 Brooks Alan and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Worcestershire, Yale University Press, 2007 Brown, Elspeth H., Catherine Gudis, and Marina Moskowitz (Eds.), Cultures of Commerce, Representation and American Business Culture, 1877–1960, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 Bry, Gerhard, ‘Wages in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States’ in National Bureau of Economic Research, Gerhard Bry (ed.) assisted by Charlotte Boschan, Wages in Germany, 1871–1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960 Bureau of Provincial Information, Land and agriculture in British Columbia, Victoria, B.C., Bulletin No. 10, 3rd edn., Printed by Richard Wolfenden, 1904 Burlton, Clive, Bristol’s Lost City: Built to inspire, transformed for war, Bristol, Bristol Books, 2014 Burridge, Kate and Lois Foster, Gerry Turcotte (eds.), Canada-Australia: Towards a Second Century of Partnership, McGill-Queens’s Press, 1997 Bush-Brown, Harold, Beaux Arts to Bauhaus and beyond, an Architect’s perspective, New York Whitney Library of Design, 1976 Cable, Boyd with a preface by David Lloyd George, Doing their bit, War Work at Home, Hodder and Stoughton, 1916 Caiden, Gerald E., Career Service, An Introduction to the History of Personnel Administration in the Commonwealth Public Service of Australia 1901–1961, Melbourne University Press, 1965 Cannon, Michael, The Land Boomers, West Melbourne, Vic., Thomas Nelson (Australia), 1976 Capoodmem, David (ed.), The European Cities Technology Reader: Industrial to Post Industrial City, Routledge, 1999 Catts, Dorothy (with and introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman, Sydney, Publicity Press, 1938 Cawston, Arthur, A comprehensive scheme for street improvements in London, accompanied by maps and sketches illustrating the principles on which the scheme has been prepared and the reasons for their adoption, Edward Stanford, 1893 Caygill, Marjorie and Christopher Date, Building the British Museum, British Museum Press, 1998 Charteris, A. H., Australian Immigration Policy No. 235 International Conciliation, Worcester, Mass.; New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Intercourse and Education, 1927 Chatterton, Frederick, Who’s Who in architecture Giving brief biographies and other useful particulars of architects practising in the United Kingdom, Technical Journals, 1914 —— (ed.), Who’s Who in Architecture, 3rd edn., The Architectural Press, 1926 292

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Clodd, Edward, Memories, Chapman and Hall, 1916 Clough, Shepherd B., A History of American Life Insurance, New York, 1946 Commonwealth Bank, Eleventh Aggregate Balance Sheet of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia as at 31st December 1917, Sydney, The Bank, 1918 Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, Printed for the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Australia by Chas. Hooper and Co., 1915 —— First Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, British Australian Ltd., 1911 —— Minutes of evidence taken before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the proposed sites for a federal capital, Melbourne, Robt. S. Brian, Govt. Printer for the State of Victoria, 1903 —— Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Commonwealth of Australia, 1901–1907 —— Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Commonwealth of Australia, 1904 —— Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Commonwealth of Australia, 1908 —— Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, Commonwealth of Australia, 1909 —— Royal Commission on Sites for the Seat of Government of the Commonwealth, Report of the Commissioners with Appendices and Plans, Sydney, William Applegate Gullick, Govt. Printer, 1903 —— Second Annual Report of the High Commissioner in Papers Presented to Parliament vol. III, 1912 —— Sixth Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, High Commissioner, 1916 —— Third Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, Printed and Published by Albert H Mullett, Government Printer for Victoria, 1913 Concrete Institute, The Concrete Institute List of Members and subscribers 1910, The Concrete Institute Condit, Carl W., The Chicago School of Architecture, A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875–1925, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, (1952)/1964 Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, Proceedings at the Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, and others interested in the building of the Federal Capital of Australia, held in Melbourne in May, 1901, Melbourne, J.C. Stephens, Printer, 1901 Cooper, Nicholas, The Photography of Bedford Lemere & Co, Swindon, English Heritage, 2011 293

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Cork, Richard, Art beyond the gallery in early 20th century England, New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1985 —— Jacob Epstein, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999 Courtney, W. L. & J. E., with drawings by Clive Gardiner, Pillars of Empire: studies & impressions, Jarrolds, 1918 Craven, Wayne, Stanford White, Decorator in opulence and dealer in Antiquities, New York, Columbia University Press, 2005 Cret, Paul. P., Masterpieces of Architecture in the United States, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930 Croft, Christopher (ed.), with an essay by Olwen Pryke, 100 Years of Diplomacy, An Exhibition Commemorating the Centenary of Australian Diplomatic Representation in the United Kingdom: 18–26 February 2010, Australian High Commission, 2010 Cromack, C. Howard, The history of the National Rifle Association of New South Wales, 1860–1956, Malabar, NSW, National Rifle Association, 1956 Crutchley, C. E. (comp., ed.), Machine Gunner 1914–1918, personal experiences of the Machine Gun Corps, Folkestone, Bailey and Swinfen, 1975 Cunningham, Colin, Victorian and Edwardian Town Hall, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981 Curl, James Steven and Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, 3rd edn., Oxford University Press (1999)/2015 Cutlack, C. M. (ed.), War Letters of General Monash, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1934 Davies, Mathew and James A. Galloway (eds.), London and beyond, Essays in honour of Derek Keene, Institute of Historical Research, 2012 Davies, Philip, Lost London 1870–1945, Crosley Green, Herts., Transatlantic Press, 2009 Davis, Lance and Robert Gallman, Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows, Britain, the Americas, and Australia, 1865–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001 Deakin, Alfred, Needs of Empire, Address delivered ... at the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange ... May 15th, 1907, 3rd edn., Supplement to the Planet, The Planet, 1907 —— The Federal Story, The Inner History of the Federal Cause, Melbourne, Robertson and Mullens, 1944 —— Edited and with an introduction by J. A. La Nauze, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters to the Morning Post 1900–1910, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1968 Dennis, Richard, Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008 Doré, Gustave and Blanchard Jerrold, London, A Pilgrimage, Grant, 1872 294

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Dow, T. K. (ed.), An Australian Colony, The Government Handbook of Victoria, Melbourne, 1898 Dowling, Edward, Australia and America in 1892, A Contrast, Sydney, Charles Potter Government Printer by authority of the New South Wales Commissioners for the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Drexler, Arthur (ed.), The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977 Dugast, Anne et Isabelle Parizet, Dictionnaire par noms d’architectes des constructions elevees a Paris aux XIXe et XXe Siecles Premiere Series, vol. 2 Periode 1876–1899 avec des additions pour les annees anterieures et posterieures, Paris, 1991 Dunstan, David with contributions by Mimi Coghlan et al., Victorian icon: The Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, Kew, Vic., The Exhibition Trustees in association with Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1996 Duveen, James Henry, Collections and Recollections A Century and a Half of Art Deals, Jarrolds 1935 Dyer, Joseph (ed.), The Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, vol. 2, Sydney, James W. Waugh, 1859 Eagle, Mary, The Art of Rupert Bunny in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australian National Gallery, 1991 Edwards, Deborah with contributions by Benedict Read et. al., Bertram Mackennal, the fifth Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Balnaves Foundation, 2007 Edwards, P. G., Prime Ministers and Diplomats, The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901–1949, Melbourne, Oxford University Press in association with The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1983 Edwards, Percy J., London County Council History of London Street Improvements 1855 to 1897, London County Council, 1897 Edwards, Ruth Dudley, The Pursuit of Reason, The Economist 1843–1993, Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1995 Eichler, Ned, The Merchant Builders, Cambridge, Mass, The MIT Press, 1982 Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1960 Epstein, Jacob, Epstein, An Autobiography, Hulton Press, 1955 Eubank, Keith, Paul Cambon, Master Diplomatist, Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1960 Expanded Metal Company Ltd, Expanded Steel for Reinforced Concrete Construction, The Company, 1910 Faulkner, C. C., The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Sydney, Commonwealth Bank, 1923 Fenske, Gail, The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008 295

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Gibbon, Sir Ioan Gwilym and Reginald W. Bell, History of the London County Council 1889–1939, Macmillan, 1939 Gibbs, Kenneth Turney, Business Architectural Imagery in America, 1870–1930, Ann Arbor, MI, UMI Research Press, (1976)/1984 Gilbert, James, Perfect cities, Chicago’s utopias of 1893, Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press, 1991 Gladstone, William Ewart, Studies on Homer and the Homeric age, vol. 3, Oxford University Press, 1858 Glass, Margaret, Tommy Bent, bent by name, bent by nature, Carlton, Vic., Melbourne University Press, 1993 Glazer, Nathan and Cynthia R. Fields, The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 Glinert, Ed (ed.), Mike Leigh (introd.) The Complete Gilbert & Sullivan, Penguin Books, 2006 Goad, Philip and Julie Willis (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2012 Gollan, Robin, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Origins and Early History, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1968 Gomme, George Laurence, Lectures on the principles of local government, Westminster, Archibald Constable & Co, 1897 —— Kingsway and Aldwych, Opening by His Majesty the King accompanied by Her Majesty the Queen on 18th October 1905, London County Council, 1905 Goodhart-Rendel, H.S., English Architecture since the Regency, Constable, 1953 Goodwin, Jason, Otis, Giving rise to the modern city, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001 Gray, A. Stuart, photographs by Jean & Nicholas Breach; drawings by Charlotte Halliday; foreword by Nicholas Taylor, Edwardian architecture: a biographical dictionary, Duckworth, 1985 Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Public Information Office, The Norman Shaw Buildings, 1982 Great Britain. Royal commission on London Traffic, Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and report upon the means of locomotion and transport in London, vol. 1, printed for H.M. Stationery office by Wyman and sons limited, 1905–6 Grey, Albert Henry George Grey, Earl; Dominion Site Limited, The Dominion House, Lord Grey’s Proposal for the concentration of the Dominion Governments’ offices under one roof in the centre of London and for the promotion of interimperial trade, Jordan Gaskell Ltd, 1913 Grieve, Maud, A Modern Herbal: The Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Cultivation and Folk-lore of Herbs, Grasses, Fungi, Shrubs & Trees with all their Modern Scientific Uses, vol. 2, New York, Dover, 1971 Gurrieri, Francesco and Judith Chatfield, Boboli Gardens, Florence, Editrice 297

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Edam, 1972 Hackman, Gill, Stone to Build London – Portland’s Legacy, Monkton Farleigh, Wilts, Folly Books Ltd, 2014 Haddon, Robert J, Australian architecture, a technical manual for all those engaged in architectural and building work, Melbourne: George Robertson, (1903)/1908 Haigh, Gideon, The Office, a hardworking history, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 2012 Hall, Peter and Paschal Preston, The Carrier Wave, new information technology and the geography of innovation 1846–2003, Unwin Hyman, 1988 Harley, Robert J., London’s Victoria Embankment, Harrow, Middlesex, Capital History, 2005 Harris, John, Moving Rooms, The Trade in Architectural Salvages, New Haven; London, Yale University Press, 2007 Haselden, W. K., The sad adventures of big and little Willie: during the first six months of the Great War, August 1914-January 1915, Fine Art Society and Chatto & Windus, 1915 —— and C. Harrison, Accidents will Happen or The Tribulations of Mr and Mrs Boffles under the Employer’s Liability Act 1907, David Nutt, Long Acre, 1907 Haskell, Arnold L., The Sculptor Speaks: Jacob Epstein to Arnold L. Haskell, William Heinemann, 1931 Hatch, F. J., The Iron and Steel Industry of the United Kingdom under war conditions, A record of the work of the iron and steel production department of the Ministry of Munitions, Harrison & Sons, 1919 Haward, Sir Harry, The London County Council from Within, Chapman and Hall, Ltd. 1932 Hay, William A., The Granite City and the men who built it, Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, Timepieces, 1998 Heydon, Peter, Quiet decision, a study of George Foster Pearce, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1965 Hill, O. Mary, Canada’s Salesman to the World, The Department of Trade and Commerce 1892–1939, Montreal; London, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977 Hilliker, John, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol. 1, The early years, 1909–1946, MacGill University Press, Montreal & Kingston; London; Buffalo, 1990 Hilling, John B. with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales KG, Cardiff and the Valleys, Lund Humphries, 1973 Hoak, Edward and Edward Warren and Willis Humphrey Church with an introduction by Paul P Cret, Masterpieces of Architecture in the United States, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire New York, Pantheon, 1987 298

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Hobson, Asher, The International Institute of Agriculture, An Historical and Critical Analysis of its Organization, Activities, and Policies of Administration, Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1931 Hogan, James Francis, Sister Dominions: Through Canada to Australia by the new Imperial Highway, Ward & Downey; Sydney; Melbourne: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1896 Holloway, Sydney J., Ancient and Modern building being some notes on the art and craft of the builder with special reference to the work of Holloway Brothers both in erection and restoration, Holloway Brothers Ltd, 1924 Hoyle, A. R., King O’Malley, ‘the American bounder’, South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981 Hughes, W. M., Scribblers and Statesmen, Melbourne: J.R. Stevens Printer, 1943 —— Policies and Potentates, London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950 Humphrey, A. P. and T. F. Fremantle, History of the National Rifle Association during its first fifty years, 1859 to 1909, Cambridge, Bowes & Bowes, 1914 Hutchison, G. S., Machine Guns, Their history and tactical employment (being also a history of the Machine Gun Corps, 1916–1922), Macmillan & Co, 1938 Hythe, Viscount, Problems of Empire, the Faith of a Federalist, London; New York, Longmans, Green, 1913 International Agricultural Institute, Copy of Further Papers and Correspondence relative to the International Agricultural Institute in continuation of Parlaimentary Paper [Cd.2958], Printer for His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909 Jackson, Patrick (ed.), Loulou, Selected Extracts from the Journals of Lewis Harcourt (1880–1895), Madison, N.J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006 Jackson, W. Eric, Achievement, A short history of the London County Council, Longmans, 1965 James, Lionel with a foreword by General the Hon. Sir Herbert A, Lawrence, King Edward’s Horse, Sifton, Praed & Co., 1921 Jeremy, David J., Dictionary of Business Biography Vol. 2 D-G, Butterworths, 1924 —— (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography, A Biographical Dictionary of Business Leaders Active in Britain in the Period 1860–1980 Vol. 1 A-C, Butterworths, 1984 Jones, Colin, Australian Colonial Navies Australian War Memorial, 1986 Jose, Arthur Wilberforce Builders and Pioneers of Australia, London; Toronto, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1928 Joske, Prue, Debonair Jack, a biography of Sir John Longstaff: 1861–1941, Hawthorn, Vic., Claremont, 1994 Judd, Denis, The Life and Times of George V, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973 Judge, M. H. (ed.), The Case for Further Strand Improvement, Williams & Norgate, 1906

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Kaye, Barrington L., Development of the Architectural Profession in Britain, A Sociological Study, Allen & Unwin, 1960 Keating, J.H., White Australia: men and measures in its making, Launceston, [The Examiner], 1924 Kendle, John E., The Colonial and Imperial Conferences 1887–1911: a study in imperial organization and politics, University of London, 1967 —— The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1975 Kenlon, John, Fires and Fire-Fighters, A History of Modern Fire-fighting with a review of its development from earliest ends, William Heinemann, 1914 Kennedy, B., Silver, Sin and Sixpenny Ale 1883–1921, Carlton; Vic., Melbourne University Press, 1978 Knibbs, G. H., Official year book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901–1907 no. 1 1908, Melbourne, McCarrron, Bird & Co. Printers, 1908 Knight, Jeffrey Russell (ed.), Register of Defunct and other Companies removed from the Stock Exchange Official Year Book 1979–80, East Grinstead, West Sussex: Thomas Skinner & Co, 1979 Knox, Bruce (ed., introd.), The Queensland years of Robert Herbert, Premier: letters and papers, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977 Knox, John Jay, A History of Banking in the United States, New York, Bradford Rhodes & Company, (1900)/1969 Koch, A. and C. W. English (eds.), Academy Architecture and Annual Architectural Review, 1889 Kohler, Sue and Pamela Scott, Eds. Designing the Nation’s Capital: The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2006 La Nauze, J. A., Alfred Deakin, A Biography, vol. 1, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1965 Landau, Sarah Bradford and Carl W. Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865–1913, Yale University Press, 1996 Latta, David, Lost Glories, a memorial to forgotten Australian buildings, North Ryde, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1986 Lewis, Nelson P., Planning the Modern City, Routledge, (1916)/2001 —— Planning the Modern City, vol. 1, New York, John Wiley & Sons, (1922)/1949 —— with the assistance of Harold M. Lewis, Planning the Modern City: a review of the principles governing city planning, 2nd edn., rev., New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1923 Liddle, Peter (ed.), Britain Goes to War, How the First World War Began to Reshape the Nation, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Pen & Sword, 2015 Lloyd, Mark, The London Scottish in the Great War, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Leo Cooper, 2001

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London County Council, Entente Municipale, Visit of the Municipal Council of Paris to London at the invitation of the chairman and Members of the London County Council, Official Programme and Illustrated Guide, London; Paris; Vienna, London Weiners Litho, 1905 —— Laying of Foundation Stone of the New Hall by His Majesty The King, Accompanied by Her Majesty the Queen on Saturday 9th March 1912, Printed for the Council by Southwood Smith and Co Ltd, 1912 —— List of Streets & Places, 3rd edn., The Council, 1929 —— London Statistics 1913–1914 vol. 24, London County Council, 1915 —— Survey of London, vol. III, The Parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields (Part 1), Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London County Council, 1912 —— Survey of London, vol. V, The Parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields (Part 2), London County Council, 1914 London Master Builders, Seventy Five Years on being a brief history of the London Master Builders Association 1872–1947, London Master Builders Association, 1947 London Natural History Society, Botanical records of the London area Part 4, Reprinted from the ‘London Naturalist’, 1932 Longford, Elizabeth (ed.), Darling Loosy, letters to Princess Louise 1856–1939, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991 MacDonagh, Michael, In London During the Great War, The Diary of a Journalist, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1935 Macdonald, Alexander, In the Land of Pearl and gold, a pioneer’s wanderings in the backblocks and pearling grounds of Australia and New Guinea, Blackie & Son, 1907 McEwen, Peter J., Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Antique Collectors’ Club, Glengarden Press, 2004 McKay, Judith, Harold Parker, catalogue of a sculptor, Brisbane, Qld, Queensland Art Gallery, 1993 Mackenzie, Compton, The Savoy of London, G. G. Harap, 1953 Mackenzie, F. A., King George V in his own words, E. Benn, 1929 McMahon, Bill, The Architecture of East Australia, Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges, 2001 Macqueen-Pope, W., Gaiety: theatre of enchantment, W. H. Allen, 1949 Magee, Gary B & Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010 Mansell, Bryan, The Living heritage of Westminster: Celebrating 400 years of architectural development in the City of Westminster, Westminster City Council and Westminster Chamber of Commerce, 1984 Marchildon, Gregory P., Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance, University of Toronto Press, 1996

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Marconi Press Agency, The, The year Book of Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony 1912, The Marconi Press Agency Ltd, 1913 Massé, H. J. L. J., The Art-Workers’ Guild, 1834–1934, Oxford, Shakespeare Head Press, 1935 Master Builders Association (London), Seventy-Five Years on being a brief history of the London Master Builders Association 1872–1947, London Master Builders Association, 1947 Mawson, Thomas H., Civic Art, Studies in Town Planning, Parks, Boulevards and open Spaces, B. T. Batsford, 1911 Maxwell, Donald, The new lights of London being a series of impressions of the glamour and magic of London at night, Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1926 —— The Enchanted Road, Methuen, 1927 Mazzini, Joseph, Life and Writings, vol. IV Critical and Literary, Smith, Elder & Co, 1867 Meller, Helen, Towns, plans and society in modern Britain, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997 Menadue, J. E., A Centenary History of the Australian Natives’ Association, Melbourne: Horticultural Press, 1971 Mill, J. S., On Liberty, and Other Essays, (ed.) John Gray, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 Miller, Caroline and Michael Roche, Past Matters, Heritage and Planning History – Case Studies from the Pacific Rim, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 Monash, John, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Hutchinson & Co., 1920 Moncrieff, A. R. Hope, Edwardian and Victorian London, Brockhampton Press, 1999 Montague, Edwin, The Means of Victory, T. Fisher Unwin, 1916 Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh & David Watkin, photographs by Keith Collie, The London Ritz, A social and architectural history, Aurum, 1989 Morison, S. and others, The History of The Times, vol. 3, The Twentieth Century 1884–1912, The Times, 1947 Morris, Lewis, Ode written and composed expressly for the occasion of laying the foundation stone of the Imperial Institute by Her Majesty the Queen, R. Clyde, (1887)/1985 Mortlock, C. B. and Donald Maxwell, with a foreword by the Bishop of London, Famous London Churches, Skeffington & Son Ltd, 1934 Mouchel, L.G. & Partners, Hennebique ferro-concrete: theory and practice: a handbook for engineers and architects, L.G. Mouchel & Partners, 1909 Murdoch, John, A Million to One, A Portrait of Andrew Fisher, Atlanta, Minerva Press, 1998 Murdoch, Walter, Alfred Deakin, A Sketch, Constable, 1923

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Murray, Robert, 150 Years of Spring Street, Victorian Government, 1850s to 21st century, North Melbourne, Vic., Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007 Musgrave, Charles E., The London Chamber of Commerce from 1881 to 1914, Effingham Wilson, 1914 Nadal, John B., London’s Fire Stations, Jeremy Mills Publishing Limited, 2006 National Rifle Association, Wimbledon-Bisley, 50 Years of the N.R.A., Official Jubilee Souvenir, vol. 1, 1860 Wimbledon-Bisley 1909, Gale & Polden, 2000 Nettlefold, Councillor and Aneurin Williams, Patrick Geddes [et. al.], Town planning in theory and practice, A report of a conference arranged by the Garden City Association, held at the Guildhall, London on October 25th, 1907, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London, Papers and Speeches, The Garden City Association, 1908 New South Wales, Royal Commission for the Improvement of the City of Sydney and Its Suburbs, Report of the Royal Commission for the improvement of the City of Sydney and its suburbs together with copy of commission, evidence, appendices and plans, Sydney, W. A. Gullick, Government Printer, 1909 Nicholson, Harold, King George the Fifth His Life and Reign, Constable & Co Ltd, 1952 Northcliffe, Lord et al., Motors and Motor-Driving, 4th edn., Longmans Green and Co, 1906 Oliver, Frederick Scott, Alexander Hamilton, an essay on American Union, Macmillan, (1906)/1931 Parkes, Kineton, Sculpture of Today, vol. 1, Chapman Hall, 1921 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Federal Capital City Designs, Report of Board appointed to investigate and report as to suitability of certain designs for adoption on connexion with lay-out of Federal Capital, 1912 in Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Papers Presented to Parliament, General and Finance, vol. 2, 1912 —— First Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, printed by the British Australian (1910) Ltd., 1911 —— Papers Presented to Parliament, General and Finance, vol. 2, 1912 —— Second Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, printed by Command, 1912 —— Third Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, Government Printer for the State of Victoria, 1913 Parkinson, Sir Cosmo, The Colonial Office from within 1909–1945, Faber & Faber Limited, 1947 Payton, Philip, The Cornish Overseas: A History of Cornwall’s ‘great Emigration’, Cornwall Editions, Fowey, Cornwall, 2005 Pevsner, Nikolaus and Bridget Cherry and John Newman, The Best Buildings of England, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Viking, 1986 303

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Pope, Stephen & Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, The Macmillan Dictionary of the First World War, Macmillan, 1995 Pope-Hennessy, James, Lord Crewe 1858–1945 the likeness of a Liberal, Constable and Co, 1955 Pope-Hennessy, Sir John, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, Phaidon, 1963 Powell, Christopher, The British Building Industry since 1800: An Economic History, E & F. N. Spon, (1980)/1996 Preston, Peter and Paschal, The Carrier Wave, new information technology and the geography of innovation 1846–2003, Unwin Hyman, 1988 Preston, W. T. R., My generation of Politics and Politicians, Toronto, D.A. Rose Publishing Company, 1927 Price, Richard, Masters, unions and men, work control in building and the rise of labour, 1830–1914, Cambridge [Eng.]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 198-? Pulling, Alexander (ed.), Defence of the Realm. Acts and Regulations passed and made to July 31st, 1915, 1915 Rae, George, The Country Banker, his clients, cares and work. From and experience of forty years, John Murray, 1885 Raymond, E. T., Portraits of the New Century (the first ten years), Ernest Benn, 1928 Redpath Brown, A Short History of Redpath Brown & Company Limited, Redpath Brown and Company, 1964 Rees, Peter, The other Anzacs, the extraordinary story of our World War I nurses, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2008 Reese, Trevor R., The History of the Royal Commonwealth Society 1868–1968, Oxford University Press, 1968 Regent’s Quadrant Committee, Report of the Committee to consider the design for completing the rebuilding of the Quadrant, Regent Street, H.M.S.O., 1913 Reid, Sir George, My Reminiscences, Cassel & Co, 1917 Reilly, C. H., McKim, Mead & White, Ernest Benn, 1924 —— Representative British Architects of the present day, Batsford, 1931  Reps, John W., An Ideal city, The 1912 Competition to Design Canberra, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 1995 Reynolds, Henry, The other side of the frontier, Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Sydney, UNSW Press, (1981)/2006 Richards, Eric, Destination Australia, Migration to Australia since 1901, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2008 Richards, Jeffrey, Imperialism and music, Britain 1876–1953, Manchester University Press, 2001 Riley, W. Edward, London County Council, Survey of London, vol. III, The Parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields (Part I) Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London County

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Council, 1912 ——Survey of London, vol. V The Parish of St Giles-in-the-fields (Part II), London County Council, 1914. Rousset-Charny, Gerard, Les palais parisiens de la Belle-Epoque, Paris, Delégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1990 Rowland, Percy F., The new nation: a sketch of the social, political and economic conditions and prospects of the Australian Commonwealth, Smith, Elder, 1903 Roy, Patricia E., Boundless Optimism: Richard McBride’s British Columbia, UBC Press, 2012 Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970, vol. 1, A–D, Calne, Wiltshire: Hilmarton Manor Press, 1985 —— Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970, vol. 5, LAWR-SHER, Wakefield, Yorkshire; E.P. Publishing Ltd., 1981 Royal Institute of British Architects/Town Planning Conference, Town planning conference London, 10th to 15th October, 1910: Exhibition of drawings & models at the Royal Academy from the 10th to the 22nd October, Printed by W. Clowes & Sons, 1910 Royle, Trevor, Queen’s Own Highlanders, A Concise History, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2007 Russell, Arthur, With the Machine Gun Corps from Grantham to Cologne in the European War, Drancs, 1923 Russell-Brown, C. (ed.), Record of the Imperial Representative Corps Trip, Australia & New Zealand 1900–1901, Army and Navy Cooperative Society, 1901 SWAG (Save Westminster Action Group), The Criterion Buildings 1874–1884, SWAG, 1974 Saint, Andrew, Richard Norman Shaw, New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2010 —— (ed.), Politics and the People of London, The London County Council 1889– 1965, The Hambledon Press, 1989 Saler, Michael (ed.), The Fin de Siècle World, London; New York: Routledge, 2015 Saunier, Pierre-Yves and Shane Ewen (eds.), Global City Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment, 1850 – 2000, Palgrave Macmillan 2008 Sawer, Geoffrey, Australian Fedderal Politics and Law 1901–1929, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1956 Selfridge, H. Gordon, The Romance of Commerce, 2nd edn., John Lane, (1918)/1923 Sell, Henry, Dictionary of the World’s Press and annual of useful commercial knowledge, King, Sell, and Railton Ltd. Printers, 1900 Sennett, Richard, Flesh and Stone, The Body and the City in Western Civilization, New York, W. W. Norton, 1994 305

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Serle, Geoffrey, The Rush to be Rich, A History of the Colony of Victoria 1883– 1889, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1971 —— John Monash, A Biography, Melbourne University Press, 1982 Service, Alastair, Edwardian architecture and its origins, The Architectural Press, 1975 —— Edwardian architecture: a handbook to building design in Britain 1890– 1914, Thames & Hudson, 1977 —— London 1900, New York: Rizzoli, 1979 —— Edwardian Interiors, Inside the Homes of the Poor, the Average and the Wealthy, London; Melbourne, Barrie & Jenkins, 1982 Severini, Lois, The Architecture of Finance: Early Wall Street, Ann Arbor: UMI, 1983 Sharpe, Robert J., The Last Day, the Last Hour, The Currie Libel Trial, Published for the Osgoode Society by The Carswell Company of Canada Ltd, 1988 —— The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial, University of Toronto Press, 2009 Sharples, Joseph, David W. Walker and Matthew Woodworth with contributions from Richard Fawcett, Jane Geddes, Andrew A. McMillan, Gordon Noble, Charles O’Brien, Aberdeenshire South and Aberdeen, The Buildings of Scotland, Yale University Press, New Haven; London, 2015 Sheean, Vincent, With a Preface by Oscar Hammerstein II, The Amazing Oscar Hammerstein The Life and Exploits of an Impresario, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1956 Simpson, John, Paris Rosemary for remembrance of bygone scenes and circumstances, Hutchinson, 1927 Skilling, H. Gordon, Canadian Representation Abroad, From Agency to Embassy, Toronto, Revision Press, 1945 Skrimshire, Samuel, Valuations, E. & F. N. Spon, 1915 Sluga, Glenda, Internationalism in the age of nationalism, 1st edn. Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 Smith, Alice E., George Smith’s Money: A Scottish Investor in America, Madison, Wis.: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1966 Smith, E. L., If you’re going to join the Army play the game marching song, Newark, N.J.: A.K. Delemos & Co., 1918 Solkin, David H. (ed.), Art on the Line, the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780–1836, New Haven, CT; London, Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Courtauld Institute Gallery by Yale University Press, 2001 Spender, J.A., The Public Life vol. 2, London; New York, Cassell and Company, 1925 Spielmann, Marion Henry, British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today, Cassell & Co., 1901 Stamp, Gavin, Lost Victorian Britain, How the Twentieth Century Destroyed the

306

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Nineteenth Century’s Architectural Masterpieces, Aurum 1988 Statistical Department, Board of Trade. Statistical abstract for the several British oversea dominions and protectorates in each year from 1903 to 1917. Fifty-fourth number, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, 1920 Stratton, Michael, Structure and Style: Conserving Twentieth Century Buildings, Taylor & Francis, 1997 Strong, S. Arthur, Jean Goujon His Life and Work, Duckworth and Co., 1903 Sugden, Florence, Edward H. Sugden, Melbourne, 1941 Sulman, John, The Federal Capital, Sydney, J. Sands, 1909 —— An introduction to the study of town planning in Australia, Observatory Hill, NSW: National Trust of Australia NSW, 2007 Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall by Hermione Hobhouse, Published for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England [by] Athlone Press, 1991 Taggart, Caroline, The Book of London Place Names, Ebury Press, 2012 Taintor’s Guide Books, The City of New York: A Complete Guide, New York, Taintor Brothers & Co, 1888 Tames, Richard, The London we have Lost, Historical Publications, 2008 Taverner, John William, Central Depot: Report on a Proposed Central Depot for the Reception of Australian Products to Be Erected in London to the Colonies Represented At the Agricultural Conferences Held in Melbourne and Hobart in 1899, Melbourne: Robt. S. Brain, Government Printer, 1899 Taylor, Isaac, Names and their histories alphabetically arranged as a handbook of historical geography and topographical nomenclature, Rivington, Percival, 1896 The Greater Britain Exhibition, Earl’s Court, London, 1899, Catalogue of exhibits in the Queensland Court, Spottiswoode & Co, 1899 The Red Book of Commerce or Who’s Who in Business 1908, J. Whitaker & Sons Ltd, 1908 The Year Book of Australia, The British Australasian Consolidated Publishing Co. Ltd., 1905 The Year Book of Australia for 1908, London; Sydney, Gordon& Gotch, 1908 Thompson, Paul, Socialists, Liberals and Labour, The Struggle for London 1885– 1914, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967 Thornbury, George Walter and Edward Walford, ‘The Strand (northern tributaries): Clement’s Inn, New Inn, Lyon’s Inn etc.’, in Edward Walford, Old and New London, illustrated. A narrative of its history, its people, and its places, vol. 3, 1878, 32–5  Thorne, Robert (ed.), Structural Iron and Steel 1850–1900, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000 Tillett, Ben, History of the London Transport Worker’s Strike, National Transport Workers’ Federation, 1912 ‘To the men of the AIF’ (dedication), ‘Australia at War’ Exhibition of Drawings

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made on the Western Front by Lieut. Will Dyson, official artist, AIF, Ernest, Brown & Philips, The Leicester Galleries, 1918 Town and Country Planning Association (Great Britain), Town planning in theory and practice: A report of a conference arranged by the Garden City Association, held at the Guildhall, London, on October 25th 1907, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London. Papers and speeches. The Garden City Association, 1908 Towner, John, An historical geography of recreation and tourism in the modern world, 1540–1940, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1996 Treloar, J. L., An Anzac Diary, Armidale, NSW, Alan Treloar, 1993 Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of World War I: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 2, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-Clio, 2005 Turak, Theodore, William Le Baron Jenney: a pioneer of modern architecture.UMI Research Press, 1986 Turnbull, Clive, The old CML Building, 316 Collins Street, Melbourne, Melbourne, Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society, 1960 Turner, Henry Gyles, A History of the Colony of Victoria, from its discovery to its absorption into the Commonwealth of Australia, vol. 2, Longmans, Green, 1904 —— The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth, A Chronicle of Contemporary Politics, 1901–1910, Melbourne, Mason Firth & McCutcheon, 1911 Tweed, Lendal, John Tweed sculptor, a memoir, Lovat Dickson Limited, 1936 Twopenny, R. E. N., Town Life in Australia, Elliott Stock, 1883 Vetch, R. H. (ed.), with a preface by Sir G. S. Clarke, Life of Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir Andrew Clarke, J. Murray, 1905 Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie, The web of empire, a diary of the imperial tour of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall & York in 1901, Macmillan, 1903 Ward, Jan, The Leonard Stokes directory, architect in a dressing grown, J. Ward, 2009 Watson, James, The Historic Interest of the Neighbourhood of the Corn Exchange and the Baltic, printed by Chas Smith, Son & Gowland, 1900 Watt, Quintin (ed.), The Bromsgrove Guild, An Illustrated History, Bromsgrove Society, 1999 Watts, Sarah Lyons, Order Against Chaos: Business Culture and Labor Ideology in America, 1880–1915, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991 Webb, Sir Aston (ed.), London of the Future, T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1921 Webb, Maurice E. and Herbert Wigglesworth (Foreword by Sir Aston Webb), Raffles Davison, Hon Associate of the RIBA, a record of his life and work from 1870 to 1926, Royal Institute of British Architects, 1927 White, Jerry, Zeppelin Nights, London in the First World War, The Bodley Head, 2014 Whyte, William (introd.), The transactions of the Royal Institute of British

308

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Architects Town Planning Conference, London, 10–15 October 1910, London; New York: Routledge, 2011 —— (introd.), Ghent Planning Congress 1913, Premier Congrès International Et Exposition Comparee des Villes, Oxford; New York, Routledge, 2013 Wilde, William H., Joy Hooten, Barry Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edn, New York, Oxford University Press, 1994 Williams, J. Gwynn, The University College of North Wales: foundations 1884– 1927, Cardiff, University of North Wales Press, 1985 Williams, Robert, Rookeries and Colliers’ Slums, A Plea for more breathing room, and for amending the building laws generally, and as suggested for London by the London County Council, W. Reeves, 1893 Willson, Beckels, The Life of Lord Strathcona & Mount Royal, London; New York, Cassell, 1915 Zealley, Alfred Edward and J. Ord Hume, Famous Bands of the British Empire, J. P. Hull, 1927 Zuehlke, Mark, Scoundrels, Dreamers & Second Sons, British Remittance Men in the Canadian West, 2nd edn. Rev., Toronto; Oxford: The Dundern Group, 2001

Articles, Journals Periodicals Agache, Donat Alfred ‘La’ housing question à Londres’, La science sociale (1902), 359–68 Anon., ‘The Satire of W.K. Haselden’, Strand Magazine, vol. 36, no. 215 (Nov. 1908), 520–7 Author unknown, ‘Melbourne’, The Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 92 Lord Chameberlain to Mecklenburg, 11th edn., New York, Encyclopedia Britannica, 90–1 Bate, Weston, ‘Bent, Sir Thomas (1838–1909)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 3, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1969 Bremner, G. Alex, ‘“Imperial Monumental Halls and Tower”: Westminster Abbey and the Commemoration of Empire, 1854–1904’, Architectural History, vol. 47 (2004), 251–82 Brewer, H. W., ‘The proposed Strand Improvements, A suggestion to the London County Council’, Graphic, 14 Mar. 1896, 308 Bryant, M., ‘Hold the front page’, History Today, vol. 56 no. 5 (May 2006), 58–9 Burns, John, ‘London Old and New’, Pall Mall Magazine, no. 36 (Jan. 1905), 2–14. —— with illustrations by Hedley Fitton, ‘London the Cinderella of the Cities’, Pall Mall Magazine, vol. 36, no. 150 (Oct. 1905), 402–8 Bylander, Sven, ‘Steelwork in Buildings – Thirty years’ progress’, Structural Engineer, vol. 15 no. 1 (Jan. 1937) Clark, Rex, ‘Carroll, John (1891–1971), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 7, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1979 Colquhoun, Archibald R (ed.), United Empire, The Royal Colonial Insitute Journal, vol. 1, no. 7 (July 1910), 810 309

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Corfield, Wilmot, ‘The Dominions Offices and the Aldwych Site’, British Architect, 26 Sept. 1913, 218 Cowper, Norman, ‘Sir Galahad, the Dauntless Imp, and Others (Personalities in the First Twenty-Five Years of Federal Politics)’, Australian Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2 (June 1951), 35–56 Cuneen, Chris, ‘Jersey, seventh Earl of (1845–1915)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 9, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1983 —— and Ann G. Smith, ‘Collins, Sir Robert Henry Muirhead (1852–1927)’ in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle (gen. eds.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8: 1891–1939, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981, 79–80 Curtis, H. L., ‘W. E. Riley, Chief Architect to the L.C.C. 1899–1919’, JRIBA, 3rd series, vol. 45, no. 4 (20 Dec. 1937), 204 Cusak, Patricia, ‘Architects and the reinforced concrete specialist in Britain 1905–8’, Architectural History, vol. 29 (1986) 183–195 Dailey, Don M., ‘Smith and Scammon: Early Chicago Bankers’, Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. 11, no. 1 (Feb. 1937), 11–18. Dawson, Danny, ‘Remembering Australian convalescents in Harefield: [Paper in Military Medicine: Special Issue. Stanley, Peter (ed.)]’, Health and History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2004, 60–74 Dennis, Richard, ‘Babylonian Flats’ in Victorian and Edwardian London, London Journal, vol. 33 no. 3 (Nov. 2008), 233–47 —— ‘Victoria Street in theory and practice: scenes from the governmentality of nineteenth century London’ in Mathew Davies and James A. Galloway (eds.), London and beyond, Essays in honour of Derek Keene, London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012, 287–316 Dilley, Andrew, ‘T. A. Coghlan, London Opinion and the Politics of AngloAustralian Finance, 1905–9’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 41 no. 1, 2013, 37–58 Dobbs, E. Wilson, ‘Heraldry as applied to architecture, paper read 24 April 1906’, RIVA (May 1906), 42–65 Dolling, Arthur T., ‘The Size of the World’s Great Cities’, Strand Magazine, vol. 27, no. 161 (May 1904), 516–23 Dungavell, Ian, ‘Webb, Sir Aston (1849–1930)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004  Ferrero, Guglielmo, ‘The Evolution of Luxury’, International Journal of Ethics, vol. 11, no. 3 (Apr. 1901), 346–54 Fletcher, Hanslip, ‘London from the Pavement’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 82 no. 4 (25 May 1934), I Gerard, Patrick, ‘Picturing Queensland: The Local, the National and the Global in Early Queensland Film’, in T. Ferrero-Regis and A. Moran (ed.), Placing the Moving Image, Nathan, Qld: Griffith University, 2004 Gomme, Alice B., ‘Bibliography of the Writings of the Late Sir Laurence 310

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Gomme on Anthropology and Folklore’, Folklore, vol. 27, no. 4 (31 Dec. 1916), pp. 408–13 Gordon, Alden R., ‘The Dispersal of the Estate of Madame de Pompadour: New Documentary’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 148, no. 1238 Art in France (May 2006), 312–24 Gray, A. S., ‘II. Public Buildings and Street Architecture’, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, vol. 121, no. 5200 (Mar. 1973) Gray, Lee, ‘The 1908 Singer Building Elevators’, Elevator World, vol. 54, no. 4, Apr. 2006, 118–22 Hackett, Hon. J. W., ‘Australia, Social and Economic Conditions’, Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 55, no. 2842 (10 May 1907), 671–702 Haig, B., ‘Sir Timothy Coghlan and the development of national accounts’, History of Political Economy, 38(2) 2006, 339–75 Hardy, Emma, ‘Farmer and Brindley, craftsman sculptors 1850–1930’, Victorian Society Annual, 1993, 4–17 Hicks, Neville, ‘Coghlan, Sir Timothy Augustine (1855–1926)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1981 Hiorns, F. R., ‘William Edward Riley 1852–1937’, JRIBA (24 Jan. 1938), vol. 45, no. 6, 317 Hogben, Paul, ‘Tall Buildings’, in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2012 Hotel Cecil, St Cecilia, The official organ of the Hotel Cecil, Limited, vol. 1 no. 1 (1 May 1896), London: The Hotel Hoyle, Arthur, ‘O’Malley, King (1858–1953), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 11, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1988 Hunter, Roslyn F., ‘Haddon, Robert Joseph (1866–1929)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 9, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1983 Jackson, Alastair A., ‘The Development of Steel Framed Buildings in Britain 1880–1905’, Construction History vol. 14, 1998, 21–40 Jones, John Brandon, ‘Some notable architects of the early twentieth century 1, Architects and the Art Workers’ Guild’, Royal Society of Art Journal, vol. 121, no. 5200 (Mar. 1973), 195–206 Kern, Stephen, ‘Changing concepts and experiences of time and space’ in Michael Saler (ed.), The Fin de Siècle World, London; New York: Routledge, 2015, 84–5 Kerr, H. B., ‘Sir James Carmichael’ in David J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography, vol. 1 A–C, Butterworths, 1984, 592–4 Kiralfy, Imre, ‘My Reminiscences’, Strand Magazine, vol. 37 (1909), 649 Langmore, Diane, ‘Reay, William Thomas (1858–1929)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 11, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1988 311

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Latham, Rev. H., ‘Nights at Play’, Cornhill Magazine, 12, 1902, 677–85 Lawrence, Jeanne Catherine, ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations: Selfridges, the Ritz, and American Technology’, Construction History, vol. 6 (1990), 23–46 Layman, Lenore, ‘To Keep up the Australian Standard’: Regulating Contract Labour Migration 1901–50’, Labour History, no. 70 (May 1996), 25–52 Lee, Sidney, ‘Andrew Clarke’ in Percival Serle (ed.), Dictionary of Australian Biography, vol. 1, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1949, 169–71 Lewis, Miles, ‘John Beswicke’ in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 81 —— ‘Building the Dome: an illustrated account’, LaTrobe Journal, no. 82 (Dec. 2013), 4–51 Lucas, William, ‘The work and influence of Norman Shaw, R.A.’, British Architect, vol. 79 (16 May 1913), 374–85 Macartney, Mervyn, ‘From Holborn to the Strand: An Ideal Street’, Architectural Review (Dec. 1899), 239–44 McDonald, D. I., ‘Architect J. S. Murdoch and the provisional parliament house’, Canberra Historical Journal, no. 15, Mar. 1985, 18–26 McMinn, W. G., ‘Reid, Sir George Houstoun (1845–1918)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 11, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1988 Matthew, H. C. G., ‘George V (1865–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn., May 2013 Mauve, Guy, ‘Architecture’, in F. G. Dumas (ed.) Franco-British Exhibition 1908, Chatto & Windus, 1908, 13 Miller, Carman, ‘Grey, Albert Henry George, 4th Earl Grey’ in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003 Minty, E. Arden, ‘London’s New Public Buildings’, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, vol. 10, no. 46 (Jan. 1907), 210–18 Mondry, Roberta, ‘The Metropolitan Life Tower: Architecture and Ideology in the Life Insurance Enterprise’ in Cultures of Commerce, Representation and American Business Culture, 1877–1960, (eds.) Elspeth H. Brown, Catherine Gudis, and Marina Moskowitz, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 208 Moore, William, ‘Notes on some younger Australian artists’, Studio vol. 62 (1914), 209 Morgan, Kenneth O., ‘George, David Lloyd, first Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863– 1945)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn., May 2011 Mouat, Jeremy, ‘Turner, John Herbert’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003 Newton, Douglas, ‘At the Birth of Anzac: Labour, Andrew Fisher and Australia’s Offer of an Expeditionary Force to Britain in 1914’, Labour History, 312

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no. 106 (May 2014) 19–41 Pemberton, S. Beatrice, ‘The Call of the Dominions ll: Interview with Mrs Fisher’ Lady’s Pictorial, vol. 73 no. 1872 (13 Jan. 1917), 35–6 Pennay, Bruce, ‘Thomas, Josiah (1863–1933)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1990 Pilger, Alison & Frank Bongiorno, ‘Russell, Edward John (1878–1925)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, vol. 1, 1901–1929, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic., 2000, 304–7 Powers, Alan, ‘Architects I Have Known’: The Architectural Career of S. D. Adshead, Architectural History, vol. 24 (1981), 103–23, 160–4 —— ‘Adshead, Stanley Davenport (1868–1946)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 —— ‘British Architecture before the Great War, Part One’, Architectural Review (11 Nov. 2014), https://www.architectural-review.com/rethink/viewpoints/ part-one-british-architecture-before-the-great-war/8671787.article —— ‘British Architecture before the Great War, Part Two’, Architectural Review (30 Dec. 2014), https://www.architectural-review.com/today/part-two-britisharchitecture-after-the-great-war/8674259.article Reade, Charles C., ‘Town Planning in Australasia: Problems and Progress in the Far Pacific’, Town Planning Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (Apr. 1912), 4–10 Reid, The Right Hon. Sir George, K.C.M.G., ‘the Past, Present and Future of Australia’, United Empire, vol. 2, no. 7, July 1911, 466 Riley, W. E., The Architectural Work of the London County Council, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. 16, 3rd series, 24 Apr. 1909, 412–42 Roberts, H. V. Molesworth, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes: a comprehensive account of his work’, Architectural Review, vol. 100, no. 600 (Dec. 1946), 174–275 Rutledge, Martha, ‘Barton, Sir Edmund (Toby) (1849–1920)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 7, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1979 Saint, Andrew, ‘Riley, William Edward (1852–1937)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2013; online edn., Sept. 2013 —— ‘Waring, Samuel James, Baron Waring (1860–1940) businessman and promoter of the decorative arts’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, published online 28 May 2015 Serle, Geoffrey, ‘Turner, Sir George (1851–1916)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1990 Skipwith, Peyton, ‘Architectural Sculpture in London, 1890–1940’, Decorative Arts Society Journal, vol. 21 (Jan. 1997), 121–9 Stocker, Mark, ‘Pomeroy, Frederick William (1856–1924)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University press, Sept. 2004; online edn., Oct. 2007 Spruson, Wilfred J., ‘The Skyscraper’, Builder Magazine, vol. 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1907), 25 Tappin, W. B., ‘Notes on Foreign Travel’, Paper read at the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) General meeting on 26 July 1904, RVIA 313

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Journal of Proceedings (Sept. 1904), 108 Taylor, William R., ‘The Evolution of Public Space in New York City, The Commercial Showcase of America’ in Simon J. Bronner (ed.), Consuming Visions Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880 – 1920, New York; London, W. W. Norton & Company, 1989 Thomson, W. G., ‘The Beauvais Tapestries at Hursley Park,’ Country Life, vol. 34, no. 889 (15 Nov. 1913), 680–3 Tibbits, George and Philip Goad, ‘Peter Kerr’ in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2012, 382–3 Turvey, Ralph, ‘Office rents in the City of London 1867–1910’, London Journal, vol. 23, no. 2 (1998), 53–67 Underwood, David K., ‘Alfred Agache, French Sociology, and Modern Urbanism in France and Brazil’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, no. 2 (1991), 130–266 Van Zanten, David, ‘Architectural Composition at the École des BeauxArts from Charles Percier to Charles Garnier’, in Arthur Drexler (ed.) The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977 Waters, Chris, ‘Progressives, Puritans and the Cultural politics of the Council, 1889–1914’ in Andrew Saint (ed.), Politics and the People of London, The London County Council 19889–1965, The Hambledon Press, 1989 Wheatley, Joyce, ‘Frederick John Dove (1830–1932)’, Dictionary of Business Biography, vol.2, D–G, Butterworths, 1924, 154–7 Wigglesworth, H. H., ‘An appreciation of the work of Alexander Marshall Mackenzie’, Quarterly Illustrated of The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (Autumn, 1933) Willis, J., ‘Charles Webb’ in Philip Goad and Julie Willis, The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2012, 757

Newspapers Newspaper material available online was accessed between 2014 and September 2017. A number of sources were drawn on: the British Newspaper Archive at the British Library; The Times was accessed online by the Times Digital Archive, 1785–2009; Trove for Australian newspapers: trove.nla.gov.au; and Papers Past for those from New Zealand: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz. The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA: 1889–1931) The Age (Melbourne, Vic.: 1854–1954) Argus (Melbourne, Vic.: 1848–1957) Auckland Star (Auckland, NZ: 1887–1991) Australasian (Melbourne, Vic.: 1864–1946) Australian Star (Sydney, NSW: 1887–1909) 314

Select Bibliography

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW: 1870–1907) Brisbane Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1864–1933) Burrowa News (Boorowa, NSW: 1874–1951) Catholic Press (Sydney, NSW: 1895–1942) Daily Express (London, England: 1900–current) Daily Mail (Brisbane, Qld.: 1903–1933) Daily Mail (London, England: 1896–current) Daily Telegraph (Launceston, Tas.: 1883–1928) Daily Telegraph (London, England: 1855–current) Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1879–current) Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld.: 1912–1936) Evening News (Sydney, NSW: 1867–1931) Financial Times (London, England: 1888–current) Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW: 1850–1932) Graphic (London, England: 1869–1932) Kalgoorlie Miner (Kalgoorlie, WA: 1895–1950) Leader (Melbourne, Vic.: 1862–1918) Manchester Guardian (Manchester, England: 1821–1959)  Mercury (Hobart, Tas.: 1854–current) New York Times (New York, N.Y.: 1857–1922) New Zealand Herald (Auckland, NZ: 1862–current) Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld.: 1874–1954) Observer (London, England: 1901–2003) Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times (London, England: 1861–1913) Punch (Melbourne, Vic.: 1855–1925) Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser (Ipswich, Qld: 1861–1908) Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866–1939) Register (Adelaide, SA: 1901–1929) Sun (Sydney, NSW: 1910–1988) Sunday Mirror (London, England: 1915–current) Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW: 1895–1930) Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (Sydney, NSW: 1871–1912) Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, NSW: 1842–1954) Table Talk (Melbourne, Vic.: 1885–1939) Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.: 1872–1947) The Times (London, England: 1785–current) Times Digital Archive, 1785–2009 (Melbourne, Vic.: 1885–1939) Times of India (Mumbai, India: 1861–current) Washington Post (Washington, D.C.: 1877–1922)

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Week (Brisbane, Qld.: 1876–1934) Weekly Times (Melbourne, Vic.: 1869–1954) West Australian (Perth, WA: 1879–current) Western Mail (Perth, WA: 1885–1954) Worker (Brisbane, Qld.: 1890–1974) Worker (Wagga Wagga, NSW: 1892–1913) World’s News (Sydney, NSW: 1901–1955)

Maps The Imre Kiralfy New International Exhibition Grounds, London W. [Scale 1 inch=90 feet], London: Imre Kiralfy, 1905 The Imre Kiralfy New International Exhibition Grounds, Hammersmith, London, W. A. Toudoire, archt. London: Imre Kiralfy, 1905

Online Resources, Websites British History Online. Version 5.0. Institute of Historical Research, http:// www.british-history.ac.uk British Pathé, Baseball in the Strand 1918, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/ baseball-in-the-strand British Pathé, Opening Australia House part l, 1918 (1989.17), http://www. britishpathe.com/video/opening-australia-house-part–1/query/Anzac ‘Charles Henry Mabey’, Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1952, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, database http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id-msib1_1271958663 Dictionary of Scottish Architects http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/ Historic England (Historic Buildings and Monuments Commissioner for England), historicengland.org.uk Historic Hansard (Australia), http://historic.handsard.net ‘History of the White City Site – BBC’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/ pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/11/mv_history.pdf London Remembers 2018, http://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/ andrew-young Parliament of Australia, http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au Robins, Anthony W. with research by Victoria Young for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Equitable Building, 1996, http://www.nyc.gov/ html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/equitable.pdf Somerset House Trust, ‘Somerset House History’ (2016), https://www. somersethouse.org.uk/history/since-the–18th-century Wright, Andrew P.K., Grant Lodge, Elgin, Conservation Statement, 2006, http:// www.moray.gov.uk/downloads/file92971.pdf

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Notes

Abbreviations AAA ADB AGNSW AH AHTSC AWM BCA BGA BL BMA BWPA CBS CUP HEA HH ICE ILN JRIBA LMA MOL MSU MUP NAA NLA ODNB OED OHC OUP RA RAA RIBA S/DOV SLV SMH SRO TNA UNSW

Architectural Association Archives Australian Dictionary of Biography Art Gallery of New South Wales Archives Australia House, London Archives Australia House Transfer of Site to Commonwealth, Australia House, London Archives Australian War Memorial British Cartoon Archive Bylander Group Archives British Library British Museum Archives Bylander Waddell Partnership Archives Commonwealth Bank of Australia Archives Cambridge University Press Historic England Archive Historic Hansard Institutution of Civil Engineers Archive Illustrated London News Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects London Metropolitan Archives Museum of London Archives University of Aberdeen Rice Library Melbourne University Press National Archives of Australia National Library of Australia Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford English Dictionary Offices for High Commissioner Oxford University Press Royal Archives Royal Academy of Arts Archives Royal Institute of Britsh Architects Dove Brothers Ltd., Builders (1850–1970) State Library of Victoria Sydney Morning Herald Shropshire Archives The National Archives University of New South Wales

317

Capital Designs UQFL VHA WCA YUP

University of Queensland Fryer Library Victoria House Archive Westminster City Archives Yale University Press

Prologue

1 ‘King and Commonwealth’, Daily Chronicle, 24 July 1913, from p. 2, box 2, NLA MS2242. 2 Alastair Service, Edwardian architecture and its origins, London: The Architectural Press, 1975; Edwardian architecture: a handbook to building design in Britain 1890– 1914, London: Thames & Hudson, 1977; London 1900, New York: Rizzoli, 1979. A. Stuart Gray, Edwardian Architecture: a biographical dictionary, London: Duckworth, 1985. 3 James Pope-Hennessy, Lord Crewe, 1858: 1945 the likeness of a liberal, London: Constable, 1955, 80. 4 H.S. Goodhart-Rendel, English Architecture since the Regency, London: Constable, 1953, 201 (as noted from lectures that Goodhart-Rendel gave in 1934). 5 Alan Powers, ‘British Architecture before the Great War, Part One’, Architectural Review, 11 Nov. 2014, http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/part-onebritish-architecture-before-the-great-war/867187.article. Powers argues that much of the history of British buildings dating from both sides of 1914 has disappeared from view: Alan Powers, ‘British Architecture before the Great War, Part Two’, Architectural Review, 30 Dec. 2014, http://www.architectural-review.com/essays/ history/part-two-british-architecture-after-the-great-war/8674259.article. 6 One exception being Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall by Hermione Hobhouse, London: Published for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England [by] Athlone Press, 1991.

Chapter One: Improvement Schemes 1 E. Harold Begbie, Tales from the Great City, London: Alston Rivers, 1907, ix. 2 Binney designed The Spirit of Gaiety for the dome of London’s second (‘New’) Gaiety Theatre which opened in Oct. 1903. Binney’s figure was placed in position in Mar. 1904. It remained there until the English Electric Company built on the site, and it was removed to the internal court of the new building erected in 1957. The gilded figure is now in the sculpture collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum: S.26301986. On the Theatre see ‘The Opening of the New Gaiety Theatre, October 24: Details of the Building’, ILN, 24 Oct. 1903, 610. 3 Paupers watched road-builders in the employ of the London County Council at work digging up London’s streets for the proposed improvements. ‘A Kingsway Contrast: Workers and ‘Out-Of-Works’ in the New Thoroughfare.’ ILN, 14 Oct. 1905, 546. 4 Imre Kiralfy ‘My Reminiscences’, Strand Magazine, vol. 37, 1909, 649. Choreographer and theatrical producer, Imre Kiralfy (1845–1919) turned his focus on London following his success at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition, Chicago. 5 Arthur Cawston, ‘Freedom of Contract in London’, The Times, 28 Nov. 1889, 6. William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out, London: Carlyle Press, 1890. 6 In just thirty years, London’s population grew from 5,572,000 to 7,387,000. On Edwardian London, see Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone, The Body and the City in 318

Notes – Chapter One: Improvement Schemes Western Civilization, New York: W. W. Norton, 1994, 317–23. 7 Helen Meller, Towns, plans and society in modern Britain, Cambridge; New York, CUP, 1997, 13. 8 Cawston stood as Moderate candidate for North Camberwell in the London County Council elections of 1892. ‘The London County Council Election’, The Times, 26 Feb. 1892, 3. Example comes too from Robert Williams, an Associate of the RIBA in 1893 when he wrote his London Rookeries and Colliers’ Slums, A Plea for more breathing room, and for amending the building laws generally, and as suggested for London by the London County Council, London: W. Reeves, 1893. Those who either made calls for change to London or picked up on such calls included Sir Aston Webb (who would later chair the Council of the London Society) and the London Society’s President, the Earl of Plymouth; T. Raffles Davison, an Honorary Associate of the RIBA, and the Marquess of Crewe (who supported action taken by the London Society). On this see Sir Aston Webb (ed.), London of the Future, London, T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1921, 273–82. Considering London politics in the period between 1885 and 1914, Paul Thompson stresses the importance of the enthusiasm of local political activists: Paul Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour, The Struggle for London 1885–1914, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. 9 Arthur Cawston, A comprehensive scheme for street improvements in London, accompanied by maps and sketches illustrating the principles on which the scheme has been prepared and the reasons for their adoption, London: Edward Stanford, 1893. Cawston notes lessons that London could gain from other cities: pp. 13–26. For opinion on Cawston’s suggestions for the improvement of London see ‘Books of the Week’, The Times, 30 June 1893, 3. 10 Cawston, A comprehensive scheme, Preface. 11 For a list of some of the street improvements undertaken: Richard Dennis, Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930. Cambridge; New York: CUP, 2008, 116. 12 ‘What London Wants Done’, Architects’ Magazine, vol. 6, no. 61, Nov. 1905, 3. Example of comparisons made by the press at the time come from: Arthur T Dolling, ‘The Size of the World’s Great Cities’, Strand Magazine, vol. 27, no. 161, May 1904, 516–23. Here, London is compared with Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St Petersburg, Liverpool, Peking, Boston, Chicago, New York. 13 George S. C. Swinton, ‘London’s Royal Road’, The Times, 2 May 1901, 7. On ‘Boulevard Mania’ see Edward J, Poynter, ‘The Widening of Piccadilly’, The Times, 24 Oct. 1901, 6. Arguments for making London a more majestic (and also a more sociable) city continued to be made through the first decade of the century. For one example: Town and Country Planning Association (Great Britain), Town planning in theory and practice: A report of a conference arranged by the Garden City Association, held at the Guildhall, London, on October 25th 1907, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London. Papers and speeches. London: The Garden City Association, 1908, 47. For illustration of a ‘new Royal way’ connecting Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament and a proposed new County Hall see Thomas H. Mawson, Civic Art, Studies in Town Planning Parks Boulevards and open Spaces, London, Batsford, 1911, 224. London-based author A. H. Beaven thought that only one wide ‘avenue’ existed in London: Langham Place (by which he could only have meant Portland Place, which short Langham Place led to). Portland Place, begun by James and Robert Adam in 1773 as an enclave of private palaces, was the widest London street of its day. Nash incorporated it as part of his avenue to the new Regents Park.

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14 15 16

17 18 19

20

Arthur Henry Beavan, with sixty illustrations by Hanslip Fletcher, Imperial London, London, J. M. Dent & Co., 1901, 122. Mary Cathcart Borer, The British Hotel Through the Ages, London; Guildford, Lutterworth Press, 1972, 209. The first electric street lighting appeared in 1878. As its publicity claimed: St Cecilia, The official organ of the Hotel Cecil, Limited, vol. 1, no. 1, 1 May 1896. The Hotel Cecil was demolished in 1930. ‘The Hotels of London’, Oamaru Mail (NZ), vol. 18, no. 12075, 31 Oct. 1913, 2; Richard Tames, The London we have Lost, London: Historical Publications, 2008, 124. One writer calls such consumption the ‘leisure invasion’, when the upper and middle classes seeking urban recreation activities shaped the general leisure environments around them: John Towner, An historical geography of recreation and tourism in the modern world, 1540–1940, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, 238. Redirection in consumption followed rising incomes of the average British consumer, which continued to grow by fifty per cent in the first half of the twentieth century: John Benson, The rise of consumer society in Britain 1880–1980, London; New York: Longman, 1994, 12–13. Guglielmo Ferrero, ‘The Evolution of Luxury’, International Journal of Ethics, vol. 11, no. 3, Apr. 1901, 346–54. Jamie L. Bronstein and Andrew T. Harris, Empire, State, and Society, Britain Since 1830, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 136. Female suffrage was established in Australia from 1895, with the colony of South Australia first granting women the right to vote and stand for office for the Parliament of South Australia. Over the ensuing decade, women in other states gained the right to vote in their state elections, so that by 1908 all women over the age of 21 obtained the right to vote. With the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 all women received the right to vote and stand for election for federal parliament. The population of Greater London in 1901 was over 6.2 million (and 4.6 million for Inner London), while the population of continental Australia in the 1901 ‘Federation’ Census was 3.7 million. Speech, Guildhall, 5 Dec. 1901: F. A. Mackenzie, King George V in his own words, London: E. Benn, 1929, 44–8. Press headlines referred to the speech under the headline ‘Wake up England!’: Harold Nicholson, King George the Fifth His Life and Reign, London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1952, 74. The spontaneous welcome that the Duke received in Australia impressed him: ibid., 70; Also, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, The web of empire, a diary of the imperial tour of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall & York in 1901, London: Macmillan, 1903, 122, 179, 211. Prolific writer on statesmanship and political economy James Ellis Barker (1870–1948), gives example of this criticism: J. Ellis Barker, Drifting, London: Grant Richards, 1901, 119. Cologne-born, Barker settled in London; he was naturalized in 1900 and changed his name from Julius Otto Elzbacher.

Chapter Two: The Strand 1 Donald Maxwell, ‘London in Fairyland’, The Enchanted Road, London: Methuen, 1927, 2. 2 John Gay, ‘Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London’, in Mark Ford (ed.), London, A History in Verse, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012, 248. 3 On this see Charles Bullen, ‘Along the Strand ’ in A. R. Hope Moncrieff, Edwardian

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Notes – Chapter Two: The Strand and Victorian London, London: Brockhampton Press, 1999, 65. 4 ‘Projected Great Architectural Changes in London’, ILN, 30 Nov. 1901, 822. ‘Proposed Strand Improvements’, The Times, 16 Dec. 1892, 6. 5 Percy J. Edwards, London County Council History of London Street Improvements 1855 to 1897, London: London County Council, 1897, 2. 6 ‘Metropolitan News’, ILN, 7 Aug. 1858, 125; ‘Kingsway And Aldwych’, The Times, 14 Oct. 1905, 7.  7 ‘On the Site Where Illustrated Journalism Was Born’, ILN, 29 Sept. 1945, 359. Offices for the ILN were originally located at 195–198 Strand. From July 1907, the new building (designed by Henry T. Hare, F.R.I.B.A.), housed new offices for the paper with offices of the rival weekly illustrated paper the Graphic and other journals. ‘London’s Costly New Buildings’, Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW), 18 Sept. 1909, 8. 8 John Gay, ‘On the pass of St Clements’, in Ford, London, A History in Verse, 248. 9 Herbert Fry, London in 1880 illustrated with Bird’s Eye Views of the Principal Streets, 6th edn., London: David Bogue, 1880, 40. The Victoria Embankment was intended to act as a bypass for traffic to avoid the congested centre of London where by 1855, each day 200,000 people traversed roads between Charing Cross and the City: Robert J Harley, London’s Victoria Embankment, Harrow, Middlesex: Capital History, 2005, 76. 10 For example: William Gordon Davis, ‘The Strand in 1900’, Photograph, London Transport Museum, Image no: Ukn, Inventory no: 2004/6538. 11 W. K. Haselden, ‘More hints to pedestrians’, BCA, WH5626. Haselden cheekily called the suit a Daily Mirror patent. On William Kerridge Haselden (1872–1953), see ‘The Satire of W.K. Haselden’, Strand Magazine, vol. 36, no. 215, Nov. 1908, 520–7. From 1861, the Locomotive Acts (known as the Red Flag Acts) imposed speed limits on all road locomotives, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons. Enthusiasts opposed restrictions on motorcars. Automobiles were limited to 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city. Speed limits were increased in 1896 (when the Red Flag Act was repealed). The 1903 Motor Car Act required vehicle registration and that drivers be licensed; irresponsible driving became an offence. The general public’s distaste for motor cars was also due to their being in their early days available to only a small sector of society, and the general public took the recklessness of early motorists as the gentry’s disregard for the masses. 12 Otto Gerlach, ‘London through German Eyes: The Strand, as a Subject of the Kaiser Sees It.’, ILN, Nov. 1907, 663. At the time, Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia, was about to visit London, hence the viewpoint of the German soldier, standing to the far right of the image. Otto Gerlach (1862–1908) was best known for his illustrations of military scenes. 13 Great Britain. Royal commission on London Traffic, Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and report upon the means of locomotion and transport in London, vol. 1, London: Printed for H.M. Stationery office by Wyman and sons limited, 1905–6, 7. In 1898, the civil engineer Sir John Wolfe Barry (son of Charles Barry, and responsible for Tower Bridge) proposed that a fly-over (as at Holborn Viaduct) be built for this corner: Sir Gwilym Gibbon and Reginald W. Bell, History of the London County Council 1889–1939, London: Macmillan, 1939, 449. 14 ‘Plan of New Street from Holborn to the Strand as proposed by Mr Harry Assiter’, Builder, 5 Aug. 1893, 108. 15 Parliament usually granted the powers of demolition. The Improvement Body was

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Capital Designs left to organise rebuilding and raising private investment to pay for it. Meller, Towns, plans and society, 15. The Bill received Royal Assent under the title of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1899, 62 and 63 Vict., cap. 266. For a plan of the new streets superimposed over the area to be demolished for their creation: ‘Destroyed by Improvements: Where Kingsway and Aldwych Stand’, ILN, 21 Oct. 1905, IV, no. 3470. 16 H. W. Brewer, ‘The proposed Strand Improvements, A suggestion to the London County Council’, Graphic, 14 Mar. 1896, 308. 17 Herbert Fry, London illustrated by twenty bird’s-eye views of the principal streets, London: W. H. Allen and Co, 1895, 57. 18 ‘Kingsway And Aldwych’, The Times, 14 Oct. 1905, 7. The surrounding area was a maze of narrow streets and alleys – one passage being so narrow it was known as Tweezers Alley. London County Council, Survey of London, vol. 5, The Parish of St Giles-in-the-fields (Part 2), London London County Council, 1914, 23, 107. Thirteenth century Drury Lane was known as ‘Aldewych’ or ‘Via de Aldewych’. 19 Samuel Johnson, ‘From London’, in Ford, London, A History in Verse, 283. 20 Hanslip Fletcher, London Passed and Passing, being a pictorial record of Destroyed and Threatened Buildings, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1909, 198; Walter Thornbury, ‘The Strand (northern tributaries): Clement’s Inn, New Inn, Lyon’s Inn etc.’, Old and New London, vol. 3, London, 1878, 32–5. British History Online, website. 21 ‘Destroyed by Improvements: Where Kingsway and Aldwych Stand’, ILN, 21 Oct. 1905, IV, no. 3470. 22 Clive Aslet, The age of empire, Britain’s imperial architecture from 1880–1930, London, Aurum Press, 2015, 36. Between 1889 and 1914, the Council allowed the lapse of 153 licences to 157 licensed premises which it acquired largely in poorer districts of London that were subjected to redevelopment plans. In 1901 the Council decided to abandon all licences for the sale of intoxicants in connection with premises acquired for the Holborn to Strand improvement. LMA CL/CER/3/4 Pamphlet no. 64, 15. Chris Waters, ‘Progressives, Puritans and the Cultural politics of the Council, 1889–1914’ in Andrew Saint (ed.), Politics and the People of London, The London County Council 1889–1965, London, The Hambledon Press, 1989, 69. 23 Hanslip Fletcher, ‘London from the Pavement’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 82, no. 4, 25 May 1934, 726. 24 Fletcher, London Passed and Passing, 195. 25 ‘The Last of a Children’s Toy Paradise: The Dismantled Lowther Arcade, Soon to Become a Part of Messrs. Coutts’s Bank’, ILN, 3 May 1902, 642; LMA Satirical Prints Collection, 4 Nov. 1902, SC/GL/SAT/028/1902/p5429570 ‘A child in these matters’, Little Miss London. A passenger steam-boat service on the Thames, which ran only from mid-1905 to 1907, was unsuccessful. The service of thirty Council-built steamboats, running daily, at 15-minute intervals, between Greenwich and Hammersmith, made a heavy loss; its failure was thought to have contributed to the downfall of the Progressives on the Council at the election of 1907: W. Eric Jackson, Achievement, A short history of the London County Council, London: Longmans, 1965, 10.

Chapter Three: The London County Council 1 Rev. H. Latham, ‘Nights at Play’, Cornhill Magazine, 12, 1902, 677–85. 2 Herbert Fry, London illustrated by twenty bird’s-eye views of the principal streets, 322

Notes – Chapter Four: The Commonwealth of Australia London: W. H. Allen and Co, 1895, 4. £500,000 came from the National Exchequer. 3 Andrew Saint, ‘Riley, William Edward (1852–1937)’, ODNB. ‘Obituary, W. E. Riley, F.R.I.B.A.’, Builder, vol. 53, no. 4946, 19 Nov. 1937, 917. Riley succeeded Thomas Blashill (1831–1905), who was transferred from the Metropolitan Board of Works; when Riley retired, the architect G. Topham Forrest (1872–1945) followed him in 1919 as Architect of the Council and Superintending Architect of Metropolitan Buildings. 4 [William Edward Riley] application for London County Council post, March 1899, LCC/MIN/6326 LMA. 5 Great Britain. Royal Commission on London Traffic, Report of the Royal Commission, vol. 1, 116. 6 Nelson P. Lewis, Planning the Modern City, London: Routledge, (1916)/2001, 34. ‘Rebuilding since great fire, Our Illustrations’, British Architect, 1874–1919, 21 Dec. 1906, 436; Philip Davies, Lost London 1870–1945, Crosley Green, Herts.: Transatlantic Press, 2009, 101. For a plan of the new streets superimposed over the area to be demolished for their creation: ‘Destroyed by Improvements: Where Kingsway and Aldwych Stand’, ILN, 21 Oct. 1905, IV. 7 G. L. Gomme, Kingsway and Aldwych, Opening by His Majesty the King accompanied by Her Majesty the Queen on 18th October 1905, London: London County Council, 1905, 39. Pamphlet no. 64 Kingsway and Aldwych opened 18 October 1905, 39 in LCC/CL/CER/3/4, LMA. 8 Isaac Taylor, Names and their histories alphabetically arranged as a handbook of historical geography and topographical nomenclature, London: Rivington, Percival, 1896, 376; Eilert Ekwall The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, Oxford, OUP, 1960, 6; Caroline Taggart, The Book of London Place Names, London, Ebury Press, 2012, 87; On the street’s proximity to St Mary-le-Strand: C. B. Mortlock and Donald Maxwell, with a foreword by the Bishop of London, Famous London Churches, London: Skeffington & Son Ltd, 1934, 93. 9 Tames, The London we have Lost, 97. 10 ‘Aldwych and The Strand,’ Letters to the Editor, The Times, 28 Dec. 1905, 9; ‘Strand Improvement’, Builder, vol. 88, no. 323, 21 Jan. 1905, 56. 11 The Royal Academy was gone from the Strand by 1837, when it settled for a time in what is now the National Gallery, before a permanent home for it was established at Burlington House. David H. Solkin (ed.), Art on the Line, the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780–1836, New Haven, CT; London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Courtauld Institute Gallery by YUP, 2001. 12 Somerset House Trust, ‘Somerset House History’ (2016), website cited from L. M. Bates, Somerset House, Four Hundred Years, London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1967. 13 ‘The Proposed Great Building in the Strand, London’, Australian Town and Country Journal, 11 Jan. 1902, 26. ‘The American Invasion of London’, The Times, 20 Nov. 1901, 8. Moreton Frewen, ‘The Proposed Strand Building’, The Times, 30 Nov. 1901, 9.

Chapter Four: The Commonwealth of Australia 1 R. E. N. Twopenny, Town Life in Australia, London: Elliott Stock, 1883, 2. 2 Warren Perry, Captain Sir Robert Henry Muirhead Collins (1852–1927) First Permanent Head of the Australian Department of Defence, 1901–10 (1963, revised and

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3 4 5

6

7

8

9

10

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enlarged 1999), 22–4, SLV MS13774 Box 4059/5; ‘Commonwealth London Office’, SMH, 9 Mar. 1906, 7. ‘Commonwealth in London’, Argus, 9 Mar. 1906, 4. ‘Federal Affairs’, Advertiser, 7 Mar. 1906, 8. Table Talk, 8 Mar. 1906, 7–8. ‘Baling out the Bay’, Punch, 15 Mar. 1906, 6. Collins regularly sent to the Military Board in Melbourne the latest scientific and military literature: ‘The Military Forces’, Advertiser, 4 Dec. 1906, 17. Chris Cunneen and Ann G. Smith, ‘Collins, Sir Robert Henry Muirhead (1852–1927)’, ADB. A Federal Council of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania existed from 1885, but was without power. In 1891, a Federal Convention held in Sydney agreed upon a constitution to be recommended for the proposed Commonwealth. The 1891 draft went through several iterations, most notably 1897, before its acceptance in 1899–1900. Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, Proceedings at the Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, and others interested in the building of the Federal Capital of Australia, held in Melbourne in May, 1901, Melbourne: J.C. Stephens, Printer, 1901. A Royal Commission on sites followed: Commonwealth of Australia, Royal Commission on Sites for the Seat of Government of the Commonwealth, Report of the Commissioners with Appendices and Plans, Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Govt. Printer, 1903. Collins was appointed on a salary of £900 a year. ‘Department of Defence’, The Year Book of Australia for 1908, London; Sydney, Gordon& Gotch, 1908, 354; Commonwealth of Australia, Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, 1909, no. 2, 1087, 1082. Victoria was the only State with a sizeable Department of Defence, with a staff of 185 consequently Victorians staffed the new central office. Gerald E. Caiden, Career Service, An Introduction to the History of Personnel Administration in the Commonwealth Public Service of Australia 1901–1961, MUP, 1965, 57. Defence cost £1,035,795 in 1906–7; its costs were about half that of the largest expenditure which was that of the Postmaster-General, but roughly double the expenditure of £634,328 on Trade and Customs. See ‘Cost of Commonwealth Departments, etc., 1901–2 to 1906–7, YB, no. 1, 1908, 653. The first colonial High Commissionership established in London was the Canadian High Commission. Established in 1880, it gave example to the other British Dominions of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Example is given of a debate in the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1885, in which one speaker opposed the continuation of the office of the Agent-General for Tasmania, as with Federation all the colonies would be represented by one ambassador: Examiner (Launceston), 31 Oct. 1885, cited by J. R. Thompson, The Australian High Commission in London, Its Origins and Early History 1901–1916, M.A. Thesis, Australian National University, 1972, 13. Thompson gives further example, including advocacy for a High Commissioner by the Press in Australia: 15–18. Collins remained Secretary of the Department of Defence to 1910, with Brigadier General Sir Samuel Pethbridge acting as Secretary (1906–10). Close connection between the Commonwealth Department of Defence and the High Commission for Australia in London existed from the start. The third and fourth Departmental Secretaries both served as Official Secretary of the High Commission: Thomas Trumble, CMG, CBE (1872–1954) was acting Secretary of the Department of Defence during World War I, and its Secretary (1918–27), before serving as Official Secretary to the High Commission in London (1927–1931), then was briefly

Notes – Chapter Four: The Commonwealth of Australia Australian Defence Liaison Officer in London (to 1932). Malcolm Shepherd, CMG, ISO (1873–1960) served as Official Secretary of the Commonwealth of Australia in London (1921–1927), then as Secretary of the Department of Defence (1927–37). 11 ‘Federal Gallery Gossip’, Freeman’s Journal, 23 Sept. 1905, 20; Argus, 21 May 1906, See Despatches Governor General’s 1906, Jan. to June C.O. 418/44. Cited by Thompson, The Australian High Commission, 48. 12 Thompson, The Australian High Commission, 51. On Collins’s appointment see pp. 100–3. 13 ‘Topics of the week’, Australasian, 3 Mar. 1906, 36. 14 ‘Baling out the Bay’, Punch, 15 Mar. 1906, 6. At the time everyone had an opinion on Defence, as H. G. Turner stresses: Henry Gyles Turner, The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth, A Chronicle of Contemporary Politics, 1901–1910, Melbourne: Mason Firth & McCutcheon, 1911, 6. 15 Perry, Captain Sir Robert Henry Muirhead Collins, 20. 16 Hon. J. W. Hackett, ‘Australia, Social and Economic Conditions’, Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 55, no. 2842, 23 Nov. 1906, 671. Winthrop Hackett (1848–1916) was a member of the West Australian Legislative Council. A journalist, he edited, later owned, the West Australian newspaper. 17 Barton to Alfred Deakin, 13 July 1905, Deakin Papers MS1540/486 NLA cited by Thompson, The Australian High Commission, 28. 18 Walter Murdoch, Alfred Deakin, A Sketch, London: Constable, 1923, 247. The Australian Labor Party was federally spelt Labour prior to 1912; for sake of clarity its modern spelling has been followed here. The Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the early 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. 19 Deakin Papers NLA 1540/15/1205–7. 20 J. A. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin, A Biography, vol. 1, Melbourne, MUP, 1965, 223. 21 Commonwealth of Australia, Minutes of evidence taken before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the proposed sites for a federal capital, Melbourne: Robt. S. Brian, Govt. Printer for the State of Victoria, 1903; Statistical Department, Board of Trade. Statistical abstract for the several British oversea dominions and protectorates in each year from 1903 to 1917. 54th number, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, 1920. 22 At an 1897 rally in support of Federation, noted in: Martha Rutledge, ‘Barton, Sir Edmund (Toby) (1849–1920)’, ADB. In 1903 the Commonwealth Public Service Act was enacted in Melbourne to prevent promotion or appointment by political privilege. 23 Alan Jenkins, ‘The London Dissector’ in Ford, London, A History in Verse, 693. 24 ‘Gaiety Theatre’, The Times, 27 Oct. 1903, 6. The musical comedy, The Orchid, ran for 559 performances at the Gaiety. It was one of the longest running plays in London (and New York, where it was staged on Broadway). 25 Bridges-Webb, Charles. ‘Charles Webb, an early Melbourne Architect 1821–1898’, SLV MS8734. Melbourne’s Grand Hotel was perhaps the grandest of Australia’s nineteenth century luxury hotels and is today’s Windsor Hotel. J. Willis, ‘Charles Webb’ in Philip Goad and Julie Willis, The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, CUP, 2012, 757. 26 The Australian Building was designed by John Beswicke (1847–1925) in association with the architects Oakden Addison & Kemp, for the Australian Property & Investment Company. Tasmanian-born Percy Oakden (1845–1917), in continuous practice in Victoria for almost fifty years, took into partnership in 1884 newly arrived English architects Welsh-born G.H.M. Addison (1857–1922), who studied

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Capital Designs at the Royal Academy, and Lancashire-born Henry Hardie Kemp (1859–1946), who attended the Royal Academy while working in the offices of R. W. Edis (1839–1927). With 12 storeys plus basement, and standing 150 feet (45.7 m) high, the building was the tallest in Australia. It remained the highest in Melbourne until c.1929. It was demolished in 1980. Miles Lewis, ‘John Beswicke’ in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, CUP, 2012, 81. Paul Hogben, ‘Tall Buildings’, in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, CUP, 2012, 678. 27 Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, vol. 3 Nation, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2014, 105. 28 Mary Florence Sugden, Edward H. Sugden, Melbourne, 1941, 22 cited in Geoffrey Serle, The rush to be rich, a history of the colony of Victoria 1883–1889, Carlton, MUP, 1971, 272. Edward Holdsworth Sugden (1854–1935) arrived as master of the new Queens College at the University of Melbourne where he played an influential role for forty years. Edward Dowling, Australia and America in 1892, A Contrast, Sydney, Charles Potter Government Printer by authority of the New South Wales Commissioners for the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, 61, 69. 29 Percy F. Rowland, The new nation: a sketch of the social, political and economic conditions and prospects of the Australian Commonwealth, London: Smith, Elder, 1903, 64–5. 30 Rowland, The new nation, 262. Cable-driven trams operated in Melbourne from Nov. 1885. The first electric tram in the southern hemisphere ran in Melbourne from Oct. 1889. 31 Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, The web of empire, a diary of the imperial tour of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall & York in 1901, London: Macmillan, 1903, 187, 121; S. Morison and others, The History of The Times, vol. 3, The Twentieth Century test 1884–1912, London, The Times, 1947, 116. 32 James Belich, Replenishing the earth, The settler revolution and the rise of the Angloworld 1783–1939, New York: OUP, 2009, 2. 33 Wallace, The web of empire, 136. Mackenzie Wallace thought that Flemington racecourse could not be surpassed. 34 Ibid., 126. For the history of the building and the exhibition see David Dunstan with contributions by Mimi Coghlan et al., Victorian icon: The Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, Kew, Vic.: The Exhibition Trustees in association with Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1996. 35 Collins was a Municipal Reform Party member of the London County Council in 1907. His brother lived in Queensland. Telegraph, 29 Mar. 1909, 9 36 ‘Melbourne’, Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 17, Lord Chamberlain to Mecklenburg, 11th edn., New York, Encyclopedia Britannica, 90–1. 37 The Garden City Association (formed in 1899) became the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association in 1909. It advocated for town planning in Britain and fought for planning legislation and the establishment of town planning as a profession in Britain. 38 Charles C. Reade, ‘Town Planning in Australasia: Problems and Progress in the Far Pacific’, Town Planning Review, vol. 3, no. 1, Apr. 1912, 5. 39 Ibid., 4–5. 40 Ibid., 6.

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Notes – Chapter Five: ‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’

Chapter Five: ‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’ 1 King O’Malley, Coolgardie Miner (WA), 23 January 1897, 5. 2 ‘Queenstown News’, Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette (Queenstown, Tas.), 18 Jan. 1901, 2. Voters in north-western Tasmania elected King O’Malley to the Tasmanian seat of Darwin in the House of Representatives of the first Federal Parliament. He was returned to the Federal Parliament in subsequent elections, easily regaining his seat in the third election in 1906. He first stood as an independent (as he had done in South Australia, where he was an Independent member of the House of Assembly (1896–99). 3 Cited by Norman Cowper, ‘Sir Galahad, the Dauntless Imp, and Others (Personalities in the First Twenty-Five Years of Federal Politics)’, Australian Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2, June, 1951, 37. George Cockerill (1871–1943) considered O’Malley the most theatrical gentleman seen in Australia: George Cockerill with an introduction by W. M. Hughes, Scribblers and Statesmen, Melbourne: J.R. Stevens Printer, 1943, 113. 4 Dorothy Catts (with an introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman Sydney, Publicity Press 1938, 213. 5 Ibid., 82. This was the view of a Labor Party parliamentary colleague journalist Ernest Carr (1875–1956), in office from 1906 to 1917. 6 Ibid., 113. 7 Ibid., 72. 8 O’Malley was the last survivor of the first Federal Parliament, an achievement that was attributed on his death in 1953, at the age of 99, as due perhaps to his aversion to alcohol. 9 To counter objections, O’Malley provided an affidavit that he was born in Stamford Farm, Canada: Letter to E. W. Turner, Divisional Returning Officer, Division of Darwin, Tasmania, 18 Jan. 1914, Papers of Arthur R Hoyle MS5519/1, NLA. On O’Malley’s birth and origins, possibly in Kansas: A. R. Hoyle, King O’Malley, ‘the American bounder’, South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981, 3–6; Arthur Hoyle, ‘O’Malley, King (1858–1953), ADB. Later, O’Malley was regarded as Canada’s colourful contribution to Australian politics. 10 For example: ‘Personal Gossip’, Critic (Adelaide), 11 May 1901, 14. 11 Cowper, ‘Sir Galahad’, 37. 12 Untitled newspaper cutting, c.1886–7, 18, NLA MS5519/1. 13 ‘News in Brief ’, The Times, 3 July 1953, 5. O’Malley was widowed at the age of twenty-eight, when his wife died of tuberculosis. Catts, King O’Malley, 24. Hoyle, King O’Malley, ‘the American bounder’, 23. Also, A. R. Hoyle, King O’Malley, NLA MS5519. 14 Catts, King O’Malley, 82. 15 ‘Australian Parliament: The Week’s Work’, Worker (Wagga Wagga), 16 Aug. 1906, 5. Naval and military defence was one of the departments of the public service in each State that the Commonwealth took over (along with posts, lighthouses and quarantine). In part, concerns held by the Australian colonies about defending the continent led to their federating; on this see ch. 16. A consolidated Defence Act was discussed from the start of the first Parliament. For details of the discussion: Sir John Forrest, Speech on moving the second reading of the Defence Bill in the House of Representatives on 16th July 1903, Melbourne: Robt. S. Brain, Government Printer, 1903; In 1904 the Commonwealth Defence Act came into force, providing

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Capital Designs for conscription of men between 18 and 60 in time of war for service within the Commonwealth or territory controlled by the Commonwealth; Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 7 Aug. 1906, HH. In 1906, Labour Party member William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes moved that compulsory military and naval drill be introduced: ‘The Federal Parliament. House of Representatives’, Geelong Advertiser, 10 Aug. 1906, 4. The Defence Act 1909 introduced compulsory military training for home defence. Service outside Australia was by voluntary recruitment. 16 This is given as it was reported: ‘Political Notes’, Western Star and Roma Advertiser (Toowoomba, Qld), 15 Aug. 1906, 3. In fact, expenditure of the Department of Defence for 1906–7 totalled over £1 million of which over £535,000 was spent on Military Forces (excluding Naval Forces). This amounted to just over six shillings per inhabitant, just over the amount spent by Canada of four shillings per inhabitant and compared to Britain’s defence expenditure of 27 shillings per inhabitant. ‘Expenditure on Defence’, Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia containing authoritative statistics for the period 1901–1907, no. 1, 1908, Melbourne: McCarron, Bird & Co, 1908, 893–4. 17 Catts, King O’Malley, 140. 18 Ibid., 165. 19 Turner, The First decade of the Australian Commonwealth, 356. From Rockhampton, where he arrived in Australia in about 1890, O’Malley walked over two thousand miles to Adelaide, where he began his political career in 1896. For a view of how the new culture of professionalism dominated the late nineteenth century see Sarah Lyons Watts, Order Against Chaos: Business Culture and Labor Ideology in America, 1880–1915. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, 15–19. 20 ‘The Final Word’, Evening News, 11 Dec. 1906, 6. Senators and members of the House of Representatives received an allowance of £400 a year. From July 1907 this was increased to £600. G. H. Knibbs, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901–1907, no. 1, 1908, Melbourne, McCarron, Bird & Co Printers, 1908, 654. 21 In an election speech delivered by Alfred Deakin at Ballarat, 29 Oct. 1903: Museum of Australian Democracy, Australian Federal Election Speeches, http:// electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1903-alfred-deakin. 22 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, 101. Henry Gyles Turner (1831–1920) referred to them particularly during the parliamentary session of 1905. 23 Deakin, Museum of Australian Democracy. 24 Ibid. 25 ‘Attendance of Members’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (Tas.), 1 Oct. 1906, 2; ‘Parliamentary Attendances’, Daily Telegraph, 19 Oct. 1906, 4. 26 Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 12 Sept. 1905, HH. 27 In Sept. 1906, the West Australian Parliament proposed holding a referendum to withdraw from the Commonwealth. 28 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, 8 Aug. 1906, HH. 29 Catts, King O’Malley, 155. 30 A. Deakin on Federation, 16 Mar. 1898 from J. E. Menadue, A Centenary History of the Australian Natives’ Association, Melbourne: Horticultural Press, 1971, 244. 31 Year Book of Australia, 1904, 750. They sought to develop a strong sense of ‘nationality’. Arguably they were familiar with John Stuart Mill’s contention that a ‘community of recollections’ was needed to develop this. ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, in Mill, On Liberty, and Other Essays, (ed.) John Gray,

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Notes – Chapter Five: ‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’ Oxford: OUP, 1991, 427. The average median age of people in Australia in the 1901 ‘Federation’ Census was 22 years. 32 Australian Natives’ Association, Constitution of the Australian Natives’ Association of New South Wales containing Rules and Regulations for the Government of Council of Representatives, Board of Directors, and subordinate branches, Sydney: Harris & Son Printers, 1902, 5. in 1901 the ANA urged government to ban the sale of cigarettes to children. For its monthly journal see The Australian Natives’ Association, Australian Native (Ballarat). 33 Australian Natives’ Association, A History of the Australian Natives’ Association 1871– 1921, Melbourne: The Association, 1921, 12. 34 Moved 19 July 1901. ‘Question, Federal Capital Site’, 19 July 1901, Hansard, Parliament of Australia, website; also, Catts, King O’Malley, 260; ‘Mr. King O’Malley’, The Times, 21 Dec. 1953, 8. Section 125 of the Constitution stipulated that the seat of government shall be on territory which ‘shall belong to the Commonwealth’. Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law, Melbourne, MUP, 1956, 26. ‘Nationalization of the Federal Territory’ was a principal national question under discussion by the Australian Natives’ Association: The Year Book of Australia for 1907, London: Gordon & Gotch, 1907, 726. Federal parliament chose Canberra as the site for the federal capital in Nov. 1908. As Minister for Home Affairs (1910–13, and again in 1915–16), O’Malley called for and received designs for the new capital. 35 Since the first meeting of the Federal Parliament, O’Malley had a motion on the notice-paper relating to the question of the federal capital. ‘Seat of Government Bill’, 8 Oct. 1903, Hansard, Parliament of Australia, website. 36 ‘Question, Federal Capital Site’, 19 July 1901, Hansard, Parliament of Australia, website. 37 Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, Proceedings at the Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, and others interested in the building of the Federal Capital of Australia, held in Melbourne in May, 1901, Melbourne: J.C. Stephens, Printer, 1901, 10, 22. 38 ‘Advertising’, Zeehan and Dundas Herald (Tas.), 2 Nov. 1903, 2. ‘King O’Malley, The King of Those Days and This, from 1901 to 1916, a remarkable speech (Hobart, 1916)’, Daily Post (Hobart), 3 Feb. 1916, 3. 39 Michael J. Bednar, L’Enfant’s Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 15. 40 Merchant builder is the term commonly used to designate a person or company who purchases a parcel of raw land and turns it into a group of houses for sale: Ned Eichler, The Merchant Builders, Cambridge, Mass, The MIT Press, 1982, xiii. 41 Catts, King O’Malley, 24; 27–8. Catts knew O’Malley well; she observed that he was interested in town-planning. In Melbourne, O’Malley’s investments in inner-city workmen’s cottages enabled his estate to endow over £70,000 in scholarships: Arthur Hoyle, ‘O’Malley, King (1858–1953)’, ADB. 42 Republican Senator James McMillan of Michigan (1838–1902), chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, sponsored the passage of a Senate resolution to study the entire park system of the District of Columbia. A United States Senate subcommittee formed an expert group which was made up of Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham; Boston landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.; and New York architect Charles F. McKim. In Australia, it was asked whether Australia could hope for so much: ‘The Federal Capital’, Mercury, 19 Aug.

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59 60

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1903, 7. On the MacMillan Plan: Sue Kohler and Pamela Scott (eds.), Designing the Nation’s Capital: The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2006, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/ ncr/designing-capital/sec1.html; Nathan Glazer and Cynthia R. Fields, The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Overviews of Washington and its development include Bednar, L’Enfant’s Legacy; John W. Reps, Monumental Washington, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Archibald R. Colquhoun (ed.), United Empire, The Royal Colonial Institute Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 1910, 1910–14. The transfer of those debts extant on the eve of Federation was permitted by Clause 105 of the Australian Constitution. By way of example see ‘Federal Parliament’, North Western advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 10 Aug. 1906, 2. Andrew Dilley, ‘T. A. Coghlan, London Opinion and the Politics of AngloAustralian Finance, 1905–09’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 41, no. 1, 2013, 37–58, see p. 47. Canada had the High Commissioner’s office in London and the Commissioner General’s office in Paris. No other Canadian diplomatic offices were opened until 1939. ‘Commonwealth Legislation’, North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 28 Aug. 1903, 2; Zeehan and Dundas Herald, 2 Nov. 1903, 2. ‘Adjournment, Federal Capital Sites’, 21 Feb. 1901, Hansard, Parliament of Australia, website. The total debt of Australia to British investors was £82. 8s. per inhabitant. Letter, King O’Malley to President Roosevelt, 6 Dec. 1937, NLA MS 460/4475. O’Malley is credited by some as the man to whom the establishment of Australia’s Commonwealth Bank was principally due. It was established by the first Labor Government in late 1911. ‘Federal Politics’, Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1906, 3; Catts, King O’Malley, 20. J. Ellis Barker, Drifting, London: Grant Richards, 1901, 181. Commonwealth of Australia, Speech by King O’Malley on the Budget, Melbourne, J. Kemp Acting Government Printer, 1906, 5. Also Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 8 Aug. 1906, HH. O’Malley addressed the House frequently about Commonwealth representation in London. Catts, King O’Malley, 217. O’Malley held the view that Parliament should elect the High Commissioner: Parliament of Australia, website. Catts, King O’Malley, 128. Deakin was delivering a policy speech: ‘The Federal Elections’, Advertiser, 31 Oct. 1903, 7. On 20 Feb. 1906, Deakin informed the Governor General that it had been decided to establish a Commonwealth Office in London to deal with remittances on behalf of the Commonwealth and to supervise the expenditure in connection with Defence stores intended for Australia. He advised the Governor-General that Captain Robert (later Sir) Muirhead Collins had been selected to take charge of the new office. Collins arrived in London in April 1906. Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, Budget in Committee of Supply, Speech 8 Aug. 1906, 4–5, HH. Ibid. Ibid. George Rae, The Country Banker, His Clients, Cares, and Work from An Experience of

Notes – Chapter Five: ‘The Pride of the Commonwealth’ Forty Years, London, Routledge (1885)/1999, 172. 61 Fire destroyed the first Equitable Life Building in Jan. 1912. Sarah Bradford Landau and Carl W. Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865–1913, New Haven and London: YUP, 1996, 68; Lois Severini, The Architecture of Finance: Early Wall Street, Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983, 52–53, 55, 58, 81–4. 62 Shepherd B. Clough, A History of American Life Insurance, New York, 1946, 168. Kenneth Turney Gibbs, Business Architectural Imagery in America, 1870–1930, Ann Arbor, Mich., UMI Research Press, (1976)/1984, 39; Quotation from Shepherd B. Clough, A History of American Life Insurance, New York, 1946, cited in Gibbs, Business Architectural Imagery, 28, and sourced from ‘Equitable Building’, Landmarks Preservation Commission, New York, http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/ downloads/pdf/reports/equitable.pdf. 63 Commonwealth of Australia. Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1904, xxvii. There was a high uptake of life insurance in Australia, where the market was very competitive. The Australian Mutual Provident Society was the largest life insurance company in the British Empire. In 1893 thirteen offices transacted life insurance in NSW alone, of which three had their head offices in the United States. Edward Dowling, Australia and America in 1892, A Contrast, Sydney, Charles Potter Government Printer by authority of the New South Wales Commissioners for the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, 39, 79. Dowling estimated in 1893 that the average number of life insurance policies in Australia was sixty-five per 1,000 of population, against twenty-five each in Canada and the United States. Edward Dowling (1843–1912) was Honorary Secretary of the A.N.A. and Secretary to the Board of Technical Education, NSW. 64 Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 8 Aug. 1906. 65 Catts, King O’Malley, 155. 66 H. Gordon Skilling, Canadian Representation Abroad, From Agency to Embassy, Toronto, Revision Press, 1945, 95. 67 T. A. Coghlan to A. Deakin, 27 July 1906, NLA MS 6335/13/172–73. Coghlan was appointed on 4 April 1906 and went to London immediately. 68 Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 8 Aug. 1906. 69 Catts, King O’Malley, 140. 70 Taintor’s Guide Books, The City of New York: A Complete Guide, New York, Taintor Brothers & Co, 1888, 16 71 City Hall remained the tallest building in Philadelphia until 1987, with the erection of Helmut Jahn’s 61-story 945-foot (288 m) skyscraper called One Liberty Place. 72 ‘Women’s Gossip’, Goulburn Herald (NSW), 11 Mar. 1892, 6. However by 1904 more than being known for having features like the world’s longest staircase, to Australian newspapers it became a symbol of municipal corruption. ‘Philadelphia, the world’s most corrupt city’, Daily Telegraph, 9 Apr. 1904, 8. Goulburn is a regional centre in NSW, 195 km (121 miles) south-west of Sydney. 73 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, vol. 18, p. 947; Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, vol. 19, 1296 cited by Sawer, Australian Federal Politics, 53; Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, vol. 26, 1439, 1986. Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, House of Representatives 1906 (3), 1037. 74 Catts, King O’Malley, 20. O’Malley never thought that the building was not to be regarded as an investment.

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Chapter Six: Representation in London 1 The Right Hon. Sir George Reid, K.C.M.G., ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Australia’, United Empire, vol. 11 no. 7, July 1911, 466. 2 Gustave Doré, Blanchard Jerrold, London, A Pilgrimage, London: Grant, 1872. I am indebted to Richard Dennis for detail on Victoria St: Richard Dennis, ‘Victoria Street in theory and practice: scenes from the governmentality of nineteenth century London’ in Mathew Davies and James A. Galloway (eds.), London and beyond, Essays in honour of Derek Keene, London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012, 287–316; Richard Dennis, ‘Babylonian Flats’ in Victorian and Edwardian London, London Journal, vol. 33, no. 3, Nov. 2008, 233–47. 3 Arthur Henry Beavan, Imperial London, London, 1901, 101. Beavan (1844– 1907) was well-known for his book Tube, Train, Tram and Car, or up-to-date locomotion (1903), a popular account of the state of the development of electrified transportation in the United Kingdom. 4 ‘The Week in London, an Australian’s Notes, a Great Question’, SMH, 28 Nov. 1911, 4. 5 G. H. Knibbs, Official year book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901–1907, no. 1, 1908, Melbourne, McCarrron, Bird & Co. Printers, 1908, 654. 6 Beavan, Imperial London, 102. Australian newspaper reports commonly confirmed Beavan’s description; for example: SMH, 22 Nov. 1910, 10. 7 The Year Book of Australia, London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.; Sydney: Year-Book of Australia and Publishing Co., 1904, 765. Western Australia was singled out for erecting particularly sizable buildings. 8 ‘The Agent-General’s Offices’, Northern Miner, 13 Feb. 1901, 4. 9 ‘Victorian Butter Scandal’, West Australian, 3 Dec. 1904, 7. Property damage was not uncommon. During demolition for construction of the Ritz Hotel, a sheet of flame one hundred feet high and a block wide burnt for a day, and threatened buildings nearby, before firemen could extinguish it. Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London: Times Books 1976, 16. The Italian Consulate at Eaton Place, Belgravia, was wrecked by a gas explosion in 1981. Bryan Mansell, The Living heritage of Westminster: Celebrating 400 years of architectural development in the City of Westminster, London, Westminster City Council and Westminster Chamber of Commerce, 1984, 53. 10 ‘Almost every day, in every newspaper in England,’ The Times, 8 Apr. 1899, 11.  11 John Burns, M.P., ‘London the Cinderella of the Cities’, Pall Mall Magazine, vol. 36, no. 150, Oct. 1905, 403 cited by Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall, 14. 12 ‘The Modern Office Building’, Builder, vol. 91, no. 3318, 8 Sept. 1906, 297: this opinion follows mention in the journal of a paper describing the role of engineers and hydraulicians in large American office buildings, written by Philadelphia-based civil engineer, Charles Gobrecht Darrach (1846–1927), whose work largely focused on transportation. 13 W. B. Tappin, ‘Notes on Foreign Travel’, Paper read at the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) General meeting on 26 July 1904, RVIA Journal of Proceedings, Sept. 1904, 108. William Britain Tappin (1890–1905) was a partner of the prominent Melbourne-based architectural firm Reed, Smart and Tappin (from 1889). The firm was initially established in 1853 by Joseph Reed (1823–90) (who in 1856 became the first elected member of the Victorian Institute of Architects).

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Notes – Chapter Six: Representation in London It is Australia’s second oldest architectural firm; it is known today as Bates, Smart. The practice is reputedly one of the oldest continually operating in the world. See Bill McMahon, The Architecture of East Australia, Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges, 2001, 166. 14 Clive Turnbull, The old CML Building, 316 Collins Street, Melbourne, Melbourne: Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society, 1960, 7. Turnbull speaks of the building having the fastest elevators in Melbourne. Jason Goodwin, Otis, Giving rise to the modern city, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001, 89. The building was demolished in 1960. 15 Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, The Web of Empire, a diary of the imperial tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901, London: Macmillan & Co., 1902, 210–11. 16 J. H. M. Abbott, An outlander in England, being some impressions of an Australian abroad, London: Methuen, 1905, 50. John Henry (Macartney) Abbott (1874–1953) was a Boer War veteran. He returned to Australia in about 1909, where he continued writing. He regularly published in the Bulletin and Lone Hand. 17 Abbott, An outlander in England, 120–1. 18 The Year Book of Australia for 1905, London, The British Australasian Consolidated Publishing Co. Ltd, 63. The reverse migration was mainly inter-state. 19 Eric Richards, Destination Australia, Migration to Australia since 1901, Sydney, UNSW Press, 2008, 33. 20 Notice of this was relayed to Timothy Coghlan, Chairman of Committee of Australian Agents General: Deakin to Coghlan, 18 Apr. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919, AH/D4. 21 R. M. Collins to A. Deakin, 29 June 1906; also 15 Aug. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 22 This was seen in the affair of the Vondel, a Dutch ship whose crew deserted in Adelaide in 1901. The South Australian government considered that inquiries made by the Dutch government over the crew should have been made direct to South Australia through its Governor, rather than to the government in the United Kingdom which directed the matter to the Governor-General of the Commonwealth and Deakin as Minister for External Affairs. The affair highlighted that Australia was now one country (for all purposes of external relations, as Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, held). 23 ‘We publish to-day a statement from the Times’, The Times, 10 Oct. 1905, 9. 24 For example, ‘Australia’, The Times, 19 May 1905, 5.  25 ‘New South Wales’, The Times, 4 Feb. 1905, 5. Coghlan’s temporary appointment continued until 1915; he was knighted in 1914. He was reappointed, again on a temporary basis, in 1916–1917, and for a third time in 1920–25. He died at the age of 68 in London in Apr. 1926. For a view of Coghlan: ‘A Lover of Figures’, Times of India, 10 May 1915, 5. As a statistician, Coghlan pioneered the use of macro data: B. Haig, ‘Sir Timothy Coghlan and the development of national accounts’, History of Political Economy, 38(2) 2006, 339–75. 26 Chris Cuneen, ‘Jersey, seventh Earl of (1845–1915)’, ADB. 27 Victor Child-Villiers was eminently connected. Grandson of Sir Robert Peel, he had been Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria from 1875 to 1877. Lord Rosebery appointed Jersey as Her Majesty’s Government’s representative at the Intercolonial Conference, Ottawa, 1894; Lord Salisbury appointed him Paymaster-General in his government in 1899. H. Gordon Selfridge, The Romance of Commerce, 2nd edn., London, John Lane, (1918)/1923, 308.

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Capital Designs 28 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 23 Nov. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 29 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 7 Dec. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/ D4, p. 2. Rent on the entire building, which Coghlan recommended, was £2,200 per annum. At the time Collins favoured Whitehall House facing Charing Cross (designed by architects Treadwell and Martin). Whitehall House is illustrated in Alex. Koch (ed.) Academy Architecture, London, Academy Architecture, vol. 27, 1905, 31 (plate no. 1573). This journal was issued in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide via the preeminent bookseller George Robertson & Company. Collins was also looking at Cunard’s Offices on Waterloo Place, a Crown property that Cunard would vacate in 1907 when their new premises near Trafalgar Square were completed. Collins to Hunt, 15 Aug. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 30 Richard Barras, Building Cycles, Growth and Instability, London, Wiley Blackwell, 2009, 204. 31 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 9 Nov. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 32 T. A. Coghlan to A. Deakin, 20 July 1906, 4; also, T. A. Coghlan to R. M. Collins, 31 July 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 33 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 14 Dec. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 34 ‘High Rents in Piccadilly, Single Room on Cornhill Commands Upward of $10,000 a Year. London Mall’, Washington Post, 16 Sept. 1905, 9. 35 R. M. Collins to A. Deakin, 29 June 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4, p. 1. 36 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 3 Aug. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 37 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 17 Aug. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/ D4, p. 1. 38 ‘Science Applied to Building’, ILN, 11 Mar. 1905, 353. 39 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 3 Aug. 1906, p. 2. Oceanic House was built as the headquarters of the International Mercantile Marine Company. 40 ‘The Hamburg-Amerika Line Building London’, Architectural Review, vol. 24, no. 142, Sept. 1908, 127–35. Apart from the ground floor and basement shipping office, the seven-storey building was largely let out to tenants. The building is the presentday Embassy of Brazil. 41 This was paid for widening Piccadilly near St James St.: Australian Town and Country Journal, 11 July 1906, 21; London Improvements, Burrowa News, 20 Oct. 1905, 1. 42 Hampton & Sons to R. M. Collins, 23 Jan. 1907; 12 Apr. 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. The Criterion was located at 218–223 Piccadilly. Sir John Betjeman, Letter to The Times, 1 May 1972, cited in SWAG (Save Westminster Action Group), The Criterion Buildings 1874–1884, London, SWAG, 1974, in Verity, Thomas Biography File, RIBA; R. Phené Spiers, ‘Obituary Notices, Thomas Verity’, JRIBA, 28 May 1891, 324. Verity was later employed to build the Gaiety Restaurant for promoters Messrs. Spiers & Pond, and in 1878 was appointed Surveyor of Theatres to the Lord Chamberlain. 43 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 17 Aug. 1906, p. 2. 44 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 14 Dec. 1906, p. 3. 45 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 9 Nov. 1906, p. 3, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. The Press reported the Victorian Agent-General John Taverner’s selection of a plot opposite St Clement Danes Church to accommodate both Victoria’s Agent General and Australia’s High Commissioner: ‘Proposed Australia House, Mr Taverner’s Scheme’, Argus, 5 Oct. 1904, 4. 46 ‘Australia in London’, Register, 18 Dec. 1906, 6; ‘Australia in London: Suggested Central Office’, Argus, 18 Dec. 1906, 7; ‘Australia in London, Statement by Mr. Deakin’, Argus, 19 Dec. 1906, 6.

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Notes – Chapter Seven: ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ 47 T. Coghlan to A. Deakin, D.P. MS1540/1261 and see also 6 Apr. 1906 D.P. MS1540/1250 NLA. Also, Neville Hicks, ‘Coghlan, Sir Timothy Augustine (1855– 1926)’, ADB. 48 A. Deakin to T. A. Coghlan, 10 Sept. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/ D4. 49 A. H. Charteris, Australian Immigration Policy, no. 235, International Conciliation, Worcester, Mass.; New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Intercourse and Education, 1927, 534. 50 Some papers reported it as costing £150,000 to erect, others at £160,000. ‘Federal London Offices’, Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 20 Dec. 1906; ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Advertiser, 19 Dec. 1906, 7. 51 For an example of the bitter feeling between the State and Federal governments see ‘Relations between States and Commonwealth’, Brisbane Courier, 19 Dec. 1906, 4. Allegations against Collins in Melbourne: Argus, 18 Dec. 1906, 7. 52 ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Advertiser, 19 Dec. 1906, 7. 53 ‘Commonwealth Office in London’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 20 Dec. 1906, 5.

Chapter Seven: ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ 1 John Belcher quoted from ‘International Congress of Architects’, British Architect, vol. 66, 20 July 1906, 40. 2 ‘The International Congress of Architects’, British Architect, vol. 65, 5 Jan. 1906, 3; On Cardiff’s Cathays Park see John B. Hilling, with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales KG, Cardiff and the Valleys, London: Lund Humphries, 1973, 145–50. 3 ‘The Contributor’, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 11 May 191, 11; For details about the timetable for the Congress and topics discussed: ‘International Congress of Architects’ (1906), British Architect, vol. 65, 15 June 1906, 418; Abstracts of papers at the congress were reported in subsequent issues of the British Architect. For example: ‘The execution of important government and municipal architecture by salaried officials’, British Architect, vol. 66, 20 July 1906, 42–53. For Results of Proceedings: ‘International Congress of Architects’, British Architect, vol. 66, 27 July 1906, 58–60. 4 Councillor Nettlefold, Aneurin Williams, Patrick Geddes (et. al.), Town planning in theory and practice, A report of a conference arranged by the Garden City Association, held at the Guildhall, London on October 25th, 1907, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of London, Papers and Speeches, London: The Garden City Association, 1908, 47. Sir Aston Webb (1849–1930) was future founding chairman of The London Society, inaugurated in 1912. 5 J. Ellis Barker, Drifting, On the State of England, London, Grant Richards, 1901, 191–2. 6 ‘The International Congress of Architects’, Builder, vol. 91, no. 3311, 21 July 1906, 75. The Conference ran from 16 to 21 July 1906. The guarantor of the congress was the RIBA. Full details of the Congress with addresses and papers given were published in the Builder: vol. 91, no. 3311, 21 July 1906, 73–100; vol. 91, no. 3312, 28 July 1906, 130–48. Details were also reported in ‘The Congress’, Building News and Engineering Journal, 20 July 1906, 69–76. 7 ‘International Congress of Architects’, British Architect, vol. 66, 20 July 1906, 40. ‘Seventh international congress of architects, London’, Architects Magazine, vol. 6, no. 63, Jan. 1906, 53. Also, London County Council Gazette, vol. 1, no. 1, 23 Oct. 1905, 1.

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Capital Designs 8 ‘Town Planning Conference’, The Times, 13 Oct. 1910, 5; ‘town planning, n.’, OED Online. OUP, 2016; ‘Government Publications Messrs. Wyman’, The Times, 30 Oct. 1906, 3. 9 ‘International Congress of Architects’, British Architect, vol. 66, 20 July 1906, 40. 10 ‘International Congress of Architects’, The Times, 17 July 1906, 8. Recently undertaken by Cass Gilbert were his plans for Washington University (1899), Minnesota State Capitol (from 1902), the University of Minnesota (1907–10), and designs for Oberlin College (from 1904) and the University of Texas (from 1909). They show the demand for the style among educational institutions in particular. 11 ‘International Congress of Architects’, The Times, 23 July 1906, 3. Tadema received the gold medal of the RIBA in 1906 in acknowledgement of his expertise in sculpture, architecture, and archaeological sites of the ancient classical world which he drew on for many of his paintings and designs for theatre. He was among the first twenty recipients of the Order of Merit (OM) instituted in June 1902 by King Edward VII to broaden the character of national reward beyond the political sphere and to recognize those who advanced Art, Literature, and Science. 12 ‘International Congress of Architects’, The Times, 2 Feb. 1905, 9; F. R. Hiorns, ‘William Edward Riley 1852–1937’, JRIBA, 24 Jan. 1938, vol. 45, no. 6, 317. 13 John B. Nadal, London’s Fire Stations, London: Jeremy Mills Publishing Limited, 2006, 105. 14 John Kenlon, Fires and Fire-Fighters, A History of Modern Fire-fighting with a review of its development from earliest ends, London: William Heinemann, 1914, 232, 236. 15 ‘London Traffic’, Builder, vol. 95, no. 3415, 18 July 1908, 59; The Royal Commission on London Traffic, called attention to the urgent need for action in London: Parliament, 1913 House of Commons Repts & Papers, 278. 16 W. K. Haselden and C. Harrison, Accidents will Happen or The Tribulations of Mr and Mrs Boffles under the Employer’s Liability Act 1907, London: David Nutt, Long Acre, 1907, 13; ‘What London wants done’, Architects Magazine, vol. 6, no. 61, Nov. 1905, 3. 17 ‘New London’, British Architect, vol. 66, 21 Dec. 1906, 431; The supplement featured 17 illustrations drawn by T. Raffles Davison (1853–1937). Davison was editor of the British Architect and Northern Engineer from 1878. The journal merged with the Builder in 1916, with which Davison acted in a consultative capacity. His contribution to the architectural profession was recognised in 1896, when he was made an Honorary Associate of the RIBA. Many of the principal architects of the time further honoured him in the 1927 publication to mark his retirement: Maurice E Webb and Herbert Wigglesworth (Foreword by Sir Aston Webb), Raffles Davison, Hon Associate of the RIBA, a record of his life and work from 1870 to 1926, London: RIBA, 1927. He too became active in the London Society. 18 The Architectural Vigilance Society to promote a more dignified and rational appearance to London’s built form was established in mid-Mar. 1903. It first met in the Conduit St. rooms of the Institute of Architects. Its chairman was Robert Windsor-Clive, first earl of Plymouth with H. Heathcote Statham its honorary secretary. ‘Trafalgar Square’, vol. 89, no. 3273, 28 Oct. 1905, 435; ‘Trafalgar Square Again’, vol. 89, no. 3274, 4 Nov. 1905, 464. 19 Windsor, et al., ‘The New Victoria Station Front’, The Times, 14 Jan. 1905, 8; W. B. Richmond, ‘London Architectural Vigilance Committee’, The Times, 23 Feb. 1903. 12. 20 For a depiction of the purpose-built works from the painting by Donald Maxwell (1877–1936): Sydney J. Holloway, Ancient and Modern building being some notes on

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21

22 23

24

25 26

27 28

29 30 31

the art and craft of the builder with special reference to the work of Holloway Brothers both in erection and restoration, Holloway Brothers (London) Ltd, 1924 (facing frontispiece); A map showing the location of Holloways’ yard on the river appears in Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall, 12 (fig. 3). ‘Holloway Bros.’ Photographed: ‘Works and Offices, Lambeth. Macdonald and Read, Architect’, British Architect, vol. 66, 27 July 1906, 59. London County Council, Laying of Foundation Stone of the New Hall by His Majesty The King, Accompanied by Her Majesty the Queen on Saturday 9th March 1912, Printed for the Council by Southwood Smith and Co Ltd, 9. The LCC reportedly paid £600,000 for the riverside site: ‘From Far and Near: Notes with Camera and Pen’, ILN, 5 May 1906, 632. ‘Holloway Bros.’ Works’, British Architect, vol. 66, 27 July 1906, 60–8. On the sophistication of Holloways’ yard see Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall, 13. ‘The New London: Great Buildings of the Present and the Future’, ILN, 1 Sept. 1906, n.p., the British Architect featured a series, ‘New London from characteristic modern buildings illustrated by T. Raffles Davison’, vol. 66, 21 Dec. 1906, in a supplement to this issue of the journal. On Ernest Augustus Runtz (1859–1913) see ‘Mr. E. A. Runtz, Obituary ‘, Builder, vol. 105, no. 3690, 24 Oct. 1913, 437–8; ‘Obituary’, JRIBA, vol. 21, 3rd series (1913–14), 29. From the autumn of 1909, Runtz practiced as Ernest Runtz and Son, Architects and Surveyors. On the Strand, he designed the Tivoli Restaurant and Buffet; and was responsible for the enlargement and alteration of the Adelphi Theatre which reopened as the Century Theatre in Sept. 1901. He was also known for notable premises like one with a facade of Pentelic marble which he designed on 36–38 Queen Anne’s Gate (c.1910) for the Anglo-American Oil Company (among the first to convey petroleum by sea in specially constructed tank steamers). ‘London County Council’, The Times, 17 Oct. 1900, 6. The Council sought expert advice on the designs, for which the Improvements Committee would pay £52 10s. ‘New Headquarters of Metropolitan Police’, ILN, 14 June 1890, 754; ‘New London’, British Architect, 14 Dec. 1906, 431; Shaw’s building, which allowed the Metropolitan Police to bring all branches together for the first time in its history, cost £300,000. R. Norman Shaw to the President of Council of the Royal Academy, 15 Nov. 1901, RAA/SEC/4/120/16. R. Norman Shaw to Sir Frederick A. Eaton, 6 Nov. 1902, RAA/SEC/4/120. Shaw’s retirement from the Royal Academy was announced in 1910: ‘Portraits and World’s News’, ILN, 8 Jan. 1910, 42; Ernest Newton, one of Shaw’s chief assistants, was made an Associate of the Royal Academy early in 1911: ‘Portraits & World’s News’, ILN, 4 Feb. 1911, 154. R. Norman Shaw to Sir Frederick A. Eaton, 6 Nov. 1902, RAA/SEC/4/120. Holborn to Strand – Vote of thanks to Mr R. Norman Shaw, R.A., 12 Nov. 1907, Report of the Improvements Committee, Item 32, p. 1026, Minutes of Proceedings, Nov.–Dec. 1907, London County Council, LMA. Elevation drawings by Runtz for a theatre for Hove (c.1905) show some similarities to London’s Gaiety including a trumpeted figure that resembles Binney’s Spirit of Gaiety, and similar coupled Ionic columns carrying an entablature and balustrade: New Theatre, Hove, Sussex, Ernest Runtz & Ford, Architects, London, E. Runtz & Ford, 1905; Gavin Stamp, Lost Victorian Britain, How the Twentieth Century Destroyed the

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Capital Designs Nineteenth Century’s Architectural Masterpieces, London: Aurum 1988, 29. 32 Riley admired Shaw’s architectural expression. H. L. Curtis, ‘W. E. Riley, Chief Architect to the L.C.C. 1899–1919’, JRIBA, 3rd series, vol. 45, no. 4, 20 Dec. 1937, 204. 33 ‘London Gossip’, Register, 23 Dec. 1912, 10. 34 Andrew Saint, ‘Riley, William Edward (1852–1937)’, ODNB. 35 R. Norman Shaw to Easton, 1 Aug. 1898, RAA/SEC/4/120/14:I. 36 ‘London Gossip’, Register, 23 Dec. 1912, 10. 37 Opening of Kingsway & Aldwych, Oct 1905, LMA LCC/CL/CER/2/7, vol. 5c; London County Council Gazette, vol. 1, no. 1, 23 Oct. 1905, 1. 38 ‘The Tramway tunnel under Kingsway’, British Architect, 26 Feb. 1904, 152. 39 Pamphlet no. 64 Kingsway and Aldwych opened 18 Oct 1905, 3, LMA CL/CER/3/4. 40 ‘Rome’s Legatee: Bird’s-Eye Views of the Modern Centre of Imperialism’, ILN, 13 Oct. 1906, 527. This aerial photograph of the area makes clear the lack of development there in mid-Oct. 1906. 41 Thomas Mawson, Civic Art, Studies in Town-planning, Parks, Boulevards and Open Spaces, London, B.T. Batsford, 1911. The area had a history for being associated with the idea that building construction stimulated economic growth. This idea is credited to have come from the book The Discourse of Trade (1690) issued by medical doctor Nicholas Barbon (1640–1698), a rapacious and unscrupulous developer of Holborn who was key to the rebuilding of London in the wake of the great fire. N.B. M.D., A Discourse of Trade, London: Tho. Milbourn for the Author, 1690. 42 London County Council, Entente Municipale, Visit of the Municipal Council of Paris to London at the invitation of the chairman and Members of the London County Council, Official Programme and Illustrated Guide, London; Paris; Vienna, London Weiners Litho, 1905, 46. 43 Mervyn Macartney, ‘From Holborn to the Strand: An Ideal Street’, Architectural Review, Dec. 1899, 239–44. Illustrating plans by Macartney showing the new street before buildings were removed, with suggested improvements. 44 ‘The Gaiety Restaurant’, The Times, 22 Oct. 1907, 13. The building became the headquarters of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in Mar. 1912. It was then known as Marconi House: W. J. Baker, A History of the Marconi Company, London, Routledge, 1970/1996, 132. 45 ‘View of the Strand, looking east, from the roof of ‘Short’s.’ (Now under discussion)’, British Architect, vol. 66, 21 Dec. 1906, 438. 46 The architectural practice of Mewès and Davis was formed in 1900. The Morning Post Building was completed in the second half of 1907. ‘Notes on New Buildings in London IV. The New Gaiety Theatre and Gaiety Hotel and Restaurant in the Strand’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3281, 23 Dec. 1905, 699–700; Changes in the Strand’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3261, 5 Aug. 1905, 147; ‘Notes on New Buildings in London I. The Ritz Hotel Building in Piccadilly’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3269, 30 Sept. 1905, 342; ‘The Opening of Kingsway’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3272, 21 Oct. 1905, 409–10. 47 Mewès was at Pascal’s during 1878–86, and Davis in 1893–98, however Mewès may have continued to assist in the teaching at Pascal’s beyond 1886. 48 ‘London’s Architecture’, Architects Magazine, vol. 6, no. 63, 1906, 54; Also, ‘Notes on New Buildings in London I. The Ritz Hotel Building in Piccadilly’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3269, 30 Sept. 1905, 342; James Steven Curl, Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, 3rd edn., OUP, 1999/2015, 746; On Davis see ‘Obituary, Arthur J. Davis, R.A.’, Builder, vol. 181, no. 5658, 27 July 1951, 127; Obituary, JRIBA, vol. 59, no. 1, Nov. 1951, 35–6; C. H. Reilly, Representative British Architects

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Notes – Chapter Seven: ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ of the present day, London, Batsford, 1931, 67–79; Davis attended the Ateliers of J Godefroy and Jean-Louis Pascal. Chaffee details specific Parisian models for Mewès and Davis’s London buildings: Richard Spofford Chafee ‘The Teaching of Architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and its influence in Britain and America’, Courtauld Institute London PhD, 1983, 235. 49 A. S. Gray, ‘II. Public Buildings and Street Architecture’, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Journal, vol. 121, no. 5200, Mar. 1973, 216. 50 Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd & David Watkin with photographs by Keith Collie, The London Ritz, a social and architectural history, London: Aurum, 1980, 24. 51 ‘Science Applied to Building’, ILN, 11 Mar. 1905, 353. 52 ‘James G. White, 80, Engineer, is Dead’, New York Times, 3 June 1942, 23. 53 David Lloyd George was first to use the term ‘Men of Push and Go’ in a speech on a new Defence of the Realm Act on 9 Mar. 1915: Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘George, David Lloyd, first Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863–1945)’, ODNB. 54 ‘Science Applied to Building’, ILN, 11 Mar. 1905, 353. 55 ‘James G. White, 80, Engineer, is dead’, 23. 56 William Henry Beable, Romance of Great Businesses, London, Heath Cranton Limited, 1926, 79; Andrew Saint, ‘Waring, Samuel James, Baron Waring (1860– 1940)’, ODNB. American engineer and contractor James G. White established his firm J. G. White & Co. in New York in 1890. In 1900 he founded the English firm. 57 Haphazard ways of employing steel and the lack of standardization in methods or materials means that it is difficult to identify the ‘first’ steel-framed building in Britain: David Capoodmem (ed.), The European Cities Technology Reader: Industrial to Post Industrial City, London: Routledge, 1999, 167; ‘The Waldorf Hotel’, British Architect, vol. 66, 21 Dec. 1906, 438. 58 The importance of this novelty is put into perspective when in 1889, London’s Hotel Victoria, acclaimed as the finest hotel in the world, offered only four bathrooms for its full complement of five hundred visitors. It offered no running water in the bedrooms, and no central heating in the hotel. Mary Cathcart Borer, The British Hotel through the Ages, London; Guildford, Lutterworth Press, 199. 59 Compton Mackenzie, The Savoy of London, London, G. G. Harrap, 1953, Cited by Mary Cathcart Borer, The British Hotel through the Ages, Guildford; London, Lutterworth Press, 1972, 221. 60 ‘The World’s News’, ILN, 2 June 1906, 788. 61 London’s Latest Palace’, Northern Star (Lismore, NSW), 9 July 1906, 3; ‘The new Ritz’, Observer, 27 May 1906, 6; ‘Luxury of the Ritz’, Maitland Daily Mercury, 18 June 1906, 3. 62 Emil Fuchs, With Pencil, Brush and Chisel. The life of an artist, New York; London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925; ‘The King and The Victoria Memorial at Crathie.’ The Times, 21 Sept. 1903, 8; ‘Friends of Alien Birth’, The Times, 28 May 1915, 6. 63 ‘Paris In London’, The Times, 8 May 1902, 7; ‘“Paris in London” Exhibition Open’, New York Times, 8 May 1902, 8. 64 ‘The New Link between North and South London: The Royal Opening of Kingsway and Aldwych’, ILN, 21 Oct. 1905, II–III. 65 ‘London County Council’, The Times, 15 Feb. 1905, 4; ‘Big London Improvements: The Processional Road, A Palace of French Industries’, New York Times, 28 Aug. 1910, C3; ‘Paris in London’, British Architect, vol. 63, 17 Feb. 1905, 112–21; On Gérard see Anne Dugast et Isabelle Parizet, Dictionnaire par noms d’architectes des

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Capital Designs constructions elevees a Paris aux XIXe et XXe Siecles Premiere Series, vol. 2 Periode 1876–1899 avec des additions pour les annees anterieures et posterieures, Paris, 1991, 76; On Scott: ‘ Obituary’, Builder, vol. 139, no. 4571, 12 Sept. 1930, 418; JRIBA 37, 20 Sept. 1930, 712; Who’s who in architecture 1914, 197. When Scott was made an Associate of the RIBA in 1881, he was proposed by Thomas Blashill who was Riley’s predecessor at the LCC. (Blashill worked as a District Surveyor in London before becoming Superintending Architect to the Board of Works.) 66 ‘Obituary’, Builder, vol. 139, no. 4571, 12 Sept. 1930, 418; ‘William Gillbee Scott’, JRIBA, vol. 37, no. 18, 20 Sept. 1930, 712; Frederick Chatterton, Who’s Who in architecture Giving brief biographies and other useful particulars of architects practising in the United Kingdom, Technical Journals Limited, 1914, 197. 67 Licentiateships were introduced in 1910 for architects who had not sat the qualifying examination to be admitted to the R.I.B.A. but were of sufficient repute to be admitted to a lesser form of membership. Chatterton, Who’s who in architecture 1914, 229, 243. Further information on Williams: Obituary, Builder, vol. 115, no. 3956, 29 Nov. 1918, 357. 68 ‘London County Council’, The Times, 15 Feb. 1905, 4. 69 ‘Paris in London’, British Architect, 112. 70 An elevation of the Kingsway entrance: ‘Paris in London, the Novel Strand Scheme: The Elevation of the Proposed Palace of French Industries Facing Kingsway’, ILN, 25 Feb. 1905, 263. 71 ‘Notes on Current Events’, British Architect, vol. 64, 25 Aug. 1905, 126. 72 ‘Paris in London’, British Architect, 112–21; Privately sponsored exhibitions with a national focus were staged at Earl’s Court: Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London, Belknap Press, 1978, 509. 73 ‘Notes on Current Events’, British Architect, vol. 64, 25 Aug. 1905, 126. 74 ‘The Aldwych Site’, The Times, 23 June 1910, 4. 75 ‘London County Council’, The Times, 15 Feb. 1905, 4. 76 ‘Notes on Current Events’, British Architect, vol. 63, 17 Feb. 1905, 109. 77 ‘London County Council’, The Times, 16 Oct. 1907, 14. 78 C. B. Mortlock and Donald Maxwell, with a foreword by the Bishop of London, Famous London Churches, London: Skeffington & Son Ltd, 1934, 91. 79 C. L. H., ‘A Walk up Kingsway’, British Architect, vol. 67, 3 May 1907, 315. 80 ‘London Topics’, Advertiser, 11 Dec. 1903, 6. 81 ‘Wild Flowers on the Vacant Sites in the Strand’, ILN, 27 July 1907, 139; ‘The Palace for London’s Parliament: The L.C.C. Hall’, ILN, 8 Feb. 1908, 195. 82 Law Land Company Limited to Clerk of Council, 14 Nov. 1911, LCC-MIN8005, LMA. Complaints were lodged by the tenants of Strand shops Nos 173 to 179 and the offices above. The British Architect considered that the ‘new’ Strand discredited the LCC: ‘The Strand Improvement’, British Architect, vol. 66, 21 Dec. 1906, 436–8. 83 Gomme took great interest in the historical side of the growth of London, as well as local government history and theory. From 1879 he published his researches into the history of municipal offices. Gomme also edited the journals Antiquary and Archaeological Review. He took a leading part in the formation of the Folk Lore Society, which was part of a growing movement at the time devoted to historical study, in this case to rescuing oral tradition. List of candidates for senior and special appointments with précis of qualifications, testimonials etc. 1889–1903, 4 LMA LCC/CL/ESTAB/4/16; Edward Clodd, Memories, London, Chapman and Hall, 1916, 135; ‘Sir Laurence Gomme’, Manchester Guardian, 25 Feb. 1916, 6; Sir

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Notes – Chapter Seven: ‘Modern Centre of Imperialism’ Laurence Gomme’, Observer, 27 Feb. 1916, 8. Alice B. Gomme, ‘Bibliography of the Writings of the Late Sir Laurence Gomme on Anthropology and Folklore’, Folklore, vol. 27, no. 4, 31 Dec. 1916, 408–13. 84 Death of L. Gomme, Antiquary, 3 Mar. 1916, 174. 85 As outlined in lectures that he delivered at the London School of Economics in 1897: George Laurence Gomme, Lectures on the principles of local government, Westminster, Archibald Constable & Co, 1897, 29, 71. 86 John Simpson, Paris Rosemary for remembrance of bygone scenes and circumstances, London: Hutchinson, 1927, 16. 87 ‘Obituary’, JRIBA, vol. 23, 3rd series, 4 Mar. 1916, 159; Gomme was general editor of the Survey of London which retraced the history of each plot of land before buildings were erected, as far as could be traced back. Gomme prepared the historical notes for these volumes, and drawings, illustrations and architectural descriptions came from W. Edward Riley: London County Council, Survey of London vol. III The Parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields (Part I) Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, London County Council, 1912; London County Council, Survey of London, vol. V, The Parish of St Giles-in-the-fields (Part II), London, London County Council, 1914. On Gomme and his naming the Aldwych: ‘Personal’, ILN, 21 Feb. 1903, 262; ‘A Famous Clerk to the L.C.C.: The Late Sir George Laurence Gomme’, ILN, 4 Mar. 1916, 291. That Gomme searched for a deeper significance for London is argued by G. Alex Bremner: ‘Imperial Monumental Halls and Tower’: Westminster Abbey and the Commemoration of Empire, 1854–1904’, Architectural History, vol. 47, 2004, 251–82. 88 As illustrated in an engraving by Hedley Fitton in the London Daily Chronicle, n.d. LMA 761 SC/P@/We/01/661; In Jan. 1905, Pall Mall Magazine published drawings by Fitton illustrating an article by John Burns dealing with sweeping changes being made in the Street Geography and architecture of London: John Burns, ‘London Old and New’, Typical of drawings published to prevent the obliteration of aspects of London with the advent of the tramways is Fitton’s drawing: ‘A Well-Known Riverside Walk in Danger of Demolition’, ILN, 11 Jan. 1902, 61. 89 ‘The London County-Hall Site’, The Times, 16 Mar. 1908, 12; ‘Compensation Claim for Aldwych Premises’, The Times, 6 June 1908, 18; It was arranged that Holloway Bros. would continue in their works and offices under a lease from the council so that their business could be carried on without interruption. ‘The London County Hall Site’, British Architect, vol. 69, 10 Apr. 1908, 260. For details of their site and LCC see ‘Notes on Current Events’, British Architect, vol. 65, 29 June 1906, 451. ‘Messrs. Holloway Bros. Premises’, British Architect, vol. 69, 10 Apr. 1908, 259. Later the Establishment Committee of the Council used the site taken up by Holloways: ‘Notes’, British Architect, vol. 81, 29 May 1914, 408; Council’s Bill for authority to acquire the Holloways site compulsorily came before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on 30 Apr. 1906, and the Bill received Royal Assent on 20 July 1906; Action taken by a tenant also brought delay to the Paris in London Syndicate: ‘Wych Street, It Would Seem, Dies Hard’, ILN, 1 Sept. 1906, 318. 90 M. Bryant, ‘Hold the front page’, History Today, vol. 56, no. 5, May 2006, 58–9; ‘The Satire of W.K. Haselden’, Strand Magazine, vol. 36, no. 215, Nov. 1908, 520–7; WK Haselden, Bandits of Bumbledown [on reverse], WH0224, BCA. On William Kerridge Haselden: http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/william-kerridgehaselden/biography. 91 The Municipal Reformers held control to 1934. Michael Ball, David T Sunderland, An Economic History of London 1800–1914, London, Routledge, 2001, 411; See also,

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Capital Designs Andrew Saint (ed.), Politics & People of London: London County Council, 1889–1965, London, Hambledon Press, 1989.

Chapter Eight: Competing Dominions 1 King O’Malley quoted from Dorothy Catts (with and introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman Sydney, Publicity Press, 1938, 200. 2 Arthur Henry Beavan with illustrations by Hanslip Fletcher, Imperial London, London, J. M. Dent & Co., 1901, 102. 3 R. H. Vetch (ed.) with a preface by Sir G.S. Clarke, Life of Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir Andrew Clarke, London: J. Murray, 1905; Sidney Lee, ‘Andrew Clarke’ in Percival Serle (ed.), Dictionary of Australian Biography, vol. 1, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1949, 169–71. 4 Quoted from ‘Victoria’ in Henry Sell, Dictionary of the World’s Press and annual of useful commercial knowledge, London, King, Sell, and Railton Ltd. Printers, 1900, 63. Reprinted in Colonial representation in London: our self-governing colonies: how their interests are promoted in the United Kingdom: illustrated with portraits of colonial representatives. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection, 1900. 5 Sell, Dictionary, 65. 6 Ibid., 73. 7 ‘Australian Embassies’, Australian Star, 16 Apr. 1895, 5; The Age called for the office of Agent-General to be revolutionised or abolished: ‘No title’, The Age, 16 Apr. 1895, 4. Call for change followed Federation: ‘The High Commissionership’, SMH, 23 July 1901, 4; And that Offices should be established on a business basis: ‘Victorian Representation in London’, Advertiser, 30 May 1901, 4; ‘Report of Mr Joseph Barling on Commercial Agents’, New South Wales Votes and Proceedings, Sydney: Government Printer, 1902, vol. 2, 1–3, 344. In 1907, approximate costs of AgentsGeneral including Commonwealth offices in London were given as £24,281. Both the Agents-General for NSW and for Queensland each received an annual salary of £1,250. The Year Book of Australia for 1907, London: Gordon & Gotch, 307, 393 8 ‘The Butter Scandal’, Advertiser, 27 Jan. 1905, 4; Henry Gyles Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, from its discovery to its absorption into the Commonwealth of Australia, vol. 2, London: Longmans, Green, 1904, 354. 9 ‘Victoria’s General-Agent’, Daily Telegraph, 15 Mar. 1899, 4. 10 John William Taverner, Central Depot: Report on a Proposed Central Depot for the Reception of Australian Products to Be Erected in London to the Colonies Represented at the Agricultural Conferences Held in Melbourne and Hobart in 1899, Melbourne: Robt. S. Brain, Government Printer, 1899. 11 ‘Mr Taverner at Brisbane’, Argus, 7 Nov. 1904, 5. 12 The Year Book of Australia, London, The British Australasian Consolidated Publishing Co. Ltd., 1905, 367; At the start of 1907, Taverner was reappointed Agent-General of Victoria for another three years, with his salary fixed at £1,000 a year, and expenses not to exceed £1,000. ‘Personal’, Advertiser, 5 Jan. 1907, 9. 13 Thompson, The Australian High Commission in London, 20 citing ‘Topics of the week’, Australasian, 30 Jan. 1904, 34. 14 Regent St. was originally developed in 1810 by the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues (established that same year, to manage the Crown lands). 15 ‘Looking for a Site’, Evening Post, vol. 80, no. 58, 6 Sept. 1910, 3. Lord Strathcona’s offices were at 17 Victoria St.

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Notes – Chapter Eight: Competing Dominions 16 17 18 19

‘London’s Tribute’, Morning Leader 15 Aug. 1910, 4. ‘Our Melbourne Letter’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 10 Oct. 1907, 2. ‘Looking for a Site’, 3. Labour Gazette, vol. 21, no. 6 June 1913, 233. That year, just 3,280 Britons migrated to Australia, a reduction by almost a half from the previous year when 6,490 moved to Australia. Under Prime Minister Laurier (1896–1911), the annual immigration figure to Canada rose to almost 400,000. 20 The Canadian Arch, Whitehall, 1902, Glenbow Archives, Calgary, Canada, NA– 1043–1. 21 Advertiser, 9 Aug. 1902, 7; ‘Britain’s Granary’ was conceived by William Thomas Rochester Preston (1851–1942), Canadian Commissioner of Emigration in Great Britain and Europe, as described in his memoir: W. T. R. Preston, My Generation of Politics and Politicians, Toronto, D. A. Rose Publishing Company, 1927, 220–1. 22 ‘Boxing Day’, The Times, 27 Dec. 1901, 4; ‘The Alhambra’, The Times, 28 Dec. 1903, 10. 23 ‘Australia and Australians’, Queenslander, 22 Apr. 1905, 21. 24 Abbott, An Outlander in England, 284. 25 Ibid., 286. 26 Ibid., 288. 27 O. Mary Hill, Canada’s Salesman to the World, The Department of Trade and Commerce 1892–1939, Montreal; London, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977, 41. 28 Mackenzie Bowell, Canada’s Minister of Trade and Commerce (1892–94), travelled to Australia in 1893 with Sandford Fleming: ‘Canadian Visitor’, Week, 20 Oct. 1893, 9. Shortly after, Sir Mackenzie Bowell became Canada’s fifth Prime Minister (1894–96). For discussion of the position of the Canadian agents in London and their relation to their High Commissioner see John Hilliker, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol. 1, The early years, 1909–1946, MacGill University Press, Montreal & Kingston; London; Buffalo, 1990, 21–22. 29 Kate Burridge, Lois Foster, Gerry Turcotte (eds.), Canada–Australia: Towards a Second Century of Partnership, McGill-Queens’s Press, 1997, 2. 30 Bureau of Provincial Information, Land and agriculture in British Columbia, Victoria, B.C., Bulletin no. 10, 3rd edn., printed by Richard Wolfenden, 1904. This issue, an informative and well-illustrated production of 144 pages, was released in Apr. 1904. It begs comparison with similar literature issued from Australia (such as that issued by Taverner) and illustrates the extent of Candadian advertising. Patricia E. Roy, Boundless Optimism: Richard McBride’s British Columbia, UBC Press, 2012, 301–2. 31 ‘Empire’s Highway’, The Times, 1 July 1909, 6. See also advertisement: ‘Canada’, The Times, 24 May 1911, 24. For displays of Canadian emblems see: ‘The Street Decorations And Illuminations’, The Times, 19 June 1911, 21. The European Traffic offices of Canada’s Grand Trunk system was at 17–18 Cockspur St. (adjacent to Trafalgar Square) from 1904. 32 Clark Blaise, Time Lord, Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000, 6. 33 ‘The ‘All-Red Route’: A Canadian Deputy’s Views’, Manchester Guardian, 21 Mar. 1908, 9. 34 Sir Edmund Barton to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 28 Nov. 1901, C.A.O., C.R.S. A8. Item no. 01/338/1; Reply from Sir Wilfred Laurier to Sir Edmund Barton, 10 Feb. 1902, C.A.O., C.R.S. A8. Item no. 01/338/1 NLA cited by Thompson, The Australian High Commission in London, 57ff.

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Capital Designs 35 H. Hodges to E. Barton, 11 Oct. 1901 C.A.O. C.R.S. A8 Item 01/338/1 NLA, cited by Thompson, The Australian High Commission, 57ff. 36 Geographic distance played its part in the relay of news. The expense of sending cables from ‘remote’ parts of the world, like Australia, curbed their transmission. However, the type of news offered arguably bore more significantly on perspectives developed in London. See Gary B. Magee and Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850– 1914, Cambridge: CUP, YEAR, 187–8. They also emphasize the importance of Reuters in circulating information in the empire, and with regard to impressions made in London. 37 James Francis Hogan, Sister Dominions: Through Canada to Australia by the new Imperial Highway, London, Ward & Downey; Sydney; Melbourne: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1896, i. Hogan was associated with the educationalist Percy Fritz Rowland (1870–1945), author of The New Nation (1903). Rowland was a tenant in Belgravia Chambers, which housed R. Muirhead Collins and his office: J. F. Hogan and Percy F. Rowland, ‘Australia’s Financial Position’, The Times, 20 Apr. 1903, 10. 38 Hogan, Sister Dominions, 14. 39 Talma & Co, Meeting of Victorian Executive Council, 23 Jan. 1903, gelatin silver photograph, in collection Portraits of Victorian Surveyor-Generals and Ministers for Lands, SLV, H4067 2284398, http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/153671. 40 Geoffrey Serle, ‘Turner, Sir George (1851–1916)’, ADB. 41 Slightly altered from Virgil’s Aeneid, 4, 173; E. Wilson Dobbs, ‘Heraldry as applied to architecture, paper read 24 Apr. 1906’, RIVA, May 1906, 57. 42 And Taverner promoted the resources of his State economically and effectively, judging from newspaper reports: ‘Victoria in London’, Euroa Advertiser (Vic), 28 July 1899, 3. 43 ‘Victoria in London’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 30 June 1902, 5. When completed in 1871, Queen Victoria St. provided a quicker route from Charing Cross to the Bank than the route along the Strand. 44 ‘Victorian Produce in London’, West Australian, 25 Apr. 1904, 5; ‘Advertising Australian Products’, Argus, 3 Aug. 1904, 8. 45 Donald Maxwell, The new lights of London being a series of impressions of the glamour and magic of London at night, London, Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1926, 4. 46 ‘Mr Irvine M.L.A.’, Portland Guardian (Vic.), 6 July 1904, 3; ‘Passing of the Empire’s commerce’, Sunday Times, 13 Nov. 1904, 4. 47 ‘The Commonwealth. Representation in England, A Proposal by Mr Taverner’, West Australian, 27 Aug. 1904, 7; ‘Australasian interests. Australia House in London’, Brisbane Courier, 27 Aug. 1904, 5. 48 ‘General Cable News’, Register, 27 Aug. 1904, 7; ‘Australian Representation in London’, Albany Advertiser (WA), 27 Aug. 1904, 3. 49 ‘Proposed Australia House, Mr Taverner’s Scheme, London’, Argus, 5 Oct. 1904, 4. 50 ‘Unveiling the National Memorial to William Ewart Gladstone’, ILN, 11 Nov. 1905, 690; Hamo Thornycroft’s statue at Aldwych (1905) was one of three erected by the Gladstone National Memorial Fund (established in June 1898). The others were erected in Edinburgh (1917, moved in 1955 from St Andrew’s Square to Coates Crescent) and at Hawarden near the Welsh–English border where Gladstone lived. 51 ‘Notes on Current Events’, British Architect, vol. 62, 2 Sept. 1904, l, 166. The journal noted that the site has an area of about 13,250 square feet with a frontage of 38 ft to Aldwych and of 125 ft to the Strand, while the frontage to the east is 40 ft in length.

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Notes – Chapter Nine: ‘At the Fore’ 52 ‘Proposed Australia-House, Mr. Taverner’s Scheme’, Argus, 5 Oct. 1904, 4. 53 ‘Australia House, Mr. Chamberlain’s Opinion’, Advertiser, 8 Sept. 1904, 6; ‘Australia House, Mr. Chamberlain’s Views’, Argus, 8 Sept. 1904, 6; ‘Australia House in London’, Brisbane Courier, 8 Sept. 1904, 5; ‘General Cable News’, Register, 8 Sept. 1904, 7; ‘News and Notes’, Broadford Courier and Reedy Creek Times (Vic), 9 Sept. 1904, 2; ‘Australia House, Closer Union,’ Kalgoorlie Miner, 8 Sept. 1904, 5; ‘The Commonwealth, An Australian House’, Daily News (Perth), 8 Sept. 1904, 8. In 1903–4, British industry feared German competition; Chamberlain led the movement for ‘Tariff Reform’, campaigning against free trade. 54 ‘Mr. Finucane’s Reports’, Brisbane Courier, 11 July 1899, 4. 55 ‘An ‘Australia’ House in London. To the Editor of The Argus’, Argus, 2 Sept. 1904, 7. 56 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 9 Nov. 1906, 3. 57 Christopher Powell, The British Building Industry since 1800: An Economic History, London E. & F. N. Spon, 1980)/1996, 72. The public health and hygiene movement of the mid to late nineteenth century coloured developments in urban planning that evolved in the early twentieth century. The public health and housing laws that developed from the ‘Sanitary movement’ led to the growth of the Town Planning movement. 58 Who’s who in Architecture, 1914, 41; Burr’s offices were at 85 Gower St., Bloomsbury in central London. 59 Montgomery-Massingberd & Watkin, The London Ritz, 64. 60 Compton Mackenzie, The Savoy of London, London: G. G. Harrap, 1953, 57. 61 On Burr see: ‘Alfred Burr, F.R.I.B.A.’ Builder, vol. 182 no. 5696, 18 Apr. 1952, 584; Hendon Times, 18 Apr. 1952; JRIBA, vol. 59, 1952, 385–6; The Times, 14 Apr. 1952; ‘Alfred Burr’, RIBA biographical file, 103/G4. 62 A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 9 Nov. 1906, ‘Proposed Australian Offices, London’, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. Burr’s plan was drawn for the plot next to that which Taverner liked, although Collins and Jersey preferred the plot at the furthest eastern end of the horn. 63 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 9 Nov. 1906, 4. 64 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 15 Nov. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 65 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 9 Nov. 1906, 5.

Chapter Nine: ‘At the Fore’ 1 W. S. Gilbert from The Gondoliers in Ed Glinert (ed.), Mike Leigh (introd.), The Complete Gilbert & Sullivan, London: Penguin Books, 2006, 563. 2 As was reported by newspapers in Australia, for example: ‘The Seddon of Australia’, Beverley Times (WA), 15 June 1907, 3. Bent’s arrival was also heralded by the ILN publishing a photograph of him: G. K. Chesterton, ‘Our Note Book’, ILN, 4 May 1907, 672. Bent was Premier, and Treasurer, and Minister of Railways until 8 Jan. 1909. He was knighted in 1908. 3 ‘Our Victorian Premier’, Prahran Telegraph, 21 Sept. 1907, 4. 4 Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story, The Inner History of the Federal Cause, Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1944, 36. 5 Weston Bate, A History of Brighton, Melbourne: MUP, 1963, 415. 6 James Belich, Replenishing the earth, The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the AngloWorld, 1783–1939, New York: OUP, 2009, 360. 7 David Latta, Lost Glories, a memorial to forgotten Australian buildings, North Ryde,

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Capital Designs NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1986, 22–3. James Munro (1832–1908), member for North Melbourne in Victoria’s Legislative Assembly (from 1874), was behind the Federal Coffee Palace (designed by Ellerker and Kilburn). On the architect and politician William Pitt see Margaret Morison, ‘William Pitt (1855–1918)’, in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, CUP, 2012, 542–4. The Coffee Palace was demolished in 1973. 8 Angus Trumble, ‘Melbourne in the Edwardian Era’ in Alexandra Bertram and Angus Trumble, Edwardian Melbourne in picture postcards, Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 1995, 18 citing The Times, 16 Dec. 1912. 9 ‘Association of Foreign Consuls’, The Times, 16 May 1907, 13; Glinert (ed.), The Complete Gilbert & Sullivan, 563; Hogan, Sister Dominions, 162–3; Weston Bate, ‘Bent, Sir Thomas (1838–1909)’, ADB. ‘Lively Premier Gone: Sir Thomas Bent of Victoria was an Eccentric Character’, New York Times, 10 Oct. 1909, 6. 10 American unease about the unfettered operation of industrial capitalism led to the enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) to curb big business power, followed by the trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt Jr. becoming President of the United States in 1901. Roosevelt ordered the Justice Department to investigate J. P. Morgan and his Northern Securities Company, which the Supreme Court voted to dissolve in 1903. 11 Geoffrey Serle, The Rush to be Rich, A History of the Colony of Victoria 1883–1889, MUP 1971, 264–5. 12 House of Representatives, Debates, 8 Aug. 1906, HH. 13 ‘Mr Bent and General Botha’, SMH, 12 Aug. 1907, 7. Bent reportedly said that Ministers in England disliked his Ealing speech, over which Churchill berated him. ‘Mr Bent’s experiences’, Times of India, 18 Oct. 1907, 8. 14 House of Representatives, Debates, 8 Aug. 1906, HH. 15 ‘The “Two Kings”’, Scone Advocate (NSW), 6 Sept. 1907, 8. Bent was present at the King’s dinner for the members of the Imperial Conference. 16 ‘Memorial Notice: Sir Thomas Bent’, Manchester Guardian, 18 Sept. 1909, 9. For a view of Bent’s avarice as a property developer: Michael Cannon, The Land Boomers, West Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1976, 263–77. On the other hand, Robert Murray regards Bent as the most intriguing – in both sense of the word – politician of the age: Robert Murray, 150 Years of Spring Street, Victorian Government, 1850s to 21st century, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007, 98–100. Angus Trumble sees Bent as one of the most lovable public figures: Angus Trumble, ‘Melbourne in the Edwardian Era’, in Bertram and Trumble, Edwardian Melbourne, 18. 17 Bertram and Trumble, Edwardian Melbourne, 18 citing The Times, 8 June 1907. Bent’s addresses in London included speaking on Victoria and its resources at the Royal Colonial Institute: Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 55, 772. 18 ‘Our London Letter’, Brisbane Courier, 31 Aug. 1907, 10. 19 ‘Association of Foreign Consuls’, The Times, 16 May 1907, 13. 20 Daily Mail, 14 Jan. 1907, 3. The Gold yield of Victoria for 1907 was 834,775 ounces, valued at £3,339,100: 24,725 ounces greater than the previous year. 21 Glass, Tommy Bent, 189. 22 ‘Mme. Melba Inaugurates a New Gramophone Factory’, ILN, 18 May 1907, 780. Also, Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Music, Britain 1876–1953, Manchester University Press, 476–8. 23 Floor Plans, 1908, AH/GV5; Street Plan, 1908, AH/GV4. Leasehold Title to the Government of Victoria was concluded on 26 Mar. 1912, for 99 years from 29 Sept. 1907.

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Notes – Chapter Nine: ‘At the Fore’ 24 For example, ‘Australia House’, Auckland Star, vol. 38, no. 112, 11 May 1907, 5. 25 Lots 1, 2 & 3 Holborn to Strand re Commonwealth of Australia, OHC Part 1 8/191, AH/D4; A. Young to R. M. Collins, 14 June 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. Measurements were specified in ‘superficial’ feet, so the dimensions were given as 10,000 superficial feet square; a super foot was equivalent to one square foot. 26 A. Young to R. M. Collins, 17 May 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 27 Samuel Skrimshire, Valuations, London, E. & F. N. Spon, 1915, 3, 7; London Remembers 2018, website. 28 ‘London’s Chief Valuer’, Builder, vol. 108 no. 3755, 23 Jan. 1915, 78. Also, Gloria Clifton, ‘Members and Officers of the LCC, 1889–1965’ in Andrew Saint (ed.), Politics and the People of London, The London County Council 1889–1965, London, The Hambledon Press, 1989, 24. Young was connected with the Kingsway and Clare Market improvement; and improvements at Westminster, to the St Luke’s and the Tabard St. areas, and Boundary St., Bethnal Green. 29 Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story, The Inner History of the Federal Cause, Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1944, 64,104; Alfred Deakin, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters to the Morning Post 1900–1910, (ed. and introd.) J. A. La Nauze, London: MUP, 1968, 3. 30 A correspondent, ‘The Late Sir William Lyne’, The Times, 5 Aug. 1913, 9. For Lyne see W. M. Hughes, Policies and Potentates, London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950, 81. 31 Hughes, Policies and Potentates, 33, 81; Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal politics and Law 1901–1929, Melbourne: MUP, 1956, 43. 32 A. Young to R. M. Collins, 17 May 1907. Annual rental estimates on each block ranged from £7,500 to £9,550. 33 Initially the Government desired a frontage of 180 to 200 feet on a main thoroughfare. R. M. Collins to Messrs Barlay & Sons, 23 June 1908. OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. 34 Burr delivered a surveyor’s report of the site: A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 9 Nov. 1906, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. By July 1907 Burr delivered two sets of drawings, each containing plans of the immediate vicinity, divisions of the land into plots, and elevations for the Strand and East corner: A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 11 July 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 35 ‘The Holborn-Strand Improvement’, Builder, vol. 95, no. 3423, 12 Sept. 1908, 275. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, London, 6, Westminster, New Haven; London, YUP, 2003, 351. 39 A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 31 May 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 40 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 5 July 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 41 A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 6 Aug. 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. Premier Bent sailed from Vancouver to Australia on the Canadian mail steamer S. S. Moana. He reached Melbourne on 17 Aug. 1907. 42 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 8 Oct. 1907, OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. Burr’s drawings for the Victorian Offices were certified at the start of July 1907. 43 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 7 Oct. 1907, OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. 44 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 5 July 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 45 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 7 Oct. 1907. 46 A. Young to R. M. Collins, 25 July 1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. 47 Burr spoke to Lord Elcho: ‘Result of Mr Burr’s interview with Lord Elcho, 2 Aug.

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49 50

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

1907, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. Burr’s design for the Headquarters of the NRA was built on the transfer of their offices from Charing Cross: Daily Express, 12 Feb. 1902, 6; The National Rifle Association, Official Jubilee Souvenir 1860–1909, London: Gale & Polden Ltd, 83–85; On the NRA in Britain and in NSW see A. P. Humphrey and T. F. Fremantle, History of the National Rifle Association during its first fifty years, 1859 to 1909, Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1914; C. Howard Cromack, The history of the National Rifle Association of New South Wales, 1860– 1956, Malabar, NSW: National Rifle Association, 1956. This value of prizes was exclusive of challenge cups which offered further incentive to compete: National Rifle Association, Wimbledon-Bisley, 50 Years of the N.R.A., Official Jubilee Souvenir, vol. 1, 1860 Wimbledon-Bisley 1909, London: Gale & Polden, 2000, 91. ‘Plan of Proposed Arrangement of The Aldwych Site’, The Times, 24 July 1907, 8. Jeffrey Russell Knight (ed.), Register of Defunct and other Companies removed from the Stock Exchange Official Year Book 1979–80, East Grinstead, West Sussex: Thomas Skinner & Co, 1979, 75. The BCDA was behind the futile Wallachin settlement of British Columbia: Mark Zuehlke, Scoundrels, Dreamers & Second Sons, British Remittance Men in the Canadian West, 2nd edn. Rev., Toronto; Oxford: The Dundern Group, 2001, 116–33. ‘Our London Letter’, Brisbane Courier, 31 Aug. 1907, 10. E. T. Raymond, Portraits of the New Century (the first ten years), London: Ernest Benn, 1928, 207, 218. ‘Proposed Canadian Offices Strand, London’, Builder, vol. 93, no. 3367, 17 Aug. 1907, 196. ‘Competition Design for University College, Bangor’, Builder, vol. 92, no. 3341, 16 Feb. 1907, 194; J. Gwynn Williams, The University College of North Wales: foundations 1884–1927, Cardiff: University of North Wales Press, 1985. 266–7. The commission went to Henry T. Hare; King George V opened Hare’s building in July 1911. Haselden gives sense of the rising temperature over the future Commonwealth site: ‘No XVI: Mr Juggins and Kings Way’, Daily Mirror, 19 Feb. 1907. ‘Empire House, Colonial Representatives and Aldwych Site’, Tribune, undated clipping, AH/D4. ‘The Aldwych Site’, The Times, 24 July 1907, 8; R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 26 July 1907, 2, OHC Part 1 8/1919 AH/D4. John Henry Keating (1872–1940) was aged 28 in 1901. ‘Political’, Table Talk, 6 June 1907, 10. ‘Empire House, Colonial Representatives’ undated news clipping, Tribune; J. H. Keating, White Australia: men and measures in its making, Launceston: [The Examiner], 1924. ‘The Commonwealth in London’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post (NSW), 8 Aug. 1907, 2. This quoted an article from London’s Pall Mall Gazette. A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 29 Aug. 1907, OHC, Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. The figure Lyne proposed was less than Collins estimated building costs would be: see William Lyne, Hansard, 25 Sept. 1907. ‘Australia House’, Auckland Star, vol. 38, no. 229, 25 Sept. 1907, 5.

Chapter Ten: Emporium of the World 1 ‘An Australian in Home Land’, Williamstown Chronicle, 5 Oct. 1912, 2. 2 ‘City of Twenty Palaces,’ World’s News, 16 May 1908, 13. Among recent literature

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3 4

5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

on imperial exhibitions is the study of five Imperial Expositions (1896–1931): Alexander C.T. Geppert, Fleeting cities: imperial expositions in fin-de-siecle Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ‘The Franco-British Exhibition, 1908.’ The Times, 8 May 1908, 20; In a later edition the paper said the exhibition even stood comparison with the Paris Exhibition of 1900: ‘First Impressions of The Exhibition.’ The Times, 15 May 1908, 8ff. Final Report of the Executive Commissioner for New South Wales at the FrancoBritish Exhibition, Parliamentary Papers, 1909, vol. v, 12. Different approaches taken to architecture by British and French architects at work on the Franco-British Exhibition were noted. The Architectural Review considered that the Frenchmen, possessing greater command of drawing, were of unfettered imagination: ‘The Franco-British Exhibition I, Architectural Review, vol. 24, July–Dec. 1908, 35. Guy Mauve, ‘Architecture’, in F. G. Dumas (ed.), Franco-British Exhibition 1908, London, Chatto & Windus, 1908, 13. ‘The Temple of the ‘Entente Cordiale’: The Wonderful Franco-British at Shepherd’s Bush’, ILN, 16 May 1908, 714–15. For maps see The Imre Kiralfy New International Exhibition Grounds, London W. [Scale 1 inch=90 feet], London, Imre Kiralfy, 1905; [birdseye view of] The Imre Kiralfy new International Exhibition Grounds, Hammersmith, London, W. A. Toudoire, archt. London: Imre Kiralfy, 1905. Harold M. Lewis, Planning the Modern City, New York, John Wiley & Sons vol. 1 (1922)/1949, 216; James Gilbert, Perfect cities, Chicago’s utopias of 1893, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 15. Washington, D.C. also played its part in American cities adopting and building City Beautiful plans. Among them were Cleveland, Denver, St Louis, and San Francisco: Michael J. Bedner, L’enfant’s legacy: public open spaces in Washington, D.C. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 51. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, New York: Pantheon, 1987, 34–83. ‘The King and the Olympic Games’, The Times, 14 July 1908, 10. Harold Bush-Brown, Beaux Arts to Bauhaus and beyond, an Architect’s perspective, New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1976, 23. Harold Bush-Brown (1888–1983) became an eminent architectural educator. C. H. Reilly, McKim, Mead & White, London: Ernest Benn, 1924, 23. ‘The strongest link of the ‘Entente Cordiale’: How the great Franco-British exhibition was planned and built’, P.I.P.: Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, no. 2451, 16 May 1908, 309. ‘The Franco-British Exhibition’, The Times, 25 May 1908, 8. Exhibitions and textile fairs were held at the White City site until 1937. See ‘History of the White City Site’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/ stories/2004/05_may/11/mv_history.pdf. Superintending Architect Report, 9 Dec. 1907. Franco-British Exhibition Australian Pavilion LCC/AR/TH/04/028 LMA. Final Report of the Executive Commissioner for New South Wales at the FrancoBritish Exhibition, Parliamentary Papers, 1909, vol. V, 12. Riley approved Burr’s plans for the building on the Strand on 21 January: LCC/VA/ DD/R163/001 LMA. West Australian Annexe, Franco-British Exhibition Australian Pavilion LCC/AR/ TH/04/028 LMA. Joseph Davies (1854–1932), civil engineer, was appointed Director-General of Public

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25

26

27 28 29

30 31 32

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Works in 1901 following a career in the Public Works Department of the New South Wales Government, for which he was consulting engineer in London in 1908. William Henry Beable, Romance of Great Businesses, London, Heath Cranton Limited, 1926, 249–59. Deryck Abel, The House of Sage 1860–1960, Fredk. Sage & Co. Ltd., 1960. Report of Messrs Coglan, Barling, and Davis, Commissioners in London for the State of New South Wales, Parliamentary Papers, 1909, vol. V, 19. ‘Portraits and World’s News’, ILN, 18 Apr. 1908, 558. Exhibiting was associated with, and promoted by, learned societies established in Sydney from the early 1820s. Their proceedings, which contained information valuable to the colonial community, were initially printed in the pages of the daily journals as part (it was said) of the constant attention to business which was characteristic of colonial life. Foremost were the Philosophical Society of New South Wales (established in 1821) and the Australian Horticultural and Agricultural Society (established in 1848). Joseph Dyer (ed.), The Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, vol. 2, Sydney, James W. Waugh, 1859, Preface, iv. The Greater Britain Exhibition, Earl’s Court, London 1899, Catalogue of exhibits in the Queensland Court, London: Spottiswoode & Co, 1899. Coordinated by Imre Kiralfy, the exhibition was presented in the Queen’s Palace, a striking building that once housed the collection of relics of the East India Company. Statistics from NSW reflected a near doubling of manufacturing activity, where between 1901 and 1909, the number of factory employees increased from 66,000 to 99,000; wages paid annually grew from £4,945,000 to £7,218,000; and the annual output leaped from £22,880,000 to £40,163,000. JRIBA, vol. 1 (New Series), no. 1, Jan. 1910, 72. On this see Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, The Macmillan Dictionary of the First World War, London: Macmillan, 1995, 375. ‘The London Exhibition, Australia’s share in it’, Examiner (Launceston), 19 June 1908, 7. For all the excitement about the Franco-British Exhibition and the Australian Pavilions, misperceptions persisted in England about each Australian state, and Australia in general. That January, anxious enquiries beset Taverner after the Daily Chronicle reported that heat wave conditions in Australia made hundreds of thousands in Australia seriously ill, revealing misconceptions in Britain about Australian conditions. ‘Australian Heat’, Advertiser, 24 Jan. 1908, 7. ‘An Interesting Letter’, Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld.), 15 Sept. 1908, 6. ‘Federal Representation in London’, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 20 Jan. 1908, 2. At a meeting held to promote an International League of Commercial Travellers’ Associations, presided over by David Lloyd George, Taverner heard Lloyd George speak about the importance of mutual assistance and goodwill to trade relations. ‘Commercial Travelers’, West Australian, 24 Mar. 1908, 5. ‘Mr. Lloyd-George On International Trade Relations.’ The Times, 23 Mar. 1908, 4. Sharing this view, William Howard Taft, President of the United States (1909–1913), suggested that a national organization be formed to help Congress keep in closer touch with commercial affairs. By this he meant the formation of an association that could determine the political wishes of businessmen, that could reach a consensus of their views, and that could speak authoritatively for the business community on legislative matters at the federal level. In 1912, upon the urging of President Taft and

Notes – Chapter Ten: Emporium of the World Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Charles Nagel, a group of businessmen formed the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Joseph F Bradley, The role of Trade associations and professional business societies in America, University Park, Penn., The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1965, 42. 33 Lewis Morris, Ode written and composed expressly for the occasion of laying the foundation stone of the Imperial Institute by Her Majesty the Queen, London, R. Clyde, (1887)/1985. 34 Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, The Web of Empire, a diary of the Imperial Tour of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall & York in 1901, London: Macmillan, 1903, 211. The view that England needed to tailor commercial policy to meet altered world conditions came from (among others) J. Ellis Barker, Drifting, London, Grant Richards, 1901, 196. 35 Board of Trade, Board of Trade Journal, vol. 54, no. 503, 19 July 1906, 142. The Board of Trade Journal was intended to be the principal medium through which intelligence collected by the branch, and intended for general information, would be conveyed to the public. Later, in 1917, the Commercial Intelligence Branch merged into a new Department of Overseas Trade. 36 ‘The Brussels Commercial Museum. One of …’, The Times, 18 Dec. 1882, 7. 37 ‘Italian Sample Museum at Buenos Aires’, The Times, 27 Dec. 1887, 10. ‘An Ottoman Commercial Museum-According’, The Times, 14 May 1891, 11. 38 ‘The Philadelphia Commercial Museum, The Times, 12 May 1899, 4. ‘The Recent International Commercial Congress at Philadelphia’, The Times, 22 Nov. 1899, 14. 39 ‘British Manufacturers and Commercial Information’, The Times, 31 Jan. 1901, 8. 40 Bruce Knox (ed., introd.), The Queensland years of Robert Herbert, Premier: letters and papers, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977, 39. Sir Robert Herbert (1831–1905), was Queensland’s first Premier (1859–66). Later appointed assistant Under-Secretary to the Colonial Office, he promptly became permanent UnderSecretary (1871–92). Apart from a brief gap of seven years, Herbert held that position until six years before his death. His unflagging view was that immigration was essential for Queensland’s development, ‘to promote the development of new country’. See pp. 179, 184. 41 ‘The Commercial Development of The Crown Colonies’, The Times, 4 Jan. 1904, 6. 42 From a speech made by King George V at Colombo, 12 Apr. 1901 in Charles E. Musgrave, The London Chamber of Commerce from 1881 to 1914, London, Effingham Wilson, 1914, frontispiece. 43 Sir William James Ashley (ed.), British Dominions their present commercial and industrial condition, London, Longmans, 1911, 31–2. 44 ‘A Collection of Opinions, ‘Which is the Most Interesting London Street?’, Strand Magazine, vol. 34, no. 201, Sept. 1908, 321. 45 ‘General notes’, SMH, 7 Apr. 1908, 11. 46 Carmichael was called to give evidence in the compensation claim made by Holloway Bros against London County Council due to the proposed county-hall for London: ‘The London County-Hall Site’, The Times, 3 Apr. 1908, 17. 47 ‘Ferro-Concrete and the Building By-Laws’, The Times, 7 Oct. 1908, 6. ‘New Westminster Guildhall. The Middle’, The Times, 11 Aug. 1911, 12. 48 H. B. Kerr, ‘Sir James Carmichael’ in David J. Jeremy (ed.) Dictionary of Business Biography, vol. 1 A–C, London, Butterworths, 1984, 592–4. 49 ‘Ferro-Concrete and the Building By-Laws’, The Times, 7 Oct. 1908, 6. 50 Sydney J. Holloway, Ancient and Modern building being some notes on the art and craft

351

Capital Designs of the builder with special reference to the work of Holloway Brothers both in erection and restoration, London, Holloway Brothers Ltd, 1924, 59. Sir Henry Tanner (1840– 1935) was the Principal Architect, H. M. Office of Works and the second President of the Concrete Institute (established in 1908). Holloway Bros secured a licence with L. G. Mouchel & Partners (as Consulting Engineers) to use the Hennebique reinforced concrete system which resulted in the firm winning the contract to build the new General Post Office building. 51 L. G. Mouchel, ‘Monolithic constructions in Hennebique’s ferro-concrete, and discussion’, JRIBA, 12 (1904–5), 47–61, 84–97. Mouchel cited the main reception room in the extension constructed at the French Embassy in London which was completed entirely in ferro-concrete, except for the external walls: see p. 59. Mouchel called for change to the London Building by-laws. 52 Adrian Forty notes that by 1905 Hennebique was estimated to control one fifth of the world market in reinforced concrete construction. Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture, A Material History, London, Reaktion, 2012, 18. Following Hennebique’s dominance in Britain, British architects viewed Mouchel as a ‘parvenu’: see Patricia Cusak, ‘Architects and the reinforced concrete specialist in Britain 1905–8’, Architectural History, vol. 29, 1986, 183–95. 53 Forty, Concrete and Culture, 28. Forty points out the resistance shown to concrete by British architects, even progressively-minded architects like W. R. Lethaby, in 1913: p. 22. Resistance to reinforced concrete from English architects stemmed from there being unclear building regulations regarding its use. Forty also identifies the appeal of concrete to ‘outsiders’, who adopt the medium to build their own visions: p. 34. 54 L.G. Mouchel & Partners, Hennebique ferro-concrete: theory and practice: a handbook for engineers and architects, London. L.G. Mouchel & Partners, 1909, 254. 55 For a list of constructions erected to Hennebique’s system beyond continental Europe (1908–15) see Fonds Bétons armés Hennebique (BAH): bureau technique central, CNAM/SIAF/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Archives of architecture of the 20th century, http://archiwebture.itechaillot.fr/fonds/ FRAPN02_BAH52/inventaire. 56 For a list of the forty-six subscribing countries who adhered to the Convention of 7 June 1905: International Agricultural Institute, Copy of Further Papers and Correspondence relative to the International Agricultural Institute in continuation of Parlaimentary Paper [Cd.2958], London, Printer for His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909, 11. 57 Stephen Kern, ‘Changing concepts and experiences of time and space’ in Michael Saler (ed.), The Fin de Siècle World, London; New York: Routledge, 2015, 84–5. 58 Olivia Rosetti Agresti, David Lubin, A Study in Practical Idealism, Boston, Little Brown and Company 1922, 214. David Lubin (1849–1919) was the owner of Weinstock & Lubin, one of the largest department stores and mail order houses on America’s Pacific Coast; Asher Hobson, The International Institute of Agriculture, An Historical and Critical Analysis of its Organization, Activities, and Policies of Administration, Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1931, 8. 59 The International Institute of Agriculture (1905–45) published the first world agricultural census (1930) and was the forerunner of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In Jan. 1908 Western Australia and Italy drew up an immigration agreement. ‘Palace of Agriculture’, Examiner (Launceston), 26 May 1908, 5. Pacific Rural Press, vol. 75, no. 26, 27 June 1908. On the history of internationalism see: Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the age of nationalism, 1st

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Notes – Chapter Eleven: Victoria House edn., Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; John Boli and George M. Thomas, Constructing world culture, international nongovernmental organizations since 1875, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. 60 Hobson, International Institute of Agriculture, 328; Agresti, David Lubin, 210, 328. 61 Hobson, International Institute of Agriculture, 324. 62 So long as farmers appreciated the importance of the Institute and brought the necessary pressure to bear on their home governments. 63 Agresti, David Lubin, 212. 64 ‘At the Franco-British’, West Australian, 30 June 1908, 5. 65 Ibid. 66 Daily News, 30 July 1908, 6; National Advocate (Bathurst, NSW), 31 July 1908, 3. Agresti, David Lubin, 214. 67 ‘The Week in London’, SMH, 4 Sept. 1908, 10. The Australian Agents-General reflected that intellectual and bureaucratic assessment was fragmented. The problem of disconnected information, by which countries ‘looked both inward and outward with many ‘eyes’ and with more or perhaps less) than a single brain’ as Aaron L. Freidberg described it, was a shortcoming at the start of the twentieth century: Aaron L. Freidberg, The Weary Titan, Britain and the experience of relative decline, Princeton, 1988; Guildford, Princeton University Press, 280. 68 ‘The Exhibition’, Daily Telegraph, 19 Sept. 1908, 7. ‘London’s “White City”’, Bendigo Advertiser, 21 Sept. 1908, 7. 69 ‘Imperialism and Emigration’, Daily News, 19 Sept. 1908, 2. 70 ‘Some Australian Statistics’, Investors’ Review, v. 20 no. 570, 5 Dec. 1908, 695. Author and financial journalist Alexander Johnstone Wilson (1841–1921) was City editor of the Pall Mall Gazette (1881–3), the Standard (1883–99), and assistant City editor for The Times from 1874. He was a notably tough-minded economist. 71 Daily News, 6; SMH, 12 March, 7. 72 ‘Some Australian Statistics’, 695; Nor did Canada escape Wilson’s scrutiny: ‘Canadian Progress’, Investors’ Review, vol. 21, no. 543, 30 May 1908, 718. 73 ‘Australian Debt and Prosperity’, Investors’ Review, vol. 23, no. 583, 6 Mar. 1909, 311; Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Pursuit of Reason, The Economist 1843–1993, Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1995, 405. 74 ‘Australian Debt and Prosperity’, Investors’ Review, vol. 221, no. 570, 5 Dec. 1908, 695. In Feb. 1909, the Fisher government ordered the building of three destroyers in Britain for an Australian naval squadron. 75 ‘Australian Debt and Prosperity’, Investors’ Review, vol. 221, no. 548, 4 July 1908, 1.

Chapter Eleven: Victoria House 1 Wilfred J. Spruson, ‘The Skyscraper’, Builder Magazine, vol. 1 no. 1, Sept. 1907, 25. 2 Details of the opening ceremony and Taverner’s speech came from several sources: Miscellaneous estrays relating to Rex Nan Kivell, 1909–75 Rex Nan Kivell Collection, MS Acc11.185 NLA; ‘The New Offices of The Victoria Government’, The Times, 26 Mar. 1909, 8; ‘Victoria in London’, Telegraph, 8 May 1909, 13. Victoria’s population was 1,300,009. ‘The Government of Victoria’, The Times, 31 Mar. 1909, 10. 3 The name of Melbourne Place was approved in 1907. London County Council, List of Streets & Places, 3rd edn., 1929, 342; ‘In connexion with the proposed erection on a portion of the Strand–Aldwych site of a new building for the Government of Victoria, the Westminster City Sessions, at its meeting to-morrow, will be

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5 6 7

8

9 10

11 12 13 14

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recommended to adopt a suggestion by the Agent’, Daily Mail (London), 30 Oct. 1907; no. 3603. Details of the building were widely reported: ‘Victoria in London’, Argus, 1 Apr. 1909, 5. ‘The Government Of Victoria’, The Times, 31 Mar. 1909, 10. ‘Building News’, British Architect, 2 Apr. 1909, 252; ‘Very like a sky-scraper’, New Zealand Herald, vol. 46, no. 13993, 24 Feb. 1909, 9; ‘The New Offices Of The Victoria Government’, The Times, 26 Mar. 1909, 8; ‘Victoria in London’, Telegraph, 8 May 1909, 2nd edn., 13. ‘Colonial Dreadnoughts’, Advertiser, 1 Apr. 1909, 7. ‘Personal Notes from England’, Register, 3 May 1909, 6. Illustrated in the Leader, 28 Sept. 1907, 34. The scale of the proposed building is illustrated in the Western Mail, 16 May 1908, 30. For an illustration of Kerr’s proposed dome see George Tibbits and Philip Goad, ‘Peter Kerr’ in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, Melbourne, CUP, 2012, 382–3. For plans of the building: J. Noone, Plan of principal floor; and Longitudinal Section, Houses of Parliament, Melbourne, Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1886. SLV H41206/2; H41206/3. Geoffrey Serle, John Monash, A Biography, MUP, 1982, 166. The dome roofed a new reading room that was built to commemorate the jubilee of the Library (first opened to the public in 1856). Planned from 1906, the Press illustrated plans for it: ‘A Dome for the Melbourne Public Library’, Weekly Times, 5 June 1909, 8. It was built with funds from Sir Thomas Bent’s government. Although attributed to Melbournebased architect Norman G. Peebles, it could not have been constructed without civil engineer John Monash (1885–1931), then of Reinforced Concrete and Monier Pipe Construction Co Ltd. On Monash as designer: Miles Lewis, ‘Building the Dome: an illustrated account’, LaTrobe Journal, no. 82, Dec. 2013, 4–51 especially 16, 27. Lewis notes that while billed as ‘The Greatest on Earth’, Melbourne’s dome was only briefly the largest such structure of reinforced concrete in the world (34.75 m in diameter and the same in height). Lewis points out that this was unremarkable: the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, built of plain rather than reinforced concrete, spanned 43.3 m. Monash was a member of the Concrete Institute, London from its outset (1908). The Concrete Institute List of Members and subscribers 1910 London: The Concrete Institute, 23. ‘The Strand Site, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov. 1907, 7. London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts and London Day Training College, Southampton Row. The School premises extended 107 feet along the Southampton Row frontage; the Training College occupied the remaining 110 feet. As illustrated in the Builder, 16 May 1908, 428. W. Macqueen-Pope, Gaiety: theatre of enchantment, London: W. H. Allen, 1949, 382. Superintending Architect’s Department, Report to the Improvements Committee, 19 June 1912, Holburn to Strand Improvement Australian Commonwealth Site no. 45, LCC-MIN8010, LMA. ‘The Strand site, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov. 1907, 7. Shaw’s design is illustrated: ‘Men and Matters of the Time, New Commonwealth Offices’, Western Mail, 11 Jan. 1908, 44. London County Council, Minutes Improvements Committee (1907), 23 Oct. 1907, 279; London County Council, Report of the Improvements Committee (1907), item 32, p. 1026; Holborn to Strand, Vote of thanks to Mr R. Norman Shaw, R.A., 29 Oct. 1907, 853.

Notes – Chapter Eleven: Victoria House 15 A. Stuart Gray, photographs by Jean & Nicholas Breach; drawings by Charlotte Halliday; foreword by Nicholas Taylor, Edwardian architecture: a biographical dictionary, London: Duckworth, 1985, 176, and for Shaw’s proposal for the South (Piccadilly) front of the Piccadilly Hotel see p. 63; English drew with perspective artist Arthur C. Fare (1874–1958). Fare was an assistant with architects Messrs. Silcock and Reay when he was commissioned to do drawings of the Piccadilly Hotel and of Regent-street for Norman Shaw. 16 In the case of the drawing of Norman Shaw’s design for the Quadrant, Fare ‘ghosted’ for English: Fare is attributed in the Builder as being responsible for the drawing. The Quadrant drawing is reproduced, and attributed incorrectly, in Sir Reginald Blomfield, Richard Norman Shaw, R.A., Architect, 1831–1912, London, B. T. Batsford, 1940, fig. 58. A contributor to the journal observed its incorrect attribution to English. Fare was described as a modest man, and Blomfield as a stickler for justice. The inference was made that Blomfield incorrectly made the attribution, as he lacked the facts. 17 N. Shaw to Eaton, 13 Apr. 1906, RAA/SEC/4/120/19. Sir Frederick Alexis Eaton (1836–1913) was Secretary of the Royal Academy from 1873. 18 ‘The Quadrant, Regent Street’, Builder, vol. 90, no. 3300, 8 May 1906, 496. Norman Shaw’s Design for The Quadrant, Regent Street London, perspective of west side looking north, 1905 is in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts. 19 ‘C.W. English [F]’, JRIBA vol. 38, no. 18, 8 Aug. 1931, 699; A. Koch and C. W. English (eds.), Academy Architecture and Annual Architectural Review, London: 1889; Royal Academy Design for the Quadrant, Regent Street, London: perspective of west side looking north, 1905, Drawn by an artist in the Office of Charles William English, Printed by Sprague & Co. Ltd, RA 11/3439, www.royalacademy.org.uk/ art-artists. ‘The Quadrant, Regent Street’ now being rebuilt from designs prepared for the Office of Woods by Mr R Norman Shaw, R.A.’, Builder, vol. 90, no. 3800, 5 May 1906, 495. In general, the Builder, approved of Shaw’s scheme for rebuilding the front of Regent’s Quadrant: see p. 481. 20 ‘The New Offices of the Government of Victoria (Australia) at the corner of the Strand and Melbourne Place, London’, Architectural Records, no. 1, July 1909, London: The Architects’ Technical Bureau Association Limited. 21 ‘Strand Site, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov. 1907, 7. As was reported in Australia: ‘Victoria’s London Office’, Register, 1 Apr. 1909, 6. 22 Stuart Gray thought Alfred Burr attempted Shaw’s Piccadilly Hotel manner: Gray, ‘II. Public Buildings and Street Architecture’, 217; For a history of Shaw see Andrew Saint, Richard Norman Shaw, New Haven, Conn.; London: YUP, 2010. On Shaw’s quality of drawings, and how their wide illustration promoted his work: Neil Bingham, Dream, draw, work, architectural drawings by Norman Shaw RA, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2014; Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Public Information Office, The Norman Shaw Buildings, 1982. 23 ‘Art Music and the Drama’, ILN, 12 Oct. 1907, 529. Shaw’s move to simplified detail is clear in the building he designed with Ernest Newton for Alliance Assurance, at the south end of St James’s St., facing up Pall Mall. ‘The Alliance Assurance Building, St James’s, London’, Architectural Review, vol. 21, no. 122, Jan. 1907, 46–51. 24 ‘Charles Henry Mabey’, Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1952, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011. 25 The slate came from the quarries of J. Stephenson & Co. of Kendal, part of the now

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Capital Designs idle Tilberthwaite Slate Quarries at Coniston in the Lakes District. 26 E. Arden Minty, ‘London’s New Public Buildings’, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, vol. 10, no. 46, Jan. 1907, 217; ‘The New Sessions House, London’, Architectural Review, vol. 21, no. 124, Mar. 1907, 136–52. 27 Mark Stocker, ‘Pomeroy, Frederick William (1856–1924)’, ODNB. A. B. Burton (1860–1933), the eminent Bronze Statue Founder and Art Metal Worker who ran Thames Ditton Bronze Foundry in Surrey (1903–39), cast Pomeroy’s figure that was positioned atop Victoria House. From Burton’s foundry came the most significant sculptures of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. A canny sculptor of Scottish descent, Pomeroy maintained his Scottish connection, frequently exhibiting in Scotland as well as in London. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and a Master of the Art Workers Guild in 1908. 28 William Lucas, ‘The work and influence of Norman Shaw, R.A.’, British Architect, vol. 79, 16 May 1913, 374–85. Regent’s Quadrant Committee, Report of the Committee to consider the design for completing the rebuilding of the Quadrant, Regent Street, London: H.M.S.O. 1913. William Lucas (1861–1939) practiced independently in London from 1893. Lucas was an original member of the London Society from its formation in 1912. See Who’s who in architecture (1914), 141. 29 W. Eric Jackson, Achievement, A Short History of the LCC, London: Longmans, 1965, 248. Also, Banister Fletcher, London Building Acts 1894–1909, Batsford, 1914. According to the Advisory Committee of 1931, the maximum effective height of a building for practical purposes was usually considered to be 100 feet. 30 ‘The Trend of Architecture at the Present Time’, Builder, Oct. 1916, 237. 31 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 6 Dec. 1907, OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. 32 For examples of suppliers and their products and services, see Architectural Review, vol. 21, no. 127, June 1907, xi–xxxvi. 33 The Luxfer Group developed fire-resistant glazing among other products like pavement lights. On work for it by Frank Lloyd Wright see https://www.luxfer.com/ about/history.asp. 34 The scale of Victoria House on the Strand–Aldwych was evident in 1912: ‘The site selected for the Commonwealth Offices in the Strand, London’, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 31 Jan. 1912, 25. 35 Gideon Haigh, The Office, a hardworking history, Carlton, MUP, 2012, 73. In 1892 the city of Chicago placed a height limitation of 130 feet on all future buildings. The limit was raised in 1900 but only to 260 feet. This was not altered until the 1920s. American examples were known to London readers of the Architectural Review which from Aug. 1908 to Jan. 1909 issued a series of articles on commercial buildings in the United States, reviewed by architect Francis S. Swales (1878–1962). 36 Speedy execution was a hallmark of the erection of the Woolworth Building. The foundations for it were under construction before the exterior design was completed. Cass Gilbert prepared the drawings for the building in eighty-six calendar days: Cass Gilbert in Edward Hoak, Edward Warren and Willis Humphrey Church with an introduction by Paul P. Cret, Masterpieces of Architecture in the United States, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930, 215. The history of the building is given in Gail Fenske, The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. The steam-powered elevator and the steel-framed skeleton radically transformed architecture. For explanation of how technological advances, as with elevators, affected building see Lee Gray, ‘The 1908 Singer Building Elevators’, Elevator World, vol. 54, no. 4, Apr.

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Notes – Chapter Twelve: ‘Doomed to Disfigurement’ 2006, 118–22. Gray explains how traction elevators were critical for the success of early high-rise buildings in New York. 37 On the view that the revolution in building with steel was akin to the radical transformation of architecture in the twelfth century with Gothic construction: C. W. Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture, Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press, 1964, 79. 38 This was what the building was called as it went up, shown by this photograph from Australia’s Leader, 27 Feb. 1909, 30. 39 Muirhead Bone, ‘Rebuilding the Strand. 1907’ in James Bone with pictures by Muirhead Bone, London Echoing, London: Jonathan Cape, 1948, 112. ‘The Victorian Agency, English Comments on it’, The Age, 8 May 1909, 20. Bone’s works are noted for their precision and attention to detail. Subjects that he favoured were industrial landscapes and engineering projects. The whole of the constructional steel work in floors, roofs, and turret was executed by Messrs. G. Aston & Sons Ltd. 40 Architects Magazine, vol. 6, no. 71, Sept. 1906, 204. 41 Theodore Turak, William Le Baron Jenney: a pioneer of modern architecture, UMI Research Press, 1986, 105–6. 42 Sven Bylander, ‘Steelwork in Buildings – Thirty years’ progress’, Structural Engineer, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 1937, 12. Also in Robert Thorne (ed.), Structural Iron and Steel, 1850–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, 319. Steel production in Britain fell in 1913 due to the importation of large quantities of more competitively priced Belgian and German steel: F. J. Hatch, The Iron and Steel Industry of the United Kingdom under war conditions, A record of the work of the iron and steel production department of the Ministry of Munitions, London, Harrison & Sons, 1919, 20. 43 Master Builders Association (London), Seventy-Five Years on being a brief history of the London Master Builders Association 1872–1947, London Master Builders Association, 1947, 14. 44 Argus, 30 Jan. 1909, 16. 45 ‘General Cable News’, Chronicle (Adelaide), 3 Apr. 1909, 36. 46 ‘Victoria in London’, Telegraph, 8 May 1909, 2nd edn., 13. 47 ‘Queensland in London.’ Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 10 Sept. 1908, 7.

Chapter Twelve: ‘Doomed to Disfigurement’ 1 2 3 4

‘The Eastern End of the Strand as it is and as it might be’, Graphic, 12 Oct. 1907, 491. R. M. Collins to A. Young, 11 Dec. 1907, OHC, Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4, p. 2. A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 9 Nov. 1907, OHC, Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. ‘L.C.C.’s Shylock Demands’, newspaper clipping dated 29 Jan. 1908, OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. Reports from Australia included ‘Council and Commonwealth Site in the Strand’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 16 Mar. 1908, 5. 5 As was reported from New Zealand: ‘Australia House’, Auckland Star, vol. 39, no. 64, 14 Mar. 1908, 5. 6 ‘World’s News and Portraits’, ILN, 8 Feb. 1908, 188.  7 The original scheme approved by the Council was estimated to cost £1,706,000: £600,000 for property; for works and building completed and furnished £1,100,000; and £6,000 for constructing the embankment wall. The aggregate cost of the whole project ultimately cost £3,875,000. ‘Competition Design for London County Hall’, Builder, vol. 94 no. 3411, 20 June 1908, facing p. 720; Marshall Mackenzie’s

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Capital Designs competitive design was published also: ‘The Palace for London’s Parliament: The L. C. C. Hall’, ILN, 8 Feb. 1908, 195. 8 So thought Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1947), a competitor (jointly with Stanley C. Ramsey and Stanley Peach); they worked for six months on their design. Alan Powers, ‘Architects I Have Known’: The Architectural Career of S. D. Adshead, Architectural History, vol. 24, 1981, 119. 9 Riley’s provisional design hung in his office. ‘Luxury for an Elected Body: The Proposed London County Council Hall at a Cost of £1,700, 000’, ILN, 22 Apr. 1905, 572. 10 Colin Cunningham comprehensively chronicles the details of the civic buildings that were erected: Colin Cunningham, Victorian and Edwardian Town Hall, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. 11 ‘Australia And The London County Council Strand Site’, The Times, 17 Mar. 1908, 12. On Knott: ‘Obituary, Ralph Knott’, JRIBA, vol. 36, no. 1, 3rd series, 9 Feb. 1929, 296; ‘Obituary’, Builder, vol. 136, no. 4487 1 Feb. 1929, 237, 255; Full details of the building and its history are found in Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall. 12 W. E. Riley, The Architectural Work of the London County Council, JRIBA, vol. 16, 3rd series, 24 Apr. 1909, 412–42. Reprints of Riley’s address were issued also, giving indication of the degree of interest taken in what Riley had to say: W. E. Riley, ‘The Architectural Work of the LCC’, reprint from the Journal of the Royal Institute of Architects, 1909, LCC/AR/CB/04/011. 13 ‘Notes’, Builder, vol. 961, no. 3455, 24 Apr. 1909, 485. 14 ‘Is War good for architecture?’, Builder, vol. 110, no. 3813, 3 Mar. 1916, 173. 15 ‘The Trend of Architecture at the Present Time’, Builder, vol. 111, no. 3846, 20 Oct. 1916, 237. 16 ‘Notes’, Builder, vol. 96, no. 3455, 24 Apr. 1909, 485. Writing more recently, John Davis outlines the view that the high-spending Progressive Council could never achieve the municipal enterprise it sought. See, John Davis, ‘The Progressive Council 1889–1907’ in Andrew Saint (ed.), Politics and the People of London, The London County Council 1889–1965, London, Hambledon Press, 1989, 27–47. 17 ‘Designs for The New Street’, The Times, 30 Oct. 1900, 12. In this instance, the Council obtained sketches from a panel of architects nominated by the RIBA. The Council abandoned its intention intended to have frontages on Kingsway developed as a single architectural entity. It felt unable to risk the financial consequences of delay that would follow from imposing this condition upon lessees of the building sites. That it did not stand committed to a uniform plan for the new streets dismayed many architects. See ch. 7, p. 59. 18 M. H. Judge, The Case for Further Strand Improvement (ed.), London, Williams & Norgate, 1906. Mark Hayler Judge, A.R.I.B.A., Who’s Who in architecture, 1914, London, Technical Journals Ltd., 1914, 127. Frederick Chatterton (ed.), Who’s Who in Architecture, 1926, London, the Architectural Press, 172. Mark Judge (1847–1927) was the first Curator of the Parkes Museum of Hygiene (from 1878). The Museum and the Sanitary Institute amalgamated in 1888, becoming the precursor of today’s Royal Society for Public Health. Up to the First World War, Judge lectured and wrote on a variety of topics related to progressing the built environment. Letters from Mark H. Judge periodically appeared in The Times. Examples include: ‘Aldwych and The Strand’, The Times, 25 Dec. 1905, 6; Letters to the Editor; ‘Aldwych and The Strand’, The Times, 2 Jan. 1906, 8; ‘Strand Island Site’,

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Notes – Chapter Thirteen: Pulling Together The Times, 6 Oct. 1909, 14. 19 ‘The City and The County Council’, The Times, 9 Oct. 1909, 11. 20 Alan Powers, ‘Adshead, Stanley Davenport (1868–1946)’, ODNB. 21 Riley, The Architectural Work, 442. 22 As described by Sir Adrian Dingli, the Crown Advocate, and later Chief Justice of Malta, in Joseph Bonnici & Michael Cassar, The Malta Grand Harbour and its Dockyard, Malta, 1994, 69, 110. 23 Riley, The Architectural Work, 413. 24 W.E. Riley to Mr. Wills, 25 Mar. 1915, RIBA Committee on Official Architecture 1913–15, from Collection London County Council Architect’s Department: Council Buildings, Construction and Maintenance LCC/AR/CB/01/166. 25 The Institute of British Architects set up a Committee in 1904 to look into regulating work undertaken by Britain’s municipal and district councils. At the end of that year, it issued a circular that pronounced the stand which the Institute took with regard to public works and municipal officials. It viewed county and municipal authorities employing their own salaried officials to design and execute important public buildings as a growing evil. ‘Municipal Officials and Architectural Work’, JRIBA, vol. 12, 3rd series, 10 Dec. 1904, 110–15; Also ‘Public Works and Municipal Officials’, JRIBA, vol. 11, 3rd series, 7 May 1904, 356. 26 Riley, The Architectural Work, 436. 27 ‘London Street Improvements’, The Times, 17 May 1909, 15. 28 ‘A Façade in Kingsway, London’, Architect & Contract Reporter, vol. 82, July– December, 10 Sept. 1909, 168. Edwin L. Lutyens, F.R.I.B.A. was the architect.

Chapter Thirteen: Pulling Together 1 Sir George Reid from ‘Dinner to Sir George Reid’, The Times, 8 Apr. 1910, 8. 2 Parliament of the Commonwealth, Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives, no. 31, 6 Aug. 1909; Groom was Minister of External Affairs (1909–10). 3 ‘High Commissioner’, Weekly Times, 12 June 1909, 29. 4 ‘High Commissioner’, Telegraph, 2nd edn., 8 June 1909, 6. 5 ‘The Senate Ministerial Statement’, Industrial Procedural Text, 3 June 1909, Hansard, Parliament of Australia, website. The Inter-State Commission was one of the main items of Barton’s 1901 policy. It was established to secure fairer trade inside the Commonwealth, and to prevent the State Governments from erecting artificial barriers between the States. Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1901–1929, Melbourne: MUP, 1956, 89, 92. 6 R. M. Collins to L. Groom, 15 Oct. 1909, Correspondence Items, Box 2, Series 1/838 NLA MS236. 7 London Master Builders, Seventy-Five Years on being a brief history of the London Master Builders Association 1872–1947, London, London Master Builders Association, 1947, 14–15. 8 A. Young to R. M. Collins, 18 Oct. 1909, AHTSC, AH/D2–3; Richard Barras charted the recurring nature of building cycles: Richard Barras, Building Cycles, Growth and Instability, London, Wiley Blackwell, 2009, 138, 157, 161. Investment in building rose sharply in 1902–5 in the United Kingdom. Barras notes that 1908 was the turning point in building investment (which sank to a low again in 1914). As the London Master Builders Association confirmed, improvement was generally

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Capital Designs not seen until 1911. At the same time, in 1909–10, Sydney enjoyed a building boom: Colquhoun (ed.), United Empire, vol. 1, no. 7, July 1910, 810. 9 A. Young to R. M. Collins, 12 Oct. 1909, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 10 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 26 Nov. 1909, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 11 Memorandum to A. Hunt, 26 Nov. 1909, p. 2, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. At the same time, Collins informed Melbourne about other options available in terms of other buildings and sites. 15 Ibid. 16 Assent was given on 13 Dec. 1909: An Act to provide for the Office of High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, no. 22 of 1909. Under the High Commissioner Act, Section 4, the High Commissioner’s duties were to carry out instructions received from the Minister respecting the commercial, financial, and general interests of the Commonwealth and the States in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. 17 Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, no. 5, 22 Jan. 1910, 48. Reid was appointed on a salary of £3,000 a year with an expenses allowance of £2,000 a year to cover travel and an official residence. The High Commission in London would be Australia’s only overseas post until 1940, when legations in Washington, Ottawa and Tokyo were opened. It was directly overseen by the Prime Minister’s Department until 1972, when it was absorbed by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. 18 ‘The High Commissioner leaving next month’, Leader, 25 Dec. 1909, 23. 19 Hogan, Sister Dominions, 11–12. 20 Alfred Deakin, Edited and with an introduction by J. A. La Nauze, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters to the Morning Post 1900–1910, Melbourne: MUP, 1968, 214. 21 Deakin, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters, 176. Also, J. A. La Nauze, Alfred Deakin, A Biography, vol. 1, Melbourne: MUP, 1965, 179, 241–2. 22 Deakin, Federated Australia, Selections from Letters, 275, also 176, 246. 23 Ibid., 215. 24 W. L. & J. E. Courtney, with drawings by Clive Gardiner, Pillars of Empire: studies & impressions, London: Jarrolds, 1918, 208. 25 Reid confirms Deakin’s opinion in his autobiography: Sir George Reid, My Reminiscences, London: Cassell & Co, 1917, 166, http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/fed/. 26 Daily Express, 2 Sept. 1913. 27 Reid was a cartoonists delight: W. G. McMinn, ‘Reid, Sir George Houstoun (1845– 1918)’, ADB. For example see a special issue of Australia’s Punch on George Reid as the Father of Federation ‘grandstanding’ in London: ‘Alone I did it’, Punch, 30 May 1899, Box 4, MS7842 NLA. 28 ‘House of Lords’, The Times, 15 Mar. 1910, 6; Reid described Rosebery as his oldest living friend in Britain: ‘Dinner to Sir George Reid’, The Times, 16 Mar. 1910, 12. 29 Colquhoun (ed.), United Empire, vol. 1, no. 4, Apr. 1910, 239. The Colonial Society was initially established in 1868 as a private club for those who took interest in the affairs of the colonies and of India. It became the Royal Colonial Institute in 1870 and was known subsequently known as the Royal Empire Society (1928–58), and is today the Royal Commonwealth Society. 30 United Empire, vol. 1, no. 4, Apr. 1910, 278. 31 ‘Dinner to Sir George Reid’, The Times, 16 Mar. 1910, 12. Also, United Empire, vol.

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Notes – Chapter Thirteen: Pulling Together 1, no. 4, Apr. 1910, 273. Customarily, Crewe took a long, historical view of events, placing current events in the perspective of historical time: James Pope-Hennessy, Lord Crewe 1858–1945 the likeness of a Liberal, London, Constable and Co, 1955, 135. 32 Bernard Attard, The Australian High Commissioners, London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1991, 15. Attard emphasised that amongst Reid’s achievements was the creation of a non-political office. 33 GV/PRIV/GVD/1901, 2 June. Several letters from King George V, sent to Reid between 1911 and 1913, suggest that he was sympathetic to Reid: examples include MS7842/1/9; MS7842/1/40, NLA. 34 Sir Cosmo Parkinson, The Colonial Office from within 1909–1945, London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1947, 16. 35 P. Cambon to H. Cambon, 15 June 1905 in Paul Cambon, Correspondence, 1870– 1924, vol. II, (ed.) Henri Cambon, Paris, 1940–46, 197 cited in Keith Eubank, Paul Cambon, Master Diplomatist, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960, 103. 36 W. M. Hughes, Policies and Potentates, London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950, 4. 37 Reid met Gladstone when in England in 1897. William Ewart Gladstone, Studies on Homer and the Homeric age, vol. 3, OUP, 1858, 7. On Gladstone’s interventions with the Press see J.A. Spender, The Public Life, vol. 2, London; New York, Cassell and Company, 1925, 97–8. Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, First Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, London, Printed by the British Australian (1910) Ltd., 1911, 3. 38 High Commissioner’s First Annual Report, C.P.P. Session 1911, vol. 2; Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, First Annual Report, 4. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 1–2. See also Littleton Groom Papers MS236/796 NLA. 41 ‘France and Australia’, Capricornian (Rockhampton, Qld.), 24 Sept. 1910, 21. 42 ‘Sir George Reid On Australia’, The Times, 1 Mar. 1910, 5. 43 ‘Sir George Reid In Paris’, The Times, 19 Sept. 1910, 5. 44 ‘Dinner to Sir George Reid’, The Times, 8 Apr. 1910, 8. 45 ‘Sir G. Reid On Australia’, The Times, 27 Jan. 1911, 14. 46 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, First Annual Report. 47 Sir G. Reid to L. Groom, 6 Apr. 1910, NLA MS236/1/908–9. 48 ‘Naval and Military Intelligence’, The Times, 24 June 1910, 10. 49 A succinct description of the power and impact of the Dreadnought ships: Tony Fry and Anne-Marie Willis, Steel, a design, cultural and ecological history, London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015, 143, 155. 50 ‘Imperial Arts League’, The Times, 5 Apr. 1910, 14. 51 ‘Dinner to Sir George Reid’, The Times, 8 Apr. 1910, 8. 52 McMinn, ‘Reid, Sir George Houstoun’, ADB. Reid was the tenth individual to be granted the honour. Twenty individuals were granted the honour from 1888 up to 1960; they included the Very Reverend Henry Wace, later Dean of Canterbury (1894); Sir Joseph Fayrer, later Physician Extraordinary to Edward VII (1894); the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1951); and Queen Juliana of Netherlands (1954); B. W. E. Alford & T. C. Barker, A History of the Carpenters Company, London: Allen and Unwin, 1968, 171. First record of a Carpenters’ Company proper is in 1333, though building regulations by the Master Carpenters are mentioned in 1271. Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, London 1, The City of London, London; New Haven, YUP, (1997)/1999, 380.

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Capital Designs 53 Alford & Barker, A History of the Carpenters Company, 160. Hundreds of boys received training at the school before it closed in 1905. 54 Australia: Photograph album of New South Wales, Corporation of London, COL/ SP/07/039, LMA. 55 Edward Dowling, Australia and America in 1892: a contrast, Sydney: Charles Potter, 1893, 147. 56 Statistics emphasized the vitality of NSW. Its imports amounted to over £34 m out of the combined Commonwealth total of £90 m, while that State’s exports were close to £38 m out of a Commonwealth total of £105 m. ‘Trade of the individual States of the Commonwealth’, Year Book of Australia, no. 3, 1910, 648–9. 57 ‘News of the Day’, Mercury, 25 Aug. 1911, 4. 58 ‘Sir George Reid’, Daily News, 2 Apr. 1910, 7. For a listing of Specialist Departments (with names of staff) and Offices established at 72 Victoria St. 1910–16, see Thompson, Appendix II, 303. 59 Commonwealth of Australia, First Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, Printed by the British Australian Ltd, 1911, 13. 60 Collins sent to Melbourne a memorandum with regard to the Gaiety site. Memorandum to A. Hunt, 3 June 1910, Sites for Commonwealth Offices in London, 3–4, AH/D2–3; Gaiety Restaurant Site, Strand, London, A63, A1910/431NAA; Also, ‘Australia in London’, Argus, 2 Feb. 1910, 12. 61 Sir G. Reid to L. Groom, 6 Apr. 1910, NLA MS236/1/908–9. 62 As reported in Australia, the increasing value of prime locations was made clear in the latest report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests and Land Revenues: ‘London land values’, Queanbeyan Age (NSW), 19 Apr. 1910, 6. 63 ‘The King’s Funeral’, The Times, 23 May 1910, 14. ‘The Late King Edward’, The Times, 25 May 1910, 9.

Chapter Fourteen: Old and New Orders 1 William Morris Hughes, Policies and Potentates, London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950, 99. 2 William Whyte (intro.), The transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects Town Planning Conference, London, 10–15 October 1910, London; New York: Routledge, 2011, 1. 3 Franco-British Union of Architects: http://ufba-fbua.com/history/. 4 Whyte, Town Planning Conference London, 12–13 for a full list of the committee of patronage and the executive committee. Patrons included the Earls of Wemyss, Crewe, Plymouth; Lord Strathcona, the Right Hon. Lewis Harcourt; Artists Sir Edward Poynter, Sir L. Alma-Tadema, Sir George Frampton, Thomas Brock; architects Sir Aston Webb, John Belcher, Ernest George. Conference members are listed on pp. 30–57. 5 W. E. Riley, ‘City Development’, in Whyte, Town Planning, 291–305; John Sulman, ‘The Federal Capital of Australia’, in Whyte, Town Planning, 604–10; Sulman assumed responsibility for planning Canberra in 1921. Developments in Australia are also covered in: John Sulman, The Federal Capital, Sydney, J. Sands, 1909; John Sulman, An introduction to the study of town planning in Australia, Observatory Hill, NSW: National Trust of Australia NSW, 2007; Nelson P Lewis, with the assistance of Harold M. Lewis, Planning the Modern City: a review of the principles governing city planning, 2nd edn., rev., New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1923, 35.

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Notes – Chapter Fourteen: Old and New Orders 6 ‘The Town Planning Conference’, The Times, 5 Sept. 1910, 4; RIBA, Town Planning Conference, Town planning conference London, 10th to 15th October, 1910: Exhibition of drawings & models at the Royal Academy from the 10th to the 22nd October, London: Printed by W. Clowes & Sons, 1910; The exhibition at Burlington House was one of three displays held during the conference. Exhibitions of items of historic interest pertaining to London were also presented at the Guildhall and at the RIBA: Whyte, Town Planning Conference London, 802–10. 7 New South Wales, Royal Commission for the Improvement of the City of Sydney and Its Suburbs, Report of the Royal Commission for the improvement of the City of Sydney and its suburbs together with copy of commission, evidence, appendices and plans, Sydney, W. A. Gullick, Government Printer, 1909. 8 Stokes had his office at 17 Buckingham St., Strand: RIBA, Kalendar 1924–5 cited in H. V. Molesworth Roberts, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes: a comprehensive account of his work’, Architectural Review, vol. 100, no. 600, Dec. 1946, 173–7, particularly 175; Jan Ward, The Leonard Stokes directory, architect in a dressing grown, J. Ward, 2009. 9 Illustrations from the Exhibition featured in: RIBA, Town Planning Conference London 10–15 October 1910 Transactions, London, RIBA, 1911, 745–801; Annual Report from the Council of The Royal Academy to the General Assembly of Academicians for the Year 1910, London. William Clowes and Sons Limited, 1911, 13; John W Simpson, ‘Foreword’ to RIBA, Transactions Town Planning Conference, 3. The exhibition at Burlington House ran from 3 Oct., and was extended to 3 Nov. ‘Architects and Town Planning’, The Times, 13 Aug. 1910, 10. 10 Abbott, An outlander in England, 131. 11 Ibid., 78. 12 John W. Reps, An Ideal city, The 1912 Competition to Design Canberra, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 1995, 8. 13 Frederick Brock, John Sankey (ed.) with a foreword by Marjorie Trusted, Thomas Brock Forgotten Sculptor of the Victoria Memorial, Bloomington, IN.: Ian Thompson, 2012, 103. 14 Brock & Sankey, Thomas Brock, 108. The Memorial was unveiled on 16 May 1911, but not completed until 1924; ‘The Queen Victoria Memorial, Sir Thomas Brock, R.A., Sculptor’, Architectural Review, vol. 29, no. 175, June 1911, 351–8.  15 The east front of Buckingham Palace was built by Edward Blore between 1846–50. When photographed behind the new memorial, Blore’s façade appears dull (clearly blackened by London’s soot-laden atmosphere): ‘The Queen Victoria Memorial’, Architectural Review, vol. 29, no. 175, June 1911, 352. Webb also heightened the east wing. 16 Brooklands Speed and Distance Tables; ‘Brooklands: Brooklands racing track, Weybridge, Surrey; Kyle Stewart’, Concrete Quarterly, no. 147, Oct.–Dec. 1985, 31. Brooklands was formally opened on 17 June 1907. The track gave example of concrete technology in its infancy because the original track was laid in 1907 without reinforcement, but metal reinforcement was subsequently added to patching and repairs. This article explains how the original concrete track constructed in 1907 was recently reconstructed, with present-day engineers restoring the track to its original construction. 17 Promoters of new railway lines used their capital and influence to resist automobile locomotion, which they stifled by securing restrictive legislation on automobiles. Parliament ordained that a man carrying a red flag by day, or a red lantern by night, must be kept a hundred yards in advance of every automobile vehicle. Fourteen

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miles an hour was the maximum speed limit allowed by the Light Locomotives’ Act (1896). In 1903, twenty miles an hour was the limit on a public highway (An Act to amend the Locomotive on Highways Act, 1896). However Local Government Boards could limit speeds to not exceed ten miles per hour. ‘The Motor Laws as they exist’ in Lord Northcliffe et al., Motors and Motor-Driving, 4th edn., London, Longmans Green and Co., 1906, 447–52. ‘Colonial Statesman and Aviation’, The Times, 22 May 1911, 16. In the summer of 1911, the Daily-Mail sponsored the £10,000 flight around England which set out from Brooklands. Brooklands was a nursery of nearly all the most celebrated machines developed just before the First World War such as the first flying boat, the first torpedo-carrying plane, and the first scout, prototype of the modern military aeroplane. Arthur Percy Bradley and Michael Burn, Wheels Take Wings, A History of the Brooklands Racing Track, London, G.T. Foulis & Co., 1933, 147–8. Claude Graham-White advocated the use of aviation for military purposes. He was the first subject in the series on aviators published by the weekly, Aeroplane, vol. 1, no. 1, 18 June 1911, 14–15. A month later, this weekly featured a British ‘Bristol’ biplane flying at Ascot Race Course, Sydney on its cover: ‘The Aeroplane in Australia’, Aeroplane, vol. 1, no. 6, 13 July 1911; ‘Aeronautics’, The Times, 14 Dec. 1910, 12. Peter Heydon, Quiet decision, a study of George Foster Pearce, Melbourne, MUP, 1965, 59. In June 1910, the Fisher Government offered £5,000 for the invention of a federal military flying machine. Australia’s first five military aircraft, ordered in 1912, were French and British designs. Collins was on the council of The Aerial League of the British Empire (Today’s Air League) from its inception in 1909. Attached to the office in May 1910 was a representative of the Department of Trade and Customs, Mr W. H. Barkley (1869–1942). He was appointed by the Minister to investigate values at which goods were invoiced into Australia. Charles E. Musgrave, The London Chamber of Commerce from 1881 to 1914, London Effingham Wilson, 1914, 87. Nineteen locations are listed on a schedule of sites for inspection, which gives details of their leasehold or freehold particulars, area, frontage, rent, price, and remarks on each. Schedule of Sites Australian High Commissioner’s Offices, London, Sites for Commonwealth Offices in London, AH/D2–3. ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Evening Post, vol. 82, no. 56, 4 Sept. 1911, 9; The Gaiety Restaurant had not been a success and closed. The Gaiety Theatre Co. Ltd. was registered in 1888 and went into voluntary liquidation in late Dec. 1939: Jeffrey Russell Knight (ed.), Register of Defunct and other Companies removed from the Stock Exchange Official Year Book 1979–80, East Grinstead, West Sussex: Thomas Skinner & Co, 1979, 197. The Marconi Press Agency, The year Book of Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony 1912, London, The Marconi Press Agency Ltd 1913, 37. Peter Hall and Paschal Preston, The Carrier Wave, new information technology and the geography of innovation 1846– 2003, London, Unwin Hyman, 1988, 37–54. ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Evening Post, vol. 82, no. 56, 4 Sept. 1911, 9. A. Thynne to E. L. Batchelor, 27 June 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. R. M. Collins to A. Young, 16 June 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. Reid had already met with John Young on 18 Apr. 1910 to ask whether the freehold could be obtained of the site (at that point the Commonwealth was considering different portions of the site). R. M. Collins, Notes of interview between the High Commissioner and Mr.

Notes – Chapter Fourteen: Old and New Orders Young 20 Apr. 1910, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 29 ‘House of Representatives’, SMH, 2 Nov. 1911, 10. 30 A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 29 Sept. 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. Burr was calculating the cubical contents of the portions of the building suggested to be occupied by the various States, so as to calculate rental values in relation to the cost of construction plus the proportionate share of the Freehold. 31 Cablegram to Department of External Affairs, 8 Sept. 1911, Australia house, Transfer of Site to Commonwealth, AH/D2–3. In this cable the total amount shown was 22,886 super feet; Collins noted the error and cabled the correction on 16 Sept. 1911. 32 Hampton and Sons to R. M. Collins, 7 Sept. 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. Hampton and Sons were headquartered and had showrooms at Pall Mall East, where they displayed decorations and wallpapers used in work they undertook for architects in every description of work in connection with building and decorating, sanitary and electrical engineering. Noteworthy interior fitting and furnishing by Hamptons included the Sessions House, Old Bailey, the War Office, Admiralty Office, Cardiff Town Hall: ‘Hamptons’, Architectural Review, vol. 21, no. 127, June 1907, 35, 37. 33 Richard Barras, Building Cycles, Growth and Instability, Wiley Blackwell, 2009, 195 citing R. Turvey, ‘Office rents in the City of London 1867–1910’, London Journal, vol. 23, no. 2, 1998, Turvey, 57. 34 A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 28 Sept. 1911, AHTSC, AHD2–3. 35 Egerton Lee Batchelor (1865–1911) was Commonwealth Minister of External Affairs from 11 Aug. to 6 Sept. 1910, then again from Oct. 1910 until his death. Josiah Thomas followed as minister to 24 June 1913. 36 Philip Payton, The Cornish Overseas: A History of Cornwall’s ‘great Emigration’ Cornwall Editions, Fowey, Cornwall, 2005, 111–12. His father, Captain Josiah Thomas (1833–1901), was active in the building of Cambourne Wesley Chapel; involved in the creation and building of the globally-leading Cambourne School of Mines; and spent much of his life abroad in a consulting capacity to mines. He toured the Rand to judge its potential before as many as 10,000 Cornish settled there. 37 Bruce Pennay, ‘Thomas, Josiah (1863–1933)’, ADB; Robert Gartrell Thomas, ‘Introduction’ in Joyce Burkitt Fetterley, One Cornishman’s Children, Friesen Press, Victoria, British Columbia, 2015, 4, 20; See also p. 361; For a century three generations of Thomas’ family managed Dolcoath, Cornwall’s largest and deepest mine. 38 ‘Federal Parliament, The Senate’, West Australian, 2 Nov. 1911, 7. 39 ‘The Great Centre, Australia in London, Neighbours possibly another Dominion’, SMH, 21 Nov. 1911, 5. 40 ‘Australia in London’, SMH, 19 June 1911, 8. 41 Prime Minister Fisher to Agents-General, 27 Nov. 1911, 106–7/357 AH/D2. 42 Mercury, 13 Dec. 1911, 3. For Josiah Thomas see B. Kennedy, Silver, Sin and Sixpenny Ale 1883–1921, Carlton, MUP, 1978; P. G. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, the making of Australian Foreign Policy, Melbourne; New York: OUP in association with the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1983, 12. 43 ‘Australia in London, Palatial Home to be Built on the Aldwych Site’, Daily News, 14 Dec. 1911, 5. 44 Approval was given on 12 Dec. 1911; Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law, 1956, 102; ‘Federal Parliament’, Morning Bulletin, 13 Dec. 1911, 5; Deakin stressed that the proposal to acquire the site could not be bettered. Most London firms held only the leasehold of their premises. Labor member William Archibald

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Capital Designs (1850–1926) backed Deakin’s argument; it won the day: ‘Federal Parliament, House of Representatives’, Advertiser, 14 Dec. 1911, 11. William O. Archibald (1850–1926) was one of the twenty-six federal parliamentarians who made up a Parliamentary Delegation which went to London for the coronation of King George V at the invitation of Members of both Houses of the Imperial Parliament. The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Second Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, London, printed by Command, 1912, 1. 45 So said South Australian Willam Archibald, echoing O’Malley’s vision: ‘Commonwealth London Offices’, West Australian, 13 Dec. 1911, 8. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. The Canadian Pacific Railway opened new headquarters in 17 Cockspur St., opposite Trafalgar Square, and offices for the Grand Trunk Railway opened just further west along the street. 48 George Rae, The Country Banker, his clients, cares and work. From and experience of forty years London, John Murray, 1885, 172. 49 Rae, The Country Banker, 156; Headquartered in Liverpool, the North & South Wales bank was established in 1836 and incorporated as a Limited Company in 1880. It opened numerous branches including forty-four country branches. The Red Book of Commerce or Who’s Who in Business 1908, London, J. Whitaker & Sons Ltd, 1908, 616–17. 50 John Booker, Temples of Mammon, the Architecture of Banking, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990, 213–4. Booker makes the point that an imposing building was the best form of advertising possible at the time because canvassing by banks was then professionally unacceptable. 51 William R. Taylor, ‘The Evolution of Public Space in New York City, The Commercial Showcase of America’ in Simon J. Bronner (ed.), Consuming Visions Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880–1920, New York; London, W. W. Norton & Company, 1989, 304. 52 A. Burr, quoted in ‘Australia in London, Palatial Home to be built on the Aldwych Site’, 5. Collins sent a copy of this report to Atlee Hunt to indicate the wide publicity which the London press gave the matter. The provincial press took up the subject in s similar way. AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 53 ‘The Federal orgy’, Brisbane Courier, 18 Dec. 1911, 6 54 Report of the Improvements Committee, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings Index July–Dec. 1911, 1594 Item 64, LCC-MIN 8007LMA. 55 ‘Federal Cabinet, London Offices’, SMH, 29 Dec. 1911, 7. 56 J. Thomas to Sir G. Reid, 29 Dec. 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 57 Ibid.

Chapter Fifteen: Concluding Negotiation 1 R. Norman Shaw quoted from ‘London Gossip’, Register, 23 Dec. 1912, 10. 2 Report of the Improvements Committee, 19 Dec. 1911, item 64, p. 1594 from London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, LMA; Report of the Improvements Committee, 30 Jan. 1912, no. 17, 136–7, LMA; W. H. Griffith to R. M. Collins, 18 Jan. 1912, AH/D2. 3 Bedford Lemere, View of the north side of the Strand looking towards the church of St Mary-le-Strand, including Gaiety Theatre and Restaurant, 1911, AO4A1534, WCA. Also, Victoria Offices at corner of Melbourne Place and Strand site, showing

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Notes – Chapter Fifteen: Concluding Negotiation how vacant the area was: Western Mail, 23 May 1913, 31. 4 R. M. Collins, Memorandum for the information of the High Commissioner of Canada, 18 Jan. 1912, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 5 Ibid. 6 ‘The Strand Site, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Telegraph (London), 23 Nov. 1907, OHC Part 2 14/1919 AH/D4. In July 1907, Burr sent his drawings for the Strand façade to Collins who sent two sets of them to Atlee Hunt. R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 7 July 1907, AH/D4; A. Burr to R. M. Collins, 11 July 1907, AH/D4; ‘The Canadian Government Offices in London’, Canadian Government Offices in London’, Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 21 Dec. 1907, 6. 7 R. M. Collins, Memorandum, 18 Jan. 1912, p. 2, AH/D2–3. 8 Sale of Land Strand and Aldwych, 17 Jan. 1912, Minutes of Proceeding Finance Committee (10 Jan.–3 Apr. 1912), LCC/MIN/5042 LMA. LCC, Lots 1, 2, & 3 Holborn to Strand Commonwealth of Australia, 18 Jan. 1912, Transfer of Site to Commonwealth, AH/D2–3. This map, signed by Andrew Young, bearing the stamp of the LCC Estates and Valuation Department specifies the area as 22,885 feet. 9 Andrew Young referred to negotiation for the whole of the remainder of the eastern horn, excluding the site let to the Victorian Government: A. Young to R. M. Collins, 17 June 1911, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. 10 J. Thomas to Sir G. Reid, 15 Jan. 1912, AHTSC, AH/ D2–3. 11 Sir G. Reid to J. Thomas, 17 Jan. 1912, AHTSC, AH/ D2–3. 12 London County Council Improvements Committee Papers, Sale of Land Strand & Aldwych, 17 Jan. 1912, 86–7, LCC/MIN/5042, LMA; ‘Australia’s new building’, Evening Post, vol. 83, no. 15, 18 Jan. 1912, 2. 13 LCC/MIN/5042, LMA. 14 Sir G. Reid to J. Thomas, 24 Jan. 1912, AHTSC, AH/ D2–3. The Commonwealth subsequently paid an additional £19,309 to the Victorian Government for the Victorian building. Crown Solicitor Memorandum, 22 Feb. 1938, London Australia House Lease NAA/A3280 P5087. 15 London County Council Improvements Committee Papers, 31 Jan. 1912, LCC/ MIN/8006, LMA. 16 London County Council Improvements Committee Papers (7 to 28 Feb. 1912), 7 Feb. 1912, no. 21, p. 12, LCC-MIN 8007, LMA. The Commonwealth solicitor, Edward Tanner, stipulated that the Council retained no title. 17 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 1 Mar. 1912, item 817, NLA MS52. 18 Histories of the Council outline costs of the Improvement: Sir Harry Haward, The London County Council from Within, London, Chapman and Hall, Ltd. 1932; Sir Ioan Gwilyn Gibbon and Reginald W. Bell, History of the London County Council 1889–1939, Macmillan, 1939; William Eric Jackson, Achievement, A short history of the London County Council, London, Longmans, 1965. 19 ‘Aldwych Site’, Builder, vol. 102, no. 3600, 2 Feb. 1912, 128. 20 Consulted by the architects, little record remains of the committee’s involvement in the process of the building’s architectural design. Press reports imply that the artists largely rubber-stamped decisions: ‘Commonwealth in London’, Argus, 3 June 1912, 11. 21 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 19 Jan. 1912, item 814 NLA MS52. Formerly VicePresident of the Institute, Stokes followed as President for three years (1910–1912). He presided over the Institute at the start of 1912 before being succeeded later that year by (Sir) Reginald Blomfield. 22 As counted that year in the 1911 census: Barrington L. Kaye, Development of the

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Architectural Profession in Britain, A Sociological Study, London, Allen & Unwin, 1960, 175; H. V. Molesworth Roberts, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes: a comprehensive account of his work’, Architectural Review, vol. 100, no. 600, Dec. 1946, 175. On the effort required to continue working, and his irritability in later life, see Roberts, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes’, 174–275. Aston Webb, Paul Waterhouse, Ernest George and others give sense of Stokes in terms of his character and his influence: ‘The Royal Gold Medal Presentation to Mr. Leonard Stokes … Address by Mr. Henry. T. Hare’, JRIBA, 3rd series, vol. 25, no. 9, July 1919, 201–5 cited by Roberts, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes’, 175. H. J. L. J. Massé, The Art-Workers’ Guild, 1834–1934, Oxford, Shakespeare Head Press, 1935, 3, 17; John Brandon Jones, ‘Some notable architects of the early twentieth century 1, Architects and the Art Workers’ Guild’, Royal Society of Art Journal, vol. 121, no. 5200, Mar. 1973, 195–206. The Guild of architects, painters, sculptors and designers was initiated in 1884 by five members of Norman Shaw’s staff, among them Gerald Horsley, W. R. Lethaby and Mervyn Macartney; they sought to unite the different artistic professions.  ‘Beauty’s Awakening’: Masque Performed at the Guildhall by the Art Workers’ Guild’, ILN, 1 July 1899, 950. Nineteen National Telephone Company Exchange buildings by Stokes are known, with five built or finished in 1900, including two in Scotland. For a contemporary illustration see Stokes’ National Telephone Co.’s Building, Reading, photographed in the Architectural Review (vol. 23, 1908, 314). A prominent example was Stokes’ Telephone House, Bon-Accord St., Aberdeen (1908–9), with part of its front in pink granite. It was unaltered in 1935. Also well known was the Kingsway plan that Stokes prepared for the LCC competition (designs were entered anonymously but it was no secret that the design from Stokes was numbered no. 29): ‘The Holborn to Strand Street Designs’, Builder, vol. 89, no. 3013, 3 Nov. 1900, 379–81; Roberts, ‘Leonard Aloysius Stokes’, 174. Roberts held that Stokes should share some of the fame assigned to Voysey (to whom the coming of the new pioneering spirit in English architecture has been primarily associated). Frederick Chatterton, Who’s who in Architecture, 1914, Technical Journals, 292. A. Marshall Mackenzie was one of five architects invited to compete for the design of University College, Bangor. His design was excluded for being too grandiose for the sloping site: J. Gwynn Williams, The University College of North Wales, Foundations 1884–1927, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1985, 267. On scholastic work by Alexander and Marshall Mackenzie: ‘Competition Design for University College, Bangor, Builder, vol. 92, no. 3341, 16 Feb. 1907, 194; ‘Competition design for National Library of Wales’, Builder, vol. 96, no. 3463, 19 June 1909, 733; A. Marshall Mackenzie & Son, Plan of proposed science buildings (library, laboratories and pavilion) on King’s College site, June 1911, MSU 1494/1/135; Many architects worked in family firms (as did Alfred Burr and his son Vincent, and Leonard Stokes and his son David). Intergenerational partnerships were common when articled pupillage was the customary training for architects. Sir G. Reid to J. Thomas, 2 Feb. 1912, AH/E9. Also R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 2 Feb. 1912, AHTSC, AH/D2–3. ‘Death of famous architect’, Aberdeen Journal, 4 May 1933, 9; William Marshall (1748–1833) was a self-taught mathematician, architect, astronomer, clockmaker, violinist and prolific composer who, with eighteenth century musicians Neil Gow (1727–1807) and Nathaniel Gow (1763–1831) and Simon Fraser (1773–1852)

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created or collected the greater part of the modern fiddler’s repertoire. He was involved in Scottish dance music when it was at its most creative and exciting. Mary Anne Alburger, Scottish Fiddlers and Their Music, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1983, 70, 78, 92. Alexander Mackenzie was an improver with Edis in 1900: Who’s Who in Architecture 1914, 143. An improver was a trainee architect, who between the ages of 15 to 21 worked as an articled pupil, or as an assistant, to an architect. After being apprenticed to his father, Mackenzie worked in the office of Colonel Edis to gain London experience. While there, he studied at the Architectural Association and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. ‘Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie’, Dictionary of Scottish Architects’, website. On Brydon’s death in 1901, Government Architect Sir Henry Tanner took charge and completed the building in 1912. Today the building is known as the Government Treasury Building. On Brydon see ‘The late John McKean Brydon’, JRIBA, vol. 7, 1901, 381–2; American Architect & Building News, vol. 72, 8 June 1901, 82; ‘The Late Mr. J. M. Brydon’, British Architect, vol. 55, 31 May 1901, 377; ‘The Late Mr. J. M. Brydon’, British Architect, 7 June 1901, 395–6. Waterhouse was also responsible for Manchester Town Hall (1868–72). Pevsner noted that the ample circulation areas considered necessary in such a large and significant public building provided scope for the theatrical handling of space: Nikolaus Pevsner, Bridget Cherry and John Newman, The Best Buildings of England, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Viking/Penguin, 1986, 194. ‘Living Architects no. 26, Dr A. Marshall Mackenzie, L.L.D., F.R.I.B.A.’, Architect and Contract Reporter, vol. 82, 17 Dec. 1909, 392. Hill of Fare, Kemnay, was one of the principal quarries of Aberdeen from 1858. William A Hay, The Granite City and the men who built it, Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, Timepieces, 1998, 3. Peter J McEwen, Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, Glengarden Press, 2004, 345. ‘Extension of Aberdeen Art Gallery (builder John Morgan)’, Aberdeen Journal, 12 Sept. 1903, 4; ‘Art, Aberdeen’, Aberdeen Journal, 6 Sept. 1898, 4; Elizabeth Cumming, ‘The Arts and Crafts Furnishing’ in Jane Geddes (ed.), King’s College Aberdeen 1500–2000, Leeds, Northern Universities Press, 2000, 276; The Aberdeen Art Gallery with its associated School of Art (both by Matthews & Mackenzie) opened in 1883 as an adjunct to Robert Gordon’s College, to which it provided a grand Italian Renaissance entrance. Its outstanding aspect was its later Sculpture Court, added by A. Marshall Mackenzie in 1901–5: Joseph Sharples, David W. Walker and Matthew Woodworth with contributions from Richard Fawcett, Jane Geddes, Andrew A. McMillan, Gordon Noble, Charles O’Brien, Aberdeenshire South and Aberdeen, The Buildings of Scotland, YUP, New Haven; London, 2015, 83. H. H. Wigglesworth, ‘An appreciation of the work of Alexander Marshall Mackenzie’, Quarterly Illustrated of The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (Autumn, 1933), 5. With an office in High Holborn in 1914, Herbert Hardy Wigglesworth, F.R.I.B.A. (1866–1949) was in partnership with David Barclay Niven (1864–1942). Wigglesworth had been apprenticed to Marshall Mackenzie. In turn, A. G. R. Mackenzie, when a junior architect in 1901, assisted Wigglesworth and Niven. Both proposed that Mackenzie be made an Associate that year, and a Fellow (in 1913), of the Institute of Architects. At the time, Herbert Wigglesworth actively criticized the growing practices of County and Municipal Authorities entrusting architectural work to their paid officials: Work done for LCC by outside

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Capital Designs architects & criticism of Official Architect 1905–20, LCC/AR/CB/01/170, LMA. Later, in 1927, Wigglesworth and Alexander Mackenzie merged their practices. 38 Alexander Mackenzie designed the memorial: ‘Memorial to Edward VII in Crathie Church’, Builder, vol. 105, no. 3580, 15 Sept. 1911, 300; ‘Court Circular’, The Times, 12 Sept. 1911, 7. 39 A. Marshall Mackenzie, Aberdeen University Edinburgh Association, Aberdeen University Edinburgh Association 23rd Annual Dinner, 1st February, 1907, Mr. Mackenzie’s Reply, 1907. 40 The ‘Queen’s Church’, as it was known, was dedicated and opened in the presence of Queen Victoria and the Royal Family in June 1895. For details of Crathie Parish Church: Joseph Sharples, David W. Walker, and Matthew Woodworth, Aberdeenshire: South and Aberdeen, New Haven; London, YUP, 2015, 444–5; Jane Geddes, Deeside and the Mearns, An Illustrated Architectural Guide, The Rutland Press, 2001, 148. 41 One example of alterations that Marshall Mackenzie made as a conservation architect comes from Aberdeen’s Greyfriars Church, where the Town Council erected a West Tower to allow for extension work for the university. A new church and steeple with open belfry stage was added (1902) in which Mackenzie reused the oak carving from the old church and relocated the east window of the old building in the new interior. ‘New Greyfriars Church Aberdeen’, Builder, vol. 82, no. 3076, 18 Jan. 1902, 62. 42 ‘The Aberdeen Quatercentenary’, British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 2385, 15 Sept. 1906, 658. The University of Aberdeen was a 15th-century foundation, with King’s College established in 1495, Marischal College in 1593, and the University of Aberdeen formed in 1860 when both colleges merged. Strictly speaking the University Quatercentenary should have been celebrated in 1895, but it was celebrated on completion of its ambitious Buildings Extension Scheme (1892–1906). Other than £46,000 granted by the State, the building funds were raised by voluntary subscriptions, with Strathcona contributing £25,000. The Royal visit to Aberdeen was an occasion of great civic pride. 43 ‘Aberdeen Celebrations’, Dundee Courier, 27 Sept. 1906, 5. ‘Aberdeen University and its benefactors’, Dundee Evening Post, 20 Dec. 1900, 2; Beckels Willson, The Life of Lord Strathcona & Mount Royal, London; New York: Cassell, 1915, 554. 44 The Royal Opening of the New Marischal College Buildings, Aberdeen University: Distinguished Participants in the Ceremonies and Rejoicings.’ ILN, 29 Sept. 1906, 429. 45 ‘Proposed Canadian Offices, Strand’, Builder, vol. 93, no. 3367, 17 Aug. 1907, 196; ‘Canadian Government Office, Quadrant Site, Strand’, Building News and Engineering Journal, vol. 93, no. 2749, 13 Sept. 1907, 357. 46 Buildings and designs for which Marshall Mackenzie was responsible are listed in the Dictionary of Scottish Architects, website. 47 ‘Mar Lodge’, Dundee Advertiser, 7 Sept. 1898, 2; Clive Aslet, The Last Country Houses, New Haven: YUP, 1982, 322. 48 Aslet, The Last Country Houses, 322. In the event of fire, water could be turned on to stand eight inches deep in all the rooms, thereby insulating the different floors. 49 Expanded Metal Company Ltd, Expanded Steel for Reinforced Concrete Construction, London, 1910; As well: ‘Monthly Review of Construction’, Builder, 10 Dec. 1910, 721–3. 50 Who’s Who in Architecture 1914, 143. Before commencing his own practice in 1902, Alexander Mackenzie worked as a junior architect under René Sergent. Parisian buildings that Sergent was then building included Hôtel de La Ferronays

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Notes – Chapter Fifteen: Concluding Negotiation (1901), currently the Brazilian embassy; and Hôtel de Breteuil (1902), currently the Irish embassy. Working under Sergent was, as with working under Edis, part of Mackenzie’s architectural education: Who’s who in architecture, 1923, 163. 51 Gerard Rousset-Charny, Les palais parisiens de la Belle-Epoque Paris: Delégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1990, 26–36. 52 Take the house he built for Jean-Philippe Worth (1856–1926), son of Charles Frederick Worth (1825–95), the Lincolnshire-born dressmaker who revolutionized fashion in Paris. (Worth continued his father’s couturier business, and the House of Worth carried on to reform women’s fashion and be the arbiter of the most elegant fashion into the 1920s.) Sergent gave Worth a building of largely unadorned stone walls and a flat roof that, while classical, appears modern. Worth’s house (1908) stood on the Champ-de-Mars where the Paris Universal Expositions of 1867, 1889, and 1900 were held. Its position reflected Worth’s appreciation for the modernity that the expositions presented as well as for the classical architecture of the nearby École Militaire (1750–68) built by Ange-Jacques Gabriel. 53 Wayne Craven, Stanford White, Decorator in opulence and dealer in Antiquities, Columbia University Press, 2005, 33. In 1867 Anatole Carlhian and his brother-inlaw, Albert Dujardin-Beaumetz began their partnership in Paris. Anatole Carlhian’s sons, Paul and André continued the business from c.1906. Joseph Duveen was one of the firm’s major clients. Encouraged by him, the Carlhians had by 1914 turned their firm into a major decorating business, with workshops for painting, wallpapers, woodwork (boiserie) and cabinetmaking. As their house architect, René Sergent had a long association with the firm which he sustained through WW1. Paul Carlhian was killed in 1914, and André Carlhian (1883–1967) continued the business. It was liquidated in 1975. ‘The Paris Firm of Carlhian et Cie, exporters of French rooms’ in John Harris, Moving Rooms, The Trade in Architectural Salvages, New Haven; London, YUP, 2007, 258–60. 54 Don M. Dailey, ‘Smith and Scammon: Early Chicago Bankers’, Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. 11, no. 1, Feb. 1937, 15. Also on Scottish investor and Chicago banker George Smith (1808–99): Alice E. Smith, George Smith’s Money: A Scottish Investor in America, Madison, Wis.: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1966; For a banking perspective see John Jay Knox, A History of Banking in the United States, New York, Bradford Rhodes & Company, (1900)/1969, 726–8, 740–2. 55 Knox, A History of Banking in the United States, 742. 56 John Benson, The rise of consumer society in Britain 1880–1980, London; New York: Longman, 1994, 23–4. 57 The Coopers became major art collectors, their dealer being Joseph Duveen. Duveen’s first sale to the Coopers, costing them US$350,000 was a suite of Beauvais tapestry-covered chairs which had been made for Madame de Pompadour: Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, Times Books, 1976, 28; Alden R. Gordon, ‘The Dispersal of the Estate of Madame de Pompadour: New Documentary’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 148, no. 1238, May 2006, 321. Cooper was made a baronet in 1905: London Gazette, no. 27818, 18 July 1905, 4981. Alastair Service points to the value of furnishings in opulent French style within the socially stratified upper echelons of Edwardian society: Alastair Service, Edwardian Interiors, Inside the Homes of the Poor, the Average and the Wealthy, London; Melbourne, Barrie & Jenkins, 1982, 116–218 and 139–40. 58 Francis Bennett-Goldney, Some Works of Art in the Possession of George A. Cooper at 26 Grosvenor Square, London, J. M. Dent & Company, 1903. Twenty-five copies of

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Capital Designs this volume were printed for private distribution. The Cooper’s collection housed in Mayfair was illustrated across its 154 pages. 59 ‘Hursley Park, I. Hampshire, The Seat of Sir George Cooper, Bt.’, Country Life, vol. 2, no. 668, 23 Oct. 1909, 562–9; ‘Hursley Park, Hampshire. II. The Seat of Sir George Cooper, Bt., Country Life, 20, 30 Oct. 1909, 598–605; W. G. Thomson, ‘The Beauvais Tapestries at Hursley Park,’ Country Life, vol. 34, no. 889, 15 Nov. 1913, 680–3. 60 Marshall and Alexander Mackenzie, were both of definite mind so considered as forceful characters. Emeritus Professor David M. Walker, interview (by phone), 26 Apr. 2015. I am much indebted to Professor Walker for generously helping with my enquiries about the Mackenzies, their history and work. He initiated the on-line Dictionary of Scottish Architects which is an invaluable resource. 61 ‘Our illustrations, The Australian Commonwealth Building’, British Architect, 23 Feb. 1912, 148. 62 ‘Australians Abroad’, SMH, 20 Mar. 1912, 5; ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Queensland Times (Ipswich), 16 Mar. 1912, 10. William Reay (1858–1929) was the Herald ’s representative in London. He later became president of the Hawthorn Branch of the Australian Natives’ Association. Diane Langmore, ‘Reay, William Thomas (1858–1929)’, ADB. 63 ‘The Commonwealth Building in London’, Evening Journal (Adelaide), 3 Feb. 1912, 4. 64 ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Queensland Times, 16 Mar. 1912, 10. Oscar Hammerstein I (1846–1919) over-reached in London where he failed to draw in the public. Hammerstein’s Opera House, Kingsway was launched in Nov. 1911, but he returned to New York at the end of his only London season in July 1912. His London Opera House was liquidated, with a loss to Hammerstein of US$1 million. Vincent Sheean, With a Preface by Oscar Hammerstein II, The Amazing Oscar Hammerstein The Life and Exploits of an Impresario, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1956, 332. 65 A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 1 May 1912, 52/822, MS52 NLA. 66 Dorothy Catts (with and introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman Sydney, Publicity Press 1938, 106; Australian Natives’ Association. Metropolitan Committee, Souvenir catalogue, Australian Manufactures and Products Exhibition, Melbourne, 1906. 67 ‘Australian Manufactures’, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW), 22 Aug. 1905, 5. Their nationalist push gathered momentum. It led to the All Australian Manufacturers Week. All the States were represented at the annual conference of the Associated Chambers of Manufactures of Australia in Melbourne in mid-Oct. 1913. 68 A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 9 Dec. 1912, A458 108/7 Australia House, Furniture For, 1912–76, NAA. It became government policy to encourage the use and display of Australian products in government buildings, as in hides used in furniture from Australian skins. A crate of these were despatched from Melbourne to London. 69 O’Malley introduced modern business systems and accountability into the Commonwealth Works Service, 13 Feb. 1911 MSO 460/33, NLA; for an early indication of his approach: Catts, King O’Malley, 170. 70 Roslyn F. Hunter, ‘Haddon, Robert Joseph (1866–1929)’, ADB. 71 ‘Australia in London’, Advertiser, 24 Oct. 1912, 9. 72 ‘Australian Stones for the Strand’, Ellesmere Guardian, vol. 12, no. 3501, 4 Feb. 1914, 2.

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Notes – Chapter Sixteen: Overseas Dominion Building 73 ‘Reviews of New Books etc., JRIBA, vol. 14, 3rd series, 2nd qtly part comprising nos 6–20, RVIA Journal of Proceedings, May 1907, 60. The King acknowledged Tadema’s public service in the 1905 Birthday Honours, along with Naval Reformer Admiral Sir John (Jacky) Fisher (1841–1920). 74 Confirmed by letter, E. Tanner to Sir John W. Taverner, 1 Apr. 1912, VHA. 75 Coghlan wanted to emphasize the vitality of NSW as a ‘trading country’. Its imports and exports accounted for a third of that of Australia: Citizen, 30 July 1913, 11, AH/D5–9. 76 Best known for his later planning work in Brazil, Agache had earlier turned his attention to London: Donat Alfred Agache, ‘La’ housing question à Londres’, La science sociale (1902), 359–68. Underwood, David K. Underwood, ‘Alfred Agache, French Sociology, and Modern Urbanism in France and Brazil’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, no. 2, 1991, 130–266. 77 ‘World of Recreation’, Worker (Brisbane), 24 Oct. 1913, 8. 78 Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 22 June 1912, 5. ‘The Australian House’, Evening Journal, 29 June 1912, 4. 79 ‘Australia in London’, Telegraph, 15 June 1912, 19. 80 Erection for Buildings for Commonwealth of Australia, Drawings Approved, 2 July 1912, 112, LCC Improvements Committee Papers (19 June to 24 July 1912), LCC-MIN8010, LMA; A. Marshall Mackenzie and Alfred Burr, Commonwealth Building Strand, GLC/AR/BR/17/038594, LMA. 81 Superintending architects Department Report to the Improvements Committee, 19 June 1912, Holborn to Strand Improvement Australian Commonwealth Site no. 45, Report of the Improvements Committee 12th and 26th June 1912, item 2, LCC-MIN8010, LMA. Later it became clear that Burr’s services were over: ‘Commonwealth Building London for the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia,’ British Architect, 1 Aug. 1913, 76. 82 Land Certificate, Title no. 162387, AH/D4. 83 ‘Commonwealth London Offices’, Ballarat Star, 27 July 1912, 10.

Chapter Sixteen: Overseas Dominion Building 1 ‘The King and the Commonwealth’, The Times, 25 July 1913, 9. 2 ‘Don’ts for London Visitors’, Oamaru Mail, vol. 36, no. 11748, 28 Sept. 1912, 3. 3 ‘Advertising Bureau, South American Project’, Daily Telegraph, 22 May 1913, 5. It was reported that the South Americans had planned earlier to set up in Newgate St. in the City but sought a more desirable central location. Their announcement coincided with the Latin-British Exhibition held in 1912 at Great White City, Shepherd’s Bush. 4 ‘Dominion House, Centre of Empire’, Financial Times, 23 July 1913, 7. 5 ‘Imperial London’, Builder, vol. 102, no. 3596, 5 Jan. 1912, 11 6 Ibid., 11–13. 7 ‘Lord Grey’s Scheme’, Wanganui Chronicle, 12 Sept. 1913, 4. 8 Albert Henry George Grey Grey, Earl; Dominion Site Limited, The Dominion House, Lord Grey’s Proposal for the concentration of the Dominion Governments’ offices under one roof in the centre of London and for the promotion of inter-imperial trade, London, Jordan Gaskell Ltd, 1913. 9 Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey by The Autotype Company, after John Singer Sargent collotype (1910), National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D9776; For a biography of Grey see Carman Miller, ‘Grey, Albert Henry George, 4th Earl Grey’ in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, http:// 373

Capital Designs www.biographi.ca/en/bio/grey_albert_henry_george_14E.html. 10 E. Harold Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, A Last word, London; New York, Hodder and Stoughton, 1917. Like Grey, E. Harold Begbie (1871–1929) was concerned with social reform and was dismayed that England was losing competitive advantage and may become a second-class Power. Begbie was a journalist with the Daily Chronicle and later the Globe. 11 Joseph Mazzini, Life and Writings, vol. IV, Critical and Literary, London, Smith, Elder & Co, 1867, 209ff, particularly the essay, ‘Duties towards your country’ (1858), 273–81; Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 46. 12 Contemporary example of advocacy for this federal principle comes from Viscount Hythe (1836–1918), 1st Earl Brassey. When Governor of Victoria (1895–1900), Thomas Brassey gave his unwavering support to Commonwealth federation. Grey wrote the foreword to Hythe’s book on the need and calls for federating the Empire: Viscount Hythe, Problems of Empire, the Faith of a Federalist, London; New York, Longmans, Green, 1913; Example of discussion about how British statesman and their critics conducted debate during the period 1895 to 1905 and about national power in general, is found in Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan, Britain and the Experience of relative Decline 1895–1905, Princeton University Press, 1988. 13 Frederick Scott Oliver, Alexander Hamilton, an essay on American Union, London, Macmillan, 1906/1931. Example set by the federalists of the early United States was held up to argue for a federal arrangement for the British Empire. Oliver’s book pleaded for the closer integration of the British empire. As the Times wrote, Oliver’s book was highly influential. It became a text book for minds turned on Imperial reconstruction. ‘Mr. F. S. Oliver’, The Times, 5 June 1934, 19. On its influence See John E. Kendle, The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975, 24. Kendle also shows how the move toward imperial federation was seriously undermined by 1913, and indeed when Oliver published his views in the Times through Oct. and Nov. 1910, 142; Oliver and Alfred Deakin met when Deakin was in London in 1907: F.S. Oliver to Deakin, 1 May 1907, 15/1476 Alfred Deakin Papers, NLA. 14 Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 138. 15 Ibid., 137. 16 On Grey, Massingham added ‘he was England of the English’, Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 60. 17 Grey to Northcote, 1 Feb. 1908, 1540/15/1070 (5) Deakin Papers NLA. 18 Grey to Deakin, 25 Jan. 1908, 1540/15/1067, NLA MS1540. On how Grey used his connections, with individuals whose judgement he trusted, see Gary B. Magee & Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850–1914, Cambridge: CUP, 2010, 207. 19 Grey to Deakin, 25 Jan. 1908, 1540/15/1068 NLA MS1540. 20 ‘Earl Grey, A Great Imperialist, His visit to New Zealand’, Evening Post, vol. 87, no. 59, 11 Mar. 1914, 3. 21 Outlining the history of the Institute is the account by Trevor R. Reese, The History of the Royal Commonwealth Society 1868–1968, London, OUP, 1968. Premises of the Institute were formerly located at no. 15, Strand: James R. Boosé; with an introduction by Sir Charles Lucas, Memory serving: being reminiscences of fifty years of the Royal Colonial Institute, London, Selwyn & Blount, 1928, 52. Boosé was connected with the Institute for fifty years from its very early stages then successively as Librarian, Secretary and Travelling Commissioner.

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Notes – Chapter Sixteen: Overseas Dominion Building 22 Boosé, Memory serving, vii. 23 J. Ellis Barker, Drifting, On the State of England, London, Grant Richards, 1901, 83, 112. Barker admired and drew on the library of the Royal Colonial Institute: Boosé, Memory serving, 21–2. Grey recommended that Barker’s histories and political writings be widely read: Grey to Deakin, 21 May 1908, 1540/15/1078 NLA. 24 Grey was an investor in Frederick B. Esler’s New York & Brooklyn Syndicate Ltd. with plans to build a Brooklyn Tunnel for the New York & Brooklyn Railway Company and Brooklyn Rapid Transport Company. ‘Mr. Esler’s plan for a tunnel to Brooklyn’, New York Times, 23 May 1901, 3. No doubt Grey found appealing Esler’s proposal, that when completed, New York would receive 2½ per cent of gross receipts over and above taxes. 25 Author unknown, ‘The New Offices of the Government of Victoria (Australia) at the corner of the Strand and Melbourne Place, London’, Architectural Records, no. 1, July 1909, The Architects’ Technical Bureau Association Limited; Correspondence between Grey and Reid, who were of similar age, shows their friendship; an instance of which comes from the report that Reid entertained Grey with Prime Minister Asquith and the Hon. J. W. Taverner: Queensland Times, 15 July 1910, 5. 26 ‘A Great Imperialist, Arrival in New Zealand’, Press (Christchuch, NZ), vol. 50, no. 14906, 3 Mar. 1914, 7. 27 The Dominions Site (Limited) board members included New Zealand politician, alpinist and substantial landholder Mr. George Beetham (1840–1915); British journalist and Conservative politician (the future Sir) Harry Ernest Brittain (1873– 1974), founder of the Empire Press Union (later the Commonwealth Press Union); Canadian Sir George McLaren Brown (1865–1939), general European manager for the Canadian Pacific Railway; Conservative politician, journalist and postal reformer Sir J. Henniker Heaton (1883–1917); and South African statesman Sir L. Starr Jameson, Bt. (1853–1917). 28 Viscount Windsor was created 1st Earl of Plymouth in 1905. Having increased his landed fortune through investments in mining, Viscount Windsor built the opulent Hewell Grange in Worcestershire (1884–1891). Half the total space of this Baronial Renaissance palace was taken up by its lofty arcaded great hall, two storeys high with Penarth and Italian marble and Derbyshire alabaster. ‘Hewell Grange, Worcestershire, The Seat of Lord Windsor’, Country Life, 15 Aug. 1903, 240–8; Alan Brooks and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Worcestershire, New Haven; London, YUP, 2007, 625–8. 29 ‘The London Borough Councils, Election of Mayors and Aldermen’, The Times, 10 Nov. 1900, 14. 30 The LCC subsequently extended the option for a further year to Sept. 1914. ‘Dominion House A Centre of Empire’, The Times, 23 July 1913, 7; ‘London Improvement Plans’, The Times, 31 July 1913, 11. 31 ‘Work begun on new facade of Buckingham Palace, and another suggested London improvement, a ‘dominion house’, New York Times, 17 Aug. 1913, C2. 32 On networks of individuals connected to Grey see Magee & Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, 208 citing Lance Davis and Robert Gallman, Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows, Britain, the Americas, and Australia, 1865– 1914, Cambridge, CUP, 2001, 767. 33 Grey to Reid, July 1913, Folder 21, Box 3, NLA MS7842. On the declaration of the establishment of the city of Canberra in Mar. 1912, King O’Malley’s oration proclaimed that an Anglo-speaking federation into a world-wide cause should be an

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Capital Designs Australian aspiration. Dorothy Catts (with an introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman Sydney, Publicity Press, 1938, 202. 34 Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 135. 35 Wilmot Corfield, ‘The Dominions Offices and the Aldwych Site’, British Architect, 26 Sept. 1913, 218; ‘Dominion House’, Aberdeen Daily, l, 26 Jan. 1914, 5. 36 Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 136. 37 Grey’s idea sat with other contemplated symbols. Eight years earlier, an Imperial Monumental Hall and Tower was proposed for Westminster. Christened a ‘Campo Santo’ by the architects, this Gothic style national mausoleum for eminent men and women of the British Empire was to be built on a site between the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. To have a tower 167 m (548 f) tall, with bells hung in the lantern, and be used mainly for the storage of government records, it was never built. Neil Bingham, 100 years of architectural drawing, London: Laurence King, 2013, 16. At the time, the world’s tallest inhabited building was the extensively advertised office of Met Life Tower, Madison Square, New York (1907–9). With a 50-storey, 700-foot campanile, the Met Life Tower was based on the Campanile of San Marco in Venice. Roberta Mondry describes the building as a moment in the rise of the American skyscraper because the 760-foot Woolworth Building rose higher in 1913. Their sky-reaching feats held world attention as did the collapse of the San Marco campanile on 14 July 1902. It was rebuilt, reopening on 25 Apr. 1912. Roberta Mondry, ‘The Metropolitan Life Tower: Architecture and Ideology in the Life Insurance Enterprise’ in Cultures of Commerce, Representation and American Business Culture, 1877–1960, (eds.) Elspeth H. Brown, Catherine Gudis, and Marina Moskowitz, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 208. 38 The Financial Times reported that the scheme met with universal eulogy from the Press. ‘Dominion House’, Financial Times, 26 Aug. 1913, 3; A Further Collection of Press Opinions on the Dominion House Scheme’, Financial Times, 28 Oct. 1913, 8. 39 ‘Dominion House’, Financial Times, 23 July 1913, 7. 40 As it was reported: ‘An Imperial Centre’, Dominion, vol. 5, no. 1339, 17 Jan. 1912, 4. 41 ‘Telegraphic’, Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Qld.), 25 July 1913, 4. Earl Grey’s obituary in the Manchester Guardian dwelled on his being the principal promoter of the scheme for promoting the Strand island site into an Imperial centre in London. The paper ascribed the Commonwealth Government’s selection of a part of this site for the Australian High Commission to Lord Grey’s concept. ‘Earl Grey’, Obituary, Manchester Guardian, 30 Aug. 1917, 5. 42 ‘Canada in London’, SMH, 16 May 1912, 9. McBride proposed to spend £50,000 on a section of the building with a frontage of 50 ft. 43 ‘Dominion House Scheme, Canadian Support’, Financial Times, 9 Sept. 1913, 6. 44 ‘Dominion House’, Financial Times, 6 Nov. 1913, 3. Canadian Agents-General signed the petition, including J. H. Turner, Agent-General for British Columbia (who chaired the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in London). 45 W.T. R. Preston, My generation of politics and politicians, Toronto, D. A. Rose Publishing Company, 1927, 50. 46 Collins to Hunt, 19 Jan. 1912, 52/8H NLA MS52/14; India House was built (1928– 30) on the South side of Aldwych, opposite the Waldorf Hotel, to designs by Sir Herbert Baker. 47 ‘Westminster Hospital Site’, The Times, 9 May 1913, 12. The construction of the Wesleyan Central Buildings (by Lanchester & Rickards, 1905–11) and the new Middlesex Guildhall (by J. G. S. Gibson & Partners, 1912–13) opposite

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Notes – Chapter Seventeen: ‘The Great Centre’ Westminster Abbey introduced changes to the area. Following these changes there was a scheme to relocate the Gothic-styled hospital elsewhere (this was not done; Westminster Hospital closed in 1993). 48 ‘Dominion House Scheme, Canadian Support’, Financial Times, 9 Dec. 1913, 6; ‘Dominion House Scheme’, Financial Times, 15 Apr. 1914, 1; ‘A Great Imperialist’, Invercargill Press, vol. 50, no. 14906, 3 Mar. 1914, 7; Grey’s scheme was discussed at the 1914 conference of Australian State Premiers. Some of the Australian State Premiers discussed interest in the scheme. Grey was confident that interest from the Australian States would materialise and anchor his plans. At the end of May 1914, the solicitor to the Dominions Site Ltd anticipated that the scheme would succeed: ‘Dominion House Scheme’, Financial Times, 29 May 1914, 9. 49 ‘The Empire’, Press, vol. 50, no. 14879, 20 Jan. 1914, 7. The Press reported that these plans were drawn by Marshall Mackenzie. No drawing of Mackenzie’s proposal (reportedly with the Government of Canada housed in the centre of the building, and the Governments of South Africa and New Zealand in the wings) has survived. 50 Preston, My generation, 352–3; On Preston see Robert J. Sharpe, The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial, University of Toronto Press, 2009, 60–6. 51 According to New Zealand reports of Canadian opinion of Grey’s scheme: ‘Dominions Housing Scheme’, Otago Daily Times, no. 15993, 9 Feb. 1914, 5. 52 Magee & Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, 235. The Royal Colonial Institute gives example of what Gary Magee and Andrew Thompson term ‘software of empire’, networks of long-distance connections over extended periods of time. 53 Similar fault lay behind the failure of the Round Table movement to which Grey was sympathetic. The group of ‘unionists’ formed under colonial administrator and future Secretary of State for War, Lord Milner, who met with Grey when he toured Canada in 1908 to promote imperial unity and the ‘new imperialism’. At that meeting, Grey was attracted to the idea of a dominions house and agreed to discuss this with Prime Minister Laurier: Kendle, Round Table, 54. Fuller detail is in John E. Kendle, The Colonial and Imperial Conferences 1887–1911: a study in imperial organization, London, 1967, Ch. vii. 54 W. K. Haselden, ‘Some things the Suffragettes might blow up?’, Daily Mirror, 23 Feb. 1913, WH0533, BCA. 55 ‘London in 2014’, Auckland Star, vol. 45, no. 75, 28 Mar. 1914, 13. 56 Begbie, Albert Fourth Earl Grey, 181. 57 Edward J. Bristow, Individualism versus Socialism in Britain, 1880–1914, New York; London, Garland Pub., 1987, 304. Begun in 1884 as the Labour Association for Promoting Co-Operative Production based on the Co-Partnership of the Workers, was generally known as the Labour Association. Since 1989, it has been known as the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA). In 1918 the first Cooperative candidates contested parliamentary elections, in alliance with the Labour Party. 58 Bristow, Individualism, 332. 59 Ibid., 279.

Chapter Seventeen: ‘The Great Centre’ 1 C. H. Reilly, McKim, Mead & White, London: Ernest Benn, 1924, 7. 2 As photographed: undated news-clipping, ‘The Aldwych Island Site – Present and Future’, The Daily Graphic, 9, Press-cuttings Book (1913), NLA MS2242; Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal: The Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Cultivation and Folk-lore of Herbs, Grasses, Fungi, Shrubs & Trees with all their 377

Capital Designs Modern Scientific Uses, Vol. 2, New York: Dover, 1971, 847; London Natural History Society, Botanical records of the London area Part 4, 1932, 48. 3 ‘The Improvement of London’, Architect & Contract Reporter, vol. 79, pt. 2, 2 May 1913, 446. 4 Arthur Hoyle, ‘O’Malley, King (1858–1953)’, ADB. 5 ‘Australia in London’, Daily Post, 17 Feb. 1912, 4. 6 ‘The ‘Altare Della Patria’ of the Victor Emmanuel Monument at Rome I – Sculpture Reliefs by Angiolo Zanelli’, Builder, vol. 102, no. 3596, 5 Jan. 1912, 4–7. 7 ‘Australia in London, A costly department’, The Age, 14 Nov. 1913, 8. ‘How George Reid is Wasting Our Money in London’, Catholic Press, 27 Nov. 1913, 13. 8 Dove Bros, 18 Apr. 1912, 21/37, AH/D2–3. 9 ‘Commonwealth Offices in London’, Australia in London, 23 Aug. 1912, HH. 10 Hugh Paterson, 11 Dec. 1912 AH 9/208. A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 30 Dec. 1912, 10/28 AH. Hugh Paterson (1856–1917) Scottish-born Melbourne artist, Paterson was a friend of Andrew Fisher whom he advised on art. Paterson promoted Australian art and was Chairman of the Commonwealth Government’s Art Advisory Board (CAAB) (1912). The CAAB evolved into the acquisitions committee for what would become the National Gallery of Australia. 11 A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 11 Sept. 1912, 52/843, MS52 NLA. 12 David John Rowe, Building a national image: the architecture of John Smith J Murdoch, Australia’s first Commonwealth Government Architect, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Deakin University, 1997, 2 citing ‘Minutes of Evidence – Royal Commission into Federal Capital Administration, (1) Issues Relating to Mr. Griffin’, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, vol. 4, pt 1, 1926–8, 831–3 13 A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 11 Sept. 1912, 52/843, MS52 NLA. 14 ‘Australia in London, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Standard, 12 Apr. 1913, 7. The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Federal Capital City Designs, Report of Board appointed to investigate and report as to suitability of certain designs for adoption on connexion with lay-out of Federal Capital, 1912 in The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Papers presented to Parliament, vol. 2, 1912, 357–8. 15 ‘Obituary Mr. J S Murdoch’, The Age, 22 May 1945, 3. 16 J. S. Murdoch to K. O’Malley, 1 Dec. 1915, O’Malley Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra cited by Rowe, Building a National Image, 1. 17 Murdoch designed the Post Office with former London architect, Hillsdon Beasley, Chief Architect State Department of Public Works (1905–17). Caroline Miller, Michael Roche, Past Matters, Heritage and Planning History – Case Studies from the Pacific Rim, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, 41–3. 18 ‘Australia in London’, Weekly Times, 2 Nov. 1912, 31; ‘Australia in London, The Proposed Building, A Plea for Australian Material’, Advertiser, 24 Oct. 1912, 9. 19 On Russell see Alison Pilger & Frank Bongiorno, ‘Russell, Edward John (1878– 1925)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, vol. 1, 1901–1929, Carlton, MUP, 2000, 304–7, http://biography.senate.gov.au/index.php/edwardjohn-russell/. 20 ‘Marbles’, Building News, vol. 3, no. 3222, 4 Oct. 1916, 316. 21 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 2 Feb. 1912, AH/D2. 22 Other likely messages could have read, ‘State Aid from the Cradle to the Grave’; ‘Maternity Grants’; ‘Free Education in Every Grade’; and ‘Liberal Old Age Pensions.’: ‘Australia’s Shop Window’, Ashburton Guardian, vol. 33, no. 8388, 17 Oct. 1912, 6. 23 ‘Victoria and America’, Argus, 15 Jan. 1913, 11.

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Notes – Chapter Seventeen: ‘The Great Centre’ 24 ‘Australia in London’, Weekly Times, 2 Nov. 1912, 31; ‘Australian Timber’, The Age, 7 Nov. 1912, 13.: ‘London offices’, SMH, 24 Oct. 1912, 11. 25 ‘Savoy House’, Journal (Adelaide), 22 May 1913, 2. Scaddan suggested that investing in London property made sense, and Savoy House could be disposed of at a very satisfactory figure should his Government ultimately decide to participate in the Commonwealth Government’s proposals re the ‘Australia Building’ when it was ready for occupancy. ‘No title’, Western Mail, 23 May 1913, 31. 26 ‘Labour Organization in Australia’, The Times, 17 Jan. 1912, 5. 27 Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld.), 7 Mar. 1912, 4; ‘London Commonwealth Offices’, Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga, NSW), 24 Oct. 1912, 2. 28 The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Papers presented to Parliament, General and Finance, vol. 2, 1912, 698. 29 ‘London Commonwealth Offices’, Daily Advertiser, 24 Oct. 1912, 2. 30 John Smith Murdoch Bio File, RIBA; Dictionary of Scottish Architects, website; D. I. McDonald, ‘Architect J. S. Murdoch and the provisional parliament house’, Canberra Historical Journal, Mar. 1985, 18. ‘Australia House’, Express and Telegraph, 23 Mar. 1922, 1. 31 ‘Australia in London, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Standard, 12 Apr. 1913, 7. Drawings from the Mackenzies which are dated 31 Jan. 1913, that Westminster City Archives now house, support this. Commonwealth Building London, WCA. 32 The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Third Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, Government Printer for the State of Victoria, 1913, 3. 33 ‘Commonwealth Offices’, Telegraph, 11 Jan. 1913, 8. 34 David Van Zanten, ‘Architectural Composition at the École des Beaux-Arts from Charles Percier to Charles Garnier’, in Arthur Drexler (ed.) The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977, 112, 185. Generally, the exterior of an École des Beaux-Arts building expressed the building’s interior function. 35 ‘Commonwealth Building’, Auckland Star, vol. 45, no. 204, 27 Aug. 1913, 6. 36 Gill Hackman, Stone to Build London – Portland’s Legacy, Monkton Farleigh, Wilts, Folly Books Ltd, 2014; Anon., The Portland Year Book and Island Record 1905, Portland Museum, Portland, Dorset, (1905)/2004; J. H. Bettey, Archaeological Journal, 128, 1971, 176–85. The author James Bone was very taken by the alluring properties of Portland Stone in London: James Bone with pictures by Muirhead Bone, The London Perambulator, London, Jonathan Cape, sixth impression 1926, 14. 37 R. T. Baker, Building and ornamental stones of New South Wales, London, Franco British Exhibition, 1908 Sydney: [NSW] Dept. of Public Instruction, 1908, 23; 36. Bowral Trachyte was first quarried in 1886. It was used on Sydney’s Central Railway Station (1906), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (1909), and State Library of New South Wales (1909). In London, the base of the new ‘Old Bailey’ up to the ground floor is unpolished Cornish granite with the rest of the main structure faced with Portland stone. 38 ‘Memorial to late Mr Norman Shaw’, Builder, 107, no. 3728, 17 Apr. 1914, 66. 39 Lenore Layman, ‘To Keep up the Australian Standard’: Regulating Contract Labour Migration 1901–50’, Labour History, no. 70, May 1996, 25–52 (see p. 46). 40 ‘Australia in London, The Building and preferences to unionists’, Advertiser, 26 Sept. 1912, 9. 41 ‘Australia in London, Commonwealth Building’, Daily Standard, 12 Apr. 1913, 7.

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Capital Designs 42 They are thought to be among the first among the first London builders to use reinforced concrete: in the Motor Bus Garage, Hackney (1906); Central Hall, Westminster (1906–11); the Colonial Bank, Jamaica (1909); and the German Sailors’ Home in East London (1910). Joyce Wheatley, ‘Frederick John Dove (1830– 1923)’ in Dictionary of Business Biography, vol. 2, D–G, London: Butterworths, 1924, 154–7. 43 After St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Albert Hall. ‘Our London Letter’, Bendigo Advertiser, 22 Oct. 1912, 5. 44 David Braithwaite, Building in the Blood, the story of Dove Brothers of Islington, 1781– 1981, Godfrey Cave Associates, 1981. Dove Brothers Ltd. were active until 1993. 45 ‘Mr. F. J. Dove’, The Times, 21 Dec. 1923, 12; no. 43530. On F. J. Dove see Joyce Wheatley, ‘Frederick John Dove (1830–1923)’ in Dictionary of Business Biography, vol. 2, 154–7. 46 The London Master Builders’ Association began under the name of the Central Association of Master Builders of London to promote and protect promoting and protecting the interests of the building trade of London in general and of Members of the Association in particular. The name was changed to the London Master Builders’ Association in Feb. 1899. Between 1918 and 1922 it was known successively as the London Master Builders and Aircraft Industries Association and the London Master Builders and Allied Industries Association, reverting to London Master Builders’ Association in 1922. 47 ‘Dove’s veteran retires’, 20 July 1962, untitled press clipping, 22/81, Dove Brothers collections’ archives, Islington Local History Centre. From a sample of five contracting firms that he studied, Christopher Powell found there was little separation of ownership and management of the firm: Christopher Powell The British Building Industry since 1800: An Economic History, London: E. & F. N. Spon, (1980)/1996, 84. 48 F. L. Dove was a Municipal Reform member of the London County Council in 1907; served as Vice-Chairman of the London County Council Education Committee (1909); chaired the Establishment Committee (1910); served on the Fire Brigade Committee (1913), and as its Chairman (1917). For his obituary see ‘Mr F. L. Dove’, The Times, 13 June 1932, 14; no. 46158. For a list of members of the London County Council from 1889: W. Eric Jackson, Achievement, A Short History of the London County Council, London, Longmans, 1963, 261. 49 Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall, 49–51. Today the boat is housed in the Museum of London. 50 ‘To County Council by Aeroplane’, The Times, 21 Dec. 1911, 3. 51 London Master Builders’ Association Its Objects and Work with Rules 1910, 5. LMA A/ NFB/01/H/2/1. 52 London County Council, London Statistics 1913–1914, vol. 24, London: London County Council, 1915, 43. Ben Tillett, History of the London Transport Worker’s Strike, London: National Transport Workers’ Federation, 1912. Militancy came to a head over the London and National Conciliation Boards; a breakdown of the industrial relations system led to the London Lockout of 1914. Richard Price, Masters, unions and men, work control in building and the rise of labour, 1830–1914, Cambridge, New York: CUP, 1980, 236ff. 53 Price, Masters, unions and men, 258. Between May 1913 and Jan. 1914 there were at least forty-eight strikes in London. All were unofficial and violated the conciliation procedures.

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Notes – Chapter Seventeen: ‘The Great Centre’ 54 Hanslip Fletcher, Daily Telegraph, 25 July 1913, in Press Cuttings Books 1913, p. 42, box 2 MS2242 NLA. Fletcher’s drawing appeared the day after the King laid the foundation stone to the building, but it was clearly drawn ahead of the occasion. 55 ‘Mr. T. Blashill on the Building Industry’, The Times, 26 Feb. 1901, 3. 56 ‘The sootfall of London: its amount, quality and effects’, Lancet, vol. 179, no. 4610, 6 Jan. 1912, 47. 57 A. Marshall Mackenzie, A. G. R. Mackenzie, Specification Erection of the Superstructure of the new Commonwealth Building, Strand–Aldwych Site London W.C. for the Commonwealth of Australia July 1913, AH/D2–3. 58 The number of London’s builders comes from Labour leader John Burns: John Burns, ‘London Old and New’, Pall Mall Magazine, no. 36, Jan. 1905, 14. 59 These were the days of four-wheeled drays, as Stuart Gray pointed out: A. S. Gray, ‘II. Public Buildings and Street Architecture’, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, vol. 121, no. 5200, Mar. 1973, 221. 60 Mackenzie, Specification Erection, AH/D2–3. 61 As was stipulated in the construction Agreement. Ian Dungavell, ‘Webb, Sir Aston (1849–1930)’, ODNB.  62 Mackenzie, Specification Erection, 24. 63 Photograph by Elwin Neame, Institution of Civil Engineers Archive, London. Stuart Elwin Neame (1886–1923) was a celebrated photographer and film-maker based in Wimbledon. The Neame family have been part of British film-making for four generations. 64 Gregory P. Marchildon, Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance, University of Toronto Press, 1996, 92. 65 Jeanne Catherine Lawrence, ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations’, Construction History, vol. 6, 1990, 23–46; http://www.gracesguide. co.uk/J._G._White_and_Co. 66 Michael Stratton, Structure and Style: Conserving Twentieth Century Buildings, Taylor & Francis, 1997, 106. 67 Frank A. Randall, History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949 cited by Carl W. Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture, A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875–1925, Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press, (1952)/1964, fig. 58. 68 Michael Stratton (ed.), Structure and Style, Conserving 20th century buildings, 1977, E. & F.N. Spon, London, 1997, 107. Also, S. Bylander, ‘Steelwork in Buildings, Thirty Years’ Progress’ in Robert Thorne (ed.), Structural Iron and Steel 1850–1900, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, 308–37, see p. 335. On the contribution made by Britain’s industrial heritage to steel-frame construction see Alastair A. Jackson, ‘The Development of Steel Framed Buildings in Britain 1880–1905’, Construction History, vol. 14, 1998, 21–40. In 1912 Bylander worked as a Consulting Engineer from offices at Duke St., Adelphi. Bylander would later practice as Bylander Waddell, Consulting Engineers. 69 On Bylander’s achievements and how London’s building regulations inhibited progress in new construction techniques see Lawrence, ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations’, 23–46. 70 Redpath Brown, A Short History of Redpath Brown & Company Limited, London: Redpath Brown and Company, 1964, 6–7. 71 S. Bylander, Notebook, Institution of Civil Engineers Archive. I am also grateful to Alan Knight, BGA, for detail about Bylander and constructional techniques that he forged.

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Capital Designs 72 Bylander, ‘Steelwork in Buildings, Thirty Years Progress’, 11–12. 73 Bylander, Structural Engineer, 12 (fig. 10). 74 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Clifton, N.J: James T. White, 1984. Today the Robert W. Hunt Company is, as it always has been, an independent inspection agency. 75 Author unknown, ‘Australia House’, 7 in undated handwritten notes, G1–2 AH. 76 ‘Strand Elevation of the New Australian Building’, The Times, 23 July 1913, 7; Builder, 1 Aug. 1913 with floor plans p. 117 and 118; also p. 4, Press Cuttings book 1913, Box 2, NLAMS2242. 77 ‘Commonwealth Building, Australia’s London Home, A prediction fulfilled’, Auckland Star, vol. 44, no. 204, 27 Aug. 1913, 6. 78 ‘Commonwealth Building, London, for the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia’, Builder, vol. 105, no. 3678, 1 Aug. 1913, 117. 79 ILN, 8 Mar. 1913, 318; no. 3855. For an aerial view of the ‘island’ building see ‘Bush House and environs, Strand, 1923’, English Heritage Britain from Above, EPW009016, http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk. The first block of Bush House stands at the top of Kingsway, with vacant space on its sides. Even by 1928, development remained to be achieved. Kingsway was not yet the business thoroughfare that it was planned to be. 80 ‘New Commonwealth Building’, SMH, 30 May 1912, 5. 81 Director-General of Works to Dept External Affairs, 21 Jan. 1914: Insurance of 1912–1919 A2, 1918/3834 NAA. 82 ‘Commonwealth Building’, Auckland Star, vol. 44, no. 204, 27 Aug. 1913, 6.

Chapter Eighteen: ‘Australia’s Day’ 1 The Times, 25 July 1913. 2 Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and music, Britain 1876–1953, Manchester University Press, 2001, 414. For King George V’s involvement see p. 425. 3 Zealley, Alfred Edward and J. Ord Hume, Famous Bands of the British Empire, J. P. Hull, 1927, 31. 4 Lionel James, with a foreword by Sir Herbert A. Lawrence, The History of King Edward’s Horse, London, Sifton, Praed & Co Ltd, 1921, 40. 5 ‘King and Empire, New Australian Centre in the Strand, Foundation Stone Laid’, Unnamed undated press clipping, p. 2, box 2, Sir George H. Reid, Press cutting books 1913, NLA MS2242. For a report on the ceremony see ‘The Court Circular’, The Times, 25 July 1913, 11; ‘The King and The Commonwealth’, The Times, 25 July 1913, 9. 6 This is how Patrick Jackson describes Harcourt. Patrick Jackson (ed.), Loulou, Selected Extracts from the Journals of Lewis Harcourt (1880–1895), Madison, N. J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2006, 10. 7 ‘Australia in London: The new building in the Strand foundation stone laid by the King’, West Australian, 21 Aug. 1913, 5; Die Wacht am Rhein (The Watch/Guard on the Rhine), written in 1840 by Max Schneckenburger and set to music in 1854 by Karl Wilhelm, was among the popular tunes played that morning. 8 The trachyte block was ordered from Sydney builders Loveridge and Hudson on 19 Mar. 1913, and despatched from Australia shortly after: NAA, Commonwealth Offices London – Foundation Stone 1913 A152, G1913/1425. Loveridge and Hudson ran a quarry on Mount Gibraltar, Bowral, NSW, from where the dense igneous stone

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

was extracted. Their showpiece building was the Equitable Life Assurance Society Building, Sydney (1891), designed by Edward Raht, chief architect of Equitable Life Assurance Company of New York. ‘Text of the address presented to the King on 24 June’, London Gazette, 1 Aug. 1913, 5486; HM King (George V) Laying Foundation Stone Commonwealth Offices. Laying Foundation Stone of Australia House, London, 1913, NAA A6661, 2. Commonwealth of Australia, First Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, London, Printed by the British Australian Ltd., 1911, 1. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 20 Aug. 1913, 9. Ibid., 9; ‘The Prince’s Thanks to New South Wales’, Australian Star, 28 Dec. 1901, 11. ‘At home on H.M.A.S. Australia’, Geelong Advertiser, 3 July 1913, 3. ‘King and Empire, New Australian Centre in the Strand, Foundation Stone Laid’, Unnamed, undated press clipping, p. 2, box 2, Sir George H Reid, Press cutting books 1913, NLA MS2242. Sir George Reid to Andrew Fisher, 25 July 1913, box 3, folder 17e, Office Correspondence, c.1908–1915, 3/1041, Papers of Andrew Fisher, NLA MS 2919. ‘The King and the Commonwealth’, The Times, 25 July 1913. The Morning Post referred to the day of the event as ‘Australia’s Day’: ‘Australia’s London Home’, undated clipping, NLA MS2242. ‘Horrors of War and Scenes of Peace: News by Photography’, ILN, 26 July 1913, 129. Unnamed, undated clipping, p. 34, box 2, NLA MS2242; Unnamed, undated clipping p. 6, book 2, ‘A Hub of Empire’, Pall Mall Gazette, 24 July 1913. ‘King and Commonwealth’, Daily Chronicle, 24 July 1913 from p. 2, box 2, NLA MS2242.

Chapter Nineteen: A National Expression 1 ‘Art and Design’, Argus, 4 June 1904, 13. ‘Academy of Art’, Townsville Daily Bulletin, 12 Apr. 1938, 2. Artists aspired to express themselves in novel ways. They believed that Australian conditions could lead them to this. This quest evolved with work by the Australian Impressionists of the late nineteenth century. It gained momentum following Federation when artists aspired to express the character of Australia. They aimed to do so not only in one medium, like painting, but in all forms. Underpinning the phrase was the belief that the cultural side of life was no less important than bodily welfare, and moreover affected the nation as a whole. The phrase underpinned the formation of Australia’s Academy of Art, established in 1938. 2 ‘Art in Australia, Mr. Bertram Mackennal’s views’, Daily Herald (Adelaide), 24 Jan. 1914, 6. 3 Establishing an advisory committee of London-based artists was intended to assuage nativist pressures besides ensuring standards; also on the committee were George Lambert (1873–1930) and Frederick (Fred) Leist (1873–1945). 4 ‘A Sculptor of Empire, Art in Australia’, Advertiser, 19 Jan. 1914, 18. 5 ‘London and its monuments’, Builder, vol. 104, no. 3648, 3 Jan. 1913, 4. 6 ‘Honoured by authors, Australia’s premier sculptor, Mr Bertram Mackennal’s Work’, unnamed press clipping c.1913, Mackennal no. 2 folders of Press Clippings, AGNSW. Example of collaboration between architect and sculptor included the carved relief sculptures by Hamo Thornycroft and Harry Bates for the Institute of Chartered Accountants Building in Moorgate, designed by architect John Belcher (1893). Sculpture was a chief feature of the building. Harry Bates ARA (1850–99) 383

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was highly respected; he trained at the Lambeth Art School. He was elected to the Art Workers Guild. ‘Sculpture Gallery Aberdeen’, Builder, vol. C, no. 3548, 3 Feb. 1911, 140. Emil Fuchs (1866–1929), sculptor, medallist and painter settled in London in 1897. He was immensely fashionable for his painted and sculpted portraits. Taken up by the royal family, he executed a coronation medal for Edward VII (1902) and designed the King’s postage stamps. Emil Fuchs, With Pencil, Brush and Chisel, The Life of an Artist, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925. A Competition was announced for the dozen murals: Commonwealth of Australia Gazette no. 44, 18 July 1914, 1239. The Mackenzies specified where the murals should be. The sum of £12,500 was estimated for them and their ornamental surrounds at rates fixed by the Artists’ Committee. The murals were to depict incidents in Australian history, features of Australian scenery, or Australian productive activity. Sketches submitted to the High Commissioner’s Office, London for the competition were due mid-Jan. 1915. With the outbreak of war, plans for the murals were abandoned. All that remains of them are sketches, like those prepared by Rupert Bunny (1864–1947) from France. See his oil sketch, Image symbolizing the Australian Commonwealth c. 1914, https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?i1. On his sketches see, Mary Eagle, The Art of Rupert Bunny in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1991, 102–27. ‘Honoured by authors, Australia’s premier sculptor, Mr Bertram Mackennal’s Work’, unnamed press clipping c.1913, Mackennal, no. 2, folders of Press Clippings, AGNSW. Peyton Skipwith, ‘Architectural Sculpture in London, 1890–1940’, Decorative Arts Society Journal, vol. 21, 1997, 124. The standard texts for both sculptors are: Deborah Edwards, with contributions by Benedict Read et. al., Bertram Mackennal, the fifth Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Project, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Balnaves Foundation, 2007; Judith McKay, Harold Parker, catalogue of a sculptor, Brisbane, Qld: Queensland Art Gallery, 1993. Mackennal’s marble, The Earth and the Elements, was bought in 1907, and Parker’s Ariadne in 1908. For a Chantrey purchase, the Royal Academy’s President and its Academicians selected by a majority decision the ‘best work of the year in its class’ executed within the shores of Great Britain. English sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey (1781–1841) was the most successful English portrait sculptor of his day. Purchase of works of British art, to encourage the progress of art in Britain, was the purpose of the Chantrey Bequest. R. M. Collins to H. Parker, 18 Sept. 1913, UQFL7/B/10. A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 20 Sept. 1913, UQFL7/B/161. Ibid. The correspondence from Mackenzie largely comes from Harold Parker’s papers. Few of Mackennal’s records have survived. A. G. R. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 22 Oct. 1913, UQFL7/B/163. Parker received halfinch scale drawings from the Mackenzies of amendments to the Entrance Doorway, so that he could make the necessary adjustments on his larger scale model. London photographer Arthur P. Monger photographed the architectural model for Harold Parker, who paid for twelve prints of the photograph: Monger invoice to H. Parker, 4 June 1913, UQFL7/E/319. A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 9 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/169. A. Hunt to R. M. Collins, 24 Sept. 1912, Australia House, Decorations by Harold

Notes – Chapter Nineteen: A National Expression Parker, A2910, 405/1/3 PART 1 NAA. 21 Eagle, The Art of Rupert Bunny, 103. Official notification of the competition appeared in the Commonwealth Gazette in July 1914. 22 Ibid. 23 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 23 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/B/166. This could have been the replica of Isolotto’s Basin Ocean by Giambologna (1529–1608), the original of which is in the Bargello Museum. In this group a central allegorical figure stands with figures below, in a pyramidal composition. Francesco Gurrieri, Judith Chatfield, Boboli Gardens, Florence, Editrice Edam, 1972, 54–5; John Pope Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London 1963 vol. 9, 88. 24 Unsigned sketch, UQFL7/A/44. Though not dated, this sketch was clearly drawn around the same time as Mackenzie wrote to Parker judging from its execution and the materials used. The sketches appear to be drawn quickly, as ideas that may be doodled in discussion at first meeting. 25 Another unsigned, undated postcard shows the same group sketched on a plinth: UQFL7/A/48. This rough sketch exists on the back of a postcard, one half of which bears Mackenzie’s address as written by Parker (such as one might note on first meeting); the other half is a loosely-drawn sketch for a sculptural group with three figures. 26 Harold Parker, Figure Group, Pencil sketch, UQFL7/A/44, Parker noted Marshall Mackenzie’s contact details on the reverse of this sketch. In allegorical representations the figure of Dawn frequently appears with the cloak of night. 27 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 23 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/b/166. 28 Ibid. It appears that Mackenzie sought more specific representations than Parker suggested. 29 This motif of navigation was a considerable feature of Sir George Frampton’s sculpture on Lloyd’s Registry Building, Fenchurch St. (1901), seen among the figures of the Portland stone frieze on the building’s turrets, and in a bronze figure of a maiden holding an ocean liner. http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/frampton/56. html. Another example is Thomas Brock’s Figure of Navigation for Admiralty Arch (1908–13) with a sextant and a heavy cloak. 30 H. Parker to A. M. Mackenzie, 26 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/c/7. 31 Ibid. 32 ‘The Royal Academy’, The Times, 4 May 1908 in Harold Parker AAA file, SLV. 33 William Moore, ‘Notes on some younger Australian artists’, Studio, vol. 62, 1914, 209 in Harold Parker AAA file, SLV. As a Chantrey Bequest purchase, the President and Council of the Royal Academy bought it for £1000. Clare H Shepherd to Lord Croft, 7/c/74, UQFL. 34 Evelyn P. Harris to H. Parker, 2 May 1910, box 2, UQFL7/B/132; Great Britain Board of Trade (Exhibitions Branch) to H. Parker, 1 Sept. 1910, UQFL7/ B/126. 35 Parker made a number of portrait busts of establishment figures. They included those made in 1911 of two women, both wives of Queensland capitalists: the lifesize marble Lady McIlwraith, wife of Sir Thomas McIlwraith (1835–1900), three times Premier of Queensland between 1879 and 1893 and frozen meat trade pioneer; and the wife of shipping magnate Sir Malcolm McEachern (1852–1910). He was Mayor of Melbourne (1897–1900, 1903–4), a Freetrader and Federationist, and in partnership with the McIlwraith brothers in the shipping line McIlwraith, McEachern & Co. Parker also made a portrait bust of Australian painter Arthur Streeton (1906). Queenslanders knew of Parker’s bust of the King; it was reproduced

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Capital Designs in the Queenslander, 8 Nov. 1913, 23 cited by McKay, Harold Parker, 20. 36 H. Parker to G. V. F. Mann, 22 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/c/6; McKay, 1991, 20. Mann was director and secretary of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1912–28). A member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board from 1912, and its chairman (1914–18), he was at the centre of discussion on the arts at the time. Gilbert Bayes (1872–1953) was the artist whose work was chosen. His bronze equestrian figures, The Offerings of Peace and The Offerings of War (1923), cast by A. B. Burton, front the gallery’s entrance. Models for them were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition: a ¼ scale model for Peace in 1917 and a model for War in 1918. In 1917, Parker exhibited in London a model for The Awakening; it was catalogued as a portion of a group for the main entrance doorway, Australia House. Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970, vol. 1, A–D, Calne, Wiltshire: Hilmarton Manor Press, 1985, 102; vol. V, LAWRSHER, Wakefield, Yorkshire; E.P. Publishing Ltd., 1981, 274. 37 City and Guilds of London Institute Certificate, Box 1, UQFL7/A/76. The City and Guilds of London Art School where Parker studied in London was variously known as the Lambeth School of Art (as it was first known, from 1854), and the City and Guilds of London Institute (in Lambeth School of Art) from c.1879. With the move to a new building it was renamed South London Technical School of Art (c.1879– 1937). When Parker attended the school, the most illustrious sculptor associated with it was French sculptor Aimé-Jules Dalou (1838–1902), best remembered today for The Triumph of the Republic, Place de la Nation, which he executed for the city of Paris (1899). Dalou was a very impressive teacher. His influence is credited for the radical change that evolved in British sculpture toward the end of the century. Marion Henry Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today, London: Cassell & Co., 1901, 1. 38 London County Council Certificate, Box 1, UQFL7/A/78. Parker gained this while studying at the South London Technical Art School. 39 Harold Parker, Biographical notes, Box 1, UQFL7/A/66. He spent 14 months cutting Ariadne in stone. C. H. Shepherd to Lord Croft, n.d., UQFL7/c/74. Clare Shepherd is Parker’s niece. 40 H. Parker to The Viscount Northcliffe, 10 June 1920, UQFL7/c/. Parker stressed this point again: Harold Parker, Notes, 3 May 1919, UQFL7/c/2 9. 41 ‘The Queen Victoria Memorial, Sir Thomas Brock, R.A., Sculptor’, Architectural Review, vol. 29, no. 175, June 1911, 352. 42 Commonwealth of Australia Agreement, UQFL7A33. 43 H. Parker to A. M. Mackenzie, 26 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/c/7. 44 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 3 Feb. 1915, UQFL7/B/164. 45 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 25 Mar. 1915, UQFL7/B/168. 46 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 9 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/169. 47 Epstein sought to celebrate the dignity of the human body in his Strand statues. Epstein’s semi-nude mother and child caused an uproar over decency and morality. Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864–1945), the Bishop of Stepney at the time, closely inspected the eighteen figures. He declared that there was nothing offensive about them. Epstein was pilloried. Controversy over Epstein’s figures broke out again in 1935 (with the Southern Rhodesian Government taking over the building); they were eventually mutilated, as they appear today. The building at 429 Strand is now Zimbabwe House, the Embassy of Zimbabwe. See: Jacob Epstein, Epstein, An Autobiography, London: Hulton Press, 1955, 21–41; The history of the saga is

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Notes – Chapter Nineteen: A National Expression outlined: Richard Cork, Art beyond the gallery in early 20th century England, New Haven; London: YUP, 1985, ch. 1; Richard Cork, Jacob Epstein, London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999, 14–16. 48 A.M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 17 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/172. 49 ‘Melbourne Statuary, A sculptor’s criticism’, Argus, 19 Apr. 1921, 7, AAA File SLV; ‘Sermons in Stones, Harold Parker’s Work, Sculptor’s Travels’, Herald, 7 Apr. 1921, 16 in Harold Parker AAA file SLV. 50 Tweed was Rodin’s principal agent and friend in England. Tweed’s promotion of Rodin’s work led to Rodin making his gift to London. On Tweed and Rodin see Lendal Tweed, John Tweed sculptor, a memoir, London, Lovat Dickson Limited, 1936. 101–10. For details of the saga over Rodin’s gift to London see Susan Beattie, The Burghers of Calais in London, The History of the purchase and siting of Rodin’s monument 1911–56, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1987. 51 Arnold L. Haskell, The Sculptor Speaks: Jacob Epstein to Arnold L. Haskell, London, William Heinemann, 1931, 27. 52 John Belcher, The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, Moorgate Place E.C., London: B. T. Batsford, 1893. Terry Friedman, et al, The Alliance of Sculpture and Architecture, Hamo Thornycrot, John Belcher and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Building, The Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Leeds City Art Galleries, 1993. There is also Thornycroft’s bronze, A Sower, Kew Gardens (1886). 53 Haskell, Epstein, 29. 54 For the Queen Victoria Memorial, Brock made an initial small sketch-model which King Edward saw in 1901, before he made a more elaborate model to a scale of one-tenth the full size for the King to approve in 1902. When Brock’s completed figures were unveiled, nine years after his model was approved, they disappointed because they made little effort to break from the spiritless bounds of convention; the Architectural Review thought his design lacked originality. ‘The Queen Victoria Memorial’, Architectural Review, vol. 29, no. 175, June 1911, 358. 55 James Belich, Replenishing the earth, The settler revolution and the rise of the Angloworld, 1783–1939, New York: OUP, 2009, 362 citing Elspeth Johnson, ‘The role of family and community in the decision to emigrate: Evidence from a case study of Scottish emigration to Queensland, 1885–8’, Family and Community History, 25, 1983, 5–25. Daniel Parker was a pioneer resident of West End (today an inner-city suburb of South Brisbane) where he died in 1926. ‘Mr Daniel Parker’, Daily Mail (Brisbane), 3 July 1926, 7. 56 This sculpture is in the collection of the University Art Museum, Brisbane. Parker initiated interest in the merit of Australian marble for sculpture by carving the portrait in Queensland Ulam marble. Parker exhibited it in the Australia Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley in 1924. It gained Parker a bronze medal at the Paris Salon (1928), making him the first Australian sculptor to receive a medal at the Paris Salon. It represented Parker again in the important exhibition held by the National Gallery of New South Wales to mark Australia’s Sesquicentennial in 1938. Over 200,000 visitors viewed this exhibition in Sydney: Will Ashton to H. Parker, 16 May 1938, UQFL7/6/217; Art Gallery of New South Wales, 150 Years of Australian Art, Sydney: National Gallery of New South Wales, 1938. 57 Although inaugurated in 1909, the university opened in the former Government House in 1911. The University was established in 1909 to mark the State’s Jubilee (and Queensland’s separation from NSW in 1859). Difficulties dogged building

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Capital Designs for the university at nearby St Lucia where the foundation stone was not laid until 1937, and the first building opened in 1949. In general, armed resistance to white settlement was not acknowledged until the 1970s. For the first history of the Australian frontier told from an Indigenous perspective: Henry Reynolds, The other side of the frontier, Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, (1981)/2006, 115; 169–71. 58 At this time, historical sense stirred widely with strong interest in salvaging abandoned records from the past, whether in music or with historical documents. In 1912, the Federal Historic Memorials Committee were tasked to commission artists to portray Sir Henry Parkes (1815–96), Sir Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, Sir George Reid, and Andrew Fisher among other prominent Federationists. Historic Memorials Committee seeking to obtain photographs of Prominent Federationists etc. NAA: A2, 1913/4041 PART 2; Memorials. Matters for reference to Historic Memorials Committee and Art Advisory Board. Conditions and terms of commissions to artists, NAA: A457, F508/7. 59 Nehemiah Bartleby edited by J. J. Knight, Australian Pioneers and Reminiscences, Brisbane: Gordon & Gotch, 1896; Louis Becke, The Naval Pioneers of Australia, John Murray, 1899; Arthur Wilberforce Jose, Builders and Pioneers of Australia, London; Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928; Another example was Alexander Macdonald, In the Land of Pearl and gold, a pioneer’s wanderings in the backblocks and pearling grounds of Australia and New Guinea, London: Blackie & Son, 1907; Nor did film-makers ignore interest in pioneering days: Francis Birtles released his documentary Across Australia in the Track of Burke and Wills, c.1912. 60 For Garbe’s two ‘epochal’ sculptural groups: ‘Sculpture Groups, Cardiff’, Builder, vol. CXL, no. 2831, 7 July 1916, 12–13. 61 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 10 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/170. 62 Ibid. 63 H. Parker to A. M. Mackenzie, 12 Apr. 1915, 7/c/9. This draft is unsigned, but the contents were posted. Copies of Parkers letters to Mackenzie: Australia House, Decorations by Harold Parker, A2910, 405/1/3 PART 1 NAA. 64 H. Parker to A. M. Mackenzie, unsigned, undated draft, UQFL7/c/78. 65 H. Parker to A. M. Mackenzie, 11 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/c/8. 66 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 12 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/171. The Mackenzies pointed out that for a successful result they should control the position, setting, scale and design of the sculpture: A. M. Mackenzie to R. M. Collins, 10 Aug. 1916, NAA: A2, 1917/1828 Australia House London, Architects Commission. 67 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 17 Apr. 1915, UQFL7/B/172. 68 D. H. Reid to H. Parker, 11 May 1915, UQFL7/B/14. Douglas Reid was secretary to his father, Sir George Reid. 69 Agreement, 25 May 1915, UQFL7A33. The schedule of conditions of the agreement observed the contract issued under the sanction of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Parker’s contract was signed on 25 May 1915. 70 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 5 July 1915, UQFL7/B/165. With this, Mackenzie enclosed a sketch, which has not survived. He also referred to a photograph, which has not survived either. 71 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 23 Nov. 1915, UQFL7/B/178. Mackenzie wanted to fix the stone before the contractor removed his crane at the building’s front. 72 A. M. Mackenzie to H. Parker, 17 Dec. 1915, UQFL7/B/180. 73 By this technique Auguste Rodin’s assistants frequently made enlargements or

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Notes – Chapter Nineteen: A National Expression reductions of his original models. It is an indirect method of carving the final sculpture from the artist’s plaster model. In the twentieth century, the technique was increasingly rejected for direct carving. 74 H. Parker to T. Carini, 12 June 1916, UQFL7/c/10; T. Carini to H. Parker, 9 June 1916 UQFL7/B/87. The price arranged with Carini did not include cutting joints or fixing on the building. 75 London & South Western Railway to H. Parker, UQFL7/B/149. The Railway Arches were at Winthorpe Road, Putney. Parker’s studio was in Pembroke Square, Kensington. 76 The Bath & Portland Stone Firms Ltd to H. Parker, 24 July 1916, UQFL7/B/44 Stone from Portland was usually shipped to Portland Wharf, Pimlico and to their Railway Depot at Nine Elms, near Battersea. ‘Portland Stone’, Architect & Contract Reporter, 4 Jan. 1907, 17. With an office in Pimlico, they delivered the stone to Carini. Stones for Parker also went to Dove Brothers who had a depot in Islington. 77 The Bath & Portland Stone Firms Ltd to H. Parker, Aug. 1916, UQFL7/B/46 3; H. Parker to J. Mears, 8 Aug. 1917, UQFL7/C/17. Joseph Mears was a contractor and wharfinger. 78 Dove Brothers Ltd to H. Parker, 9 Mar. 1917, UQFL7/B/107. 79 T. Carini to H. Parker, 11 July 1917, UQFL7/B/88. 80 Time Sheet, 1917, UQFL7/E/386; Australia House Memorandum Book, UQFL 7/6/388. In addition to their wages, they expected to receive the 4s. bonus awarded to men when working on Munition work. 81 Dove Brothers Ltd to H. Parker, 9 Sept. 1917, UQFL7/B/11. 82 R. M. Collins to H. Parker, 2 Feb. 1918, UQFL7/B/16. Parker asked for a key to the door of the hoarding in front of the building so that he could get in at any time to work on the groups. 83 W. Bowles to H. Parker, July 1917, 7/B/79. Bowles survived the war. Later he proposed a sculptural group, The Pioneers. This was a design for a centenary memorial to the early pioneers of Victoria when the State observed the centenary of European settlement there in 1934. Blamire Young, art critic for Melbourne’s Herald, considered that the subject of ‘pioneers’ was a difficult subject (perhaps because the impact of the 1929 Depression undercut rhetoric about progress). A clipping in Parker’s papers illustrated the work. No commission was given for the sculpture in Victoria. 84 Only authorised in Oct. 1915, the Machine Gun Corps was formed in Mar. 1916. Bowles joined it at its inception. Its heavy branch was formed in Nov. 1916; it became the Tank Corps in 1919, and was later known as the Royal Tank Corps. For its history: G. S. Hutchison, Machine Guns, Their history and tactical employment (being also a history of the Machine Gun Corps, 1916–1922), 1938. 85 C. E. Crutchley (comp., ed.), Machine Gunner 1914–1918, personal experiences of the Machine Gun Corps, Folkestone: Bailey and Swinfen, 1975, 16. 86 Ibid., 73. For a picture of the Corps see Arthur Russell, With the Machine Gun Corps from Grantham to Cologne in the European War, London: Drancs, 1923, 149. 87 Hutchison, Machine Guns, 271. 88 Marjorie Caygill and Christopher Date, Building the British Museum, London: British Museum Press, 1998, 60. 89 Jean Goujon (c.1510–c.1568) was a French Renaissance mannerist architectural sculptor who worked with architect Pierre Lescot (c.1510–1578). He is famous for his sculptural decoration of the Louvre palace (1549–1562), made in collaboration with

389

Capital Designs

90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Lescot. The first complete study of Goujon to appear in English was issued in 1903: Reginald Lister, with an introduction by S. Arthur Strong, Jean Goujon His Life and Work, London, Duckworth and Co., 1903. Arthur Strong (1863–1904) was Librarian to Chatsworth House from 1895 and also to the House of Lords from 1897. F. W. Pomeroy to H. Parker, 18 Dec. 1917, UQFL7/B/234. Mackennal’s group was cast at Arthur Burton’s Thames Ditton foundry. Mackennal was quoted by the Chronicle, 10 May 1924, 45. Table Talk, 26 June 1924, 14. Week, 6 June 1924, 6; Daily Standard, 27 Mar. 1924, 1. Australia House, Decorations by Harold Parker A2910 405/1/3 PART 2, NAA. Kineton Parkes, Sculpture of Today, vol. 1, London, Chapman Hall, 1921, 157–9.

Chapter Twenty: Displaying Purpose 1 Sir Robert Garran, ‘One People, One Destiny’ in Parliament Jubilee Dinner Commonwealth of Australia Jubilee Celebrations 1901–51, Banquet given by the Ministers of State for the Commonwealth of Australia on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament House Canberra 12 June 1951, AH/D5–5. Compressed into four words, Garran’s line embodied the hopes held on Australia federating in 1901. 2 Memorandum to A. Hunt, 16 Jan. 1914, New Commonwealth Offices Naming A2911, 290/1914NAA; ‘Municipal Map of London’, The Times, 15 Dec. 193, 6. Earlier press reports had already referred to the building as ‘The Australian House’: ‘The Australian House’, Evening Journal, 29 June 1912, 4. 3 Robert J Haddon, Australian architecture, a technical manual for all those engaged in architectural and building work, Melbourne: George Robertson, 1903/1908, 113. 4 R. M. Collins to A. Hunt, 23 Jan. 1914, NAA 53/7125. 5 ‘Advertising among the Londoners’, Sun, 28 Feb. 1914, 6. Thos Cook & Son operated in Australia, and the Orient Steam Navigation Company was considering renting one of the building’s shop-fronts on the Strand and basement store for £600 per annum. Australia House London Accommodation Orient SN Co, NAA: A1, 1914/1254. 6 ‘Charivaria’, Punch, 15 Apr. 1914, 281. 7 William Whyte (intro.), Ghent Planning Congress 1913, Premier Congrès International Et Exposition Comparee des Villes, Oxford; New York, Routledge 2013, xiv. A planned Second Congress of Cities, scheduled for San Francisco in 1915, never occurred due to the war. The Union Internationale des Villes (UIV) was renamed and is today’s International Union of Local Authorities (IULA). 8 The exhibition was scheduled from May to Nov. 1914. With just two of the 52 sections of the exhibition dealing with the construction of cities, it attracted criticism for not giving more attention to issues related to cities such as essential services: ‘The Lyons International Urban Exhibition’, Town Planning Review, vol. 5, no. 1, Apr. 1914, 76; ‘An International Union of Cities’, Town Planning Review, vol. 5, no. 2, July 1914, 245; ‘Chronicle of Passing Events, An International Union of Cities’, Town Planning Review, vol. 5, no. 3, Oct. 1914, 245–7. 9 Pierre-Yves Saunier and Shane Ewen (eds.), Global City Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment, 1850–2000, Palgrave Macmillan 2008, 74. 10 Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, London, Printed for the High Commissioner

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11 12 13

14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24

of the Commonwealth of Australia by Chas. Hooper and Co., 1915, 259. Set up by commercial sponsors, the exhibition became known as Bristol’s ‘White City’, although it was short-lived due to insufficient financial support. ‘Bristol Exhibition’, The Times, 29 May 1914, 14. Also, Clive Burlton, Bristol’s Lost City: Built to inspire, transformed for war, Bristol, Bristol Books, 2014. ‘Remarkable Cinema Figures’, World’s News, 21 Apr. 1917, 5. Investment in Great Britain in the cinema business exceeded over £15 million by the close of 1914. As reported from ‘World of Recreation’, Worker (Brisbane), 9 Apr. 1914, 12. ‘Advertising Australia’, Evening Telegraph (Charters Towers, Qld.), 22 Jan. 1909, 2. The Pathé brothers acquired the patents of the Lumière brothers; their heyday was in the early 1900s. On Pathé’s power and dominance (known as ‘Pathé-mentia’) see Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American 1900–1910, Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1999, 119 (and beginning chapters). Patrick Gerard, ‘Picturing Queensland: The Local, the National and the Global in Early Queensland Film’ in T. Ferrrero-Regis and A. Moran (ed.), Placing the Moving Image, Brisbane, School of AMC Griffith University, 2004, 10; ‘Telling the World – Bert Ive: Pioneer of Australia’s Documentary Heritage’, National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, http://www.nfsa.gov.ay/visit-us/exhibitions-presentations/ previous-exhibitions/telling-the world-bert-ive/; Bert Ive Rate of Travelling Allowance NAA: A1, 1914/21243; Ive filmed a record of Australian life, landscapes and industries until his death in 1939. ‘Australia the Unknown’, Examiner (Launceston), 28 Dec. 1914, 2. Bedford Lemere photographed for a wide range of commercial firms among them decorators such as Maple and Co.; the foremost art dealers, Duveen Brothers; as well as builders like Trollope and Colls; and specialist suppliers such as H. H. Martyn, the Cheltenham fibrous plaster company who carved the wooden swags around the doors to the Picture Gallery in the State Apartments, Buckingham Palace in 1914. HEA, BL22448A, BL22748/002. Photographs documenting progress made on the building can be seen online on the Historic England Archive, website. HEA, BL22748/002, BL22748/003. Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report, 1915, 10. The Builder’s lock-out ended on 10 Aug. 1914. A major strike called for the summer of 1914 by the Triple Alliance never occurred. ‘Mr Fisher on Australia’s readiness’, Bathurst Times (NSW), 3 Aug. 1914, 2; ‘Five Nations At War’, The Times, 3 Aug. 1914, 6. For political reasons behind Australia’s unlimited support to Britain and entry into the war see Douglas Newton, ‘At the Birth of Anzac: Labour, Andrew Fisher and Australia’s Offer of an Expeditionary Force to Britain in 1914’, Labour History, no. 106, May 2014, 19–41; ‘Crisis of our Fate’, Argus, 3 Aug. 1914, 14, cited by Newton, 25. James Bone, with pictures by Muirhead Bone, London Echoing, London, Jonathan Cape, 1948, 51. Stephen Pope & Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, The Macmillan Dictionary of the First World War, London, Macmillan, 1995, xvii. Other valuable references pertaining to London through the First World War include Jerry White, Zeppelin Nights, London, The Bodley Head, 2014; and, for a first-hand account from a long-serving journalist on The Times, see Michael MacDonagh, In London During the Great War, The Diary of a Journalist, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1935. Scotland responded to the onset of war by raising 320,589 recruits through voluntary enlistment, the highest proportion in the United Kingdom. Edward M.

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25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

38

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Spiers, ‘The National Response to the Outbreak of War, 1914’ in Peter Liddle (ed.), Britain Goes to War, How the First World War Began to Reshape the Nation, Pen & Sword, 2015, 53. R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard, Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions 1915–1916, London, Cassell, 1978, 4. John Benson, The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain 1880–1980, London; New York, 1994, 26. ‘November – The Willies’ War Artists’ in W. K. Haselden, The sad adventures of big and little Willie: during the first six months of the Great War, August 1914–January 1915, London, Fine Art Society and Chatto & Windus, 1915, 21. The Germans came within 40 miles of Paris, but their advance was halted by resistance begun at the Marne. ‘War and Work’, Builder, vol. 108, no. 3731, 7 Aug. 1914, 147. ‘New Building Restrictions’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3864, 23 Feb. 1917, 133. On the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) see Spencer C Tucker (ed.), The Encyclopedia of World War I: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 2, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-Clio, 2005, 341–2. Also, Alexander Pulling (ed.), Defence of the Realm. Acts and Regulations passed and made to July 31st, 1915, London, 1915. HEA, BL22748/001, also BL22748/004. Two firms were contracted for the stone carving: W. Aumonier & Son of Fitzroy Square, and H.H. Martyn & Co, Cheltenham. Australia House, Publicity, AH/D1–3. Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report, 279; HEA, BL22748/003. A. Marshall Mackenzie & Son, Report of Progress of Work from January 1st 1915, AH/D1-3; Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report, 43. Dove Brothers Ltd., Australia House, 16 Dec. 1914, Drawings specification, GB 1032 S/DOV. ‘General News’, Chronicle, 11 Apr. 1914, 41, ‘Tenders Accepted’, Commonwealth Gazette, no. 44, 18 July 1914, 1230. The contract was for just over £3,560 to be delivered to the Department of Home Affairs by mid-Sept. 1914. Emma Hardy, ‘Farmer and Brindley, craftsman sculptors 1850–1930’, Victorian Society Annual, 1993, 4–17; The Red Book of Commerce or Who’s Who in Business, London, 1908, 299; Architectural Review, vol. 21, no. 127, June 1907, xvii. Work they executed beyond London included the Belfast City Hall, York Minster, and the marble work at Mount Stuart, Bute. As well, they completed work for Princeton University and St Nicholas’ Church, Hamburg. As for Holy Souls Chapel, Westminster Cathedral. Established in 1821, Whitehead & Sons advertised themselves as craftsmen in marble: Architectural Review, vol. 42, 1917, xvi. ‘Lloyd’s of London’, Advertiser, 2 May 1928, 14; ‘J. Whitehead & Sons Ltd.’, The Times, 24 Mar. 1928, 16; ‘The Queen Victoria Memorial, Sir Thomas Brock, R.A., Sculptor’, Architectural Review, vol. 29, no. 175, June 1911, 358. Also, The Red Book of Commerce, 880. Whitehead & Sons completed the flooring of the Royal Insurance Company’s West End offices: ‘Royal Insurance Buildings, St James’s, London. John Belcher, A.R.A., Architect’, Architectural Review, vol. 25, no. 146, Jan. 1909, 48. Richard Crittall & Company Ltd of London were also sub-contractors for heating, hot water supply and heat for cooking at County Hall: Hobhouse, Survey of London. Monograph 17, County Hall, 129. Pipe work in Australia House was delayed and would be installed from 1916: Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report of the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom, London, High Commissioner, 1916, 43.

Notes – Chapter Twenty: Displaying Purpose 39 The building was designed when the Commonwealth adhered to Gold, and as the strong rooms protected the stock of sovereigns or bullion which were held, they were built to resist attack by electric arc, oxy-acetylene flame or gelignite. The gold standard broke down during the war.: Harry Emory Cubb, ‘A Brief Description of Chubb’s new Triple Treasury Door’, Proceedings of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, in Chubb and Son Limited (Locksmiths and Sage Manufacturers) ‘Chubb Collecteana’, LMA CLC/B/002/10/01/065/044D. 40 Quintin Watt (ed.), The Bromsgrove Guild, An Illustrated History, Bromsgrove Society, 1999, 80. 41 R. M. Collins to L. E. Groom, 13 Nov. 1914, in Papers of Sir Littleton Groom, circa 1886–1936, NLA MS 236 1/1351. 42 ‘Tributes to prominent Aberdonians’, Aberdeen Journal, 2 May 1916, 4; The regiment originated as part of the Volunteer Force sponsored by the Highland Society of London and the Caledonian Society of London, when a group of individual Scots raised The London Scottish Rifle Volunteers under the command of Lt Col Lord Elcho, later The Earl of Wemyss and March. The King’s Own regimental tartan is Elcho Tartan of Hodden Grey in colour. With the Haldane Reforms (1908), the Volunteers were transformed into the Territorial Force. The London Scottish was re-designated the Fourteenth Battalion, County of London Regiment (London Scottish). The regiment raised three battalions during the war, with the 1/1st Battalion serving on the Western Front.: Mark Lloyd, The London Scottish in the Great War, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Leo Cooper, 2001, 21. 43 ‘Mr. A. G. R. Mackenzie, F. R. I. B.A. The new president of the Architectural Association’, Building News, vol. 110, no. 3208, 28 June 1916, 619. 44 Aberdeen Evening Express, 28 Apr. 1916, 5; Aberdeen Journal, 2 May 1916, 3. 45 W. M. Hughes Decode of Cable from Sydney, NLA MS 2919/3/205–6 Series 3 Box 2. Within the week, Harcourt announced in the House of Commons that no Imperial Conference would be held during 1915. 46 On 16 May 1915, the troopship Goorkha arrived at Southampton, carrying survivors from the Dardanelles. C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 3, The Australian Imperial Force in France 1916, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1934, 159. 47 Savage’s appointment took effect from 10 Nov. 1914: Sir George Reid to R. M. Collins, 11 Dec. 1914, High Commissioner’s Staff, Colonel Savage Honorary Military Rank Conferred, NAA A2910 442/18/13 Part 1; F. Savage to R. M. Collins, 28 Oct. 1910, NAA A2910 442/18/13, Part 1. 48 James Bone, London Echoing, 50. 49 Ibid. 50 Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report, 43. This report, issued in 1916, noted progress made on the building from 1 Jan. 1915. 51 HEA, BL22967. 52 Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report, 1915, 39. 53 ‘Construction Section Australia House Strand’, Builder, vol. 108, no. 3772, 21 May 1915, 491–3. 54 ‘Australia House Elevation to Strand’, Builder, vol. 108, no. 3772, 21 May 1915, 490. 55 A. Hunt to Senator Pearce, 25 May 1915 AH 1914–30 416/458 NAA; In late 1916, it was hoped that the building could be occupied in Mar. 1917: R. M. Collins to External Affairs, 9 Nov. 1916, Australia house Insurance of A2, NAA. 56 Boyd Cable with a preface by David Lloyd George, Doing their bit, war work at

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Capital Designs home, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916, 12 and 25. Boyd Cable was the pen name for Ernest Andrew Ewart (1878–1943), English writer who was born in India, served in the Boer War, held firm opinion about the menace of European militarism, migrated to Australia, covered the war as a news correspondent and wrote military history; William H Wilde, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edn., New York, OUP, 1994, 262. 57 The Rt Hon Christopher Addison, British Workshops and the War, London, T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1917, 49. Ministers of Munitions were David Lloyd George (May 1915– July 1916), Hon. Edwin Samuel Montagu (July to Dec. 1916), Christopher Addison (Dec. 1916–July 1917), Winston Churchill (July 1917–Jan. 1919). 58 Edwin Montague, The Means of Victory, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1916, 53. 59 Arthur Mason, ‘Hand Notes’, Australia House Archives G1–2. Arthur Mason, Sydney City Organist, and organist and choirmaster of St James’ Church, Sydney, wrote on music for the SMH. He worked as a journalist in London (1907, and from 1913). Robert Ampt, The Sydney Town Hall Organ. William Hill and Son’s magnum opus, Woodford, NSW: Birralee Publshing, 1999, 54ff. 60 Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report, 43. 61 O. Hammerstein to A. M. Mackezie, 3 May 1912, AH/E9–3. 62 Duke & Ockenden to A. M. Mackenzie & Son, 2 Nov. 1916, AH/E9-3. From south-east London, Duke & Ockenden began as a general engineering business in the early nineteenth century. From 1868 the firm began specialising in water supply, as consulting engineers and contractors, Artesian Well Borers and Pumping Machinery Manufacturers. 63 Ministry of Munitions of War to R. M. Collins, 16 Nov. 1916, Water Supply Artesian Well 1912–1921 AH/E9–3. 64 Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report, 43. 65 ‘An Economic Survey of 1916’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3863, 16 Feb. 1917, 122. 66 Dorothy Catts (with and introduction by Dame Mary Gilmore, D.B.E.), King O’Malley, Man and Statesman, Sydney, Publicity Press, 1938, 218. 67 W.D. Bingle to Department of Defence, 22 Mar. 1915 (Defence File Central Administration 156/1/752; Navy Office 15/2193); Australian building materials for Australia House [Buchan marble for Commonwealth offices London], NAA: A2910, 405/1/53 Part 1 (1915–1916). Buchan Marble was used for the entrance and staircase of the Public Library, Museum and At Gallery of Victoria (today the SLV) when a new annexe building was erected from 1909 to mark the library’s Jubilee. 68 The shipment was mistakenly reported to have arrived in early 1914 (during the Builders’ lock-out). ‘Australian Stones for the Strand’, Ellesmere Guardian, vol. 12, no. 3501, 4 Feb. 1914, 2; Commonwealth of Australia, Fifth Annual Report, 1915, 40. Sir Thomas White, ‘The Story of Australia House’, The Strand, 159, AH/E9–2. Sir Thomas White (1888–1957) was Australian High Commissioner in London during 1951–6. 69 W. D. Bingle to R. M. Collins, 14 Apr. 1916, NAA A2910, 405/1/53, Part 1, Australian building materials for Australia House; Walter Bingle (1861–1928) was acting head of the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs (1907–9, 1914–16). He became secretary and permanent head of the Department of Works and Railways (1917–26). 70 On the Port Adelaide waterfront, the shipment was noted for the quality of the material and the size of the blocks, according to Adelaide’s newspaper Daily Herald, 15 Mar. 1916, 4. 71 Commonwealth of Australia, Sixth Annual Report, 43.

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Chapter Twenty One: Play the Game 1 ‘A Soldier to his Critic’ in F. M. Cutlack (ed.), War Letters of General Monash, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1934, 19. This rhyme verse was prompted by reports in Australia regarding the conduct of the Australian troops in Egypt. The reports disgusted General Monash who complained to the Commonwealth Minister for defence, Senator George Pearce, in Mar. 1915 that they were grossly exaggerated. ‘Play the Game’ was a poem encouraging enlistment issued on 16 June 1915 by one of Melbourne’s principal newspapers. Walter A. Gale, Play the Game, Melbourne: The Argus, 1915. Later in the war, it was also the name of several United States servicemen’s marching songs. One example being: E. L. Smith, If you’re going to join the Army play the game marching song, Newark, N.J.: A.K. Delemos & Co., 1918. 2 Reid’s speech to the troops of the 1st Australian Division appears in J. L. Treloar, An Anzac Diary, Armidale, NSW: Alan Treloar, 1993, 68–71. The troops could thank Reid for sparing them from training on the Salisbury Plain, as was intended. With Army Reforms in the 1890s, 42,000 acres (16,996.8 hectares) was purchased at Salisbury Plain in 1898 for large-scale training. Reid feared that conditions there would be too suddenly harsh for the men who were un-acclimatised to English winters. 3 On 11 Apr. 1915 Reid inspected troops encamped at Romsey near Southampton. Sunday Mirror, 11 Apr. 1915, 10; ‘A Central Queenslander in the Army Service Corps’, Capricornian, 12 June 1915, 31. 4 Prue Joske, Debonair Jack, a biography of Sir John Longstaff: 1861–1941, Hawthorn, Vic.: Claremont, 1994, 118, 122. 5 Over £4,500 was paid away daily to enlisted men. Accountant’s Report 1916, AH/ E9, 8–9. 6 Lionel James with a foreword by General the Hon. Sir Herbert A, Lawrence, King Edward’s Horse, London: Sifton, Praed & Co., 1921, 41;’Sir George Reid’s son’, Daily Record (Lanarkshire), 10 Jan. 1916, 6; Douglas and Clive Reid survived the war. 7 Boyd Cable with a preface by David Lloyd George, Doing their bit, War Work at Home, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916, 9–10. Written in Jan. 1916, this was issued in May that year for circulation amongst troops with the B.E.F. to tell them of support at home in supplying armies with materials of war. 8 ‘German Peace Proposals’, Punch, 20 Jan. 1916, 5 in Fisher Press Clippings Series 10 Folder 29a Item 118, Folio Box 7, NLA MS2919. Fisher served as High Commissioner from 22 Jan. 1916 (to Apr. 1921). Reid gained a seat to the House of Commons as member for St George’s Hanover Square. 9 ‘New Australian High Commissioner’, The Times, 27 Oct. 1915, 7. 10 Sir George Reid from the Sixth Annual Report of the High Commissioner, and as reported by the press: ‘Australia in London’, Register, 6 June 1916, 4. 11 Peter Bastian, Andrew Fisher, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009, 306. 12 Elizabeth Longford (ed.), Darling Loosy, letters to Princess Louise 1856–1939, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991, 288. 13 Series 9, Miscellaneous Papers 1899–1962, Box 5, NLA MS2919. 14 Christopher Croft (ed.), with an essay by Olwen Pryke, 100 Years of Diplomacy, An Exhibition Commemorating the Centenary of Australian Diplomatic Representation in the United Kingdom: 18–26 February 2010, London: Australian High Commission, 2010, 25. 15 Westminster Gazette, 31 Jan. 1916. Press clippings book Folio Box 7 NLA MS 2919.

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Capital Designs 16 For example, when addressing the University of Birmingham on 19 Oct. 1916: ‘Empire Organization, Australian High Commissioner’s Address’, Western Mail, 15 Dec. 1916, 44. 17 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. III, The A.I.F. in France 1916, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1934, 167. Bean’s assumption registers the confusion that existed during urgent wartime conditions. 18 ‘Australia House Nears Completion’, Christian Science Monitor, 26 June 1916, 3. 19 ‘Music in Australia House’, The Times, 27 Oct. 1916, 5. 20 Fisher proposed that the official opening should take place on Anzac Day. Commonwealth Offices, London A11804, 1916/138 NAA. 21 This was reversed in 1921, when the Departments of External Affairs and of the Prime Minister were joined under a single Secretary and Minister (and remained so until 1973). 22 On Fisher see John Murdoch, A Million to One, A Portrait of Andrew Fisher, London; Atlanta, Minerva Press, 1998, 71; On Hughes see P. G. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901–1949, Melbourne, OUP in association with The Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1983, 32–5. 23 E. Allan Box (born c.1889) rose rapidly through the Commonwealth Public Service. He entered the service in 1903 and became Secretary to the Prime Minister in 1912 until he was transferred to London in 1916. At the end of 1917 he succeeded (Sir) Robert Muirhead Collins as Official Secretary at Australia House. He resigned from Public Service from 31 Oct. 1919, for a commercial career. Collins was knighted in 1919. 24 For example, ‘Fisher visited the Third Australian General Hospital, London’, Sunday Times, 26 Mar. 1916, 19. 25 H.C. Smart to A. Hunt, 27 Dec. 1916, 53/962 Atlee Hunt Papers, 53/962 NLA. 26 S. Beatrice Pemberton, ‘The Call of the Dominions II: Interview with Mrs Fisher’ Lady’s Pictorial, vol. 73, no. 1872, 13 Jan. 1917, 35–6. 27 ‘News in Brief ’, The Times, 26 Dec. 1916; Author unknown, ‘Australia House, London’, AH/2–3, D1. 28 H. C. Smart to Contractors, 31 Jan. 1917, Australia House Publicity, AH/D1–3 A. London’s Daily Mail planned to devote a front page to the building. 29 Jerry White, Zeppelin Nights, London in the First World War, London: The Bodley Head, 2014, 223. 30 W. K. Haselden, ‘The public tries to avoid profiteering’, Daily Mirror, 3 June 1919, BCA, WH3007. Shortages persisted throughout the war and required buying basic necessities at inflated prices. Price controls were imposed on staple food items in attempts to stem public discontent. This cartoon, which is dated 1919, indicates the extent of shortages, and how these problems consequently persisted. 31 ‘War Material and Defence of the Realm Regulations’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3879, 8 June 1917, 365. 32 ‘Box stacking ground’, Ministry of Munitions Journal, no. 9, Aug. 1917, 273. 33 Jobbing books from Dove Brothers Ltd, and their record of works, show that from Mar. 1917 they were building Aeroplane Propellers. Record of Works (1917–24), 221, GB 1032 S/DOV. 34 Muirhead Bone, Munition Drawings, London: Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions, 1917. 35 ‘War-time Building’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3867, 16 Mar. 1917, 177. 36 ‘Building Trade in War Time’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3859, 19 Jan. 1917, 59.

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Notes – Chapter Twenty One: Play the Game 37 ‘Licences for Building Work’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3879, 8 June 1917, 365. 38 ‘Air Raids and Damages’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3880, 15 June 1917, 378. 39 25 July 1916, London County Council Question of increases of pay etc during war, 1914–1918, LMA LCC/CL/Estab/3/5; ‘Fifty Thousand Building Trade Workers Wanted’, Building News, no. 3235, 3 Jan. 1917, 19. 40 Gerhard Bry, ‘Wages in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States’ in National Bureau of Economic Research, Gerhard Bry (ed.) assisted by Charlotte Boschan, Wages in Germany, 1871–1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960, 306. 41 High Commissioner England, Australia House War Bonus to Workmen, NAA: A2 1919/2998. 42 ‘Labour Organization in Australia’, The Times, 17 Jan. 1912, 5.  43 M. L. Shepherd to P. Deane, 10 July 1923, NAAGeneral Works 2943/1923 cc 405/1/13. 44 High Commissioner’s Office to Secretary, Department of Works and Railways, 31 May 1918, Cablegram 1573/1918, AH/E1-3. 45 Cabinet Committee on Accommodation (Sir Alfred Mond), 1917–1920, PT 1/31 TNA; Cabinet Committee on wartime accommodation of departments, 1917, WORK 22/3/12 TNA. 46 Details of premises taken over by the Office of Works 1 Jan. to 31 Dec. 1916: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Return showing (1) temporary buildings erected or contracted for by H.M. Office of Works, etc., to be used as government offices in the London district during the period 1st Jan. to 31st Dec. 1916, with particulars of estimated cost for architect’s and engineering services. (2) Premises hired or requisitioned by or on behalf of H.M. Office of Works, etc., in the same area and period and for the same purpose, London: House of Commons, 1917. ‘Automobile Club Taken Over’, The Times, 27 Jan. 1917, 7. 47 ‘Australia House’, Argus, 17 Jan. 1917, 9; Bendigo Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1917, 5. 48 A. Fisher to Prime Minister, 11 Jan. 1917 NAA A2910, 405/16/4. 49 News in Brief.’ The Times, 16 Jan. 1917, 9. 50 ‘Australia’s birthday honoured in London’, Advertiser, 29 Jan. 1917, 8 51 ‘The Right Hon. Andrew Fisher, P.C., at his new official home’, Daily Mail (Brisbane), 7 Apr. 1917, 11. 52 J. S. B. Davidson to H. K. Ellison, 12 July 1918, Opening of Australia House by HM The King, AHA E1–3; ‘H.M. Office of Works’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3873, 27 Apr. 1917, 275. H.M. Office of Works issued a contract to the contractors for the building, Dove Bros., Ltd., for building works at Australia House, namely for Partitions. 53 On Fisher’s terms the Department rented the space for a reduced annual rent of £6,000. 54 HEA BL23797. 55 Daily Herald, 27 Sept. 1917, 5. 56 ‘The Port of London Authority’, Builder, vol. 112, no. 3866, 9 Mar. 1917, 183. 57 ‘Shy New Zealand’, Auckland Star, vol. 44, no. 110, 9 May 1913, 6. 58 Crickmay & Sons to Superintending Architect, 5 Dec. 1913, New Zealand Government Offices, 3 Heathcock Court, 413–416 Strand, Westminster LB: Building Act Case File (Offices) 1914–1965, GLC/AR/BR/17/040763 LMA. Following the Crimean War, a retired officer of the 8th Hussars pioneered resettling ex-servicemen. He organised them into the Corps de Commissionaires, a body of uniformed men to provide security to the City of London’s financial houses. Over

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Capital Designs 1,000 members formed the Corps by 1880. They were headquartered in London at Exchange Court, just behind New Zealand’s offices. 59 ‘Offices in London’, New Zealand Herald, vol. 53, no. 16203, 6; Illustrated in the Building News, vol. 112, no. 3235, 3 Jan. 1917, 16. 60 ‘New Zealand Offices, Otago Daily Times, no. 16686; ‘New Zealand in London’, Fielding Star, vol. 12, no. 2935, 4 May 1916. 61 ‘Canada in London’, Advertiser, 7 Nov. 1913, 16. Turner got nowhere in his negotiations with the LCC over its land in the Strand. 62 The firm of builders was known after the master builder Thomas Cubitt (1788–1855) who extensively developed areas of London with speculative housing. On his death, his business was bought by a leading competitor and the combined firm became known as Holland, Hannen & Cubitts. 63 James Carmichael (1858–1934) was among the industrialists on whom Lloyd George came to rely on to boost the war effort. Chairman of the Munitions Works Board of the Ministry of Munitions (1917–19), he was a member of the Standing Council of the Ministry of Reconstruction (1918), and Director-General of Housing in England and Wales (1918–20). He was knighted in 1919 for his services during the war. H. B. Kerr, ‘Sir James Carmichael’ in Dictionary of Business Biography, vol. 1, 592–4. 64 ‘The Offices of the Agent General for British Columbia Have Been Removed to British Columbia House, 1 and 3, Regent/street, S. W., as from 22nd Instant’, Financial Times, 22 Dec. 1915, 5. The building stands today as Trafalgar House, at the southern end of the renamed ‘lower’ Regent St. The street was renamed Regent St. St James’s in Sept. 2014; For discussion in relation to Australia: ‘AngloWestralian Notes’, West Australian, 7 Oct. 1920, 8. 65 ‘The Branch of the Commonwealth Bank Will Be Opened at Australia House at 12 O’Clock To-day by the High Commissioner’, Financial Times, 1 Oct. 1917, 1; Commonwealth Bank, Eleventh Aggregate Balance Sheet of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia as at 31st December 1917, Sydney: The Bank, 1918. The address for the Australia House Branch first appears here. Branches for the A.I.F. were also maintained in Wiltshire at Tidworth, Salisbury Plain and Warminster. Its principal London Branch was at 36 to 41 Broad St., New Broad St. in the City. 66 Lord Stamfordham to E. A. Box, Australia House Souvenir official opening, AH/ E9–2; Arthur Bibbe, 1st Baron Stamfordham (1849–1931), was Private Secretary to George V. The Commonwealth Bank assisted other federal authorities to organise war loans, primary production pools and a merchant shipping fleet. 67 Robin Gollan, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Origins and Early History, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968, 140 citing Governor to London Manager C. A. B. Campion, 16 Nov. 1915, London Letter Series, CBS. Uniquely, in Australia, the Commonwealth Bank was empowered to conduct both savings and general (trading) bank business, with the security of a Federal Government guarantee. 68 Nicholas Cooper, The Photography of Bedford Lemere & Co, Swindon, English Heritage, 2011, 277. 69 C. E. W. Bean and H. S. Gullett (annotated), Wilkins, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 12, Photographic Record, 4th edn., Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1935, plate 379. Harefield Park was owned by Charles A.M. Bilyard Leake (–1932), formerly chairman of the North Sydney Investment and Tramway Company that erected the Long Gully Bridge, a suspension bridge in North Sydney linking Northbridge and Cammeray (1892). Some fifty huts were

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70 71 72

73 74 75

76 77 78

79

erected in the grounds to extend the accommodation. Today it is the site of Harefield Hospital, a world centre for heart and lung transplants. See Danny Dawson, ‘Remembering Australian convalescents in Harefield: [Paper in Military Medicine: Special Issue. Stanley, Peter (ed.).]’, Health and History, vol. 6, no. 2, 2004, 60–74; Queenslander Pictorial, supplement to the Queenslander, 15 Sept. 1917, 23. Photographs of Eagle Hut in Aldwych: ‘Soldiers’ Club-Theatre’, The Times, 10 Dec. 1917, 6; ‘American Y.M.C.A. Hut in Aldwych’, The Times, 4 Sept. 1917, 3.  British Pathé, Baseball in the Strand 1918, website. Papers of Mary Pitcairn, NLA MSS1665; ‘Theatre as Soldiers’ Centre’, Brisbane Courier, 21 Dec. 1917, 7. The Australian YMCA Theatre opened on 8 Dec. 1917. The Aldwych Theatre was the centre of the association’s work in London. Red Triangle Social Centres like this benefited servicemen especially during the period under demobilization. ‘The Australian Commonwealth Parliament House’, Builder, vol. 111, no. 3837, 18 Aug. 1916, 94. ‘Report of the Architects’ War Committee’, JRIBA, vol. 25, 3rd series, Apr. 1918, 137. This report appeared in the annual report of the Council for the year 1917–18. William Harold Williams (1876–1918) in Antonia Brodie et. al. (eds.) Directory of British Architects 1834–1914, vol. 2, London, Continuum, 2001, 1008; Obituary, Builder, vol. 115, no. 3956, 29 Nov. 1918, 357. Another casualty of the war was Philip Edward Webb (1885–1916), serving in the Royal Engineers, youngest son of Aston Webb. ‘The late Philip E. Webb’, Builder, vol. 111, no. 3845, 13 Oct. 1916, 222. Record of Service in the Great War 1914–18 by members of the Council’s Staff, London, London County Council, 1922, 197. Pamphlet no. 111 St Paul’s Cathedral Memorial Service for those connected with the LCC who fell in the Great War 1914–18 Tuesday February 11th 1919, LMA LCC/ CL/CER/3/7. Captain Gilbert Marshall Mackenzie, Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany’s), NAA WO 339/9193 and WO374. After returning from Ypres, he joined the Metropolitan Relief Force. Obituary, Architect and Builder’s Journal, 14 June 1916, 252; Trevor Royle, Queen’s Own Highlanders, A Concise History, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2007, 128. Nikolas Gardner, The Siege of Kut-al-Amara, At war in Mesopotamia 1915–1916, Bloomington, IN; Minneapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014.

Chapter Twenty Two: Take the Strain 1 Australia House’, Times of India, 6 Aug. 1918, 6. 2 William Riddell Birdwood, Khaki and Gown, An autobiography, London; Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co, 1941, 321. General Birdwood’s order to his Troops on the eve of the Australians’ entry into the Amiens battlefield on 26 March 1918 was widely reported by Australian newspapers: ‘Australians’ entry into northern battle, General Birdwood’s Order’, Daily Observer (Tamworth, NSW), 17 Apr. 1918, 2. 3 GV/PRIV/GVD/1918, 3 Aug.; Harold Nicholson, King George the Fifth, His Life and Reign, London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1952, 24. 4 John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Hutchinson, London, 1920, 56, 64. 5 H.F. Batterbee to E. A, Box, 10 July 1918, Opening of Australia House by HM The King, AH/E1–3. This folder from this box contains subsequent items cited through this chapter.

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Capital Designs 6 H. Mahon to A. Fisher, 3 Oct. 1916, AH/E1–3. 7 Memorandum to Prime Minister’s Department, 30 Jan. 1917, AH/E1–3. W. Long to A. Fisher, 7 Mar. 1917, AH/E1–3. Walter Long, Secretary of State for the Colonies, discussed the opening with Lord Stamfordham, the King’s Private Secretary and the King agreed to wait until the building was completed. 8 George V King of Great Britain, The king to his people, being the speeches and messages of His Majesty King George the Fifth delivered between July 1911 and May 1935, London: Williams & Northgate, 1935, 83. 9 A. G. R. Mackenzie to Official Secretary, 4 July 1918, AH/E1–3. 10 Bedford Lemere (Photograph), Australia House Strand, View of entrance front from Norfolk St., Builder, vol. 115, no. 3939, 2 Aug. 1918, 75. 11 ‘Court Circular’, The Times, 3 Aug. 1918, 9; 4 Aug. 1918 (the anniversary of England’s declaration of war on Germany on the night of 3 Aug. 1914) was a National Day of Prayer and Day of Remembrance. Not until later was it known that the Allied forces at the Battle of Soissons recovered most of the ground lost to the German Spring Offensive. 12 F. A. Mackenzie, King George V in his own words, London: E. Benn, 1929, 17. 13 ‘Britain in wartime, Australian Delegates Impressions’, Border Morning Mail and Riverina Times (Albury, NSW), 2 July 1918, 2. 14 ‘Australia House’, The Times, 5 Aug. 1918, 4. This phrase was repeated in the opening lines to the report on the opening of the building that was issued from the High Commission to AIF members: ‘Australia House opened by the King’, Anzac Bulletin, no. 83, new issue, 9 Aug. 1918, 10. 15 ‘King unites English says Lloyd George’, New York Times, 9 July 1918, 6. 16 This work would not be completed until later the following year. Photographs in the English Heritage Archive show unfinished areas. For example: A marble floor under construction in Australia House, BL24270/014. Buchan Marble Piers in the Exhibition Hall were photographed for the brochure produced for the opening but detail within the Hall was touched-up so the space appeared ‘finished’ when the brochure was printed. 17 Australia House Iron Gates A2910 405/1/78 NAA. Bromsgrove Guild Ltd were also unable to supply decorative bronze and other metal work which they were contracted to produce for the London County Council’s County Hall. Work stopped on that building. It remained a shell until the Office of Works and the Ministry of Food occupied it in 1917. ‘Survey of London’, Hobhouse, 55. 18 H. C. Smart to J. L. Treloar, 17 July 1918, AWM200/272. 19 E. A. Box to Westminster City Council, 22 July 1918, AH/E1–3. 20 ‘Australia House’, SMH, 1 Aug. 1918, 7. The Pavilion was enlarged to accommodate the increased numbers: Westminster City Council City Engineer and Surveyor to Secretary, Australia House, 2 Aug. 1918, AH/E1–3. 21 5,000 copies with an embossed gold cover were issued, of which 100 copies were ribbon tied with Vellum covers. Copies were despatched to Australia to State Governors, Federal and State Parliamentarians, State Capital Mayors, and Permanent Secretaries of each Federal Department. 22 Brig Gen to HQ AIF Fifth Army France, 23 July 1918, AWM64/272. 23 H. C. Smart to Colonel Ridley, 30 July 1918, AWM97/272. 24 Receipt, 3 Aug. 1918, AH/E9. 25 Viscount Knutsford to A. Fisher, 28 July 1918, E1–3AHA. Sydney Holland, 2nd Viscount Knutsford (1855–1931) was chairman of the London Hospital. Sir Denison

400

Notes – Chapter Twenty Two: Take the Strain Miller (1860–1923) was the first governor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He was appointed by Andrew Fisher from 1 June 1912. See C. C. Faulkner, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Sydney: Commonwealth Bank, 1923. 26 E. A. Box to H. F. Batterbee, 2 Aug. 1918, AH/E9. 27 GV/PRIV/GVD/1918, 3 Aug. 1918. 28 Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E. W. Bean, Official Historian: Souvenirs, 1915–18; sports programmes, menu cards and invitation cards to the opening of Australia House, London, 1918, AWM38, 3DRL 6673/608. 29 W. C. Bridgeman to C. Bridgeman, 3 Aug. 1918, 4629/1/1918/47 Correspondence of W. C. Bridgeman, 1918, Records of the Bridgeman Family, SRO, S.R.O.4629; ‘Viscount Bridgeman’, The Times, 15 Aug. 1935, 12. 30 British Pathé, Opening Australia House, part l, 1918 (1989.17), website. 31 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the war of 1914–1918, vol. VI, The A.I.F. in France: May 1918–The Armistice, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1942, 504–5; C. M. Cutlack (ed.), War Letters of General Monash, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1934, 253; Geoffrey Serle, John Monash, A Biography, Melbourne: MUP, 1982, 340; Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1920, 115 (Monash summarises his battle plan: 81–114). The great offensive began on 8 August. The King visited the Australian Corps at the Allied junction of Villers-Bretonneux on 14 August when he presented Monash with the insignia of a Knight Commander of the Bath. ‘RearAdmiral Sir F. F. Haworth-Booth’, The Times, 22 Feb. 1935, 16. 32 Monash, The Australian Victories, 120. 33 Australia House Souvenir official opening, AH/E9; Sir James Whiteside McCay (1864–1930) was Commonwealth Minister for Defence (1904–1905), during which he implemented long-lasting reforms, including the creation of the Military Board. Senator George Pearce appointed McCay as commander of the A.I.F. Depots in the United Kingdom. Thomas Griffiths (1865–1947) became acting commandant of AIF Headquarters, London and, under the direction of Birdwood and Brigadier General (Sir) Brudenell White, drafted the orders for administration of the AIF He was administratively responsible for the AIF personnel in the United Kingdom. In June 1918 he became a temporary brigadier general and remained AIF commandant in London until the end of the war. 34 Monash, Australian Victories in France, 295–6. 35 Fuhrmann Osmond Charles William [Fuhrman Otto Carl Wilhelm] NAA: B2455; Biographical cuttings on Osmond Charles William Fuhrmann, NLA 1885854. Fuhrmann (1889–1961) later served as private secretary to Prime Minister Hughes, and to Sir Joseph Cook at Australia House from 1922. Mackenzie, King George V in his own words, 115. The King decreed that all descendants of Queen Victoria should bear the name of Windsor. 36 A. Fisher to W. Watt, 3 Aug. 1918, AH/E1–3. Fisher forwarded a copy of the King’s speech to William Watt in Australia, Acting Prime Minister (Apr. 1918–Aug. 1919) while Prime Minister Hughes served in the Imperial War Cabinet and attended the Versailles Peace Conference. The King’s speech was reprinted in the following day’s press: ‘Australia House, opening by the King’, Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1918, clipping AH/E9–2. 37 Fisher’s Speech: Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1918, clipping AH/E9–2. 38 It was among the recruiting and imperial solidarity songs of the War: Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and music, Britain 1876–1953, Manchester University Press, 2001, 337.

401

Capital Designs 39 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australian in the War of 1914–1918, vol. IV, The Australian Imperial Force in France: 1917, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935, 595. 40 Rex Clark, ‘Carroll, John (1891–1971), ADB. 41 ‘To the men of the AIF’ (Dedication), ‘Australia at War’ Exhibition of Drawings made on the Western Front by Lieut. Will Dyson, official artist, AIF, London: Ernest, Brown & Philips, The Leicester Galleries, 1918. Dyson’s drawings were exhibited for the Australian Commonwealth in Leicester Square in Jan. 1918. 42 Cablegram sent to the Prime Minister’s Department, 2 Aug. 1918, AH/E1–3. Investitures were held widely. During the war the King visited the entrenched armies five times. Denis Judd, The Life and Times of George V, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973, 138. 43 H. C. G. Matthew, ‘George V (1865–1936)’, ODNB. 44 Cutlack, War Letters, 289. 45 World War One Australian Army Nursing Service, http://www.aans.gravesecrets. net/o.html. At the age of 35, Ida O’Dwyer embarked from Australia on 28 Nov. 1914. She served in Egypt, England and France. She was Awarded the Royal Red Cross in Apr. 1918. She returned to Australia in Jan. 1919. 46 Peter Rees, The other Anzacs, the extraordinary story of our World War I nurses, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2008, 239. 47 (Sir) James Anderson Murdoch (1867–1939) was Chief Commissioner of the Australian section of the Red Cross Society. An Edinburgh native who migrated to Australia when 17, he was self-made. He headed one of Sydney’s largest emporia, Murdoch’s, and was a founding member of the Master Retailers’ Association (1903). He offered his services gratuitously for Red Cross work. From late 1915, he worked with the military authorities to systematically render invaluable aid to Australian troops, casualties and prisoners of war. By early 1917, goods from Australia were packed and despatched from the London office to France and the more than 1,000 hospitals in Britain holding Australian patients. He returned to Australia in Oct. 1918. The Australian Comforts Fund (ACF) was formed in 1915 to provide supplementary food, clothing and means of recreation to men under military command. Honorary Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stanley Woodburn was Chief Commissioner of the ACF in London. Rejected as medically unfit so unable to enlist, Woodburn volunteered as field representative of the ACF. He resisted AIF opposition to a civilian presence with the army. Samuel H Bowden (ed.), The History of the Australian Comforts Fund, Being the official record of a voluntary civilian organization during the Great War and until the return of all the Australian troops, Sydney: Australian Comforts Fund (Australia), 1922. 48 QM/PRIV/GVD/1918 3 Aug. 1918; The Queen, accompanied by the Princess Mary and attended by Sir Edward Wallington, Private Secretary to the Queen, visited Australia House again several days later. 49 Written when George Turton arrived in England with the AIF Motor Transport Service: ‘With the Australians in England’, Hillston Spectator and Lachlan River Advertiser (NSW), 17 Apr. 1915, 3. 50 ‘King opens Australia House’, Mercury, 15 Oct. 1918, 8. 51 Kingston Miller & Co., AH/E1–3. The caterers brought in five two-ton loads including tables, chairs etc. to the Lower Hall of Australia House. 52 ‘Australia At War’, The Times, 5 Aug. 1918, 4.

402

Notes – Epilogue

Epilogue

1 A. Box, 6 Mar. 1919, Australia House – Financial arrangements A2910, 405/1/41 Part 1, NAA. 2 RIVA, vol. 15, no. 4, Sept. 1917. 3 Sir Lawrence Weaver, ‘London’s New Architecture’, in Arthur St John Adcock (ed.), Wonderful London: The world’s greatest city described by its best writers and pictured by its finest photographers, Educational Book Co., 1927, 306. 4 Some Notable Examples of British Architecture, 1892–1942. From a Drawing by A. C. Fare, R.W.A., F.R.I.B.A. ‘Through the Century, The Builder’s Contribution to Progress’, Builder, vol. 164, no. 5213, 1 Jan. 1943, 15–18. 5 London Master Builders, Seventy Five Years on being a brief history of the London Master Builders Association 1872–1947, London Master Builders Association, 1947, 38. 6 The film never eventuated. NAA A3211, 1977/544 Film about Australia House – Flagship in the Strand.

403

Index A Pengelley and Co., 246 Aberdeen Art Gallery, 170, 222, 369n36 Abbott, John H. M., 46, 75, 150, 288, 333n16, n17, 343n24, 363n10 Adam, Robert, 172, 319n13 Admiralty: Architectural and Engineering Works 16, 132, 261; office, 365n32 Admiralty Arch, 152, 213, 261, 385n29 ‘Advance Australia’, 24, 106 Aerial League of the British Empire, 153, 365n20 Agent-General, 37, 47; problems with, 70–3 Agent-General (Victoria), 44, 50, 71–3, 78, 118, 342n7, 342n12 Agents-General (Australian), committee of 48 Aldwych, see also Strand-Aldwych, 12, 18, 59–60, 62–4, 66–9, 80, 82, 84, 90, 94–6, 117–18, 121, 123, 128, 130–4, 139, 149, 155, 158–9, 161–7, 170, 178, 181, 186–9, 190–4, 199, 211–12, 214, 219, 250, 257, 262–3, 265, 271, 280 Aldwych Theatre, see also William Sprague, 63, 65, 265, 277, 399n72 Aldwyche, Via de, 13 ‘All Australian’ Exhibition, 246 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 55, 177, 226n11, 362n4, 373n73 Anglo-Boer War, 5, 7, 90, 96, 100, 214; and memorial to, 54 Architect and Contract Reporter, 168 Architectural Vigilance Society, see 404

also Viscount Windsor, 57, 336n18 Architectural Association, 131, 166, 360n31 Argus (Melbourne), 80–1 Artesian Well, 252 Art Workers Guild, 166, 221, 368n24 Ashbee, C. R., 222 Auckland Star, 212, 263 Australia Building (London), see also Franco-British Exhibition, 115, 379n25 Australia Building (Melbourne), 26, 45 Australia House (London), see also Commonwealth Building, 80–1, 118–19, 224, 234–5, 239–40, 242, 245–6, 250–2, 255, 257–8, 260–1, 263–6, 269, 271, 273–4, 277–81 Australian Comforts Fund, 276, 402n47 Australian Federal Capital see Canberra Australian Federal Parliament, 7, 22, 31, 38, 47, 151, 157, 162, 196 Australian Natives’ Association (ANA), 35, 42, 90, 98, 111, 175, 253, 289, 302, 328–9, 372n62, n66 Balfour, Arthur, 57 Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange, 177 Bank of England, 41, 50 Barker, J. Ellis, 54, 64, 186, 320n20, 375n23 Barry, Sir Charles, 12, 130, 321n13 Barton, Edmund, 21, 24–5, 34, 325n17, 343n34, 344n35, 388n58; and Inter-State Commission, 359n5 Basinghall Street, 107, 109

Index

Batchelor, E. Lee, 150–6, 162, 241 365n35 Bath and Portland Stone Firms Ltd, 231 Beavan, Arthur Henry, 43–4, 70, 332n3, 333n6 Beaux-Arts, 13, 63, 103, 152, 171–2, 202, 242–3, 250, 268, 270, 333n3, 391n16, 400n10 Beaux-Arts, École nationale supérieure des, 63, 171, 221–2   Bedford Lemere, Henry (Harry), 13, 161, 242–3, 250, 268, 279 Belcher, Sir John, 19, 53, 55, 57, 103– 4, 227, 233, 362n4, 383n6, 392n37 Belgravia Chambers, 43, 344n37 Bent, Thomas, 80, 87–92, 95, 99, 345n2, 346n13, n15–17, 347n41, 354n8 Berlage, Hendrik Peter, 55 Berlin, 6, 148–9, 151, 319n12 Binney, Hibbert C, 3–4, 122, 318n2, 337n31 Birdwood, General Sir William, 267–8, 272   Birmingham, 6 Bisley see National Rifle Association Blomfield, Sir Reginald, 59, 367n21 Board of Trade (UK), 25, 108–9, 118, 145, 193 Boer War, 5, 7, 54, 96, 100, 214, 333n16, 394n56 Bone, Muirhead, 125, 244, 260, 357n39 Bone, James, 244, 249, 379n36 Borden, Sir Robert, 189, 192 Booth, General William, 4, 6 Boucher, Adolphe Augustus, 243, 246, 262 Bowell, Sir Mackenzie, 76, 343n28 Bowles, William, 233, 389n83, n84 Box, E. Allan, 258, 271–2, 280, 396n23 Brewer, Henry William, 11–13, 20, 58, 278, 281

Bristol Exhibition, 241, 391n10 British Architect, 118, 123, 174 British Columbia (Canada), 37, 76–7, 97, 151, 189, 192, 263, 284 British Columbia Development Asociation, 97 British Empire League, 101, 215 British North America see Canada Brock, Sir Thomas, 151–2, 225–6, 228, 247, 362n4, 363n14, 385n29, 387n54, Bromsgrove Guild, 247, 270, 400n17 bronze, 9, 54, 80, 122, 178, 218, 224, 227, 233–4, 247, 270, 280 Brooklands Motor Racing Track, 152–3, 363n16, 364n18 Browne Post, George, 40, 42 Brydon, John McKean, 58, 168, Builder, 11, 45, 53, 57, 94, 97, 120, 123, 131, 165, 181–2, 211, 221, 245, 250, 252, 256, 266, 281, 336n17, 355n15 building advances, 19–20, 25, 45, 64, 83, 112, 126, 132, 204, 210; building boom, 4, 25–6, 44, 156; scale, 7, 43, 12, 27, 45, 56, 97, 109, 123, 146; speculation (merchant builders), 19, 36, 88 Burlington House see Royal Academy of Arts Burnet, Sir John James, 53, 63, 112, 233, 281 Burnham, Daniel, 149, 329n42 Burns, John, 44, 193, 200, 244, 341n88 Burr, Alfred, 82–4, 92, 94–6, 105, 111, 118–25, 138–9, 155–9, 162–3, 174–5, 178, 201–2, 221, 263, 345n58, n62, 347n34, 348n47, 349n18, 355n22, 365n30, 366n52, 368n28, 373n81 Burton, A. B. see Thames Ditton Foundry Bush-Brown, Harold, 104, 349n11

405

Bylander, Sven, 64, 208–10, 381n68, n69 Cabinet Committee on Accommodation, 261 Cambon, Paul, 143 Canada House, 170, 240 Canadian Pacific Railway, 41, 74, 77, 79, 158, 366n47, 375n27 Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, 49, 77, 158, 366n47 Canberra, see also Federal Capital, 177, 195 Carini, Torquato, 231–2, 389n74, n76 Carlhian & Baumetz, 172, 371n53 Carmichael, Sir James, 111–12, 263, 351n46, 398n63 Caroe, William Douglas, 57 Cawston, Arthur, 4–6, 12, 14, 319n8, n9 Cecil Hotel see Hotel Cecil census: 1901 (Australian), 35, 320n19, 329n31; 1911 (British), 367n22; 1930 (first world agricultural), 352n59 Chamber of Commerce (France), 101 Chamber of Commerce (Italy), 110 Chamber of Commerce (London), 110 Chamber of Manufacturers (Melbourne), 246 Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary Joseph, 7, 81, 100, 257, 333n22, 345n53 Chambers, Sir William, 19 Chancery Lane, 12 Chantrey Bequest, 222, 224–5, 228, 384n13, 385n33 Charing Cross, 3, 8–9, 74, 149, 184, 244, 263, 265, 321n9, 334n29, 344n43, 348n47 Chicago, 26–7, 32, 42, 76, 101–3, 105, 124, 125, 149, 356n35 Chicago World Fair, 168 Child-Villiers, Sir Victor (Earl of Jersey), 48, 78, 82, 95–6, 115, 117,

406

333n27, 345n62 Chubb & Sons, 247, 393n39 Christian Science Monitor, 257 cinematograph, 3, 193, 199, 217, 240–2 ‘City Beautiful’, 37, 55, 102, 349n8 City Hall (Philadelphia) see Town Halls City Hall (San Francisco) see Town Halls City of London, 8–9, 12, 43, 52, 79, 91, 110, 156, 174, 177 Clare Market, 11, 16, 347n28 Clarke, Sir Andrew, 44, 71–2 Classical architecture, 104, 171, 371n52; style, 63, 203, 211 Cockerill, George, 31, 327n3 Cockspur Street, 50, 77, 127, 158, 190, 208, 263 Coghlan, Sir Timothy, 41, 48–9, 51–2, 82, 115, 177, 331n67, 333n25, 334n29, 373n75 Colcutt, T. E., 109 Collins, Captain Sir Robert Muirhead, 21, 38, 43, 45–6, 51, 73, 82, 99, 115, 117, 128, 161, 214, 218, 230, 239, 255, 276, 330n56 Collins, Edward, 28 Collins Street (Melbourne), 22, 45 Colonial and Imperial Conference see Imperial Conference Colonial Quarter (London), 43 Colonial Office, 47, 80, 87, 108, 141–3, 351n40 Commercial Intelligence Branch, 109–10 Commercial Museum, 110, 118 Commonwealth Bank of Australia in England, 150, 264–5, 271, 330n51, 398n65–67, 400n25 Commonwealth Building (London), 38, 41–2, 121, 123, 128, 138, 154, 159, 167, 171, 178, 191, 195–6, 198, 200–3, 210, 212–14, 216, 219, 221–2, 226, 240, 243, 252, 256,

Index

258, 268, 277, 279, 376n41 Commonwealth Building (Melbourne), 198, 203 Commonwealth Government, see also Federal Government, 37, 40, 43–4, 46, 76, 80, 96, 138–9, 150, 159, 161, 163, 170, 198, 201, 218, 223, 229, 242, 246, 252, 261–2, 265, 273–4; building program, 43–4; cinematographer, 242; costs, 37, 262; Official Year Book, 40; supply contracts, 246; in wartime, 261, 265 Commonwealth Government Arts Advisory Board, 378n10 Commonwealth of Australia, 7, 21, 39, 115, 273, 279 Commonwealth of Australia Cinema and Photographic Branch, 242 Commonwealth offices (Melbourne), 44 Concrete Institute, 351n50, 354n8 congestion (in London), 9–10, 25, 28, 49 Congress of Architects (Melbourne) (1901), 22, 36 Connoisseur, 57 consolidated stock (consols), 37 coo-ee, 89, 218, 276, 278 Cook, Sir Joseph, 204, 239, 244, 268–9, 272, 277 Cooper, Sir Edwin, 129, 281 Corinthian columns, 19, 34 Cornwall, Sir Edwin, 53 Coronation Arch, 74–5 County Hall, New County Hall, 11, 58, 68–9, 97, 129, 188, 205, 213, 218, 247, 357n7, 400n17; Old County Hall, 11 Covent Garden, 8, 13 Crathie Parish Church, 169–70, 176 Cret, Paul Philippe, 63 Crewe,  Earl of, 117, 141-143, 207, 215, 271, 360n31, 362n4 Crickmay & Sons, 263 Crossley, Ada, 215

Cuming, James, 75 Daily Express, 193 Daily Mirror (London), 10, 69, 98, 192 Daily News, 159 Daily Telegraph (London), 14, 46, 119, 121, 127, 138, 162, 189, 206 Davies, Joseph, 105, 349n20 Davis, Arthur, 63–5, 338n46, n47, 339n48 Davison, T. Raffles, 56, 58, 120, 269, 319n8, 336n17 Deakin, Alfred, 24–5, 32–5, 37, 39, 41–2, 46 , 49, 52, 88, 91–3, 98–9, 106, 137, 140, 142, 144–5, 147, 158, 184, 242, 263, 268, 279, 330n56, 333n22, 365n44, 374n13 Defence (Australia), Council of, 22; Department of, 22, 324n7; and its expenditure, 324n8, 328n16; and close connection to Australia House, 324n10; home defence, 328n15; Secretary for, 22 Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), 245, 259 Delcassé,Théophile, 101, 143 Department of Inland Revenue, 262 Dickens, Charles, 13, 36 Domes, of the Gaiety Theatre, 58, 60; of Royal Insurance Company, Liverpool, 60; for the proposed Canadian offices, 97; of the Australian Pavilion, 104–5; of the Imperial Institute, 109; their ubiquity, 119; in Melbourne, 119, 354n8; of Burr’s design, 121–2, 129, 178, 205 Dominion House, see also Empire House, 186–8, 219 Dominion House Scheme (Dominions Centre), 186, 188, 191–2, 263, 377n48, 377n53 Dominions Department (of the

407

Capital Designs

Colonial Office), 87 Dominion Gates, 152 Dominions, 7, 37, 73, 77, 92, 97, 115, 117, 141, 147, 181, 186, 188–192, 214, 216–17, 219, 241, 256–7, 268, 273, 278–80 Doric pilasters, 105 Dove Brothers Limited, 204–8, 215, 243, 246, 250, 260, 268, 380n44, 396n33 Dove, Frederick John, 205 Dove, Frederick Lionel, 218, 274, 380n48 Dreadnought, 145, 217 Drury Lane, 12–13, 265, 322n18 Durrant,  Sir Arthur, 262 Eagle Hut, Aldwych, 265 Edis, Sir Robert William, 168, 248, 326n26, 369n31, 371n50 Edwards, Sir James Bevan, 184–5 Eiffel, Gustav, 125 electricity, 6, 17–18, 25, and impact, 154; with trams, 27; and elevators, 45; and building, 58, 64, 83; and dividends, 89 elevators, 45, 333n14, 356n36; ‘elevator building’, 12 Elgar, Sir Edward, 7 Embankment, Victoria, 129, 200, 244, 265, 321n9, 357n7 Empire House see also Dominion House Scheme, 81, 98, 187 English, Charles William, 120 Entente Cordiale, see also ‘Geographical Nuggets’, 65–7, 100 Entente Municipal (1905), 65 Epstein, Sir Jacob, 227–8, 235, 386n47 Equitable Life Assurance, 39; in Australia, 40 Equitable Building (Melbourne), 45 Equitable Building (New York), 40, 331n61

408

Equitable Building (Sydney), 203, 383n8 Esler, Frederick B., 19–20, 375n24 Evans, Sir Arthur John, 7 Evening Post, 73 Exhibition Building (Melbourne), 22, 27, 175, 246 External Affairs, Department of (Australia), 25, 258, 396n21, Exposition internationale urbaine de Lyon (Urban International Exhibition, Lyon), 240 Fabian Society, 6 Fare, Arthur Charles, 120 Farmer & Brindley, 246 Federal capital, see also Canberra, 22, 25, 36, 149–51, 177, 195, 198, 329n14 Federal see Capital Territory, 36; mind, 24; principle, 182, 374n12 Federal Coffee Palace (Melbourne), 89 Federation Drought, 33, 39, 106, 232 Federal election, 244; (1906), 33, 204 Federation, 7, 22–3, 25, 34–7, 47, 79, 93, 106, 139–40, 175, 182, 185, 220, 228, 232, 279, 375n33, 383n1 Federation (Canada), 76 Federation (Imperial), 181, 192, 374n13 ‘Federation Stone’, 203 Federationists, 21, 24–5, 32, 72, 385n35, 388n58 finance, 3, 32, 37–9, 42, 90, 159 Finucane, William Eugene, 81–2, 266 First International Congress of Cities, 240 Fisher, Andrew, 137, 147, 150–7, 198, 200, 228, 239, 244–59, 262, 264, 268, 270, 272–4, 276, 279 Fleet Street, 8, 12, 17, 48, 91, 111, 175, 249 Fleming, Sir Sandford, 77 Fletcher, Hanslip, 14, 79, 206 Flinders Lane (Melbourne), 28

Index

Flockhart, William, 59 Forrest, Sir John, 23, 25 Frampton, Sir George James, 57, 233, 362n4 Franco-British Exhibition, 100–3, 106, 111, 113, 115, 124, 349n4 Franco-British Union of Architects, 148 free-trade, 146; free-traders, 24, 140, 156 French Palace Development see also Paris in London, 67 French Style, 6, 65, 67, 171–2, 221 Fry, Herbert, 9, 12–13 Fuchs, Emil, 65, 222, 384n8 Futher Strand Improvement Committee see Mark Judge Gabriel, Ange-Jacques, 171, 371n52 Gaiety Theatre, 3, 18–19, 25–6, 58–63, 112, 120, 147, 154, 188, 214, 364n24 Garden City, 148, 183, 326n37 Garden Cities and Town Planning Association of Great Britain, 28 Garbe, Richard Louis, 229 Gare de Lyon, Paris, 103 Garran, Sir Robert, 21, 25, 269, 276, 390n1 Gay, John, 8–9 ‘Geographical Nuggets’, see also Entente Cordiale, 115 George V see King George V George, Sir Ernest, 59, 362n4, 368n23 Gérard, Ernest, 66, 97, 248 Gerlach, Otto, 10, 18, 321n12 German air raids, 250, 262 Gibbs, James, 18, 97 Gilbert, Cass, 55, 124, 336n10, 356n36 Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck, 18, 224 Gladstone, William Ewart, 144, 361n37 Gladstone monument (Strand), 80, 159, 224, 270, 344n50

Glasgow, 6, 167 Glynn, Patrick (Paddy), 239 Goddard & Sons, 246 Gomme, Sir George Laurence, 68–9, 92, 340n83, 341n87 Gothic, architecture, 125; style, 11– 13, 20, 65, 109, 169–70, 204 Government Offices, 44, 58, 73, 84, 159, 168, 199, 262, 275 Grand Hotel (Melbourne), 26, 325n25 Graphic (London), 11, 134, 166 Great Fire (1666), 17 Grey, Sir Albert Henry George, 181– 93, 375n24, 376n41, 377n48 Griffin, Walter Burley, 177 Groom, Sir Lyttleton, 137, 261 Guildhall, 54–5, 109, 112, 166, 363n6 Hackett, Sir John Winthrop, 23, 325n16 Haddon, Robert Joseph, 176, 239 Hamel, capture of, 268, 270 Hammerstein, Oscar, 175, 207, 209, 252 Hampton and Sons, 155–6, 365n32 Harcourt, Lewis, 143, 215, 218, 248, 362n4 Hare, Henry Thomas, 57, 59, 97, 321n7, 348n54 Harmsworth, Alfred, 225–6 Haselden, William Kerridge, 10, 56, 69, 96, 98, 192–3, 245, 259 Haworth-Booth, Francis, 272 height limits, 124, 211, 356n29, n35 Hénard, Eugène Alfred, 149 Hennebique, François, 112 Hennebique reinforced concrete system, 112–13, 352n50, 353n52 Herbert, Sir Robert George Wyndham, 110, 351n40 Higinbotham, George, 88 High Commissioner, 23, 37–8, 40–1, 47, 50, 72–3, 76, 80–1, 99, 107–8, 139–42 High Commissioner Act (1909), 32, 98, 137, 139

409

Capital Designs

Hobbs, Talbot, 55 Hoddle, Robert, 36 Hogan, James, 78, 89, 139, 344n37 Hogben, George J., 258, 276 Holborn, 8, 10, 12, 17, 61, 119, 233, 338n41 Holborn Metropolitan Borough Council, 165 Holborn to Strand Improvement, 12, 16–18, 25, 59–60, 94, 96, 133–4, 164, 280; and Holborn to Strand development, 186; and scheme, 194 Holloway Brothers, 57–8, 69, 112, 208, 210, 243, 341n89, 351n46, 352n50 Holywell Street, 13–14 Home Affairs, Department of (Australia), 22, 151, 195, 201, 252 Hopetoun, Lord, 21 Horace W. Cullum & Co, 211 Horseferry Road, Westminster, 207, 255, 272 Hororata, 253 hotels: Grand (Melbourne), 26, 325n25; Cecil, 6, 55, 112, 127, 252, 261, 320n15; Metropole (London), 141; Savoy 6, 127; Ritz (Paris) 63–4; Ritz (Piccadilly) 65, 83; Victoria (London), 339n58; Waldorf (Aldwych), 65, 167, 191, 209, 222 House of Commons, 44, 78, 101, 193, 215, 246, 270–1 House of Lords, 42, 117, 141, 147 Houses of Parliament, 12, 151; Melbourne, 119 Housing and Town Planning Act 1909, 148 Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, 17 Hughes, William Morris, 93, 150, 228, 255–6, 258, 262, 269, 272–3, 277 Hunt, Atlee, 25, 49, 95, 99, 128, 138, 175–6, 195, 197, 239, 258

410

identity, 23, 42, 47, 51, 218, 220 Illustrated London News, 9–10, 15, 59, 62, 66, 170, 219 immigrants, 39, 46, 51, 74, 192, 241 immigration: agents, 70; British Columbia, 77; Canada, 191, 343n19; Commonwealth Government, plans for, 46–9, 51, 137, 142, 242; immigration offices 47, 51–2; reverse migration 46; Victoria, 73 Imperial Arts League, 145 Imperial Conference, 52, 87, 90, 147, 150, 153, 189, 192, 268, 393n45 Imperial Council, see also Imperial Conference, 87 Imperial Federation League, 182 Imperial Institute, 25, 91, 108–10, 126, 185, 244 improvements, 4–5, 8, 15, 17–18, 45, 56, 59–62, 64, 93–4, 133, 148, 150, 162, 165, 194, 262 India House (London), 280, 376n46 Inns of Court, 14 ionic columns, 119, 121 Investors Review see Wilson, A. J. Ive, Albert Sewell (‘Bert’), 241 J. G. White & Co, 208, 339n56 J. Whitehead & Sons, 247, 392n36, n37 James, Samuel Baron Waring, 64 Jenney, William Le Baron, 125 Jervis Bay (NSW), 36, 246 Johnson, Dr Samuel, 13, 201–2 Judge, Mark, 131, 358n18 Kaiser Wilhelm II, 151, 245, 321n12 Kannuluik, John (Jann), 175 Keating, John, 98, 348n58 Kenlon, John, 56 King Edward VII, 5, 17, 61, 66, 87, 90, 100–1, 117, 147, 169–70, 172, 187, 221, 387n54 King Edward’s Horse, 214

Index

King George V (Duke of Cornwall and York), 7, 111, 143, 147, 150–1, 170, 181–2, 213, 216–17, 221, 225, 233–4, 256, 264, 268–70, 273, 361n33 Kingsway, 17–18, 25, 58–62, 66–9, 81, 94, 96, 123, 130–1, 134, 163, 166, 194, 209, 211–12, 252, 358n17, 368n26, 382n79 King Victor Emmanual of Italy, 113 Kiralfy, Imre, 4, 65, 101–4, 115, 125, 318n4, 350n25 Knott, Ralph, 129–30 Labor Party (Australia), 33, 42, 137, 255, 258, 325n18, Labour Co-partnership Association, 193 Lanchester, H. V. ‘John’, 148; Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards, 130 Larke, John Short, 76 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 78, 189, 192 Law Courts, see also Royal Courts of Justice, 11–13, 59, 81, 91, 132, 148, 170, 175, 214 Law Courts (Kingston, Jamaica), 149 L’Enfant, Pierre Charles, 36 Liberty and Property Defence League, 96 Light Railways Commission (1896– 1905), 48 Little, John, 150, 152 Lloyd George, David, 233, 248, 251, 261, 270 London Building Act (1894), 6, 16, 30, 174, 211 London County Council (LCC), 6, 8, 11–14, 16–19, 25, 50, 58–62, 65–9, 80, 82, 84, 92–9, 118, 121–6, 128, 130–4, 138, 154–5, 157, 161–4, 166, 174, 178, 186–7, 190–1, 194, 196, 204–5, 207, 209, 212, 218, 225, 243–4, 260, 263, 265–6 London County Council Improvements Committee, 66,

92, 94–6, 120, 128, 138, 157, 159, 162–3, 165, 178, 194 London Government Act (1899), 6 London Master Builders’ Association, 205–6, 380n46 ‘London Particular’, 207, 258, 265 Longstaff, John, 165, 220, 254 Louise, Princess, 54–5 Lowther Arcade, 14 Lubin, David, 113-115 Lucas, William, 122, 356n28 Lusitania, 102, 247, 249 Lutyens, Sir Edwin, 281 Lyne, Sir William, 91–4, 99, 128 Mabey, Charles, 122 McBride, Sir Richard, 77, 151, 189 Macartney, Sir Mervyn, 59, 368n24 Mackennal, Sir Bertram, 165, 195–6, 220–30, 234–5 Mackenzie, A. G. R. (Alexander ‘Alick’), 167, 248, 264, 369n37, 370n50 Mackenzie, A. Marshall, 65, 97, 167, 201, 218, 222, 230, 248, 252, 266, 368n28, 370n41; Marshall Mackenzie and Son, 65, 97, 129, 167 Mckenzie, Sir Compton, 83 Mackenzie, Gilbert, 248, 266 Mackenzie Wallace, Sir Donald 27, 45, 326n33 McKim, Mead & White, 104 Mclean, Allan, 24 McMillan Plan (1902, 37) Mahon, Hugh, 268 Mansion House, 9, 54, 101 manufacturerers, Australian, 175–6, 253, 198, 246, 253, 372n67; British, 7, 45, 109, 153, 188, 247; French, 67; German, 146 marble, 9, 58, 89, 98, 124, 152, 169, 176–8, 196, 198–9, 201, 211, 213, 224–6, 246–7, 253, 270, 276, 280, 337n24, 375n28, 387n56, 392n35,

411

Capital Designs

n36 Marconi Building, 154 Marischal College, Aberdeen, 167–9, 171, 370n42 Masonic Temple, Chicago, 124 Mathews & Mackenzie (Elgin), 201 Mathews, James, 201 Mawson, Thomas, 62 Maxwell, Donald, 79–80 Melba, Dame Nellie, 91 Melbourne Exhibition Building, 22, 27, 175, 246 Melbourne Place, 118, 121–2, 159, 163–4, 190–1, 202, 207 Melbourne Review, 33 Metropolitan Board of Works, 6, 11, 17, 94 metropolis, 4–5, 13, 39, 67, 72, 98, 182, 273 Mewès, Charles-Frédéric, 64, 338n46, n47, 339n48 Milford Lane, 9 Military Cross, 275 Miller, Sir Denison, 264, 271, 276 Ministry of Munitions, 251, 259–60 modern, 13–14, 18, 25, 33, 36, 45–6, 53–4, 56, 59, 61–4, 67–8, 77, 79, 83; and city space 53; Australian adoption of 46 Monash, General Sir John, 119, 272, 354n8, 395n1, 401n31 Morning Leader (London), 73 Morning Post (London), 74, 189 Morning Post Building, 63–5, 209, 252, 338n46 Mouchel, Louis Gustav, 112–13 Mountford, Edward William, 59, 119, 233, 281 Murdoch, John Smith, 196–9, 201–4, 206, 243 Muthesius, Hermann, 55 National Rifle Association, 96 Nationalism & Australian Natives

412

Association (ANA), 175–6, 196, 220 New London, 56, 59 ‘New Man’, 33, 90 New Zealand, 27, 76, 147, 158, 185, 188, 191–2 New Zealand Association, 185 New Zealand Government, 78 New Zealand Government Office Building (London), 262–3 New Zealand Herald, 124, 263 New Zealand High Commission, 37, 262, 324n9 New Zealand House (London), 280 New York, 26, 32, 39–40, 42, 56, 159, 208 New York Times, 89, 187 Nipper, George, 26, 325n25 offices, 11, 16, 19, 20; calls for improving 44; critcism of, 44; in Australia 45; for Coutts Bank, 15; problems with, 48; rental of, 49 O’Malley, King, 31–42, 90, 98, 150– 1, 157–8, 175–7, 195, 198, 201–3, 261, 327n2, n3, n13, 328n19, 329n34, n35, n41, n53, 331n74, 372n69, 375n33 Ophir, HMS, 7 Orient Steam Navigation Company (Orient Line), 7, 240, 390n5 ‘Outback’, 33 Pacific Cable Board, 78 Pall Mall Magazine, 14, 341n88 Paris, 3, 5–6, 17, 26, 36, 43, 54, 57, 63, 65–6, 100, 105, 109, 151, 224, 241, 245, 267 ‘Paris in London’, 67 Paris Salon, 387n56 Parker, Harold, 222–5 Parkes, Kineton, 235 Parliament (Federal) see Australian Federal Parliament Parliament House (Melbourne), 177

Index

Pascal, Jean-Louis, 65, 338n47, 339n48 Pathé Freres, Paris, 241 Pearce, George F., 150–3, 155, 178, 401n33 Pevsner, Nikolaus, 369n33 Philadelphia, 20, 42, 105, 110, 331n71 Piccadilly, 50, 63, 83, 96, 11, 120–2, 149 Pite, A. Beresford, 57 Pitt, William, 89 Pomeroy, Frederick William, 122, 178, 233, 356n27 Portland stone, 19, 67, 122, 131, 152, 174, 203, 208, 231, 235, 243, 264 Post, George Browne, 40, 42 Powers, Alan, 318n5 Poynter, Sir Edward, 18, 20, 57, 362n4 Preston, William T. R., 191 profesionalization, 33, 83, 92, 119, 132 progressivism, 5, 6, 17, 25, 35, 44, 172 protectionism, 24 publicity, 39, 66, 69, 137, 144, 159, 165, 199, 240, 259, 269; and showroom, 41, 157 Punch (Melbourne), 21, 23, 38, 255 Queen Alexandra, 105, 147, 169, 221 Queen Mary (Duchess of Cornwall and York), 7, 233, 270, 276 Queen Victoria, 76, 89, 100, 151, 169, 182, 370n40; descendants, 401n35; jubilee, 87, 108, 139, 146, 281; memorial, 149, 151–2, 187, 208, 226, 228, 247, 281, 387n54 Queensland, 32, 46, 71–2, 76, 77, 81–2, 106, 110, 127, 156–7, 159, 187, 200, 228, 266 Rae, George, 39, 158 Rand-McNally Building in Chicago, 209 ratepayers, 61, 68–9, 211 Reade, Charles Compton, 28

Redpath Brown and Company, 209–10 reform, 4, 22, 32–4, 69, 80–1, 83, 93, 117, 137, 145–6, 166, 183, 187, 205, 240 Regent Street, 5, 50, 61, 73, 120, 123, 130, 149, 263 Regent Street Quadrant, 120 Reid, Dame Flora, 255 Reid, Sir George Houstoun, 24, 139–48, 153–4, 159–67, 170, 174–5, 177–8, 186–7, 199–200, 202, 204, 206, 212, 214–18, 220, 222, 229–30, 241–2, 245, 248–50, 254–6, 279 Reilly, Sir Charles, 104 Richard Crittal & Company, 237, 392n38 Riche, Lord, 95 Rickards, Edwin Alfred, 53, Riley, W. Edward, 16–17, 55, 59–60, 92, 105, 119–20, 129–33, 148, 195, 240, 323n3, 358n9, n12 Ritz, César, 63 Ritz Hotel see hotels Robert W. Hunt & Co, 210 Rodin, Auguste, 227 Roosevelt, Theodore, 147, 346n10 Ross, D. H., 76 Rouvier, Maurice, 143 Rowland, Percy Fritz, 27, 344n37 Royal Academy of Arts, 54, 149, 221, 233, 323n11, 363n6, n9 Royal College of Art, 57 Royal Colonial Institute, 141, 184–5, 188, 360n29, 377n52 Royal Commission (London) (1893), 4; (1903), 10, 17, 56 Royal Commission (Sydney) (1909), 149 Royal Courts of Justice, 12 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), 4, 19, 55, 59, 66, 131, 133, 148–9, 166, 335n6, 358n17, 359n25 Royal Society of Arts (RSA), 24, 69

413

Capital Designs

Royal Tour (1901) see also Ophir, 27, 45 Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA), 45, 123, 150, 176, 280, 332n13 Runtz, Ernest, 59–60, 120, 337n24 Russell, Edward (Ted), 199 St Clement Danes, 9, 11–13, 18, 69, 80, 91, 96, 121, 155, 201–2, 217, 224, 272, 276 St Mary-le-Strand, 9, 11–13, 18, 58, 67, 133, 170 St Paul’s Cathedral, 48, 55, 129, 155, 188, 205, 247 Saarinen, Eliel, 177 Sage and Co, 105 Sanitary Institute, 83, 358n18 Savoy House (London), 200, 256 Salisbury, Lord, 7 Salisbury Plain, 272, 395n2, 395n65 Salt, Sir Thomas, 158 Salomons, Sir Julian, 71 Sanson, Paul-Ernest, 171 Savage, Frank, 43, 204, 239–40, 249, 258, 393n47 Savoy Hotel see hotels Scaddan, John, 200 Scott, W. Gillbee, 66, 340n65 Second Empire style, 42 Seddon, Richard, 90 Sergent, René, 171–3, 370n50, 371n52, n53 Serle, Geoffrey, 90 Service, Alastair, 371n57 Shaftesbury Avenue, 3, 50 Shaw, R. Norman, 53, 59, 109, 120, 123, 129, 132, 149, 168 Simpson, Sir John, 68, 148 Singer Building, New York, 124 skyscraper, 27, 40, 124, 169, 188 slum, 6, 12, 17, 43 Smart, Captain Henry, 240–1, 248, 257–8, 270

414

Smith, Donald Alexander (Lord Strathcona), 73–4, 97, 117, 145, 147, 161–2, 169–70, 190–1, 215, 362n4, 370n42 Soane, Sir John, 12   Société des Artistes Français, 165 South Africa House (London), 280 Southamton Row, 11, 119, 354n10 Somerset House, 19, 62, 81, 91, 96, 131, 170, 174, 188 Spielmann, Marion, 57 Spielmann, Sir Isidore, 145 Sprague, William, 63 Spring Gardens, 11, 159 Statham, H. Heathcote, 57, 336n18 steel, 19, 38, 42, 45, 55, 64, 101–2, 104, 112, 124–6, 146, 171, 205, 207, 252 steel-framed building, 63–4, 67, 117, 209–11, 243–4, 265 Stokes, Leonard, 59, 130–1, 149, 166– 7, 363n8, 367n21, 368n26, n38 stone, see also Portland stone; 97, 104, 122, 125, 168–9, 176–7, 195, 198, 203, 225, 229, 231, 253; bluestone, 199; Bowral trachyte, 203, 215, 218; stonemason, 58, 112 Tasmanian freestone, 34 Strand, 3, 8–14, 17–20, 48, 50, 52, 58–63, 66–9, 80, 82, 91–5, 97, 111, 117–22, 124–8, 131–4, 147, 149, 153, 157, 161, 164, 170, 174, 182, 184, 188–9, 192, 195–6, 200, 202, 211, 214, 217, 219, 227, 234, 244, 252, 256, 263, 265, 270–1, 276, 278, 281 Strand–Aldwych, see also Aldwych, 67, 82, 161, 164–5, 181, 189, 199, 212, 219 Street, George Edmund, 12, 59, 109, 170 Streeton, Sir Arthur, 166, 220, 254, 385n35 style, 60, 103–4, 158, 171, 177, 264,

Index

280; Boom-Style, 89; Classical, 19, 63, 131, 203, 211; EdwardianBaroque, 119; ‘English-Renaissance’, 122, 159; French, 65, 152, 171–2, 203; Gothic, 12–13, 20; ‘QueenAnne’, 53; Second Empire, 42 Sugden, Edward, 26, 326n28 Sulman, Sir John, 149, 362n5 Sunday Times 14, 90 Surveyor, 17, 59, 92, 126, 209, Sydney Morning Herald, 157, 174, 252, 270 Tanner, Sir Henry, 50, 58, 112, 352n50, 369n32 Tappin, William, 45–6, 332n13 Taverner, Hon John William, 50, 72–3, 75, 77–82, 88, 91–2, 105, 107–8, 111–13, 115–19, 121, 123, 125–7, 138, 178, 187, 271, 334n45, 342n12, 343n30, 344n42, 345n62, 350n29, n32 Taylorism, 33 temperance, 89, 186, 322n22 Temple Bar, 9, 48, 106 Thames River, 8, 15, 54, 130, 182, 205, 322n25 Thames Ditton Foundry, 356n27, 386n36, 390n91 The Orchid, 26, 325n24 The Strand see Strand The Times, 4, 18, 20, 26–7, 44, 54, 57, 67, 77, 96, 98, 100, 103, 211, 219, 224–4, 256, 262, 270 Thomas, Josiah, 156–7, 159–60, 163, 165–7, 170, 176, 195, 197–200, 365n37 Thornycroft, Sir William Hamo, 224– 5, 344n50, 383n6, 387n52 Thynne, Lord, 138, 155, 162–3, 266 Toudoire, Marius, 103–4 Town Hall, 28, 130; Cardiff City Hall, 53, 130; Colchester, 53, 103; Deptford, 130, 148; Melbourne,

26; Philadelphia, 331n71; San Francisco, 126; South Melbourne, 26 Tozer, Sir Horace, 71 Trafalgar Square, 5, 8, 17, 49, 52, 57, 74, 77, 91, 107, 127, 152, 244, 280 trams, 208; (London), 93; (Kingsway), 194; (Melbourne) 26–7 Treasury Place (Melbourne), 44, 198, 252 Turner, Henry Gyles, 33 Turner, Sir George, 79 Turner, Hon John Herbert, 77, 263, 376n44, 398n61 United Kingdom Provident Institution, 9 Union of Cities, 240 Unwin, Sir Raymond, 148 urbanisation, 15, 26 Verity, Thomas, 50, 334n42 Vermont, Joseph, 66 Victoria (British Columbia), 76 Victoria (Australia), and Australian Natives Association, 35; Chief Secretary, 33; colonial, 23; Immigration, 46; Premier, 23, 80, 87; Protectionism, 24; State, 78–9, 88, 90–2, 111, 116, 118, 177 Victoria Cross, 274 Victoria Embankment, 9, 265, 321n9 Victoria House (London), 15, 92, 99, 117–27, 138, 154, 159, 161, 164, 174, 178, 186, 188, 191, 207, 211, 214, 233, 239, 244, 257, 261, 263, 265 Victoria Station, 57, 73–4, 207, 217 Victoria Street, 43, 47, 70, 73–4, 84, 107, 190, 200, 239, 258, 261 Victoria Wharf, 58 Victorian Era, 4, 146, 221, 226 Victorian Government Offices see Victoria House (London)

415

Capital Designs

Victorian Legislative Assembly, 32, 72 Victorian Royal Commission (1905), 72 Vienna, 6 Wagner, Otto, 55 Walcot, William, 120 Waldorf Hotel see hotels Wall Street (New York), 38 Walsingham House Hotel, 83 Waring, Lord/Baron, see also Samuel James, 208 Waring and Gillow, 64–5 Waring-White Building Company, 50, 64, 208 War Bonuses, 260–1 War Office, 45, 49, 119, 125, 150, 187 247, 249, 252, 260–1, 265 Washington, D.C., 27, 36–7, 149, 153, 360n17 Waterloo Place, 52, 221, 234, 334n29 Waterhouse, Alfred, 168, 369n33 Webb, Charles, 26, 399n75 Webb, Sir Aston, 54, 59, 77, 129, 149, 152, 187, 208, 226, 281, 319n8, 335n4, 362n4, 363n15 Wellington Street, 10, 12, 18, 58–9, 250 Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas, Francis (Lord Elcho), 96, 98, 128, 193, 248, 362n4, 393n42 Wesleyan Central Hall at Westminster 205 West End, 6, 20, 48–9, 64, 82, 84, 91, 112, 158, 178 Westminster Abbey, 43, 57, 73 Westminster Improvement Commission, 43 White, James Gilbert, 64 ‘White City’ see Franco-British Exhibition Whitehall, 49, 74–77, 119, 150, 224, 244, 262 Williams, William Harold, 66, 248, 266 Wilson, A. J., 116, 353n70

416

Windsor-Clive, Robert (The Lord Windsor), 187, 336n18 Woodward and Gruning, 120 Woolworth Building (New York), 124, 159, 356n36 World Columbian Exposition see Chicago World Fair Worshipful Company of Carpenters, 146 Wren, Christopher, 9, 122, 130, 155, 276 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 124 Wych Streeet, 13-14, 18 Wylie & Lochhead, 276 Young, Andrew, 92–5, 128, 138, 155, 162, 347n28, 364n28, 367n8, n9 Zeppelin raid, see also German air raids, 249–50