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| Chapter 12. FALLEN ARCHES |
| Early Australian Architectural History |
| As we have examined in detail the anatomy
of Colonial architecture, we should A now learn something of the methods of butchering the carcass, for this sad story forms a large part of Australian architectural history. No architecture in the world has been so maltreated, so senselessly pulled about, as the Colonial architecture of Australia. Even the masterpieces have been treated as though they were disease-infected. Australians speak with pride of Francis Greenway and his lovely buildings, and yet there is not one remaining Greenway building in its origina1 state. St Matthew's Church at Windsor is the least maltreated of them all, but St Luke's, Liverpool, Hyde Park Barracks, and the barracks of the Campbell house were assaulted with a degree of brutality that varies from disturbing to revolting. This sorry tale can be repeated so often, that to light on a Colonial building that is as the designer left it is a discovery exhilarating in its rarity. Of the buildings illustrated in this book, only eleven besides St Matthew's remain in a state that gives one a fair idea of the original design. These are: The obelisk, Macquarie Place. Lansdowne bridge. Lapstone bridge. Elizabeth Bay House. Denham Court. Camden Park. Lindesay. Hartley courthouse. St John's Church, Camden. Congregational Church, Sydney. Richmond Villa. Except in four of those buildings, the architecture has been preserved by good luck more than by good management.  It would not be sensible to propose that all old buildings should be preserved intact. Buildings wear out, outlast their usefulness, and sometimes become an encumbrance, and so they should pass from the architectural scene. However, when a building is continuing to serve a useful purpose, it is senseless to destroy its beauty wantonly, as has been done so often in Australia. There was some excuse for the vandalism of the Victorian age, for it was a world-wide decadence of taste that allowed even England's masterpieces by Sir Christopher Wren to be "improved" by inferior men in the name of modernity. Although the bad taste of the nineteenth century swept the world, leaving artistic ruin in its wake, there remain in England, France, South Africa, America, or in any part of the world outside Australia buildings that have served man for hundreds of years and that are treasured as examples of m art. Australia has not learnt that if buildings have to be adapted to modem needs, the work can be done cleanly and sympathetically, so that the original beauty is preserved; a bathroom can be added to a bathroom-less house without destroying the whole; a veranda can be added or, if necessary, subtracted without the answer equalling ugliness.  Here are actual examples of unwitting, or deliberate, vandalism: A lovely old house, full of charm and dignity, and with innumerable verandas, was purchased by a man whose first move was to add what looks like a festering sore on the lovely old walls-a "sleep-out" veranda totally enclosed in asbestos cement sheeting, the windows of which are completely at variance with those of the house. The owner of a Colonial cottage Gonted with a veranda supported on delicately turned, gracefully proportioned columns, by a most painful operation lopped off the lower half of the columns and propped up their truncated and mangled shafts on piers of machine-made bricks that in no way matched those of the house, thus, at a stroke, ruining the proportions of his lovely cottage and causing discord between the colours of its materials. Hyde Park Barracks at Sydney, whose claim to excellence is that they form, as a whole, a poem of proportion, were hacked open to allow the bearing members of hunchbacked galvanized-iron additions to be thrust into their vitals. At Campbelltown, an old mill that closes beautifully the vista at the turn of a road was thought fit to serve for nothing more useful than a hoarding; the whole of the fine old stonework was obliterated by the ugly colours of an advertisement for somebody's alcohol. All the beautifully designed shop-fronts of the erstwhile harmonious main street of Windsor were torn out so that badly designed, unmatching fronts could be substituted. And so it goes on. If the funds to do physical violence to the fabric are lacking, the buildings can, with excellent precedent and entirely in the spirit of the thing, be bedaubed with drab brown paint to cover up the beautiful original colours. The lovely hews of sandstock brickwork, particularly, offer a wonderful opportunity for obliterating beauty in this way. The worst thing about this mutilation is that a lot of it in the past has been done by architects; the very people who should have been sensitive to the beauty of the originals did the most harm to them. Much of this came from sheer ignorance of architecture: it has been said that if ignorance is bliss then, surrounded by Colonial buildings, some Australian architects of the past must have been the happiest men alive. But such bitter comment, fortunately, becomes less necessary as time passes. The attacks on the buildings were often deliberate, and the trail of ruin is so widespread that it does not need words to point out what is self-evident. The eyes are acted by examples of defacement wherever Colonial buildings exist. A glance at Lennox Bridge, Parramatta, as the designer left it and after mutilation (75) is convincing enough. A plaque on the parapet of this bridge actually lists the atrocities that have been committed on its fabric. The attack upon Greenway's design of the barracks of the Campbell house was pitiless; from being a clean, crisp building that could easily have been adapted to its more modern purpose-which differed little from the original one-it was transformed into a thing of deformity and shoddiness (74). Such mutilation as this takes time and effort, which could equally well have been spent in endeavouring to make any necessary alterations harmonize with the original design. We shall see in a later chapter how the owner of Lindesay has, without trouble, carried out the enlargement of the house so that its appearance as well as its convenience has been added to. We shall see how St James's Church, Sydney, was improved by the additions of one architect, even if one side (fortunately hidden) was tom open by an incompetent designer. A commercial firm in Parramatta did not pull down the delightful Colonial cottage on the site when it acquired business premises. It restored the old building, converted it into offices, and the required new buildings were added at the rear of the site away from the street. Beauty and usefulness can go hand in hand if good sense guides the way. |
| This section is based on the excellent book Early Australian Architects and Their Work (Angus & Robertson, Syd, 1954); Herman, Morton, (1901-1983). Illustrated and Decorated by the Author. |