From the 1840s onwards, architecture in Britain
was dominated by ‘the battle of the styles’— Classical versus Gothic. Both
styles had their passionate adherents; less committed, more flexible
architects could switch from one style to the other as circumstances
demanded. As knowledge of Greek, Roman, medieval and Renaissance
architecture increased, the demands and restricdons imposed on practitioners
became correspondingly heavier. In the 187os some younger British
architects—among them J. J. Stevenson and E. R. Robson—sought to break away
from the dogmas of academic stylism and find a more flexible idiom. They
turned for inspiration to the domestic architecture of England in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the time of Queen Anne and,
perhaps more relevantly, William and Mary. Strongly influenced by buildings
in the Low Countries, this was a basically simple, elegant architecture of
fine brickwork, with lively Dutch gables on the skyline and some light
touches of not especially correct Renaissance detailing.
Stevenson, Robson and the great Norman Shaw soon became adept at drawing on
the vocabulary of this period of English architecture and freely combining
many of its elements with wit and imagination. Their buildings were usually
to be seen in an urban context in the form of commercial buildings and
townhouses, and the scale was invariably small. There was at least some
justification for calling this cheerful, unpretentious new style Queen Anne,
but this name soon became misused and appropriated to describe buildings
having a different range of characteristics (see FEDERATION QUEEN ANNE). The
style is therefore now described as Anglo-Dutch.
Today there are relatively few surviving examples of the style in Australia,
usually gracing city streets and not rising above six to eight storeys. An
appreciable number of Anglo-Dutch buildings have been demolished and
replaced by taller structures. The survivors are characterised by the plain
red-brown brickwork of their façades, enriched by delicate, attenuated
ornament in brick and terra- cotta. At the roofline, a lively, playful
silhouette is achieved by the use of stepped or scalloped brick gables.
Windows are usually double-hung, vertically proportioned and painted white;
often the upper sash is subdivided by wooden glazing bars and the lower sash
is a single sheet of glass.
Corporation Building (former Municipal Building), Hay Street, Sydney NSW.
George McRae, City Architect, C. 1893. A sprightly design of fine brickwork
and terracotta.
Air Force Club (former Woods Chambers), Scott Street, Newcastle, NSW.
Frederick Menkens, architect, 1892. The steep monumental gable and oriels
give a Hanseatic flavour.