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design
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Derham Groves
*
examines the life
and legacy of the radical colonial-era
architect.
When the Tropic berthed at Sydney Harbour on 5 January
1863, among its passengers was a 24 year-old Canadian-born
architect, John Horbury Hunt, en route from Civil War-torn
Boston to India where he intended to settle.
Fortunately for our architectural heritage, Edmund Blacket, the
colony’s leading architect, recognised Hunt’s prodigious talent
and persuaded him to stay.
Throughout his career, Hunt designed many highly individual
buildings, mostly in Sydney and regional New South Wales,
including churches, houses and schools. Characteristically,
they were architecturally challenging and well ahead of
their time.
In particular, he was a master, a virtuoso, of brickwork which is
celebrated in the Horbury Hunt Awards, part of the Think Brick
Awards,Australia’s premier architectural prize acknowledging
excellence in brick and block masonry design, and more
recently, roof tiling.
A quick-tempered, eccentric person, Hunt spent just two years
working for Blacket before entering briefly into a partnership
and then working as a sole practitioner until his death.
His harmonious and rational use of materials – especially his
skillful handling of brick and timber – characterise Hunt’s
architecture. Instead of applying decoration to his buildings,
he simply relied on the materials to create the visual interest.
As such, he unwittingly sowed the seeds of Modernism in
Australia.
Among Hunt’s most admired buildings were his Modern
Gothic brick residences, such as Booloominbah (1888) at
Armidale, and Camelot (1888) at Kirkham.The latter was the
setting for the recent television series,
A Place to Call Home.
Hunt’s library of about 4000 architectural books was one of
the best in the country.A number of historians consider that
his designs relied too much on the illustrations in those books.
JM Freeland, the author of
Architect Extraordinary:
The Life and
Work of John Horbury Hunt:
1838-1904 (1970), described him as
“an inventive copyist”.
However, others consider this backhanded compliment to be
unfair, claiming that instead of merely copying the designs of
some of the architects represented in his library, such as
Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Henry Hobson Richardson, Hunt
actually understood their architectural theories and
thoughtfully applied them to his own work.
He was very active in the affairs of Australia’s fledgling
architecture profession. Hunt was a founding member of the
Sydney chapter of the Society for the Promotion of
Architecture and Fine Art and the inaugural president of the
Institute of Architects of New South Wales. He sought to
improve the standards of the local architecture profession,
particularly through education, and was highly critical of
unqualified practitioners whom he once colourfully described
as “the effeminate gentleman artist element.”
Architecture has long been regarded as an eccentric
profession, however Hunt was more odd than most. He was
easily recognised around Sydney dressed in his knee-length
frock coat, high-waisted trousers, blue waistcoat with silver
buttons, and loosely tied string bow tie. Furthermore, his
bell-topper hat had a compartment for drawing paper and
his bicycle was fitted with a folding drawing board and a
place for ink!
Hunt had strong views about most things, but especially the
built environment. He was not shy of public debate and
frequently aired his often-divisive opinions in the local press.
For example, in 1889
The Sydney Morning Herald
reported Hunt’s
observation “that a host of buildings is being planted in our
midst, huge in bulk, vile in conception, false and reckless in
construction – piles that are revolting to the cultured taste and
positively demoralising to the public mind.”
Charles W. Goodchap, a fellow architect and also, no doubt, a
good chap, was deeply offended by Hunt’s comments and
wrote to the newspaper to remind his cantankerous colleague
“that the huge piles referred to are the work of our leading
architects”. Possibly that was Hunt’s point.
While he had no time for dumb architects, Hunt absolutely
adored dumb animals. He was a vocal member of the
Animals’ Protection Society of New South Wales. If he saw a
cabbie beating a horse he was liable to jump to the animal’s
defense and turn the whip on the man.
Hunt and his wife, Elizabeth (who died in 1895), were childless,
and it was widely believed that they were buried with their pet
pony, cats, dogs and geese in South Head cemetery.
His architectural practice was crippled by the 1890’s
depression. John Horbury Hunt was almost destitute when he
died from kidney disease in 1904, aged 67, only escaping a
pauper’s grave through the charity of friends.
* Dr Derham Groves, BArch (Deakin), MArch (RMIT), PhD (Minn) is a
Melbourne-based architect, academic and author with a special interest in
popular culture (derhamgroves.com).
John Horbury Hunt:
Eccentric Visionary
i