Australian author May Gibbs opted for continental architecture in building her home
One hundred years ago, artist and author May Gibbs moved into her new home, ‘Nutcote.’ Her architect, BJ Waterhouse, was already renowned for his Neutral Bay commissions. The grandest of these were ‘Ailsa’ and ‘Brent Knowle’ in Shellcove Road. Both were examples of the popular Arts and Crafts style, with sloping roof lines and varied features and materials.
There was an Englishness about both because Arts and Crafts was born in that country from the work of William Morris and others who were keen to celebrate artisanal skills and promote beauty in the face of industrialisation and mass production.
Art and Crafts also reflected vernacular English architecture with nods to medieval and Tudor buildings. Waterhouse was English-born but Australian trained. However, Arts and Crafts was established in the colony, so he was in effect applying the aesthetics of his old country to the new.
May Gibbs was English-born, so one might have expected her to commission a house that evoked her childhood home. Nutcote, however, was decidedly continental. The style is called Inter-war Mediterranean and is characterised by swirled render on exterior walls and airy verandas and porches with loggias and tall doors.
As the name suggests, the design evolved in Mediterranean landscapes and in response to those climates. For that reason, it was popularised in sunny, coastal Sydney in the first three decades of the 20th century – a reaction against Arts and Crafts in many respects. Mediterranean architecture had one of its strongest champions in Leslie Wilkinson, the first professor of architecture at the University of Sydney.
Wilkinson, too, was English-born but attuned to the need to design for local conditions. He also recognised the historical link with the classically inspired Georgian architecture which dominated colonial design to the early 1800s. Wilkinson worked in the Mediterranean style at the university not long after the start of his tenure there in 1919.
Waterhouse met Wilkinson around this time. They collaborated on the Refectory Building at the university which featured a Mediterranean loggia. Wilkinson designed a house for himself in that style in 1923 and that year marked the completion of Waterhouse’s first Mediterranean style house, ‘Silvermere’ in Wentworth Falls.
It would seem, therefore, that the idea of a continental rather than English house for May Gibbs was Waterhouse’s suggestion. But it may have taken a bit of coaxing. An early design drawing in the Stanton Library collection, likely dated 1923-24, shows a house with an incongruous mix of features; a steep roof and tall tapered chimney in the English style, with three arched doors opening on a veranda which evoked southern Europe. In the end the roof was flattened and the Mediterranean emphasised.
From 1925 English-born May drew and wrote about the Australian bush in a cottage evoking a sea on the other side of the world.
You can visit this special house at 5 Wallaringa Avenue, Neutral Bay; Wednesday to Sundays 11am to 3pm.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council