From Canberra — Australia’s National Capital by Crispin Hull
Ch 4 — Walter and Marion Burley Griffin’s planned city
In April 1911 an international competition for the design of the new capital was announced based upon the surveys and contour maps produced by Scrivener in 1910. There were 137 entries and the ballroom at Government House in Melbourne had to be commandeered to put them on display. Walter Burley Griffin of Chicago had learned of the federation of Australia while he was at university. He decided then to enter whatever competition there would be to plan the capital. He had to wait 10 years. But it was only the determination of his wife, Marion Mahoney Griffin, that saw him enter. Nine weeks before the deadline he had not started. Marion insisted. Moreover, in the end, the plan was made more accessible and more easily understood by the excellence of her drawings. The plans went in a taxi near midnight to catch the last train to connect to the boat to Australia.
Griffin described himself as an architect and landscape architect. Town planning was not a well-recognised field at the time, so few entrants described themselves as town planners. They were mainly architects, surveyors and engineers, but also clerks, farmers, authors, builders, miners and some salesmen tried their hands.
Griffin came out of the American “cities beautiful” movement. It was idealistic in seeking better conditions for all people living in cities. It sought practical, efficient, beautiful and satisfactory places to live. For efficiency it required some formality. Competing with that was the English garden city concept – with irregular picturesque lines based on a romantic notion of nature. Others were highly classical and monumental. The Royal Institute of British Architects boycotted the competition because the final decision was to be made by a lay person, albeit not a Minister of the Crown, and not an architect or group of architects. Rather a technical board was appointed to advise Home Minister King O’Malley on the entries. Its members were John Kirkpatrick (dropped from NSW Institute of Architects for non-payment of fees but still well regarded in some architectural quarters); James Alexander Smith president of the Victorian Institute of Engineers and John Montgomery Coane a fellow of the Victorian Institute of Surveyors — appointed by O’Malley as chair. Kirkpatrick and Smith joined in a majority decision for first three places. Entry No 29 by Walter Burley Griffin of Chicago first, Eliel Saarinen of Finland second and Alf Agache of France third. Coane picked three entirely different winners. O’Malley went with the majority, but the bureaucrats charged with implementing the design argued that is was too extravagant and elaborate and therefore too expensive. O’Malley referred all the placegetters’ designs to a departmental board which reported towards the end of 1912. The lack of unanimity at the competition stage was a weapon used by bureaucrats to argue against Griffin’s plan. The board said it could not endorse any of the plans. So it came up with its own hotch-potch of what it thought were the best elements of some of the plans and included a few ideas of its own. It was on the basis of this plan that the foundation stone was laid on March 12, 1913, and the city named Canberra by Lady Denman, wife of the Governor-General. The stone can be seen today in front of Parliament House.
Within three months of the laying of the stone, the Fisher Labor Government and King O’Malley were gone. The new Liberal Government of Joseph Cook had a different view. It invited Griffin to come to Australia to work with the board, but soon they disagreed. This time Griffin won. The Government disbanded the board, cancelled its plan and made Griffin director of design and construction. Labor returned briefly in 1914 and the new bureaucracy fought with Griffin until Billy Hughes took over the Prime Ministership and O’Malley – now a Griffin supporter – was reappointed Minister for Home Affairs. In 1916, after a Royal Commission which castigated the bureaucracy for hindering Griffin’s vision, Griffin’s plan was formally approved so that significant changes would require an Act of Parliament. By then, though, World War I was consuming Australian society, and it was nearly 40 years, a Depression, another world war and five Prime Ministers later before the cause of creating a national capital in line with Griffin’s vision was taken up with any enthusiasm or serious public money, with two notable exceptions – what was called the provisional Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial. The former driven by the political imperative to get Parliament out of Melbourne and the later driven by the determination of Charles Bean (the official war historian) and the national mood to ensure the sacrifices made by the soldiers of the young nation were commemorated in the nation’s capital.
At least while virtually nothing was done in the 40 years, Griffin’s vision had not been compromised by inconsistent construction, so in the 1950s and 1960s the genius of his vision could slowly become reality, although with some unfortunate compromises. The avenues along key land axes between significant high points were constructed to form the Parliamentary Triangle. The triangle used two hills, Capital Hill and City Hill and the front of Russell Hill as points. The triangle was to be defined by two great avenues — Commonwealth and Kings — which would span the lake. An axis ran through the centre of the triangle from Capital Hill across the lake up Anzac Parade to the Mount Ainslie. The vista along that axis is now one of the finest urban icons of nationhood in Australia. The lake was created by damning the Molonglo River. And significantly, the hills were left free of building. Slowly the major national institutions were built. They were more than concrete and steel. They described the nation: its democracy and rule of law; its culture; its sacrifices for freedom and its pursuit of an open, healthy lifestyle.
As Australia emerged from World War II, there was no longer a security or cost argument for keeping much of the administration of the Federal Government in Melbourne. But there was little enthusiasm from the federal bureaucracy, more comfortable in the then culturally richer Melbourne than in the nascent national capital. Robert Menzies, the new Prime Minister elected in 1949 at first hated Canberra, thinking it as a place of exile.
Architect Robyn Boyd best described the state of Canberra at the time. He said, “”Canberra reached its nadir in 1954.” He mentioned one or two satisfactory buildings such as the Australian War Memorial and the Patents Office, but they were “”swamped in the mediocrity of an enormous sprawling suburb without a centre.” Griffin had been forsaken, he said. He was right. Location and construction of buildings in Canberra was done in a haphazard way, though at least not in a way inconsistent with Griffin’s plan.
Then Menzies had a conversion. Yes, there was much wrong with Canberra, stemming from its underdeveloped state and lack of population. Menzies’ daughter Heather Henderson complained about the city. She could not rent a house nor get a good block of land. The pavements were in disrepair. Menzies’ wife Pattie urged him to try to take Heather’s baby for a walk. Menzies saw that Canberra needed work. Moreover, he soon began to realise that Canberra was permanent and would always be the capital. “”Once I had converted myself to this faith, I became an apostle, though years were to elapse before major success,” he wrote. Menzies was more than apostle; he was leader in the creation of Canberra. He realised that there was a place in history for the leader who put political will behind making the capital.
Two major political events in 1954 made Canberra the centre of national attention. The Queen visited. The glittering occasions of the visit were conducted in Canberra. The Queen made her broadcast to the Australian people from Canberra, so people realised that this was the capital. And the highly controversial Petrov Royal Commission into communist influence in Australia opened in Canberra. Combined with this was the fact that for the first time in the century there was a significant period of economic stability, meaning there was enough money to make the city. All that was needed was the political will. Menzies had that will and had the political stature not to succumb to people who would prefer the money to be spent on more bread-and-butter issues.
In 1955, a parliamentary committee inquired into the national capital. It lamented the lack of progress and supported the Griffin plan. It recommended a single authority be set up. Menzies did this by creating the National Capital Development Commission. But he also appointed English architect William Holford, who made recommendations inconsistent with Griffin’s plan. Holford abandoned the north-eastern apex of the triangle — allowing it to peter out amid a jumble of Department of Defence buildings. It has since been partially rescued. He also reduced the significance of the east-west axis of the triangle — Constitution Avenue, instead creating a curved modern freeway along the northern edge of the lake. To this day, the freeway cuts the city from the lake — the antithesis of Griffin’s aims.
Fortunately, Holford’s recommendation to build the permanent Parliament House on the lake shore was not taken up. The placing of it in its present place has done much to restore the Griffin approach with monumental buildings at high points. Holford’s errors stemmed from the fact that he was dealing with Canberra without the lake and lacked the acuity to see how the detail of Griffin’s plan would have worked. At that time Canberra seemed like two towns, rather than a unified city. It was only when the Molonglo River was damned at the height recommended by Griffin and the lake filled up did the city become a cohesive whole, and the beauty of Griffin’s concept became fulfilled. Even then, Griffin’s formal shaping of the lake was abandoned due to cost.
While the buildings and avenues were being constructed, much was also being done to preserve and improve the natural elements of the site.
In 1820 the Limestone Plains were largely treeless. A few eucalypts graced the Molonglo, but the dry climate with frosty winter nights made the place difficult for trees. After Griffin laid out the streets and places for buildings, one of the wisest appointments of the nascent Commonwealth was that of Charles Weston as officer in charge of afforestation in 1913. In the next 13 years he directed the planting of more than a million trees and set up the Government nursery at Yarralumla. Combined with Griffin’s plan of not building on the hills, it made the Bush Capital. Weston tested species and revegetated the hills with native species. In the city itself he used both natives and exotics. Each street was lined with a particular species to add identity and harmony. There are no front fences in Canberra, so the hard lines of the built form are subdued. From the look-outs on Black Mountain or Mount Ainslie, the city seems to hide in vegetation, as if the vegetation were there first and building put among it rather than the other way. The trees accentuate Canberra’s sharp seasons. Autumn blazes orange and red. Spring blossom and light green. And the stark of winter is softened by the grey-green of eucalypts.
Weston left in 1927. Later his work was taken up by Professor Lindsay Pryor who collected from throughout the world and experimented with propagation to establish a suite of species that established a landscape theme for the city. This was executed through the free-issue scheme under which residents taking up undeveloped land over the years were granted a free tree and shrub allowance from the Yarralumla nursery. The nursery has grown 50 million trees — more than 150 per present-day resident — and plenty more plants have come from other nurseries. Today Canberra has some of the strictest tree preservation legislation in the world.
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