Bring on the street colonnade

Abstract

The street colonnade was devised in the ancient world and is found abundantly in many cultures. It was introduced very early into the penal colony of New South Wales Australia and, through the process of conscious design followed by an inventive local iteration, a distinctive timber and iron form of street colonnade became pervasive in the cities and towns of New South Wales. The danger posed to them by the advent of motor vehicles early in the twentieth century led to the removal of the majority of them. Architects have continued to build colonnades nonetheless. This article reasons a case for this typology for today as both excellent in urban terms and culturally relevant.

About the Authors

Hector Abrahams leads a Sydney architectural practice which strives to take the long view in architecture.

The impetus for this article was a commission from the architect Joe Agius to provide a cultural reasoning for the typology of the street colonnade in New South Wales. It was developed through discussion with Sam Treharne of Street Level Australia, and tested with my colleagues Brianna Jessup, Olivia De Beus and Stephanie Thelin.

Contacts T: +61 02 9299 7959 E: habrahams@haarchitects.com.au

Article

To set the tone, the above photograph, by Emilio Cresciani, shows a fine colonnade along Pittwater Road in North Manly, Sydney, discussed in this article.

If you walk a few hundred metres west from the overhanging ledges of the high rise that makes up the new Parramatta Square in Sydney (1), you come into the simpler colonnaded developments which the city promoted under its urban policy of the 1970s. There you might gain relief from the traffic, protection and  perhaps relax.

Perhaps what has once worked should be considered again. Street colonnades are particularly good at cutting the strong light and  westerly winds in Parramatta. In fact  all of Australia has long used the urban street colonnade for a lots of good urban reasons beyond basic shelter.

A peerless ancient example of a retail colonnade is the Stella of Atlas in Athens.  After its reconstruction in 1953-56, the American School of Classical Studies (2) described its typology thus:

“…the type was revived after the Greek dark ages … reaching the climax in the second century BC… The primary function of the stoa was to provide shelter for large numbers of people..stoas were commonly found in sanctuaries and market places as also in the neighbourhood of theatres and stadia …the Stoa of Attalos was the most splendid of all these buildings.…The spacious colonnades were used as promenades. The 42 closed rooms behind served as shops. On festival days thousands of citizens standing on the two floors of the Stoa and its Terrace commanded a perfect view of the processions that passed on the street of the Parthenaia. “

Stella of Atlas in Athens reconstructed 1953-56: The market place in the foreground is crossed by the street of the Panathenaia. From booklet published by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens second edition 1962.

Known since the ancient world, the street colonnade came to Australia in the form of a columned verandah added to a house in the Town of Sydney. According to Broadbent (3), this earliest documented veranda was added by Lieutenant-Governor Grose to his house c. 1793.  As the illustration shows, it enabled the governor to receive people in the public view as well as to elevate the civic status of this official residence.

Lieutenant Governors House 1793, showing a newly constructed verandah addition, elevated above the street. After: Ravenet reproduced by Broadbent.

After this first colonnade was built at the house of the Lieutenant Governor,  the government began to design front verandas to its public buildings to add what was seen as useful space.  Only later, in the 1820s, did it find its way onto private houses, first in the larger houses and, later on, common housing, where the use of the  veranda became almost universal.

Probably the longest street colonnade ever created in Sydney was the tripartite one added on to the Wynyard barracks before 1842. It ran for about two hundred metres along York Street,  opposite the long side of the parade ground, which today is Wynyard Park.

Plan of Military Barracks and surrounds in Sydney, showing the location and extent of the colonnade along York Street facing the Parade Ground. After a map of Sydney by Shields 1845.

In Sydney, two major developments in the following decades so valued colonnades as to bring them onto the private side of the boundary, beginning a practice still in play. The 1865 design of the Sydney GPO by the Colonial Architect James Barnet devised a continuous elevated street colonnade to three streets. The colonnade on the long side addressed a street which Barnet also created as the urban setting for this great work. A lot of the business of the Post Office was conducted in this colonnade, such as posting letters,  notice giving, shipping and weather information, as well as doors to separate rooms with special uses. In fact the post office building was only one room thick, as it also needed a large central works courtyard for dispatching.

The highly original architect John Horbury Hunt designed a new shopping emporium in  1872 known as Victoria House. It had a continuous colonnade to Pitt Street, seventeen bays long, and set at the level of the pavement. The internal wall was a continuous expanse of large sheets of glass (4).

 

In  the decades after 1850,  the colonnade was developed in a new expression built of timber and cast iron on the public land in front of  the property boundary on main street buildings. They were generally wide, up to four or five metres, one or two storeyed, sometimes three. and the upper story worked as a private verandah to a residence.  In some  towns and cities, they were numerous enough to form into an almost continuous street cover, such as High Street West Maitland.  These colonnaded forms defined the key urban character  of cities and towns throughout Australia. (5)

View of High Street, West Maitland, about 1890. In this, the fourth largest city in NSW at the time, the long and crooked High Street was lined with wide verandahs forming continuous runs.

With the advent of motor car transport after 1900, the ubiquity of the posted verandah over the main street was to be reversed. As volume and speed increased, the posted structures were seen as a risk and most street colonnades were systematically replaced by suspended awnings.  The Johnson’s building in lower George Street Sydney is thought to be the earliest suspended awning in New South Wales, designed by Scottish trained Gorrie McLeish Blair in c. 1905.

The suspended awning at Johnsons Building, Grosvenor Street, Sydney, built c. 1909; this is the first suspended awning designed for Sydney. Photograph by Darren Graham

 

Melbourne building Canberra by John Sulman

In the twentieth century as awnings replaced street colonnades over footpaths,  architects continued to advocate for and use colonnades within their city buildings. An early advocate was John Sulman, whose Melbourne and Sydney Buildings in Canberra attempted to introduce an urban quality to the suburban city.

The modernist MLC building in North Sydney by Bates Smart McCutcheon in the 1950s provided a colonnade. The development of East Circular Quay by Andrew Anderson of Peddle Thorpe and Walker is a monumental example. There is also the colonnade addition to Opera house in the 1990s by Richard Johnson of Johnson Pilton Walker.

In the latter part of the twentieth century colonnade making returned to public policy as well. In Parramatta in the 1960s and 70s colonnades were public policy for new development, illustrated in the Government Architect Court Precinct in Marsden Street and in the City of Sydney as well.

From the 1990s they were also allowed to be reinstated for heritage buildings that had lost them; this is a reconstruction from North Manly circa 2000, which sheltered an existing bus stop.

This modest example is located at an important bend in Pittwater Road demonstrates the excellent urban qualities of this typology as developed in New South Wales.  It affords a protection from wind and rain greater than the cantilevered awning. Its greater  enclosure than an awning is much needed  since most roads have become primarily transport corridors.

They offer more opportunities and a better setting for placing of signage and lighting, banners and all the oomph of street life. They mediate the public private realm. From the point of view of the retailer they provide protection from glare for the large glass shop windows and, in this case, some excellent veranda outdoor space for low-cost rental accommodation upstairs, perched over the street.

But most of all,  they have a place in the psyche  of Australian culture having been developed and used here  for so long. It is suggested that they can be  understood as beautiful.

Notes & References

1. Parramatta Square is newly  completed. It is a pedestrian mall formed by six new buildings, including Australia’s largest commercial office tower of over 50-storeys, drastically changing the scale and character of the area. The works include a refurbished town hall, new library, underground carpark and link to the railway station concourse. It was achieved by the demolition of two streets and several  existing buildings across the extensive site.

2. The American School of Classical Studies: The Stoa of Attalos ll in Athens, The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton New Jersey, 1959

3. Broadbent , James: The Australian Colonial House Architecture and Society in New South Wales 1788-1842 Hordern House , Sydney 1997

4. Reynolds, Peter; Muir , Lesley; Hughes, Joy: John Horbury Hunt Radical Architect 1838-1904 Historic Houses Trust , Sydney 2002

5. Cox, Philip; Stacey , Wesley: Historic Towns of Australia Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1973