Geoffrey Harley Mewton

Geoffrey Harley Mewton (1905–1998) was an Australian architect and leading proponent of modern architecture in Melbourne during the 1930s.[1][2] He is best known for the Woy Woy flats at Elwood, Victoria, amongst the first flat blocks in Melbourne to show the influence of the European Modern movement.[3]

Geoffrey Harley Mewton
Born(1905-01-21)21 January 1905
Brighton, Victoria, Australia
DiedMarch 1998
Fulham, London, England
NationalityAustralian
EducationMelbourne University
OccupationArchitect
Known forWoy Woy Flats
Spouse(s)Elma Ellen Mewton
Parent(s)William Arthur Mewton
Violet Ratcliff Ford

Personal life

Geoffrey Mewton was the youngest child of William Arthur Mewton and Violet May Ratcliff Ford (1868–1953). His siblings were Beryl Harley Mewton (1898–1982) and Roydon Harley Mewton (1900–1964). Born on 21 January 1905 in Brighton, Melbourne, he was educated at Wesley College, Melbourne.[4][5] In 1938 he married Elma Ellen Gotz,[6] and they lived in Sandringham in a house he designed for the next 20 years.[3] They had one child, Noelle Margret Mewton. In March 1998, Mewton died while on a trip to London, England aged 93.[4]

Architectural career
Woy Woy, Elwood, 1982 (before alterations)

Mewton began his architectural career in 1923, beginning his articles at the Blackett, Foster & Craig office while studying at night at the Working Men's College (now the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT).[5] From 1926 to 1928 Mewton attended night classes at the Melbourne University Architectural Atelier.[3] While still a student in May 1928, Mewton, in partnership with fellow student Roy Grounds, won 1st prize in an Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Exhibition for a house costing under £1000.[7] He also won a scholarship later that year.[8] After graduating, in mid 1928 Mewton and Grounds set off together on a 'worlds tour',[9] first to London with another student Oscar Bayne, where they all shared 'digs'.[3]

During his time in London, Mewton worked for Adams Holden & Pearson (partner Charles Holden is best known for his Modernist 1930s London Underground railway stations[5]).

In 1929 after travelling to New York Mewton found work in the office of William Van Alen, at the time completing the Chrysler Building, briefly the world's tallest building.[4][5]

At the age of 25 on 20 October 1930 Mewton returned to London to sit his Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) examinations and then travelled throughout Europe for nearly two years.[4][5]

On returning home to Melbourne, Australia on 13 September 1932, Mewton set up his own office.[5] A year later Roy Grounds returned to Melbourne and the pair formed the office Mewton & Grounds.[1][5] Their partnership was informal and each worked individually, collecting their own profits.[5] Quickly the pair became acknowledged as amongst the chief protagonists of modernism in Melbourne.[1]

Out of the many projects designed under this arrangement, only some have been definitely ascribed to one or the other, but it is thought that Mewton's work in this period was often the more starkly Modernist of the two, exhibiting the influence of the work of Dutch Architect William Dudok, combined with the minimalism of the Bauhaus,[1][5] in a series of blocky brick or rendered houses and flats over the next 5 years. However both partners appear to have designed in both Modernist mode and in a more cottage style. One of their first projects, attributed to Grounds,[5] was radically modern for Melbourne - located in the hills of Upper Beaconsfield, Wildfell, built in 1933, was a long flat roofed rectilinear composition of white painted brick, with red and cream brick details and window frames painted 'burnt autumn', clearly influenced by Dudok.[10] This was followed in 1934 by the Milky Way Cafe in Little Collins Street, a venture of the United Milk Producers Society[11] to encourage milk consumption, with modern tubular steel furniture and flush recessed lighting panels.

The flat roofed rendered boxy walls of Mewton's Woy Woy flats, Elwood, 1936 (and the similar Watt House, Toorak, attributed to Mewton & Grounds, c1935), are clearly influenced by the pure 'white box' Modernism of late 1920s Germany, and it is probably the first apartment building in Australia to do so.[12] Other projects adopted a slightly softer approach using bricks, but still in uncompromising rectangular volumes, such as the white-brick Stooke House Brighton (1935, demolished), the Evan Price House, Essendon (1936), the Ingpen House, Geelong (1937, demolished), and the blocky two-tone brick of the Bellaire Flats in St Kilda (1936). Some of the other designs attributed to the partnership were, like Roy Grounds' Frankston area houses at the time, more rustic gable roofed designs inspired by the work of William Wurster, including the Fairbairn House, Toorak (1936) and the flats at the beach end of North Road, Brighton. Mewton's own house in Sandringham (1938) followed this mode, executed in red brick as a series of overlapping gable roofed sections, employing windows at the rear that could be folded back completely to create a house that opened to the garden.[1][5] Robin Boyd described this house as "the perfect example of the Victorian type, house and garden are really planned as one."[1]

Other designs show how even interwar architects known for their Modernist work could also design in more traditional styles. The flats in Ormond Road Elwood (1933) are modern yet domestic in character, with overall simplicity in cream brick, but also prominent gables and chimneys, and detailing in raised brickwork. The Maisonettes in St Georges Court, Toorak (1939) are another version of this approach, with modernist white rendered walls and porthole windows, combined with simple gable roofs, a prominent chimney and Georgian touches - an arched entry to one unit and a concave porch roof over the other - while the Riviera Court flats in Brighton (1938, and probably unpainted cream brick originally) apply the same simple gable roofed shapes, but with the brick detailing seen in the Elwood flats.

In about 1937 Grounds left for another overseas trip, leaving Mewton to practice alone, though the partnership was not formally dissolved until 1939, when Mewton began a partnership with Edward Billson that lasted to 1942.[5]

During World War II, Mewton worked for the Department of Labour and National Service,[5][13][14] working on mess halls and field hospitals.[5][13]

After the war, Mewton worked briefly in 1945 for the firm A.C. Leith & Bartlett, producing a booklet of designs for the Housing Commission of Victoria.[5] He was nominated that same year as judge for the Sun Post War Homes competition, and was an advocate for The Age 'Small Homes Service', established in 1947.[5][15]

Later in 1945 Mewton joined the firm Godfrey & Spowers, along with Eric Hughes and John Lobb, together forming 'Godfrey, Spowers, Hughes, Mewton and Lobb'.[5][16] Expanding in the late 1950s the firm began to undertake industrial and office buildings such as Allan’s Music Building, Collins St (1956), National Mutual Centre Melbourne (1965, demolished) and Dallas Brooks Hall (1963–1969, demolished).[17][5] Mewton continued to work for Godfrey, Spowers, Hughes, Mewton and Lobb as a partner until he retired from practice in 1980.[17]

Key Works
  • The (demolished) George Stooke House, 176 Halifax Street, Brighton, was built 1935, and won equal first prize of three in the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Architectural Competition,[18][19] as part of the Ideal Home Exhibition held in February 1936. The modest house, composed of low interlocking and rectilinear volumes including a walled garden was built of strikingly modern white bricks.
  • Woy Woy, 77 Marine Parade, Elwood, was built in 1935–1936, and is the earliest example of Modernism in flat development in Melbourne, along with Cairo Flats in Fitzroy of the same year, and both are amongst the few of any pre-WW2 apartment developments in the city to display this influence.[16] The design is extremely minimal,[17] with the cubic forms perhaps deriving from Willem Dudok, though the severe flat rendered walls are closer to the German Bauhaus.[16] Some time in the 1980s the appearance was changed substantially - the roof over the stairs was raised from well below the parapet to be in line, with the 1936 plaque, a window, and the rooftop glazed pavilion added, and all the windows of the two upper floors were enlarged by lowering the sills (a photo can be found here).
  • Mewton's own house at 207 Bluff Road, Sandringham, built in 1938, is a single-storey clinker brick house with a terracotta tiled gabled roof. With a long row of folding windows to the rear garden, Robin Boyd described it "as a wise house that knows not to be jealous of the garden."[5] in his seminal 1947 publication Victorian Modern, placing it amongst the houses that he felt introduced Modernism to Victoria.

List of works

Mewton & Grounds

Attributed to Mewton :[5]

  • George Stooke House, 176 Halifax Street, Brighton VIC (1935, demolished)
  • Woy Woy flats, 11 Marine Parade, Elwood VIC (1936)
  • Evan Price House, 2 Riverview Road, Essendon VIC (1935–36)[20]
  • Bellaire Flats, 3 Cowderoy Street, St Kilda VIC (1936)
  • Ingpen House, Aphrasia Street, Geelong (1937, demolished)[21]

Attributed to both :

  • Flats, 46 Ormond Road, Elwood (1933)[22]
  • Milky Way Cafe, 300 Little Collins Street, (1934)[23][24]
  • 'Portland Lodge', Henty House, 1 Plummer Avenue Olivers Hill, Frankston (c1935)[25] (this is adjacent to the 1953 Henty House)
  • Watt House, 6 Grosvenor Court, Toorak VIC (c1935) - now somewhat altered.
  • Fairbairn House, 236 Kooyong Road, Toorak VIC (1935–36)[26]
  • Scout Settlement Home, 313 Nott Street, Port Melbourne (1936)[27]
  • Flats, 2-6 North Road, Brighton VIC (1936)[28] Altered.
  • House, 493 Kooyong Road, Elsternwick (1936)[29]

Geoffrey Mewton

  • Riviera Court Flats, 156 Church Street, Brighton VIC (1938)[1]
  • Mewton House, 207 Bluff Road, Sandringham VIC (1938)

Billson & Mewton

  • Maisonettes, 11 St Georges Court, Toorak (1939)[30]

Geoffrey Mewton

  • 21 Summerhill Road, Beaumaris VIC (1950)
  • Milky Way cafe, 1934 (demolished)
  • Stooke House, 1935 (demolished)
  • Bellaire Flats, West St Kilda, 1936
  • Ingpen House, Aphrasia Street, Geelong, 1937 (demolished)
  • 207 Bluff Road, Sandringham, 1938
  • Woy Woy, Elwood, in 2019

References
  1. Heritage Alliance (2007). "City of Bayside Inter-War & Post War Heritage Study", p.20-21.
  2. Peter Cuffley (1993). Australian Houses of the Twenties & Thirties. Five Mile Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-86788-667-2.
  3. Langmore, D (2007). "Australian Dictionary of Biography: 1981–1990. A-K. Vol. 17.", Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, Australia. ISBN 9780522853827
  4. , www.ancestrylibrary.com, viewed 24 April 2014.
  5. Goad, P and Willis, J (2012). "The Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture", p. 452-453. Cambridge University Press, Victoria, Australia. ISBN 978-0-521-88857-8
  6. "Wedding Today". Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957). 14 May 1938. p. 17. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  7. "Institute of Architects' Exhibition". Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957). 1 May 1928. p. 8. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  8. "ARCHITECTURAL SCHOOL". Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954). 25 July 1928. p. 14. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  9. "TWO AUSTRALIAN ARCHITECTS". Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954). 28 July 1928. p. 20. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  10. "Sunshine Home at Upper Beaconsfield". Trove. 24 May 1933. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  11. ""THE MILKY WAY"". Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957). 14 February 1934. p. 5. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  12. Peterson, Richard (2009). "A Place of Sensuous Resort, Chapter 42, Woy Woy" (PDF). Richard Peterson.
  13. Madge, J and Peckham, A (2006). "Narrating Architecture: A Retrospective Anthology", Routledge, Milton Park Abingdon, Oxon. ISBN 0-415-38564-4
  14. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 March 2014. Retrieved 26 April 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link), "Spowers Background", viewed 19 April 2014.
  15. "What the People Want: Victoria now building the ideal home". Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954). 28 June 1951. p. 2. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  16. Peterson, R (2005). "A Place of Sensuous Resort: Buildings of St Kilda and their people", www.skhs.org.au/SKHSbuildings/42.htm
  17. "Spowers Background"
  18. "First Prize, Architectural Competition, Ideal Home Exhibition". Journal of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. 34 (1). March 1936 – via National Library Australia.
  19. "R.V.I.A. JOURNAL". Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954). 22 April 1936. p. 20. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  20. "Evan Price House". Victorian Heritage Database. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  21. "HOUSE AT GEELONG, VICTORIA". Construction and Real Estate Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1930 - 1938). 8 September 1937. p. 8. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  22. "Compact Flats in Elwood". The Herald. 6 December 1933. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  23. ""Milky Way" café, Melbourne / Commercial Photographic Co". State Library Victoria. 1935.
  24. "Come to the MIlky Way -Opening Today". Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954). 14 February 1934. p. 8. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  25. "Ormond College". vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
  26. "House at 236 Kooyong Road Toorak, 1936". State Library Victoria. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  27. "Two-Storey Home For Scout Settlement". Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954). 18 November 1936. p. 12. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
  28. "UNIQUE FLATS AT BRIGHTON". Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954). 3 March 1937. p. 18. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  29. "Measured Drawing, 493 Kooyong Road, Elsternwick". State Library Victoria. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  30. "MODERN PLANNING FOR TOORAK MAISONETTES". Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954). 19 July 1939. p. 16. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
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