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ABSTRACT
This paper traces the influence that pioneering Australian architectural historian David Saunders (1928–1986) exerted over the development of the University of Melbourne’s Cross Street Co-operative Housing Development in Carlton designed by Earle, Shaw & Partners (1970–1971). Cross Street is one of a number of public–private medium-density housing developments that were constructed on large sites resumed by the Housing Commission of Victoria after World War II. While the Housing Commission was demolishing large areas of inner Melbourne for tabula rasa high-rise modernist development, Saunders argued for the retention, adaptation, and acculturation of urban form, exemplified in the house he and architect wife Doreen designed for themselves in Parkville (1962). Saunders took an active role in commissioning Cross Street and his influence meant that it became the first large-scale urban project in Australia that consciously articulated an understanding of its historic environment. The project demonstrates many of his key urban ideas such as the importance of the nineteenth-century terrace form and shared pedestrianised spaces. This paper argues that the project presaged the so-called rediscovery of the city in Australia, emerged amidst the rise of local architectural history as a discipline, heritage activism, and an institution positioning itself for expansion.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our interviewees Merelyn Saunders, Gus Saunders, Helen Marton, Lyn-K Saunders, and Robert Fleming for their generosity and willingness to submit to our ongoing questions about David and Doreen Saunders, and the Cross Street Development. Thanks are also due to the Saunders Family, the Shaw Family, the University of Melbourne Archives, and the State Library of Victoria for granting us permission to publish the images in this paper. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their helpful advice. Their insightful comments greatly improved this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Earle, Shaw & Partners, architects’ statement on Cross Street Co-operative Housing Development in Ian McKay, Robin Boyd, Hugh Stretton, and John Mant, Living and Partly Living (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971).
2. An earlier but smaller Australian urban project that acknowledged its nineteenth-century context in form and morphology was the cluster-planned St John’s Village, 96 small flats for the aged, in inner suburban Glebe, Sydney (1964) designed by architects Hely, Bell, and Horne. See “St John’s Village, Glebe, NSW,” Architecture in Australia, 54: 3 (September 1965): 107–112; Tom Heath, Glenn Murcutt, and Barry Davis, “St John’s Village – an appraisal,” Architecture in Australia, 54: 3 (September 1965): 113–114.
3. Graeme Davison, “Carlton and the Campus: The University and the Gentrification of Inner Melbourne 1958–75,” Urban Policy and Research, 27:3 (2009): 260.
4. Stephen Pascoe, “The social and spatial construction of student housing: the University of Melbourne in an age of expansion,” (M.Phil Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2011), i.
5. University of Melbourne Student Housing Board Report, June 1964, 3. 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
6. University of Melbourne Student Housing Board Report, June 1964, 7.
7. University of Melbourne Student Housing Board Report, June 1964, i.
8. Stephen Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?: the University of Melbourne, the Housing Commission of Victoria, and the contest for Carlton in the 1960s,” in David Nichols, Anna Hurlimann, Clare Mouat, and Stephen Pascoe (eds), Green Fields, Brown Fields, New Fields: Proceedings of the 10th Australasian Urban History, Planning History Conference, (Melbourne, Victoria: The University of Melbourne, 2010), 457. Much of this conference paper is reproduced within Pascoe’s “The social and spatial construction of student housing: the University of Melbourne in an age of expansion,” (M.Phil Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2011) in “Chapter 4: A revolution in governance: 1957–1964” and “Chapter 5: The contest for Carlton: 1964–1971.”
9. Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 457–459.
10. Pascoe, “The social and spatial construction of student housing,” 92.
11. Catherine Townsend and Paul Walker, “Public-private partnerships and medium-density housing in North Melbourne: from Hotham Gardens, 1959 to Northside Communities, 2021” in Housing and the City, eds. Katharina Borsi, Didem Ekici, Jonathan Hale, and Nick Haynes (Oxfordshire, England; New York: Routledge, 2022), 148.
12. “Slum Reclamation Must Go On,” The Age, August 18, 1955, 2.
13. “New Slum Authority Must Be Set Up, Says Housing Minister,” The Age, April 5, 1957, 3.
14. Townsend and Walker, “Public-private partnerships,” 150.
15. Renate Howe (ed), New houses for old: fifty years of public housing in Victoria 1938–1988 (Melbourne: Ministry of Housing and Construction, 1988); Peter Mills, “Refabricating the Towers: The Genesis of the Victorian Housing Commission’s high-rise estates to 1969,” (PhD Thesis, Monash University, 2010); and David Hayward, “The reluctant landlords? A History of public housing in Australia,” Urban Policy and Research, 14: 1 (1996): 5–35.
16. The attempt to save the Lee Street Block was one of the Carlton Association’s key campaigns against the Housing Commission in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is detailed well in Renate Howe, David Nichols, Graeme Davison, Trendyville: the battle for Australia’s inner cities (Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing, 2014).
17. Howard Tanner, Australian Housing in the Seventies (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1976); Ian McKay, Robin Boyd, Hugh Stretton and John Mant, Living and Partly Living (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971).
18. Ray Davie, “Carlton Planning for a Bright Future,” The Age, September 21,1968, 25. “Contrast in Carlton,” Architect, 3: 10 (September–October 1970), 13–14. “Stratum Development (Melbourne University Staff) Cooperative Limited was the successful tenderer for the Cross Street, Carlton,” Cross Section, no. 195 (January 1969), np. Robin Boyd, “The Neighbourhood” in McKay et al., Living and Partly Living, 38–39.
19. Townsend and Walker, “Public-private partnerships.”
20. Caroline Butler-Bowdon and Charles Pickett, Homes in the Sky: apartment living in Australia (Carlton, Victoria; Sydney: Miegunyah Press in association with the Historic Houses Trust of NSW, 2007).
21. Howe (ed), New houses for old; Mills, “Refabricating the Towers” and Hayward, “The reluctant landlords?” 5–35.
22. Pascoe, “The social and spatial construction of student housing,”
23. Simon, Pinnegar, Ilan Wiesel, Edgar Liu, Tony Gilmour, Martin Loosemore, and Bruce Judd, 2011, Partnership working in the design and delivery of housing policy and programs, AHURI Final Report No. 163, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne, https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/163. Accessed May 28, 2021. Kate Shaw, Peter Raisbeck, Chris Chaplin, Kath Hulse. 2013. Evaluation of the Kensington redevelopment and place management models: Final Report. https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/SCLSI/Public_Housing_Renewal_Program/Kensington_estate_evaluation_Jan_2013.pdf Accessed September 1, 2020.
24. Submission to HCV by Leslie M. Perrot & Partners, November 6, 1964. PROV, VPRS 1808, Unit 47. As quoted in Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 454–457.
25. Cross-Section, 100, February 1961, 2.
26. Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 455.
27. Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 454.
28. Memorandum of meeting, 6 May 1965, Addendum 2 to Monthly Report to May 10, 1965. Leslie M. Perrott, quoted Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 460. Perrott & Partners. PROV, VPRS 1808, Unit 47.
29. Judith Brine, “Saunders, David Arthur Lewis (1928–1986),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/saunders-david-arthur-lewis-15756/text26944, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 1 July 2022.
30. David A.L. Saunders, “Joseph Reed. Architect, Melbourne 1852–90,” (B.Arch Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1950).
31. Brine, “Saunders.”
32. Technically, Sydney architect/academic Morton Herman (1907–1983) can be considered Australia’s first career-based architectural historian, publishing his undergraduate thesis (1930) as The early Australian architects and their work (1956) and teaching at Sydney Technical College (later the University of New South Wales) from 1946. However, in terms of formal graduate level training in architectural history, Herman completed his M.Arch research thesis while holding a visiting position at the University of Melbourne in 1960. Saunders completed his M.Arch thesis on terrace houses the year before in 1959. See Philip Goad, entry on Morton Herman in Philip Goad and Julie Willis (eds) The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture (Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 329–330.
33. David Saunders, (ed), Historic Buildings of Victoria, (Brisbane: Jacaranda in association with the National Trust, 1966).
34. “News of the Day,” The Age, August 4, 1958, 2.
35. James Lesh, Values in cities: urban heritage in twentieth-century Australia (New York, NY: Routledge 2023), 79.
36. David Saunders, “Terrace Housing in Melbourne,” (M.Arch Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1959).
37. David Saunders, quoted in “News of the Day,” The Age, November 30, 1959, 2.
38. “News of the Day,” 1959, 2.
39. Merelyn Saunders, Gus Saunders, Helen Marton and Lyn-K Saunders interview by Philip Goad and Catherine Townsend, 15 March 2022.
40. John R. Gold, “A SPUR to action?: The Society for the Promotion of Urban Renewal, ‘anti-scatter’ and the crisis of city reconstruction, 1957–1963,” Planning Perspectives, 27:2, 199–223, (2012). DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2012.646770
41. Authors’ correspondence with Merelyn Saunders December 2022. Strizic spoke several European languages and may well have translated the text.
42. Reyner Banham, quoted in Neville Quarry, “House: Corner of Morrah and Gatehouse Streets, Parkville, Victoria,” Architecture in Australia, 56: 3 (June 1967), 449.
43. Reyner Banham, “Men and Buildings,” Architecture in Australia, 51: 3 (September 1962), 59.
44. Cross-Section, no. 124 (February 1963), n.p.
45. Heritage Council Determination, “Saunders House, 90–92 Gatehouse Street, Parkville,” Heritage Council Victoria, 1 December 2016, 10.
46. Sarah Williams Goldhagen, “Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern,” in Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault (eds), Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 315.
47. Howe, Nichols, and Davison, Trendyville, 22. A larger discussion of Grahame Shaw is beyond the scope of this article, however his varied and theoretically engaged career warrants further scrutiny. For biographical details on Shaw’s career, see Built Heritage Pty Ltd, “Grahame Shaw (1928–1985),” Dictionary of Unsung Architects, https://www.builtheritage.com.au/dua_shaw.html (Accessed online 19 December 2022).
48. David Saunders to Grahame Shaw, 13 November 1959, 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
49. Saunders to Shaw, 13 November 1959.
50. Saunders to Shaw, 13 November 1959.
51. Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 461.
52. 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
53. Minutes of the Student Housing Board 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
54. David Saunders, “Carlton,” Architecture and Arts (June 1965): 30.
55. Saunders, “Carlton,” 31.
56. Saunders, “Carlton,” 30–31.
57. Saunders, “Carlton,” 31.
58. Saunders, “Carlton,” 31.
59. Saunders, “Carlton,” 31.
60. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Odhams, 1963).
61. Saunders, “Carlton,” 31.
62. Saunders, “Carlton,” 33.
63. Saunders, “Carlton,” 34.
64. Saunders, “Carlton,” 34.
65. Monthly Report to May 10, 1965. Leslie M. Perrott & Partners. PROV, VPRS 1808, Unit 47.
66. Pascoe, “An ‘enlightened urban renewal’?,” 461. Pascoe notes that these maps are available for view at PROV, VPRS 1808, Unit 47.
67. “Wie wohnt die junge Generation? – Wie baut die junge Generation?,” Bauwelt 51/52 December 21, 1959).
68. Phyllis Allen, “Hostel Planning. The social unit as a basis of planning,” The Architects’ Journal Information Library, April 7, 1965, 851.
69. For the British, European, and American context, see Stefan Muthesius, The Postwar University: Utopianist Campus and College (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 31–40; 64–83; 138–174; 206–216; and Carla Yanni, Living on Campus: An architectural history of the American dormitory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 153–218. For the Australian context, see Philip Goad, “Living on Campus,” in Andrew Saniga and Robert Freestone (eds), Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities (Nedlands, WA; UWA Publishing, 2023), 221–245.
70. See Philip Goad, “Open Field, Open Street, Open Choice: John Andrews and the South Residences, University of Guelph (1965–68),” in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, eds. Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast, Qld.: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, 639–650; Peter Dormer and Stefan Muthesius, Concrete and Open Skies: Architecture at the University of East Anglia, 1962–2000 (London: Unicorn Press, 2000).
71. John Andrews and Jennifer Taylor, Architecture: A Performing Art (Guilford: Lutterworth Press, 1982), 123–132; and Philip Goad, “Greenfields and Urban Systems,” in Paul Walker (ed) John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Design Press, 2023), 104–133.
72. Minutes of the Student Housing Board 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection.
73. The minutes of SHB meetings show that Saunders was responsible for the long-term planning of student housing 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria. Saunders’s involvement with the architects is shown by his inclusion at client discussions such as Earle, Shaw & Partners Memorandum of discussion Student Housing Cross Street Project 3 August 1967. 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
74. “Report to the vice-principal from the student housing board” September 1967. 1973.0001 Box 1, David Saunders Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
75. Earle, Shaw & Partners quoted in Davie, “Carlton Planning,” The Age, September 21, 1968, 2.
76. Davie, “Carlton Planning,” 2.
77. Davie, “Carlton Planning,” 25.
78. “Stratum Development (Melbourne University Staff) Cooperative Limited was the successful tenderer for the Cross Street, Carlton,” Cross Section, no.195 (January 1969): 2.
79. “Contrast in Carlton,” Architect, 3: 10 (September–October 1970), 13.
80. “Contrast in Carlton,” 14.
81. MacKay et al., Living and Partly Living.
82. Philip Goad ed., Judging Architecture. Issues Divisions Triumphs. Victorian Architecture Awards 1929–2003 (Melbourne: Royal Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter, 2003), 275, 288–289.
83. Howe et al., Trendyville, 43.
84. Tibbits had worked as a graduate architect on the documentation of Cross Street Robert Fleming interview by Philip Pender, Jack Davies, Philip Goad, and Catherine Townsend.
85. Saunders, “Terrace Housing,” 1.
86. Lesh, Values in Cities, 231.
87. Rebecca Madgin and James Lesh (eds), People-centred methodologies for heritage conservation: exploring emotional attachments to historic urban places (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021). Katie Barclay and Jade Riddle, Urban emotions and the making of the city: interdisciplinary perspectives (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021).
88. Goldhagen, “Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern,” 315.
89. Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and Histories of Architecture (London: Granada, 1980 [1976]), 149, 158–160.