From Hilltop Landmarks to Suburban Place Makers: Brisbane’s Post-War Religious Territories and Communities

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the shifting urban and architectural manifestations of Christian churches built in twentieth century Brisbane, the capital of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. In doing so, it considers how religious communities contributed to the formation of Brisbane’s modern cityscape. Based on texts published in the journals of Brisbane’s four largest Christian denominations, a chronological mapping of the development of the city’s religious territories from 1945 to 1977, and an architectural analysis of a select number of Brisbane churches, this paper demonstrates how during the post-war era Brisbane’s Churches shifted their urban planning approach from representational hilltop landmarks to community centres, and their architectural manifestation from grand (modern) monuments to suburban place makers. It also discusses what urban and community building strategies were pursued in this multi-denominational religious territory, and how this affected church architecture. While comparable shifts did occur elsewhere, both abroad and interstate, the paper argues that Brisbane, with its hilly topography, property-oriented religious leaders, and lack of government-funded community infrastructures, heightened opportunities for the Churches to use modern architecture and urban planning to express their faith and social values.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper was commenced during Daunt’s doctoral research under the supervision of Janina Gosseye (TU Delft, and Honorary Senior Fellow of the University of Queensland); John Macarthur (UQ School of Architecture); and Sven Sterken (KU Leuven, Belgium). Earlier versions were presented at a symposium Daunt co-convened with Philip Goad entitled Constructing Religious Territories: Community, Identity and Agency in Australia’s Modern Religious Architecture (Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, 24 August 2018) and at the 2018 EAUH conference, held in Rome at the University of RomaTre (1 September 2018). The paper is based on chapter six of Daunt’s doctoral dissertation. It has since been expanded and reworked. Lisa Marie Daunt, “Communities of Faith: Modern church architecture in Queensland, 1945–1977” (PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2021).

2. In Australia the Church of England was renamed the “Anglican Church of Australia” in August 1981.

3. David Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill: Religion in Brisbane in the 1950s,” Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 14, no. 6 (1991): 243.

4. On Liturgical renewal, for Brisbane see: Lisa Marie Daunt, “1960s Brisbane Church Architecture: Creating Modern, Climatic and Regional Responses to Liturgical Change,” Queensland Review 23, no. 2 (December 2016), 224–5.

5. See: Elizabeth Richardson, “The untold story of modernism: a critical analysis of the post war church in Victoria Australia, 1950–1970” (PhD thesis, The University of Melbourne, 2020); and Paul Hogben, “Coal, Steel and the Holy Cross: Post-War Churches and Chapels of the Hunter Region, NSW,” Fabrications, 32, no.2 (2022), 246–71.

6. For European research in this field see: Sven Sterken and Eva Weyns, eds., Territories of Faith: Religion, Urban Planning and Demographic Change in Post-War Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022).

7. In 1882, this timber church was replaced with a new brick church. The brick church, in turn, was replaced in 1976 following government land resumption for road widening and extension. See: St Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Visitors Pamphlet, May 2014; Otto Thiele, One Hundred Years of the Lutheran Church in Queensland (Brisbane: Publication Committee of the Queensland District United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, 1938), 6, 186.

8. This church replaced two earlier Methodist worship spaces built on other CBD sites. See: “Albert Street Uniting Church,” Queensland Heritage Register listing 600,066, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=600066, last accessed 11 June 2022.

9. “St Marys Anglican Church,” Queensland Heritage Register listing 600,244, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=600244, last accessed 5 June 2022; “Holy Trinity Anglican Church,” Queensland Heritage Register listing 601,875, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601875, last accessed 5 June 2022.

10. The first stage opened in 1910 but the cathedral was not fully completed until 2008. John Loughborough Pearson (1817–1897) designed the Cathedral initially for another site, his son redesigned it for this site. See: Denzil Scrivens, A Queensland Masterpiece: St John’s Cathedral Brisbane and Architect John Loughborough Pearson RA (Brisbane: St John’s Cathedral, 2017), 66, 103.

11. T. P. Boland, “Duhig, Sir James (1871–1965),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/duhig-sir-james-6034/text10315, last accessed 26 August 2022.

12. Boland, “Duhig;” Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill,” 249; Ian Breward, A History of the Australian Churches (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993), 308; “Archbishop Duhig Memorial,” Catholic Leader, Supplement, 1965, 3.

13. “Our Lady of Victories Catholic Church,” Queensland Heritage Register listing 601585, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601585, last accessed 7 May 2022.

14. Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit, A Heritage Study: Brisbane Places of Worship Pre 1940, Vol 1 (Brisbane: Brisbane City Council Heritage Unit, 1996), 91–7; Tom Elich, 100 Stories For 100 Years: 1916–2016 Celebrating 100 Years (Brisbane: Brisbane Liturgy, 2016).

15. Co-adjutor from early-1912 as titular archbishop of Amida and coadjutor to Archbishop Dunne.

16. On St Brigid’s see: Robert Riddel, “RS (Robin) Dods 1868–1920: the life and work of a significant Australian architect” (PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2008), 545–71.

17. T. P. Boland, “Irish and Australian, James Duhig, Archbishop of Brisbane, 1917–65,” in William James O’Shea et al. Good Shepherds 1859–2009: The Catholic Bishops of Brisbane (Brisbane: Brisbane Archdiocesan Archives, 2009), 57.

18. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Catholic Church in Brisbane opened 77 new church-buildings, while the Church of England opened 63, the Methodists 43, and the Presbyterians at least 39 (extracted from Lisa Marie Daunt, “Database of Queensland religious buildings,” private dataset).

19. T.P. Boland, James Duhig (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1986), 184, 342.

20. Boland, James Duhig, 342–3. Boland notes that “[i]n a comparable period, Archbishop Mannix in Melbourne had increased his numbers from 114 to 184 under the impact of the major migrant intake in the Commonwealth.” See: Boland, James Duhig, 343.

21. Boland, James Duhig, 75, citing James Duhig, Souvenir of St Mary’s, Ipswich (Brisbane: Outridge Printing Co, 1904), 4.

22. Boland, James Duhig, 45.

23. Boland, James Duhig, 190, 238. In many Brisbane suburbs municipal water reservoirs and bush land reserves occupied the apex of the highest hilltops, including in Spring Hill, Bardon, Highgate Hill, Chapel Hill, Mt Gravatt and Mt Koot-tha. Mapping Brisbane’s church infrastructures and hills, it becomes apparent that the churches (across denominations) commonly chose sites on the more accessible crests within residential areas.

24. Boland, “Duhig”.

25. Boland, James Duhig, 184.

26. Boland, James Duhig, 184.

27. Duhig, for instance, purchased the site for the Holy Spirit Catholic church in Auchenflower in 1926. At that time, it contained the 1876 Auchenflower House, which became a Carmelite Sisters convent in 1927, and which was later demolished to construct the new Holy Spirit Catholic church (1969).

28. Boland, James Duhig, 184.

29. Boland, James Duhig, 187.

30. James Duhig, Crowded Years (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1947), 135.

31. From early on, the Australian Catholic Church had preferred building religious precincts, comprising school buildings, a convent, church, presbytery, and parish hall. This strategy was adopted in 1885 when Australia and New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops met for their first Plenary Council and agreed that the first priority in the establishment of a new parish was to build the school. From the early twentieth century, with the encouragement of Duhig, the rapid expansion of teaching orders of nuns and brothers facilitated the proliferation of Catholic schools across South-East Queensland. See: A. Ian Ferrier, “Archbishop Duhig – Churches of his Early Years,” Proceedings of the Brisbane Catholic History Society (1988), 40–6; Paul Ilay Ferrier, “The Golden Period of Catholic Progress, Archdiocese of Brisbane, 1912–1927” (B.Arch thesis, University of Queensland, 1986).

32. Hilliard claims that unlike Duhig, Anglican Archbishop Reginald Charles Halse (1881–1962, Archbishop 1943–1962) “did no forward planning.” Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill,” 248.

33. Boland, James Duhig, 342–3.

34. “Catholic Buildings Adorn City, Archbishop Says,” Catholic Leader, 30 March 1961, 3; Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill,” 249.

35. Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill,” 242. In Great Britain attendance peaked in 1960, then declined. See: Robert Proctor, “Uncertainty and The Modern Church: Two Roman Catholic Cathedrals in Britain,” in Vladimir Kuli, Timothy Parker, Monica Penick and Frederick Steiner, eds. Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 113. Decline also set in in many European countries, impacting church building in Rhineland Germany from the late-1960s, and Belgium and Netherlands in the mid-1980s. See: Wolfgang Jean Stock, ed. European Church Architecture 1950–2000 (Munich: Prestel, 2002), 121, 125, 155.

36. “New Holy Rosary Church, Windsor,” Catholic Leader, 26 August 1954.

37. Boland, James Duhig, 365.

38. Cross-Section 80 (June 1959), 2; “Memories of the Beginning of the Tugun Parish…” text received 1 July 2009 by the Catholic Brisbane Archdiocese Archives from Pat Mullins. Mullins attributes the design of St Monica’s to Frank Cullen. It has since been renovated and significantly extended twice, with the worship space (church proper) now within the extensions.

39. Cross-Section 80 (June 1959), 2. St Francis (1959) was designed by Lund Hutton Newell.

40. Hilliard, “A Church on Every Hill,” 254; “New Church at Wilston,” Methodist Times, 26 April 1956, 12; Daunt, “Communities of Faith,” 192.

41. When the Wilston Methodist Memorial church opened the Methodist Church’s periodical claimed it to be “ultramodern in design” (Methodist Times, 26 April 1956, 12). It was also published in Architecture in Australia (October-December 1956), 48; Cross-Section 26 (December 1954); Cross-Section 46 (August 1956); Cross-Section 47 (September 1956); Methodist Times, 19 April 1956, 9; Methodist Times, 23 May 1957; Sunday Mail, 12 September 1954; Courier-Mail, 10 November 1954, 8.

42. E. J. A. Weller, ed. Buildings of Queensland (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press: Queensland Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 1959), 35; On Driver see: Donald Watson and Judith McKay, A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Library, 1984), 74.

43. Gibson worked for Searl and Tannett in 1951–52 and then for Cross and Bain between 1953 and 1976. He designed at least fifteen Queensland church-buildings (plus other unbuilt schemes). These were mainly in Brisbane, for the Presbyterians, Church of England, and Methodists. (James (Jim) William Gibson interviewed by Lisa Marie Daunt, 28 March 2018, held in the Daunt’s private collection).

44. In the US, the A-frame church had been popularised from the mid-1950s. St Andrew’s Lutheran (1954, US, Illinois, Park Ridge) is one of architect Charles Edward Stade’s (1923–1993) earliest A-frames. Various other influential American architects also designed A-frame churches that were extensively published. Eero Saarinen, for instance, used an A-frame volume for Lutheran Concordia Senior College Chapel (Fort Wayne, Indiana, US, 1957). This became one of the most published of the US’s many late-1950s A-frame ecclesiastical buildings, a type that (in general) was given ample attention in the contemporary popular press, which likely encouraged its adoption in Australia in the late-1950s, and then Queensland in the early-1960s. An early A-frame for Australia was Geelong Grammar School Chapel (1958) in Timbertop (VIC), which was designed by Buchan Laird & Buchan architects and engineers. See: Gretchen. T. Buggeln, The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 106–7; Cross-Section 77 (March 1959), 3; “Chapel, Geelong Grammar School Preparatory College, Timbertop, near Mansfield,” Architecture in Australia 48, no.2 (June 1959), 91–2.

45. “New Church at Ashgrove: A Forward Move,” Methodist Times, 22 March 1962, 1; “Old T became a new A,” Courier-Mail, 3 January 1963, 13. The other write-up was: Courier-Mail, 14 March 1962, 3.

46. Boland, James Duhig, 184.

47. Carolyn Nolan, Ribbons, Beads and Processions: The Foundation of Stuartholme (Toowong: Stuartholme Friends and Parents Association, 1995), 126. The earlier (1920) convent-school building was designed by Hennessy, Hennessy, Keesing and Co. See: “Stuartholme School,” Brisbane City Council Heritage Register listing https://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/heritage-places/2213, last accessed 26 August 2022. Drinan was the long-serving manager of the Queensland office of Hennessy and Hennessy. See: John W. East, No Mean Plans: Designing the Great Court at the University of Queensland (Greenslopes: John W. East, 2014), 19, 27, 107; “Obituary of Leo J. Drinan,” The Courier-Mail, 2 March 1967, 5.

48. Nolan, Ribbons, Beads and Processions, 127–30; “Prolific Artist Won Acclaim for his Work,” The Courier-Mail, 17 December 2015; Rodney Hall, Focus on Andrew Sibley: Artists in Queensland (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1968), 36–8; D. Helen Friedmans, “Contemporary Art Society, Queensland Branch, 1961–1973: A Study of the Post-war Emergence and Dissemination of Aesthetic Modernism in Brisbane” (Master of Arts Thesis, University of Queensland, 1989), 33–4.

49. Boland, James Duhig, 184; Duhig, Crowded Years, 135–6.

50. Cecil Hargraves interviewed by Lisa Marie Daunt and Janina Gosseye, 29 June 2016 (held in the Daunt’s private collection).

51. Hargraves interview 2016.

52. Sue Cummins, ed., Our Lady of Dolours: Parish – Jubilee 1932–1982 (Mitchelton: Our Lady of Dolours Parish, 1982), 6.

53. George Nugent, “Some Reminiscences and Acknowledgements,” in Cummins, Our Lady of Dolours, 23; “Priest’s Legacy of Goodness,” The Catholic Leader, 14 October 2001.

54. “First Church for Changes;” “Archbishop To Open Church At Mitchelton,” The Catholic Leader, 15 July 1965.

55. While within the municipal boundary of Brisbane the Catholic Church appears to have taken up new liturgical arrangements earlier than the Church of England, this was not the case in the state of Queensland in general. Earlier Church of England churches in regional Queensland were built with the altar forward of the liturgical east wall. The earliest was St Luke’s Church of England, Kenilworth (1955), by John Brayton, which also adopted modern architecture. See: Jonathan Charles Holland, “The Past is a Foreign Country: A History of the Church of England in the Diocese of Brisbane, 1950–1970” (PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, 2006), 209; “New Look Architecture is Here,” The Courier Mail, 23 November 1955; Daunt, “Communities of Faith,” 158, 182. Others in regional Queensland followed, including St Andrew’s Church of England in Longreach (1960) by Neville R Willis, which was built with a decagon shaped nave. See: Daunt, “Communities of Faith: Regional Queensland’s Innovative Modern Post-war Church Architecture,” in Victoria Jackson Wyatt, Andrew Leach and Lee Stickells, eds. Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 36 (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2020), 65–78.

56. Cummins, Our Lady of Dolours, 6, 23.

57. “New Mitchelton Church Opened,” The Catholic Leader, 22 July 1965, 3.

58. David Hilliard, “The Religious Culture of Australian Cities in the 1950s,” Hispania Sacra 42 (1990), 472.

59. Hilliard, “The Religious Culture of Australian Cities in the 1950s,” 474.

60. Hilliard, “The Religious Culture of Australian Cities in the 1950s,” 475. This post-war growth was driven by European immigration (English, Irish and Italian), which greatly boosted Catholic congregations and schools.

61. Janina Gosseye and Alice Hampson, “Queensland Making a Splash: Memorial Pools and the Body Politics of Reconstruction,” Queensland Review, 23, no.2 (December 2016): 178–95.

62. Schools funded by the Queensland State Government continued to develop throughout the city’s suburbs. There is commonly one primary school per suburb, and a state High school per four to eight suburbs. See: Department of Education and Training, Queensland Government, Primary School Catchments and Secondary School Catchments maps www.qgso.qld.gov.au/maps/edmap/, last accessed 26 August 2022.

63. Frank Gibson Costello, who between 1941 and 1952 was the Officer-in-Charge at the Brisbane City Council Building and Planning division, preferred neighbourhood units of 500 families (or about 2500 persons), occupying about 150 acres. He proffered that for each four of these neighbourhood units, certain municipal community facilities needed to be provided: a library, swimming pool, sporting fields, picture theatres and health centre. See: Frank Costello, “The City of Brisbane Plan,” Architecture 34, no.4 (October-December 1945): 233.

64. Although Costello did not detail where church communities fit in, Langer did. In his 1944 publication Sub-Tropical Housing he outlined his ideas for decentralised community facilities, where community essentials like the shopping centre, “primary school, kindergarten, health-care centre, library, church, recreation and sports ground, hall and bus stop” were never to be more than a ten-minute walk from any house. See: Karl Langer, Sub-Tropical Housing (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1944), 3. For more information about Karl Langer, see: Deborah van der Plaat and John Macarthur, eds. Karl Langer: Modern Architect and Migrant in the Australian Tropics (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). Langer also designed several prominent Queensland churches. For more information on Langer’s churches, see: Sven Sterken and Lisa Daunt, “From Austria to Australia: Three Lutheran Churches by Karl Langer,” in Victoria Jackson Wyatt, Andrew Leach and Lee Stickells, eds. Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 36 (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2020), 350–61; and Sven Sterken and Lisa Marie Daunt, “Tempered Modernism: Karl Langer’s Architecture for the Lutheran Church in Queensland,” Fabrications 31, no. 3 (2022): 398–426.

65. Alice Hampson and Janina Gosseye, “Healthy Minds in Healthy Bodies. Building Queensland’s Community. One Weatherboard at a Time,” in John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Andrew Wilson, eds. Hot Modernism: Queensland Post-war Architecture (London: Artifice, 2015), 236–61. See also: Hannah Lewi and David Nichols, eds. Community: Building Modern Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010).

66. Earlier attempts to achieve a legislated town plan for Brisbane failed. See: J.R. Minnery, “The Wonderful Possibilities of the Future: Town Planning and Greater Brisbane,” 11^th International Planning History Society Conference, Barcelona, Spain 14–17 July 2004; John Macarthur, Donald Watson and Robert Riddel, “Civic Visions for Brisbane,” in John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, and Andrew Wilson, eds. Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945–1975 (London: Artifice, 2015), 218.

67. The Courier-Mail, 2 March 1960, 2, cited in Holland, “The Past is a Foreign Country,” 140–1.

68. A deliberate attempt to address social issues was the “Church and Life” movement of 1966, sponsored by the Australian Council of Churches, as an interdenominational study program, which aimed “to encourage a more effective ‘Christian presence’ in the community and greater co-operation in projects for the common good.” See: Holland, “The Past is a Foreign Country,” 429.

69. Holland, “The Past is a Foreign Country,” 140–1.

70. The Wells Way was the coined phrase for church building fundraising campaigns facilitated by the American born Wells Organisation, which operated in Queensland between 1959 and 1974.

71. For discussion of these social changes and their effects on Australia’s Churches see: David Hilliard, “The Religious Crisis of the 1960s: The Experience of the Australian Churches,” The Journal of Religious History 21, no.2 (June 1997): 209–27; David Hilliard, “Pluralism and New Alignments in Society and Church 1967 to the Present,” in Bruce Kaye, ed. Anglicanism in Australia: A History (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 124–50. For Queensland see: Holland, “The Past is a Foreign Country”; Jonathan Holland, Anglicans, Trams and Paw Paws: The Story of the Diocese of Brisbane 1945–1980 (Brisbane: CopyRight Publishing Company, 2013), 121–202; John Maguire, Prologue: A History of the Catholic Church as Seen From Townsville 1863–1983 (Toowoomba: Church Archivists’ Society, 1990), 189–226.

72. For more information, see: Daunt, “Communities of Faith”.

73. “Corinda opens new church,” The Catholic Leader, 19 December 1968. The land was purchased in 1910 for the 1912 church, with more land purchased in 1916 for the first church to be extended. The 1968 church is the current and second church-building for this site.

74. James Gibson interview 2018. This is the first dedicated church-building, but third building for this site, with the first building opened on 31 August 1952 as a hall and the second opened on 18 March 1956 as a Sunday School.

75. James Gibson interview 2018.

76. James William Gibson, ed. Except the LORD Build: A Manual of Building for Presbyterian Congregations (Brisbane: Presbyterian Church of Queensland, 1967), 22.

77. Gibson, Except the LORD Build, 25.

78. The church received (a very rare) three mentions in the periodical Australian Presbyterian Life: “New Buildings of Queensland Church,” Australian Presbyterian Life, 1 October 1966, 27; “Wavell Heights Church Distinctly Planned,” Australian Presbyterian Life, 29 October 1966, 28; “Church on the Round Achieves its Aim,” Australian Presbyterian Life, 10 June 1967, 27; and his book in “Church Building,” Australian Presbyterian Life, 10 June 1967, 12.

79. Reflecting Presbyterian worship—as opposed to the communion table/altar (Eucharist) centric or pulpit (lesson) centric worship styles/liturgies of other denominations.

80. James Gibson interview 2018.

81. “Church on the Round Achieves its Aim”.

82. This site was purchased on the advice of the architect. See: Robin Gibson interviewed by Lisa Andersen (Daunt), 22 June 2000, in Lisa Andersen (Daunt), “Responses in Ecclesiology: Examples of Brisbane Church Building Design in the 1960s” (B.Arch thesis, University of Queensland, 2000); Henry Clarkson, The Light in the Heart of Kenmore: 100 Years of Presbyterian Tradition and Development in Kenmore and Districts (Kenmore: Kenmore Presbyterian Church, 1973), 10–11; Henry Clarkson and Dawn Langford, Tell the Next Generation: A Project of the Kenmore Uniting Church Parish, 130th Anniversary (Kenmore: Kenmore Uniting Church, 2015 Compact Disc).

83. Assisted by Frank Reginald Holmes (b.1937).

84. Clarkson and Langford, Tell the Next Generation, 72.

85. Clarkson, The Light in the Heart of Kenmore, 10–11.

86. Most congregations instead adapted a former church to a multi-purpose church hall, for use by community groups as well as the Church’s own groups. However, more were built as the Uniting Church commenced a new building campaign around 1990, resulting in numerous church complexes (many designed by Thomson Adsett). For more information on this Kenmore church see: Daunt, “1960s Brisbane Church Architecture,” 224–5.