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.

Up until the mid twentieth century Brisbane consisted mostly of timber houses that sprawled across the city’s hills and lowlands, divided by the meandering Brisbane River.¹ Among the most striking features of the city’s landscape in the early twentieth century were its ecclesiastical buildings in Gothic and Romanesque styles, which were mostly perched atop Brisbane’s many hills and ridges (Fig. 1). From the early twentieth century, the four largest Christian denominations—the Church of England,² the Catholic Church, and the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches—had coexisted in a position of some strength in the city, and all preferred to build hilltop structures.³

Figure 1. Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, ca. 1900, showing the Baptist City Tabernacle (1890) in the centre, the spire of St Paul’s Presbyterian (Spring Hill, 1889,) to the left, and Wickham Terrace Presbyterian (1887, demolished 1905) on the right edge of the photo (SLQJO, photographer: Poul Poulsen https://hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/9723 accessed August 29, 2018).

From the mid-1960s, however, significant changes occurred in these Christian religions, which in Brisbane prompted shifts in the urban positioning and architectural manifestation of their ecclesiastical infrastructures. Seeking to express religious renewal through built form, these Christian denominations began to reconsider their urban strategy of building grand monuments perched on hilltops and crests, in favour of building smaller, almost domestic-scale churches in new suburban developments in and around the city—not only in the Brisbane’s inner suburbs, but also in its middle and outer suburbs. By the end of the 1950s and from the early 1960s Brisbane’s architects also increasingly rejected the Gothic and Romanesque architecture styles in favour of designing more contemporary church buildings that were more sympathetic to their residential setting, both in terms of materiality and scale. In some cases, they also explored gathered plan arrangements that responded to international calls for liturgical renewal.⁴ Initially these buildings were still sited on elevated sites but from the mid-1960s less conspicuous suburban sites were selected which considered the building’s position relative to other churches and community facilities, also considering the necessity to provide off street parking and the integration of other social functions. Churches thus increasingly assumed the role of social centres that not only rivalled each other, but also the growing number of secular community infrastructures developed by Australia’s maturing welfare state.

While recent research has documented developments in post-war church design in Australia,⁵ not much is known yet with regards to how Australia’s religious territories changed post-World War II. Following recent scholarship abroad into territories of faith,⁶ this paper takes a first step in better understanding the post-war development of Australia’s religious territories by analysing how interactions between Brisbane’s geography, religious leaders and architects led to shifts in the urban planning and architectural development of the city’s churches. Based on texts published in the journals of Brisbane’s four major religious denominations, as well as interpretative maps analysing the development of the city’s religious territory from 1945 until 1977 and appraisals of the architectural design of a select number of churches, it documents the churches’ transition from grand structures perched on hilltops and crests towards smaller, domestic-scale churches in new suburban developments in and around Brisbane.

Brisbane’s Pre-WW II Religious Territories

Up until World War II, the construction of ecclesiastical structures in Brisbane focused mainly on the city’s Central Business District (CBD) and its inner suburbs. (Fig. 2) The first St Andrew’s Lutheran church was built at the junction of Wharf Street and Wickham Terrace in 1861.⁷ Located on hills nearby were the Baptist City Tabernacle (1890) and the Wickham Terrace Presbyterian Church (1887, demolished in 1905). The ornate Albert Street Methodist Church, which is located in close proximity to the later built Brisbane City Hall (1917–1930), opened in 1889 following the design by Oakden, Addison and Kemp.⁸ Across the Brisbane River, on the cliffs of Kangaroo Point was the stone church of St Mary’s Church of England (1873, which replaced the earlier 1849 storm damaged church) and the Holy Trinity Church of England in Woolloongabba (1870, replaced in 1875 and again in 1930).⁹

Figure 2. Mapping of Brisbane’s hilltops and Pre-World War II religious buildings.

(Daunt, 2020, with the base image from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; hilltop locates from QTOPO, accessed July 21, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

Early in the twentieth century, the Church of England claimed the highest point in Brisbane’s CBD to construct St John’s Cathedral. Diocesan architect John Hingeston Buckeridge (1857–1934) selected the site between Ann and Adelaide Streets in 1900 and from 1906 to 1910 the first stage of English architect Frank Loughborough Pearson’s (1864–1947) design was built.¹⁰ St Stephen’s, Brisbane’s Catholic Cathedral, which was designed by architects Benjamin Joseph Backhouse (1829–1904) and Richard George Suter (1827–1894) and built between 1864 and 1922, also occupied a prominent site within the CBD, although not as elevated as that of St John’s. It was only from the early twentieth century that the Catholic Church more vigorously pursued the construction of hilltop structures in Brisbane. These were mostly located in the city’s inner suburbs and were to a large extent the work of James Duhig (1871–1965), Brisbane’s Catholic Archbishop from 1917 to 1965.¹¹ Under Duhig’s leadership, Brisbane’s archdiocese witnessed an ambitious ecclesiastical building program that included churches, hospitals, and schools, earning Duhig the moniker “James the Builder.” Of the more than four hundred major building projects realised during Duhig’s tenure, close to three hundred were churches.¹² Approximately half of these were within Brisbane’s municipal boundary. Two noteworthy early examples are the Spanish mission cement-rendered brick church of Our Lady of Victories (1919–1925), designed by T. R. Hall and G. G. Prentice in Bowen Hills¹³ and St Peter and Paul’s, designed in 1916 by Henry (Harry) James Marks (1871–1939) and opened in 1926 in Bulimba.¹⁴ These followed closely after St Brigid’s in Red Hill (1914), which was designed by local architect Robert (Robin) Smith Dods (1868–1920). Although this Catholic church was realised before Duhig was appointed Archbishop (but while he was already co-adjutor),¹⁵ it masterfully blended the Gothic and Romanesque styles—it had the proportions of the former and the architectural detailing of the latter—that he much admired.¹⁶ Duhig wanted only the very best ecclesiastical architecture for his Archdiocese, capable of evoking Rome’s famous Basilicas.¹⁷

Building a Highly Visible Catholic Church “On the Seventy-Seven Hills of Brisbane”

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Catholic Church had the most extensive building program in Brisbane.¹⁸ This was facilitated by Duhig’s enthusiastic interwar property-acquisition, which enabled him to establish parishes and build churches on these lands following the end of World War II.¹⁹ As Thomas Patrick Boland (1941–2019), an ordained priest and religious historian has noted: “Between 1945 and 1950 he [Duhig] opened nine parishes, six of them in 1946, as chaplains returned from the war. Between 1951 and 1965 he opened twenty-three more, only three of them in the sixties. Between 1945 and 1965 he added thirty-two parishes to his existing seventy-seven. He had increased the number by over 40%.”²⁰

In 1986 Boland authored a comprehensive biography on Duhig, which offers insights into the Catholic Archbishop’s personal motivations for his pastoral and territorial vision for Brisbane. Duhig was born in Ireland and trained in Rome; two important factors that greatly influenced his urban vision for the Church. According to Boland “visibility of the church was important to the Irish [immigrants to Australia], who had been forced to build in the back streets, behind narrow, low facades in their Catholic homeland.”²¹ In Rome then, where Duhig trained for priesthood for several years, he “could see the monuments of Rome on its seven hills around him,” from the vantage point of Vatican Hill.²² This, Boland contends, inspired Duhig to build a highly visible Catholic Church “on the seventy-seven hills of Brisbane.”²³ (Fig. 3)

Figure 3. Mapping of Brisbane’s Catholic church buildings opened during the tenure of Archbishop James Duhig (Daunt, 2020, with base image sourced from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

In terms of territorial organisation Duhig favoured small religious units with easy access to the Church to encourage close contact between the clergy and the people.²⁴ This meant creating many new parishes and religious communities, which gave scope to his keen interest in property acquisition and building, and which he finely attuned to Brisbane’s physical landscape to create a highly visible Catholic Church. Already prior to becoming Archbishop, Duhig, in his capacity as co-adjutor, had begun purchasing hilltop estates.²⁵ Once a property had been obtained, he would seek out a religious order to buy it.²⁶ Residences on these sites would then be converted into convents, brothers’ residences and schools that also served as the new congregation’s first worship space until a church could be built on the site.²⁷ Between August 1917 and August 1918 Duhig spent the extravagant sum of £40,000 for large hilltop estates in Toowong, Nundah, Clayfield, Bulimba, Hawthorne, Coorparoo, Ashgrove and Dutton Park, all middle suburbs, located at about five kilometres distance from Brisbane’s CBD, and the inner suburb of Bowen Hills.²⁸ (Fig. 4) This spending spree left him with considerable debt—he was balancing loans and overdrafts across eleven banks—soon after taking up the Archbishop’s role.²⁹ Duhig was aware of the precarious financial situation, but in his 1947 autobiography points out that these sites could not have been purchased later as they would no longer have been available.³⁰ From the interwar years through to the early 1970s these hilltops and ridges were gradually equipped with various ecclesiastical buildings to form religious precincts.³¹ (Fig. 5)

Figure 4. Mapping of Brisbane’s suburbs and religious buildings, with reference to suburb types.

(Daunt 2020, with the base image from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; suburb boundaries from voomMAPS.com accessed July 30, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

Figure 5. Mapping of Brisbane’s Catholic churches.

(Daunt 2020, with the base image from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

Although the leadership of Brisbane’s other large denominations (Church of England, Presbyterian, Methodist) were equally keen to create smaller, more easily accessible religious units in close proximity to their congregations, they were unable to match the size and number of land parcels that Duhig purchased for the Catholic Church.³² As a result, during Duhig’s tenure the Catholic Church in Brisbane became more prolific and more visible than the others. Boland notes that from 1950 until 1965 “scarcely a weekend passed in which he [Duhig] did not open or lay the foundation stone for some church building. Frequently there were two functions on the one afternoon, and three were not unknown,” and adds: “On those rare occasions when there was nothing to open he would enquire querulously what the clergy were doing.”³³

In 1961, during his blessing and opening of the St John the Baptist new parish church in Enoggera, an outer suburb to the north-west of Brisbane’s CBD, Duhig, who was then ninety years of age and forty-four years into his tenure as Archbishop, reflected on his building work in Brisbane:

I think I was one of the few who realised the beauty of the site selected for the capital of Queensland, and I am pleased that the Church has been able to do so much to enhance its natural beauty…Some people tell me that I have picked the eyes out of Brisbane. They might more appropriately have said that we have adorned the hills and environment of the city with buildings that have made an impressive contribution to its dignity and importance.³⁴

Gently Modernising Brisbane’s Hilltop Churches

In Brisbane, as elsewhere in Australia and in Christian contexts abroad, the 1950s marked the end of a long period of religious stability.³⁵ If the church building boom of the latter half of the 1950s (Fig. 6) saw numerous new churches built on the city’s hilltops and ridge lines, these gradually abolished historical architectures, and began to modernise—albeit ever so gently—in response to growing calls for religious renewal.

Figure 6. Bar chart of Brisbane’s religious buildings opened per year from 1829 to 2018.

1945-49 shown red; 1950-59 shown pink; 1960-69 shown yellow; 1970-79 shown blue, years before and after shown in grey (Daunt 2022, collated from “Queensland dataset”).

For Windsor, a suburb three-and-a-half kilometres from Brisbane’s CBD, Francis (Frank) Leo Cullen (1909–1991), a nephew of Catholic Archbishop Duhig and one of Queensland’s most prominent Catholic church architects, designed Holy Rosary, which was opened on 22 August 1954. (Fig. 7) Holy Rosary was positioned along a major road and on a hilltop. Although a sizeable brick church, it had limited ornamentation and a simple aesthetic. The church, for instance, had no arches and all openings had straight lintels. In form and layout, however, the church did still follow the basilica type. At the opening, Duhig praised the church’s beauty, its siting, and its interiors: “This is indeed a beautiful church well worth of the commanding site which it occupies…all who gaze on the interior of this new church today cannot but be impressed by the beauty and its devotional aspect.”³⁶

Figure 7. Recent exterior photograph of Holy Rosary Catholic, Windsor (1954), by Frank Leo Cullen (Daunt, 2022).

Although he allowed parishes to experiment with new architectural ideas, Duhig made his preference for Gothic and Romanesque styles very clear, as he often spoke vehemently against modern architecture, even when he was invited to open new (modern) Catholic churches.³⁷ In 1959, for instance, as he opened and blessed St Monica’s (Tugun, south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast) he declared: “it is about time we returned to dignified Goth’c & Romanesque arch’ture: modern ecclesiastical arch’ture is abominable”, and added “This looks like an army shed!”³⁸ Duhig’s Anglican counterpart, Archbishop Reginald Charles Halse (1881–1962, Archbishop 1943–1962), did not share his Catholic confrater’s aversion for modern architecture. Speaking at the dedication of St Francis’ Church of England in Nundah, which opened only a few days after St Monica’s, he said: “When I hear people say that modern building cannot rise up to the older standards I am prepared to say ‘come & see this new church’.”³⁹ (Fig. 8)

Figure 8. Recent exterior photograph of St Francis of Assisi Church of England, Nundah (1959), by Lund Hutton Newell (Daunt, 2022).

Modern church designs were also being built for Methodist congregations. Near the top of a hill in Wilston, Ford Hutton Newell designed a “soft” modernist Methodist church (1956), with a tall “victory” war memorial tower positioned boldly on the street corner, possibly to outcompete the Catholic church across the road.⁴⁰ This was a substantial brick build and signified an important architectural shift for the Brisbane Methodist church, which up to this point had built churches in historicising styles.⁴¹ Another influential modern design, St Stephen’s Church of England (1958) in Coorparoo, designed by Horace George Driver (1902– 1982), was celebrated as “daringly modern” in Edward James Archibald Weller’s (1903–1979) 1959 book Buildings of Queensland.⁴² It was the first church in the state to integrate air-conditioning and one of many to clad its front façade in glazed coloured tiles. However, the proportions of its façade still emphasised the vertical, like in Gothic churches, with tall windows breaking up its brickwork walls. The roof, whilst still gabled, has a shallow pitch and the internal planning was still arranged as the processional basilica, though the nave and sanctuary were proportionally wider than in earlier churches and no screen visually separated the congregation from the minister. These latter two buildings were amongst the most modern of Brisbane’s 1950s churches.

A-Frame Churches on Hilltops

From the early 1960s, the popularisation of new construction technologies led to experimentation with building form. A new type that was introduced in Brisbane around this time was the A-frame church. Constructed of steel and with a roof that extended to function as walls, the A-frame church not only reduced building costs, but it also offered clergy and congregants who were still coming to grips with the demands of a changing society and liturgical renewal a comfortable middle-ground between tradition and modernity. A-frame churches essentially put a modern jacket on what was still a landmark building with an uplifting interior volume (reminiscent of historical church designs), certainly when situated atop one of Brisbane’s hills or ridgelines.

Brisbane’s first A-frame church, The Grove Methodist, opened in Ashgrove, a middle suburb at a distance of about five kilometres from the CBD, on 8 April 1962 following the design of James (Jim) William Gibson (1932–2018) of Cross and Bain.⁴³ (Fig. 9) When Gibson designed this structure, the A-frame church building type was being published extensively in American architectural periodicals, which were well read by Queensland’s architects.⁴⁴ As a practicing churchman (Presbyterian and later Uniting Church of Australia) Gibson was also aware of new ideas for gathered worship spaces, which he introduced in The Grove Methodist by splaying the side walls, lowering the roof over the sanctuary (so that the congregation would not be subservient to the sanctuary and minister) and providing space outside the entry for social gatherings before and after services. Gibson also turned the church sideways, to increase the visibility of the tall A-shaped glazed facades to those walking and driving by. This siting was unconventional when compared with other Brisbane churches, which commonly face the road head on. The Grove Methodist was well received in the local press. It was featured prominently on the front cover of the March 1963 issue of Methodist Times, which described it as “A forward move,” while the Courier-Mail, one of Brisbane’s largest newspapers, declared it “one of the most striking examples of contemporary church architecture in Brisbane.”⁴⁵

Figure 9. Interior view of the Grove Methodist (1962) by James W. Gibson of Cross and Bain, 1962 (Jim Gibson archive courtesy of Annette Coupland).

Another noteworthy ecclesiastical A-frame structure in Brisbane is the Stuartholme Chapel in Toowong (at its furthest edge, near Mount Coot-Tha, now known as Bardon), also a middle suburb of Brisbane. This land had been purchased by Duhig in 1917, who stated that it was “the ultimate hilltop site.”⁴⁶ It was, however, only in the early 1960s (1961–1963) that a school chapel was constructed at Stuartholme Catholic Girl’s School following the design of Leo Joseph Drinan (1903–1967) of Hennessey, Hennessey and Co.⁴⁷ (Fig. 10) His design beautifully complemented the building’s elevated location and the adjoining 1920s ecclesiastical structures with a dramatic, tall, triangular form, in which a large stained-glass window designed by the young artist (and the school’s art teacher) Andrew J. Sibley (1933–2015) was set.⁴⁸ High on the hilltop, the chapel’s siting was far less accessible than was deemed suitable for a parish church, so it took Duhig some time to convince The Sisters of Sacred Heart (the French order, who in 1920 had founded this school) to consider the site at all.⁴⁹ This remains Brisbane’s most elevated ecclesiastical precinct and chapel and a final crescendo for Duhig’s Brisbane of adorned hilltops.

Figure 10. Recent exterior photograph of Stuartholme Catholic Girls School Chapel, Toowong (1963), by Leo Drinan of Hennessey, Hennessey and Co. (Daunt, 2018).

Of similar structural expression is Cullen Fagg Hargraves and Mooney’s Our Lady of Mt Carmel Catholic in the middle suburb of Coorparoo (1964–5). (Fig. 11) Designed by Keith William Mooney (1930(?)-1995), this church combines traditional and contemporary detailing under an expressive steel and concrete A-frame structure with angled glass side walls and diamond skylights between each structural portal of the nave. Like The Grove Methodist, Our Lady of Mt Carmel’s adoption of the A-frame form ensured it became a landmark within its local community. The sanctuary end is especially visible from the hilly streets to its east. However, at its street address this church’s front façade is set down almost a full storey, with a flight of steps leading from the footpath down to its entry doors.

Figure 11. Recent exterior photograph of Our Lady of Mt Carmel Catholic, Coorparoo (1964–5), by Cullen Fagg Hargraves and Mooney (Daunt, 2022).

Lady of Dolours in Mitchelton: Addressing Liturgical Renewal on a Brisbane Hilltop

As the modern movement in architecture and international calls for liturgical renewal across the Churches (which led to the Second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church, 1962–65) impelled church leaders to get with the times, more and more churches were built in a modern style, even if these were initially still located on prominent, elevated locations, and still expressed a desire for representation that was more in line with earlier teachings of the church.

Leading the way was Cullen’s practice which from the early 1960s increasingly adopted new, modern architectural ideas, mainly under the influence of younger staff joining the firm, including Mooney and also Cecil (Cec) Francis Hargraves (1930–2019). Hargraves, who had travelled through Canada and the US in the mid-1950s, was a devout reader of American magazines, including Liturgical Arts.⁵⁰ One of the elements that Hargraves considered an essential component of good church architecture was a prominent roof. This, he believed, would help to distinguish the church from nearby secular buildings, as well as other religious structures on site.⁵¹

In the early 1960s, Hargraves designed one of Brisbane’s pivotal Catholic modern churches: Our Lady of Dolours in Mitchelton. (Figs. 12 and 13) Although this church was still situated on an elevated hillside (though not as elevated as others discussed above)—the site was originally purchased by Duhig in the late 1920s—it clearly expressed liturgical renewal in its plan, shape, and materiality.⁵² The client of Our Lady of Dolours was Parish Priest Father George J. Nugent (1912–2001, Mitchelton PP 1947–1989). Having travelled overseas in 1961 and having read the English Church of England minister, art critic and writer Reverend Peter Hammond’s (1921–1999) 1960 book Liturgy and Architecture, Nugent was aware of liturgical changes taking place within the Catholic Church. Accordingly, in 1962, he commissioned Hargraves to design “a church that could be seen from all over the parish” and that would bring “the congregation [as] close as possible to the altar”.⁵³ Hargraves’ response was a simple brick structure with an “oriental pagoda” roof that satisfied his own desire for a distinguishable modern church—the Catholic Leader described it as “elevated and commanding”⁵⁴—and also addressed Nugent’s wish to express liturgical renewal in built form. The church had a square plan with a diagonal centre aisle that gathered the congregation around the sanctuary. Importantly, the altar was brought forward, away from the sanctuary (liturgically east) wall, to allow the priest to stand either in front or behind it.⁵⁵

Figure 12. Our Lady of Dolours Catholic Church, Mitchelton (1965), by Frank L. Cullen, Fagg, Hargraves & Mooney, photographed ca. 1965 (Cross-Section no.158 December 1965, 3).

Figure 13. Cropped floor plan dated 17 February 1966, of Our Lady of Dolours Catholic Church, Mitchelton (1965), by Frank L. Cullen, Fagg, Hargraves & Mooney (UQFL432 Frank Cullen Collection).

On 18 July 1965, after a protracted building process and a few months after Duhig’s passing, Our Lady of Dolours was opened and blessed by Duhig’s successor Archbishop Patrick O’Donnell (1897–1980, Duhig’s co-adjutor from 1948, Archbishop 1965–1973), who said⁵⁶:

The style of the Church is new and not everyone will be happy with it. But, although we must be led by tradition…we must not become slaves to it. In the beginning, when the Church came out of the Catacombs she adopted the style of the Roman basilica for her places of worship. As time went on, the style of Churches changed to that of Romanesque, and, several centuries later to the wonderful Gothic style of architecture. This style reached its perfection during the Renaissance period and then degenerated into Baroque. Now … we have the Modern style of architecture—as time and thought proceed so also do ideas and styles of architecture and literature. We must be constant with the times.⁵⁷

Moving into the Middle and Outer Suburbs, as Community Centres

The story of the gradual modernisation of church architecture that unfolded between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s is also a story of Churches venturing further and further into Brisbane’s developing suburban territories—from middle suburbs, such as Windsor, Wilston, Coorparoo, Ashgrove, and Bardon to outer suburbs, such as Michelton, where Our Lady of Dolours was built—and changing their approach to church siting.

According to religious historian David Hilliard, by the 1950s, Australia’s state capitals commonly consisted of a series of concentric rings, each with a distinctive religious make-up.⁵⁸ As Hilliard notes, Australia’s city centres usually featured two cathedrals, one for the Church of England and one for the Catholic Church, as well as churches for the other main denominations. Around the CBD was a band of working-class inner suburbs that tended to be mostly Catholic, surrounded by “established middle-class suburbs” that housed a higher proportion of Protestants, particularly the Church of England.⁵⁹ (Figs. 3 and 14) From the end of World War II, these concentric bands that had formed around the country’s capitals from the early twentieth century (whose population density continued to increase in the second half of the twentieth century) were progressively surrounded by a new ring of post-war suburbs, which attracted young families with mortgages, higher purchasing power and newly acquired family cars.⁶⁰ In Brisbane, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, most church building activity, occurred in this new ring of post-war suburbs that were five to ten kilometres away from Brisbane’s CBD. The Catholic Church’s major building push in this area in the 1960s followed on from the Church of England’s building campaign in this same area in the 1950s. (Figs. 5 and 14) Interestingly, as the Churches ventured into the outer suburbs (while solidifying their presence in the inner and middle suburbs), the predilection for hilltop sites became less outspoken. Instead, accessibility became the main driver in Churches’ territorial planning, as church buildings increasingly assumed the role of community centres.

Figure 14. Mapping of Brisbane’s Church of England churches (Daunt 2020, with the base image from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

Although this change in the church’s public character was undoubtedly informed by calls for liturgical renewal, in Brisbane, it was also prompted by the (relative) absence of government-funded community facilities. If by the 1950s Brisbane’s urban population had grown significantly when compared to the early twentieth century—particularly in the city’s suburbs—the growth of government-funded community infrastructures in these suburbs lagged behind; not only in recently constructed post-World War II suburbs, but also in inner-city suburbs that had developed from the early twentieth century. Apart from a few in-ground, mostly open-air, swimming pools that from the late nineteenth century were realised in the inner suburbs, such as Fortitude Valley and Spring Hill,⁶¹ and some recreational green reserves (both in the inner suburbs and a bit further afield), other community facilities, such as libraries and public halls, were virtually non-existent. As a result, by the 1950s, the major points of community centrality in Brisbane were its schools, church halls and, to a lesser extent, the churches. At that time, the latter still aspired to be representational temples to God rather than more unassuming community centres.⁶²

From the late 1950s, however, informed by growing welfare state ideology and with the encouragement of local town planning advocates, such as Frank Gibson Costello (1903–1987)⁶³ and Dr Karl Langer (1903–1969),⁶⁴ who argued for the decentralisation of services, things began to change. The Brisbane City Council began constructing smaller suburban community facilities, such as public lending libraries, sports infrastructure and entertainment venues.⁶⁵ Progress was, however, slow; due in part to the fact that the first legislated and regulated town plan for Brisbane was not formalised until 1965.⁶⁶ Up until the 1960s, government-funded community infrastructure was thus not holistically planned for and, not surprisingly, sparse. In 1960, to highlight the lacking offering of community facilities within the city’s suburbs, The Courier-Mail stated: “social workers regard some—though not all—new areas as little better than leafy slums…they too often have no kindergartens, no clubs, no playing fields, no parks, no swimming pools, no libraries, no public halls—and nothing for youngsters to do [leading to] outer suburban boredom.”⁶⁷

To address the needs of the densifying and growing city and population, from the late 1950s and particularly during the 1960s, churches increasingly and more deliberately and explicitly assumed the role of community centres.⁶⁸ Church buildings began to function as local community facilities, catering to a range of organisations and age groups.⁶⁹ Fund raising events, including those introduced by the Wells Way, also led to greater social activity, at least for the duration of the fund raising period.⁷⁰ Such initiatives aligned with theological-liturgical shifts occurring across denominations in the 1960s, when laity participation and an emphasis on church community were fostered, as the Churches attempted to stave off disruptive secular shifts within Australian society.⁷¹ To attain greater community engagement and counteract growing secularisation, the city’s four largest denominations adopted three distinct strategies. First, they upgraded their existing infrastructure in the CBD and the city’s inner-city suburbs, which meant that in post-war decades many timber churches were replaced with brick buildings. Secondly, they increased their presence in the inner suburbs. During the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, these four denominations each continued to construct churches to ensure that in each suburb their denomination would have at least one church. Finally, they expanded into the newly developing post-war suburbs.⁷²

Liturgically Rethought Churches in Brisbane’s Outer Suburbs

By the time that church buildings in Brisbane had well and truly ventured into its outer suburbs, Vatican II was underway in Rome, which meant that the Catholic Church and its architects increasingly recognised the need to re-think sacred architecture and consider how the Church could best cater to modern society. In Brisbane, this meant that from the mid-1960s, a new type of church emerged that attested to a holistic re-thinking of the Church’s role within the society, and (particularly) for its suburban communities. This new (suburban) church was more attuned to its commonly residential surroundings, and more sensitive to its context, both in terms of materiality and scale. A good example is St Joseph’s War Memorial Catholic in Corinda, which opened on 15 December 1968. (Fig. 15) Designed by Hargraves for Cullen, Fagg, Hargraves and Mooney, St Joseph’s was situated on a flat part of the suburb, near the railway station and shopping precinct. It was built from brick and covered with a gable roof to resemble a large house and (thus) blend in with its suburban surroundings.⁷³ Responding to liturgical change, Hargraves positioned the sanctuary at the intersection of the cruciform plan and applied clear glazing to the sides of the church, which were sheltered by deep verandahs, to provide light, air and views to the garden and the surrounding community.

Figure 15. Exterior photograph of St Joseph’s War Memorial Catholic Church, Corinda (1968), by Cullen Fagg Hargraves and Mooney (Cross-Section, no.205, Dec 1969, 2).

Re-evaluations also occurred within the Presbyterian denomination. At the forefront of the local Presbyterian Church’s architectural re-thinking was Jim Gibson, who in the early 1960s had designed The Grove Methodist Church (discussed above). In the mid-1960s, Gibson convened the Queensland Presbyterian Assembly’s Architectural Committee, and designed several more churches, including St Luke’s at Wavell Heights, a northern outer suburb of Brisbane.⁷⁴ (Figs. 16 and 17) Inspired by the writings of Hammond and visits to various Presbyterian churches in Sydney designed by Stanley (Stan) B. Smith (1919–2005) of McConnell, Smith and Johnson, Gibson published a book in 1967, entitled Except the LORD Build, a manual of building for Presbyterian congregations, in which he called his fellow Presbyterians to action.⁷⁵ He posited that “The Church Reformed must ever be reformed” and that to achieve this, “[t]he theology of the church should determine the architecture of the church,” adding: “Only when the architecture of the church is made to reflect its theology will there be created satisfactory church buildings.”⁷⁶ Within this book Gibson detailed for its layperson readership aspects of site selection including its position in relation to other churches and community infrastructures; briefing the architect; considerations for both the exterior architecture and internal arrangement; and design for other community uses with the church site.

Figure 16. Exterior view of St Luke’s Presbyterian Church, Wavell Heights (1966), by Cross and Bain, photographed on the opening day (photographer: L. & D. Keen Pty Ltd. 1966, courtesy Wavell Heights Presbyterian Church).

Figure 17. The interior of St Luke’s Presbyterian Church, Wavell Heights (1966), designed by Cross and Bain, during the opening service (photographer: L. & D. Keen Pty Ltd, 1966, courtesy Wavell Heights Presbyterian Church).

Through his own designs Gibson sought to achieve church architecture directly responsive to Presbyterian worship and encouraged others to rethink functional-liturgical briefs ahead of embarking on their design to ensure “the gathering and involvement of the congregation in the act of worship.”⁷⁷ Gibson expressed these ideas in St Luke’s Presbyterian, which he designed while working for Cross and Bain. This church, which opened on 9 November 1966, was highly influential.⁷⁸ St Luke’s was set back from the street to align and, to a certain extent, blend in with its residential neighbours. The building’s stretched pentagon, kite-shaped plan was topped with a generous folding roof to create an inclusive worship space that valued each sacrament equally.⁷⁹ A narrow spire with a skylight base detail was placed centrally, over the baptismal font, which was positioned at the heart of the congregation, and illuminated the centre of the worship space. Gibson made sure that the sanctuary did not receive more natural or artificial light than other parts of the worship space, and that it was thus not given greater prominence than the congregation that gathered around it.⁸⁰ He also placed the pulpit and the communion table side by side to reflect their equality within Presbyterian worship. Six months after the opening of St Luke’s, Australian Presbyterian Life wrote: “all commented favourably on the ‘gathered around’ seating arrangement…to conduct worship in this building, or to be one of the other worshippers in the service, is to begin to understand what it is to belong in a community—the beloved community of Christ’s people.”⁸¹

Like St Luke’s, Kenmore Presbyterian, which opened on 24 February 1968, was also centrally located within its suburb, at a bend along one of Brisbane’s main arterial roads, where it enjoyed maximum visibility as well as optimal accessibility for Kenmore’s growing post-war community.⁸² (Fig. 18) Located in Kenmore, one of Brisbane’s newly developing outer suburbs about nine kilometres south-west of Brisbane’s CBD, this Presbyterian Church was designed by Robin Gibson (1930–2014),⁸³ who blended some of the architectural ideas embedded in Hargraves’ Mitchelton Catholic church with those of Jim Gibson’s St Luke’s Presbyterian to create a complementary pair of square planned buildings with pyramid roofs, neigh identical in footprint, size, and form, but one positioned higher up in the topography and more prominent from the street than the other. (Fig. 19) The more prominent building housed the church proper, while the second building, which was designed as a Christian Education Centre, contained a multi-purpose space on the top floor for Sunday school and other family, social and community events, and a kindergarten on the bottom floor. The complex was to serve not only the congregation but the whole community. From 1968 and through to the present it has been “used by every variety of community group and all ages from kindergarten [and also new mothers and baby groups] to senior citizens”.⁸⁴ The site was specifically purchased with this programme in mind.⁸⁵ Built in a suburb where government-funding for community facilities was still pending in the 1960s, this church explicitly expressed the post-war church’s desire to play a central role for Brisbane’s growing suburban communities. Yet, despite its clever design and its popularity, Kenmore Presbyterian remained a rarity; one of only a few post-war Brisbane churches to include such a generous offering of new spaces specifically devoted to community facilities (when not co-located with a religious school).⁸⁶

Figure 18. Cover of the 1966 fund raising brochure for the proposed Kenmore Presbyterian Church (Queensland Presbyterian Archives, Kenmore file).

Figure 19. The stair linking the two buildings of the Kenmore Presbyterian Church (1968), by Gibson and Associates (Kenmore Uniting Church collection, courtesy of Dawn Langford).

Conclusion

From the 1960s, Brisbane’s four largest denominations all reconsidered their urban planning strategies, as they upgraded existing church precincts, acquired new sites to boost their presence, and ventured into developing post-war suburbs. If up until the early 1960s, the pre-World War II preference for ecclesiastical structures to be prominently positioned on Brisbane’s hilly topography was still pursued, the design of these new landmarks increasingly departed from historicising Romanesque and Gothic styles to experiment with more contemporary and modern architectural forms. By the late 1960s then, in response to both the international Churches’ and local Church communities’ calls for liturgical renewal, a new “type” of church building emerged that was more community oriented and sought to fulfil the growing need for social centres within Brisbane’s densifying and expanding urban fabric. These churches were smaller, often domestic in scale and were commonly no longer positioned on elevated sites, as they endeavoured to blend in with their residential surroundings. Thus, as the city’s municipal government slowly developed its own secular community infrastructures, the Churches contributed towards town planners’ ideals for tight-knit suburban communities, with social facilities within a short drive of their homes. (Fig. 20)

Figure 20. Mapping of Brisbane’s hilltops and 1945–1979 religious buildings (Daunt 2020, with the base image from BCC City plan 2014 pd online mapping, accessed July 20, 2018; hilltop locates from QTOPO, accessed July 21, 2018; church building locations from “Queensland dataset”).

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.