The Alexander Mackintosh Archive: revealing records of a master builder
Forgotten for decades, the archive of building contractor Alexander Mackintosh was rediscovered in a roof space in the 1990s. It includes more than 270 architectural drawings and reveals information about the work of many of Sydney’s leading architects of the early 20th century.
Alexander Mackintosh was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1859. Little is known of his youth or training. In 1885 he emigrated to Sydneyaboard the SS Aberdeen, his emigration papers listing him as a journeyman joiner. In Sydney, Alexander established himself as a successful master builder and contractor, working with many of the city’s leading architectural firms.
In 1892 Alexander married Mary Louisa Mackenzie. Together they had four daughters, with three surviving to adulthood. After Mary’s untimely death in 1913, Alexander moved the family to ‘Glenora’, an Arts and Crafts–style house he built on Ingram Road in Wahroonga. Alexander died in 1937, but the house remained in the Mackintosh family’s hands until the death of Jessie Mackintosh, Alexander and Mary’s eldest daughter, in 1981, when it was sold.
Even though the era of Mackintosh ownership had come to an end, a part of the family’s history would remain hidden in the roof space until the 1990s. Stored, and forgotten, under the house’s angled roof was a considerable collection of documents from Alexander’s working life – more than 270 architectural drawings and over 30 specification documents relating to building work carried out between 1900 and 1926, mainly on Sydney’s north shore. Although the papers show signs of wear and tear and water damage from their many years under the roof, the collection is a remarkable survival, documenting Alexander’s building work for domestic and commercial projects by architects such as B J Waterhouse, W Hardy Wilson, John Burcham Clamp and James Peddle.
Below is a taste of the material in the archive.
Eric Apperly’s Avondale Golf Club, 1927
Eric Langton Apperly (1889–1951) is best known for his golfing prowess, but he also enjoyed a distinguished career as an architect. Born in Sydney, Apperly took up golf at a young age to help him recover from illness. He became one of the most successful amateur golfers in Australia, becoming the national amateur champion in 1920 and the NSW amateur champion on five occasions. Professionally, Apperly studied architecture at the University of Sydney, followed by further studies in London at the Architectural Association School. Returning to Sydney in 1910, he joined the firm of Power & Adam. In 1918 he went into partnership with Arthur Henry Wright (1881–1959), establishing the firm Wright & Apperly in Bond Street, Sydney.
In the mid-1920s, the opportunity arose for Apperly to unite his passions. The Avondale Golf Club was the vision of a group of businessmen wanting a private golf club for their use on Sydney’s north shore. In 1926 the group purchased 200 acres (81 hectares) of bushland behind Presbyterian Ladies College in Pymble. The following year, Apperly submitted plans for the course and temporary clubhouse, and by December the course was complete and the clubhouse was officially opened by NSW Governor Sir Dudley de Chair. Avondale Golf Club was Apperly’s first golf course design, happily combining his professional and sporting worlds in one project.
William Hardy Wilson’s ‘Purulia’, 1914
The renowned architect, author and artist William Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) is best known for his domestic architectural work, in particular a series of houses designed to convey his deep admiration for Australian colonial architecture. Key to his designs were the principles of restraint and simplicity; this was especially evident in the design of his own home, ‘Purulia’ on Fox Valley Road in Wahroonga, built in 1914. Hardy Wilson envisioned the house as a ‘maidless flat’,1 with a simplified floor plan reflecting a modern way of living. With no domestic staff, the kitchen was to be used more as a family room, and it adjoins the living room rather than being hidden at the rear of the house.
Hardy Wilson claimed that the naming of his house was inspired by the conversation of two pigeons who perched on the roof during construction. Their sounds reminded him of the name ‘Purulia’, an old house he had seen in Tasmania, ‘so the pigeons gave the house the name’.2
‘Purulia’ survives today as an elegant and refined example of Hardy Wilson’s architectural practice, and the precision and quality of construction and detailing provide enduring evidence of Mackintosh’s fine work.
Edwin Roy Orchard’s home at Clifton Gardens, c1914
Several architects commissioned Mackintosh to construct their own homes, a testament to his skill as a builder. Edwin Roy Orchard (1891–1963) placed his trust in Mackintosh to undertake the construction of Orchard’s home around 1914. On a hill in Clifton Gardens on Sydney’s north shore, overlooking the harbour, Orchard planned a two-storey Arts and Crafts house of cream-coloured rough-cast walls and dormer windows set into a steeply pitched roof.
The dormer windows would be criticised in Building magazine in 1915 – they were said to be unsuitable for the Australian climate, bringing the rooms ‘too close to the direct heat of the summer sun’. However, the magazine praised Orchard as:
a young Australian architect with a keen eye for the best points in architectural design and a knowledge of how to best apply them … Being of an artistic temperament, he gives his work an attractiveness that is particularly fitting to domestic architecture.3
A note on the joinery points to Orchard’s eye for detail – it reads: ‘All joinery to be well seasoned, fine grained Oregon [pine] with wavy figure’.
Orchard was one of the architects responsible for introducing the California bungalow style of house to Sydney in the years before World War I, and became best known for his Art Deco designs in Queensland. Several of his early designs for clients on Sydney’s north shore survive in the Alexander Mackintosh archive.
B J Waterhouse’s ‘Elwatan’ for Robert C Dixson, 1924
While many clients are well represented in the Mackintosh archive, others appear in only a single building specification document – a listing of requirements for different sections of a build compiled by the architect for the builder or subcontractor. Architects typically don’t keep copies of these types of documents (unlike plans and elevations), and builders’ copies tend to be used and discarded. The Mackintosh archive contains more than 30 specification documents, providing a rare glimpse of the correspondence between architect and builder.
‘Elwatan’ is one of the properties that only appear in the archive in a specification document – in this case, a document relating to the preparation of the site for a client named Robert C Dixson. The unassuming document – badly damaged and only twopages long – relates to the construction in 1924 of what was then the most expensive residence ever built in Australia. The B J Waterhouse–designed house, with 168 acres (68 hectares) of garden, a model farm, fowl house and elaborate garage, was constructed and decorated at a cost of £100,000. The garage alone reportedly ‘cost as much as a suburban home’.4 The name of the house, ‘Elwatan’, comes from the Arabic for homeland or motherland.
Robert Craig Dixson was a millionaire who had inherited the British-Australasian Tobacco Company from his father, Sir Hugh Dixson. Robert’s new house was built to be a family home, but its elaborate turret – and high price – had commentators declaring that ‘Elwatan’ had ‘put the Castle into Castle Hill’.5
Robert and his wife enjoyed entertaining, and the house played host to an enormous number of parties, fundraising events and musical performances throughout the 1930s and 40s. After Robert’s death in 1958, the main house, along with six cottages on the estate, was sold to the Anglican Church and turned into the Mowll retirement village, which is still operating today.
Explore the Alexander Mackintosh Archive.
Notes
1. W Hardy Wilson, ‘Building “Purulia”’, in Domestic architecture in Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1919, p15.
2. Ibid, p17.
3. ‘Australian domestic architecture. How “type” is evolved’, Building, vol 16, no 96, August 1915, p118.
4. ‘Sydney’s £100,000 bungalow’, Smith’s Weekly, 1 May 1926, p9.
5. Ibid.
Published on
Mel Flyte
Collections Discovery Assistant, Caroline Simpson Library
Growing up in rural NSW on Wiradjuri country, Mel’s childhood was spent undertaking her own archaeological excavations in the creek bed on her family’s property. Old bottles, cow bones, and pieces of rusty farm equipment were all exciting discoveries capable of revealing stories of the past. School holidays were punctuated with long car trips with her mum to see blockbuster exhibitions in Canberra and Sydney, so galleries and museums have always felt familiar. Studies in archaeology and art history have inspired Mel’s passion for objects and their ability to elicit emotions and tell stories.
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