A century ago, a public design competition resulted in the grand architecture of the Shrine of Remembrance. For 90 years it has stood as an iconic sentinal in Melbourne's architecture, so it's hard to imagine anything else in its place...
In this series, you'll uncover the the designs that could have been Victoria's War Memorial and the architects behind them.
In this episode, Dr Katti Williams shares the story of the architects behind the Shrine, Philip Hudson and James Wardrop, and how their military service impacted their thinking for the memorial.
Transcript
LAURA THOMAS: It’s the fourth of August , 1921, just under three years after the end of the First World War. There’s a meeting in Melbourne Town Hall where the Minister for Public Works, Frank Clarke, moves a motion for a National War Memorial for Victoria to be built in Melbourne. He says the monument should commemorate ‘the services of those who enlisted and fought in the Great War’
It’s a time when you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t been touched by the tragedy of conflict … so the stakes are high. An architectural competition is announced to decide what the memorial will look like, and ‘Australasians and British Subjects resident in Australia’ are invited to try their hand at the design.
A site is chosen – The Grange, it’s called - at the corner of Domain and St Kilda Roads, and by the competition closing date on 30 June 1923, 83 designs have been submitted. Of these, six are shortlisted. The winner, A Shrine of Remembrance, is announced on 13 December 1923.
Today, the Shrine of Remembrance is an iconic sentinel in Melbourne’s architecture. It’s hard to imagine the building looking any other way. Welcome to Designing Remembrance, a series where we uncover the designs that could have been, and the architects behind them.
From accusations of architectural plagiarism to spats over the function of the memorial, you’ll get a glimpse into the past and discover the roads not taken.
I'm Laura Thomas, and in this episode, we'll introduce you to the first placed architects, Philip Hudson and James Wardrop. Dr Katti Williams joins me today. She's a research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and she's currently doing ongoing research into Hudson and Wardop. So thanks Katti for joining us.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Pleasure.
LAURA THOMAS: Tell me a little bit about Hudson and Wardrop and their war service in particular.
KATTI WILLIAMS: So Hudson and Wardrop were both First World War servicemen, and they were both Melbourne practitioners. So they had trained in Melbourne. Hudson was originally from New Zealand, though, which is quite fantastic, putting the NZ in Anzac, but he did serve for the Australians. Hudson was born in 1887 and he and his family traveled across the Tasman in the early years of the 20th century, where he attended the Friends School in Hobart. And then he came to Melbourne, where he served an apprenticeship, which is known as articled to Anketell Matthew Henderson, who was one of the major architectural figures at the time, and his son, Kingsley Henderson would go on to become one of the adjudicators of the Shrine of Remembrance competition.
LAURA THOMAS: So there were already those early links there
KATTI WILLIAMS: Already! Wardrop was a boy from the inner west, and he served his articles with Charles D’Ebro who was another famous Melbourne architect, and at the time he was serving his articles, Hudson was employed in D’Ebro’s office as well. Now, immediately before the First World War, Wardrop and Percy Meldrum, who, again, their circles, architectural circles are quite small. He also entered the war memorial competition. They went to America to work and to travel, and Wardrop wound up in England, where he was studying, and then came back to Australia and enlisted.
LAURA THOMAS: And where did he serve?
KATTI WILLIAMS: James Wardrop was a signaller, so his rank initially was sapper, and he served on the Western Front. He actually received a Military Medal, and that was for actions at Harbonnières where he and another signaller spent hours and hours and hours trying to maintain communication lines under heavy bombardment and really under quite horrific conditions. Shortly after the actions for which he would later receive the Military Medal, he was admitted to hospital suffering debility or effort syndrome, including a very, very high heart rate. And he wound up in hospital in the north of England for some time, and was eventually repatriated to Australia. Wardrop's younger brother Archibald also served, and both brothers then went on to serve Australia in World War Two, James actually staying within Australia and working as a garrison engineer. Hudson served with the Fourth Pioneers on the Western Front, and three of his siblings served as well. His sister Pamela, was a nurse in India with the Australian Army, and his two younger brothers, sadly, were both killed on the Western Front.
LAURA THOMAS: And they were both killed in quite close proximity and in quite close proximity in time, is that correct?
KATTI WILLIAMS: That's true. John had initially been serving with the Australian Field Ambulance in the Dardanelles, and was wounded in May 1915, later transferred to the British Army, and then was killed in late October 1916 and then late December, Roy was killed by a shellburst.
LAURA THOMAS: And how do you think that their service, and in particular this profound loss that Hudson endured, impacted their submission to the design competition for Victoria's war memorial?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Look, I think it really underpins the absence that the building addresses. So rather than trying to express a sense of triumph through a triumphal arch, what they really did was highlight this sense of absence through the creation of an interior space. They both had firsthand experience of warfare. Wardrop had those traumatic experiences under fire, and Hudson had that traumatic experience of losing his two brothers. And Hudson wrote later on about his initial thoughts about the Shrine. He very explicitly said that he believed the building needed to have a soul or an interior. It needed to be a building that you could actually go into, that you could enter.
LAURA THOMAS: And they did this through the design of the Sanctuary, which is the upper level of the Shrine. It's where a lot of the ceremonial events happen. So let's talk more about that. Why is the Sanctuary so significant architecturally?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Within that interior space is the most marvellous evocation of absence. There's been a lot of work done on the absence of the Australian war dead. Bart Ziino is one fantastic academic, Ken Inglis, who's sadly no longer with us is another, another writer also Bruce Scates and so forth. Many, many historians have written about the importance of the experience of absence to Australia and to the other colonies. Now that's because the bodies of the dead were never repatriated, so we don't have any, you know, there was no no grave for people to physically visit, and therefore a war memorial becomes, in essence, a surrogate tomb. And what Hudson and Wardop managed to do was to create this absolutely marvellous interior space redolent of absence. You get all of the cues as you walk in, as you enter, to make you feel like you're entering a tomb. I mean, from the very first moment that you see the building, if you know what you're looking at, it's a pyramidal roof which was supposed to immediately signal to the observer that it was a mausoleum of some sort. From the minute you see that to walking through, being channelled through these tight corridors with really high ceilings and entering that charged inner space that's lit ethereally from above, you know that you're entering a space that's not for human habitation, and as you approach the centre of the floor, you see this stone lip and a sunken stone right in the middle of the floor, and as you walk up to it, you're unconsciously doing all the things you would do as you stand by grave site, you're bowing your head, having to physically look down. It's like a metaphor for the gaping tomb, and it's made all the more acute because there's no body actually there. It heightens that sense, and it plays on that sense in the most sincere and serious way, that there is no body there, that this is a place of absence.
LAURA THOMAS: And with the words 'Greater Love Hath No Man' carved into the stone. And it's an experience that a lot of people who come to the Shrine, those who come on the big ceremonial days, Anzac Day and Remembrance Day, or those that just come for a visit, I think everyone has that experience, that solemn experience, that experience of reflection. And you can probably, for those that aren't as architecturally inclined, you don't really consciously think about the design that went into that, but you can feel it. You can feel it going in there.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Absolutely feel it. Yeah, it's a transcendent, transformational sort of experience, almost. You enter from the busyness of the outside world, and all of a sudden, I mean, it even smells different. It smells of wreaths of the past, like old, old, dried flowers and the you can smell the stone almost. Everything about that inner space is just so carefully crafted to really heighten those emotional senses. Almost that you enter the soul of the building, the soul of the memorial.
LAURA THOMAS: What inspiration did Hudson and Wardrop draw on for this design? We won't talk too much about the specifics, because people can come and visit and see it, but I'm curious to know where they got this inspiration from.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Everyone should come and visit. It's just such a fantastic building. What they were really doing is referring to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. That was a very, very precise reference. It had been destroyed for centuries before the Shrine was built. So the beauty of the mausoleum, though, was that we have written descriptions of it, but no, obviously, no photographs, but also no first hand drawings, only reconstructions. So the way in which the mausoleum was imagined over time became almost as important as what it may have looked like. And what Hudson and Wardrop were doing was responding to one particular reconstruction, which was, it was a manner of representing the mausoleum that came from French Enlightenment architecture. And through that through the American schools. And it was, look, architects were taught by looking at at prior examples. So by making that conscious choice, they're signaling that this to any observer with the with the knowledge that this is a structure absolutely about death. And then once you get inside, there's no actual body, there's no grave, just this illusion that strikes at the heart of what it was to serve in a war on the other side of the world. One academic has written that those who served gave their bodies to the cause because they never returned.
LAURA THOMAS: And this is a theme that I think would have resonated with thousands of grieving families across Melbourne and Victoria.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I mean, the Cenotaph in Whitehall was so successful because it provided a focus for grief. In Melbourne, we had a temporary cenotaph too for a while, but to actually have a place that serves as a monument, and by not having any one body in it, you're also it's essentially becomes far more democratic and far more evocative.
LAURA THOMAS: So how did the public respond to this design?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Lot of people absolutely loved it. There was also a lot of criticism. Funnily enough, a lot of artists were quite critical, but it seems that a lot of them didn't understand the explicit architectural references that were being made. So people were like, 'what's this massive pyramid doing on top of a temple? That doesn't mean anything. It's too squat. Looks like a pottery kiln', without understanding that that the pyramid could be used as a roof. It didn't necessarily just mean a solid Egyptian form.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Another of the criticisms wasn't necessarily targeted at the Shrine itself, but at the whole idea of such a large amount of money being spent on a monument. Of course, at that time, the Second World War hadn't occurred. There was very much the idea that this was the war to end all wars, or certainly, hopefully the war to end all wars, which, of course, we all know that it wasn't. We all know that the Second World War wasn't either, but people still at the time, in certain quarters, were questioning the sheer expense, when this could be spent on a hospital, for example, or on provisions for returned soldiers. The newspapers were full of differing opinions, all having a say on the matter. After the Second World War, they made additions to the forecourt to commemorate the war, rather than building a second enormous monument. And by that stage, the memorial was really, it was part of the Melbourne landscape. The degree of regard in which the Shrine is held has waxed and waned over time, as well as we become more and more aware of processes of inclusion and exclusion, of contested histories, of the societal attitude to war and how that has changed and conflict and so forth. What I like to think we see now is more of a mindful approach to the structure and to what it represents. It's very important that we don't forget. It was always intended to be a didactic monument, one in which taught future generations. I would expect that message to change over time as well. But what it all comes down to, though, is that central expression of absence.
LAURA THOMAS: Do you know if Hudson and Wardrop stood in front of the Shrine, once it was constructed, and said, 'Yes, we've done it. We've achieved what we wanted to'?
KATTI WILLIAMS: I don't know. I've had the privilege of speaking with two of Hudson's grandchildren and two of Wardrop's grandchildren, and they all have a real sense of the significance of the Shrine and of the amazing achievement that their grandparents put in. What both families remembered were the stories of hours and hours of drawing put into the project. I think this is one thing we tend to forget when it comes to these competitions, is the huge investment in time and effort that is involved. Architects were trying to maintain their businesses, and particularly, sort of, towards the end of the 20s and in the 30s, I mean, this is a time of economic recession, trying to balance that with these competitive opportunities, where you're competing for, you know, the honour of designing the memorial, and if it's a war memorial, there's a huge emotional investment in that for a lot of people, particularly veterans. There's also the prize money if you were placed, and the exposure because the the prize winning designs were usually published in the press. All designs are usually exhibited in public exhibition. But there's also the fact that the work didn't end with the competition. I mean, later in life, Hudson said that it was 11 years of his life to build with the Shrine, and so it's an ongoing, ongoing project, and particularly when you look at all of the the delays that the Shrine project had. It looked at one point that it wasn't even going to be built. I mean, that must have been a tremendous blow.
LAURA THOMAS: We've through this series spoken about lots of different designs, all looking very different, all with a different purpose, all with a different story behind them. Why do you think that Hudson and Wardrop were selected as the winners for the Victorian war memorial design competition?
KATTI WILLIAMS: I think the Shrine just has something extra, and that's that inner space. It's not just any inner space. It's the way it's been so carefully designed and constructed that that transformative experience we've been talking about. But it also, it's so visible from the city, and it's got such a distinctive outline. So it's, it's a landmark that you can see from so many points of view, and before so many large buildings were built, it would have been even more prominent. But you can, you can enter it. You can actually enter, and you can enter as part of a public ceremony, or you can enter just on your own, just subtly, I think that's it's really enduring appeal. And I think the idea that it wasn't just an external monument, but an internal monument with that soul is what made it, really set it apart. Other structures had interiors, but there was just something about the way in which Hudson and Wardrop structured that inner space that really just brought the whole thing to another level.
LAURA THOMAS: And I think, as I mentioned earlier, that is still the soul of the building, the Sanctuary, the place that people go to reflect and have those services. So that is a transcendent thing over the decades and now into our 90th year here at the Shrine. Thank you so much, Katti, for sharing the history behind the Shrine and the design competition. It's been an absolute pleasure to pick your brains about this.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Thank you for indulging me on one of my favorite topics.
LAURA THOMAS: Always, we love it too. Thank you.
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