Oakden, Addison and Kemp was an Australian architectural firm in Melbourne, Victoria. While it was short lived, existing from only 1887 to 1892, they designed a number of outstanding projects, and all three members designed many more notable projects separately, and in earlier and later partnerships.The firm had its beginnings as Terry & Oakden, a partnership between the older and architect prolific Leonard Terry (1825-1884) and architect Percy Oakden (1845-1917), which lasted from 1874 until Terry's death in 1884. In 1885 George Henry Male Addison joined to create Terry Oakden & Addison, and in 1887 Henry Hardie Kemp joined, creating Oakden, Addison & Kemp.
One of the earliest projects of the partnership was North Park, a large mansion for Alex McCracken, of McCracken's Brewery, completed in 1888, which was amongst Melbourne's first examples of the Queen Anne style. The South Australian Insurance building completed the same year in Collins Street, part of the Rialto / Olderfleet group, is an interesting essay in the Gothic revival, with elements in the rarely used material, architectural terra cotta. Another large project of that busy year was the Queens (or Carlton) Coffee Palace on the corner of Rathdowne Street and Victoria Street, overlooking the Carlton Gardens, in an exuberant style described as German Renaissance. The building never opened as a hotel, instead eventually become apartments, then a Catholic women's hostel, before being demolished c1970. Their broadly Queen Anne design for the 1889 London Chartered Bank in Queens Parade, Fitzroy North, is a local landmark, its three storey restrained red brick form accentuated by a conical roof. That same year they designed Alton, a large house on the slopes of Mt Macedon, in a style that has been described as Arts & Crafts, and notable for the first floor walling of hung terra cotta tiles.
The firm also took on the design of a massive project, the 12 storey Australian Property Investment Co. Building (together with John Beswicke) in Elizabeth Street, amongst the tallest in the world in 1889. Later known as the APA building, it was Australia's tallest building until 1912, and Melbourne's tallest until 1929. It was also designed in the new Queen Anne fashion, the tall spikes and spires of the roof adding to its verticality.
The next year they designed the more conventional, but still tall, premises for the YMCA headquarters, with its mansard roofs and internal hall. The YMCA never occupied it, due to the financial crash of the 1890s, which also curtailed the work of the firm.
Addison had started a Brisbane branch in about 1886, and designed separately after 1888 though under the name of the firm, and was responsible for a series of designs that are still landmarks in Brisbane. He left teh partnership to establish his own practice there in 1892, the Melbourne firm becoming Oakden & Kemp. This firm lasted a few more years during the depression, by after Kemp moved to Sydney in 1895, the partnership was dissolved in 1896. Kemp later returned to Melbourne, and partnered with Beverley Ussher to create Ussher & Kemp in 1899, popularising the local version of the Queen Anne (or Edwardian or Federation) villa with numerous outstanding designs until Ussher died in 1908. In 1900 Oakden took on Cedric Henry Ballantyne to become Oakden & Ballantyne, until Oakden died in 1917.
List of works Percy Oakden
1870: Ballarat Town Hall, Sturt Street, Ballarat (Oakden merged the competition winning exterior by JJ Lorenz, and interior by HR Caselli) 1872: Wesleyan Church, Sydney Road, Brunswick 1873: Clunes Town Hall and Court House, Bailey Street, Clunes 1887: St Albans Village Plan Precinct, Victoria and Albert Crescents, St Albans
Terry & Oakden 1874: Former Methodist Church, Church Street, Fitzroy North 1875: Former ES&A Bank, 49-51 Reid Street, Wangaratta. 1876: Ercildoune, Napier Street, Footscray 1880: Former ES&A Bank, Clarendon Street, South Melbourne 1881: Front addition to town house, Gipps Street, East Melbourne 1883: Francis Ormond Building, Workingmen's College (first stage), La Trobe Street, Melbourne 1884: Former ES&A Bank, Alexander Road, Ascot Vale 1887: Queen's College, Melbourne
Oakden, Addison & Kemp 1887: Former Wesleyan Church and Manse, 21 -23 Highbury Grove, Kew 1888: Grosvenor Chambers, 9 Collins Street, Melbourne 1888: North Park (later Woodlands), Woodland Street, Essendon 1888: South Australian Insurance Building (originally New Zealand Chambers), Collins Street, Melbourne 1888: Wesleyan Church, Hesse Street, Queenscliff 1888: Manse, former Wesleyan Church, 21 -23 Highbury Grove Kew. 1888: Queens / Carlton Coffee Palace, Rathdowne Street, Carlton. (demolished c1970) c1888: Former London Chartered Bank, High Street, Northcote 1889: Former London Chartered Bank, Napier Street, St Arnaud 1889: Former London Chartered Bank, 370-74 Queens Parade, Fitzroy North 1889: Former London Chartered Bank, 71 Wellington Street, Kerang 1889: Thomas Gaggin House, Alma Road, Camberwell 1889: Dr Thomas Rowan House (Alton), Alton Road, Mount Macedon (destroyed by fire 1983) 1890: Australian Property Investment Co. Building, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne (with John Beswicke, demolished 1980) 1890: Former YMCA (now Salvation Army Temple), Bourke Street, Melbourne (with Billings & Son) 1890: Terrace House, 16 Jolimont Terrace, East Melbourne 1890: Workshops, Workingmen's College, Bowen Street, Melbourne (now Building 4, RMIT) 1890: Former Wesleyan Methodist Church, Cardigan Place, Albert Park (now part of Albert Park Primary School) 1892: Francis Ormond Building, Workingmen's College (second stage), La Trobe Street, Melbourne
Oakden & Ballantyne 1901: Ivanhoe Metropolitan Fire Station, Upper Heidelberg Road, Ivanhoe 1901: The Wilderness Homestead Second House, Wilderness Road, Gritjurk 1910: Hawthorn Fire Station, William Street, Hawthorn 1910: New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company Building, Collins Street, Melbourne
References
Further reading Lewis, Miles (December, 1977) Architectural Drawings As Historical Sources in The La Trobe Journal, No. 20, pp: 69-89 (The Friends of the La Trobe Library) ISSN 0041-3151