The Mansions is a heritage-listed row of six terrace houses at 40 George Street (corner of Margaret Street), Brisbane City, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by G.H.M. Addison and built in 1889 by RE Burton. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 August 1992.
The architectural style is Victorian with Italianate influences.
History The Mansions, built in 1889 and located near Parliament House on the George Street ridge at the corner of Margaret Street, was designed by architect George Henry Male Addison as six attached elite masonry houses. Constructed by RE Burton for £11,700, it was an investment for three Queensland politicians – Boyd Dunlop Morehead, then Premier; William Pattison, Treasurer; and John Stevenson, member for Clermont – during a decade of enormous population growth and land development in Brisbane.
Since the 1820s, the north bank and adjacent ridgeline of the Brisbane River, now containing William and George Streets, has always featured a concentration of government and associated activities and uses. Over the period of the Moreton Bay penal settlement, buildings constructed along this ridgeline, were used by government officials for "accommodation, administration and control". When the settlement was closed in 1842, the remnant penal infrastructure was used by surveyors as a basis for the layout for the new town of Brisbane. Set at right angles to the river, the prisoner's barracks determined Queen Street, while the line of buildings along the ridge determined William Street. Streets surveyed parallel to these streets including George Street, formed Brisbane's rectangular grid.
While a range of buildings and activities occurred along George and William Streets from the 1840s, the government maintained its dominant presence in the area. At some sites (such as the former Commissariat Store and Brisbane Botanic Gardens) earlier uses were continued. The establishment phase following the separation of Queensland in 1859 saw the new colonial government reserve land parcels and construct a range of buildings to facilitate its functions. The building of Government House (now Old Government House) and Parliament House along the eastern end of the George Street alignment in the 1860s firmly entrenched the physical reality of a government precinct in the area.
The siting of Parliament House had a pronounced effect on the built environment around lower George Street. Many of Queensland's early politicians were pastoralists, a reflection of their economic dominance in the colony. Together with a growing workforce of public servants, these politicians required accommodation when in Brisbane. From the 1860s to the 1880s, a range of buildings, many built by, or for politicians, were built to address these needs.
Throughout the 1880s Brisbane was transforming into a colonial city. Many of Queensland's immigrants remained in the capital, swelling the population from almost 40,000 in 1881 to well over 90,000 in 1891. This growth stimulated building, municipal organisation, amenities and services, and cultural and leisure outlets. The flourishing building activity caused Brisbane's practising architects to treble in number, and builders and contractors to rise from 16 in 1882 to 87 in 1887. Brisbane's centre sprouted a host of impressive new stone buildings including the Customs House, additions to the Government Printing Office, the first wing of the Treasury Building and the Alice Street facade of Parliament House. The number of inhabited dwellings in the capital almost doubled between 1881 and 1891 from 5,814 to 10,321, causing the town to overshoot its old boundaries. Consequently, land speculation was extensive and the capital value of metropolitan land rose towards its peak in 1890, a level not approximated again until 1925.Crook, Paul 'Brisbane Society in the 1880s', UQ Hons thesis, 1958, Ch. 1, pp. 4, 11-12, 31Davison, 'New, Brawny, Uneven and Half-finished', in Fisher, Brisbane in 1888, Brisbane History Group, Brisbane, 1988, pp. 156-7Crook, 'Brisbane Society in the 1880s', Ch. 1, pp. 4, 23 cited by H J Davies, The Hume Family of Toowoomba and Brisbane: A Case Study of Middle-class Social Mobility, UQ PhD thesis, 2004, pp. 184-6.
The land on which The Mansions was later erected, lots 1 and 2 of Portion 38, was originally purchased as Town Lot 56 in 1852 by land speculator James Gibbon. By 1863 he had subdivided the land into three lots, but lots 1 and 2 remained vacant. The land was transferred in 1882 to William Williams, a successful Brisbane businessman associated with the Australian Steam Navigation Shipping Company. He in turn sold the vacant land in August 1888 to Pattison, Morehead and Stevenson who were members of parliament, business associates and friends.
BD Morehead (1843–1905) was a pastoralist, businessman and politician who served in both the Queensland Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council. With AB Buchanan he established BD Morehead and Co. in 1873 which comprised a mercantile and trading business and a stock and station agency. He experienced financial disaster in the 1893 economic crisis. William Pattison (1830–96), a businessman, mine director and politician, served in the Queensland Legislative Assembly between 1886 and 1893. He was one of the original shareholders and later chairman of directors of the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company but was damaged politically and economically by the 50% collapse of the company's share price from mid-1888. John Stevenson was a pastoralist who bought into the firm of BD Morehead and Co., managing the stock and station business until 1896 when he formed the business J Stevenson and Co. He was a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1875 to 1893.
These three men engaged architect George Henry Male Addison to design a row of houses for the George Street site. Addison had moved from Melbourne to Brisbane and established a branch of Oakden, Addison and Kemp, which in 1888 won the competition to build a new exhibition hall for the National Agricultural and Industrial Association on Gregory Terrace (now known as the Old Museum Building). Addison was an accomplished designer, his buildings stylistically eclectic and more ornately and highly finished than any previously seen in the city. The distinctive use of face brickwork relieved with stone or rendered detailing and steep dominant roof forms are characteristics of his work. Other Addison-designed buildings include the Albert Street Uniting Church in Brisbane and the Strand Theatre in Toowoomba Addison's skills and distinctive style of domestic architecture were recognised and attracted business from Queensland's leading professionals. Noteworthy houses designed by him are Cliveden Mansions in Brisbane; Kirkston in Brisbane; Oonooraba in Maryborough, and Ralahyne, and Cumbooquepa both in South Brisbane. Addison called tenders for the construction of The Mansions viz "city residences in George street" in the Brisbane Courier on 29 September 1888, closing on 15 October. RE Burton's tender of £11,600 was accepted.
The Mansions was designed to be impressive and aesthetically pleasing, using high quality materials, generous use of ornamentation and careful composition of building forms, the six individual houses being unified by the overriding use of arcades and the arrangement, in alternating pairs, of entries and roof dormers. The design was well suited to the climate, the arcades providing shade without impeding ventilation. Soon after the residences were completed in late 1889 The Boomerang described them as:"unique in their way, being built after the Queen Anne style of red brick with stone facing. They have been constructed to suit the climate. The mantelpieces are very rich and were specially imported. In fact, its as fine a terrace as any in Australia".Addison published a drawing of The Mansions in 1890 in the Building and Engineering Journal of Australia, describing them as:"convenient and roomy having three reception rooms and ten bedrooms, exclusive of servants" quarters. The front is of brick, relieved with Oomaroo [sic] stone, the total cost £11,700...".The Mansions as terraced houses were a type of land use that was uncommon in colonial Queensland due to the enactment of the Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885. This legislation enforced a minimum lot size of and a minimum frontage of effectively stopping the building of terraced housing in Queensland except as a rental investment. Early pre-legislation versions of terraced housing in Brisbane included Harris Terrace and Hodgson's Terrace (demolished) in George Street; Athol Place in Spring Hill (1860s); Princess Row in Petrie Terrace (1863) and a group of four houses () in Wellington Road, Petrie Terrace. Terraces built around 1885 or afterwards included Byrne Terrace on Wickham Terrace (1885–86, architects John Hall and Son, demolished); O'Keefe Terrace on Petrie Terrace (1886–87, architect Andrea Stombuco and Son); Cook Terrace (1889, possibly Taylor and Richer) on Coronation Drive; Cross Terrace in Red Hill (1886); Petrie Mansions on Petrie Terrace (1887–88); Brighton Terrace in West End (1890 John Beauchamp Nicholson); and two terrace houses on Wellington Street, Petrie Terrace (1894/95). Of these, The Mansions was the grandest and most ambitious architecturally.
Elite tenants began to occupy the well-located residences from 1889 but the economic downturn which culminated in the 1893 depression denied full occupancy. Although the Queensland economy experienced problems from the mid-1880s, the downturn only became apparent from 1889 after local confidence waned and British investment funds dried up. The building industry was affected first and most severely, then depression spread to other sectors of the economy. The severest years of the depression in Queensland were from 1891 to 1893. Brisbane's economic experiences followed those of the Queensland economy overall but with different emphases. The phenomenal growth of the 1880s had culminated in widespread speculation in land and buildings, which created an excess capacity of offices and dwellings. Brisbane's descent into depression began with a crash in the construction and building materials industries and the collapse of building societies towards the end of 1891 after the climax of its land and building boom. Land and rent values began dropping in 1890, reaching their lowest level in 1893–1894. Empty dwellings became a common sight in the city and suburbs - some deserted while other recently built ones had never been occupied. All three investors in The Mansions suffered severe financial losses during this depression.