National War Memorial (South Australia)

The National War Memorial Committee was formed in order to bring the proposal to fruition, and in February 1924 the committee announced an architectural competition to find the design of the new memorial.[9] In the preamble to the conditions of entry, it was stated that the new memorial was to serve the purpose of "perpetually commemorating the Victory achieved in the Great War, 1914–1918, the Supreme and personal sacrifice of those who participated in that War, and the National effort involved in such activities".[10]

Portrait of Dame Nellie Melba GBE by Henry Walter Barnett. She proposed building a carillon of bells as the new memorial.

Entry was open to South Australians who were British subjects,[11][12] and those intending to submit designs were required to file a statement of intent prior to 29 February 1924. The competition closed on 30 September 1924, and there was a one-guinea entry fee. Three assessors were nominated to judge the entries: the South Australian Architect-in-Chief, A. E. Simpson; local architect Herbert Louis Jackman (representing the South Australian Institute of Architects); and Sir William Sowden.[9]

The committee specified a budget of £25,000[9] (previously figures of both £5,000 and £100,000 had been discussed),[13] and the conditions of entry stated that the memorial was to be situated at the entrance to Government House on the corner of King William Street and North Terrace, placing it just behind the existing memorial to the South African War.[14] This location was counter to previous suggestions: a 1919 survey of architects had proposed that the memorial should be built on Montefiore Hill,[15] while in 1923 the plans for the memorial involved erecting it at the rear of Government House, rather than at the front.[16]

The committee left open the form that the memorial would take, beyond stating that the memorial was not to be "utilitarian in character",[14] and debate over the form led to the emergence of a number of suggestions, many of which were covered in the media of the day. These included Dame Nellie Melba's proposal to build a carillon of bells;[13][17] a suggestion by Simpson Newland to turn Anzac Highway into a "Way of Honour" by adding triumphal arches to each end;[17] and Walter Charles Torode's plan to build a 30-metre-high (98 ft) "metal and marble" monument on the top of Mount Lofty with an electric car to carry people to the summit.[5]

In the end a total of 28 architectural firms registered their intent to submit entries to the competition—a lower number than expected, but Richardson suggests this may have been due to work on proposals for the new Adelaide railway station.[18] Out of those 28, a total of 26 firms submitted designs by the deadline. On 10 November 1924, before judging could be completed, the Richards Building in Currie Street was destroyed by fire, taking with it all 26 proposals.[19]

Although most of the judging had been completed before the fire, suggestions at the time that the committee could use what they had learned from the entrants to propose a new competition with greater clarity as to the requirements led to naught: a 1925 letter to the then Premier John Gunn reveals that there was little to be learned from the competition, as the assessors had found that none of the designs were suitable.[20]

Louis Laybourne Smith, the architect who (along with Walter Bagot and Rayner Hoff) was largely responsible for the winning design.

Little progress had been made on the memorial by 1926. While some debate occurred in respect to the form that the memorial would take,[21] the focus of the discussions concerned the location of the memorial, and this centred on the future of Government House and the role of the Governor. A number of left-wing politicians argued that the grounds of Government House should be turned over to the State and used to build the memorial while the conservatives desired to retain the status quo.[5] By 1925 the National War Memorial committee was prepared to accept the Government House grounds as the site of the memorial, but they delayed making an announcement.[22] This proved to be fortuitous, as legal issues prevented the plan from going ahead. Instead a portion of the grounds, located at the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue, was put aside for the purpose.[5] (The plan to move the Governor and to use the grounds as part of a larger war memorial were revisited, over 80 years later, in 2007).[23]

In 1926, after pressure from the returned soldiers, a second competition was announced.[24] Once again the budget was set at £25,000. As per the first competition, all entrants had to be South Australian British subjects, and all entries were to be judged anonymously, but this time there was to be only one assessor: John Smith Murdoch, the chief architect for the Commonwealth of Australia. In deference to the previous competition, the top five entrants from 1924 were each given £75 upon the submission of a new design, and all of the designs were insured by the government for £100 each.[25]

With entries restricted to South Australians, only 18 designs were received—a figure that was "correspondingly fewer" than those received in other states where the competitions were open to all Australians.[26] Nevertheless, in his Assessor's Report, Murdoch acknowledged that the quality of some of the proposals was such that they "probably would not have been exceeded had the competition been more open".[27] After examining the submissions, on 15 January 1927, the design by Louis Laybourne Smith, (one of the principals at the architectural firm Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne–Smith), was selected by Murdoch as the winner.[26]

View of North Terrace, Adelaide, looking east from between Kintore Avenue and King William Street, Adelaide, circa 1940. In the foreground can be seen the National War Memorial.

Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne-Smith had entered the 1924 competition with an arch designed by Walter Bagot, but in 1926 Bagot was away in Europe. Thus Laybourne-Smith was responsible for drawing and submitting the final design,[5] although he was clear to highlight the role Bagot played in the "architectural conception" of the monument.[28] While the firm was to be awarded 6% of the cost of the memorial, they refused all but enough to cover their own expenses, asking instead that residues (approximately £1000) be placed in a trust fund to pay for the upkeep of the work.[29] While this is seen as an altruistic act, Richardson noted that Laybourne-Smith was both a member of the National War Committee and sat on the sub-committee which drafted the rules of the competition, and thus it may have been considered "improper" to accept the money.[30]

When announced to the public the design was "universally hailed as a masterpiece".[31] Nevertheless, in writing his report on the result of the judging, Murdoch stated of the winning architect that he "depends almost entirely on the sculptor to tell the story of the memorial, employing in his design no more architecture than that required to successfully frame and set his sculptural subjects, and to provide accommodation to the extent asked for by the conditions".[27] This view was echoed by Inglis, who described the architecture as "essentially a frame for statuary"—an approach that he felt was "unusual" for an architect.[26] As a result of this dependency on the sculpture, some of the other contestants expressed concerns, arguing that the contest was about architectural works rather than sculptural ones, even though the conditions of the competition specifically allowed for sculpture in the proposals.[31]

Early stages of the construction of the National War Memorial, circa 1928.

Construction of the memorial began in 1928 with the cut and placement of marble blocks from Macclesfield and Angaston.[32] The South Australian Monumental Works were chosen to work on the construction, with Alan Tillett as the principal. Although no sculptor was named in the winning proposal, it did make mention of a possible candidate—who later proved to be Rayner Hoff, a Sydney-based sculptor born in England.[26] Rayner Hoff produced the designs for the sculptures from his Sydney studio, with the bronze castings from Hoff's plaster models being produced by the South Australian firm A. W. Dobbie and Company. (Hoff had expressed reservations that a South Australian company would be capable of handling bronzes of the required size, but a test casting of the lion's head from the memorial was sufficient to overcome his concerns). The two angel reliefs sculpted from the Angaston marble were produced by Julius Henschke in situ from Hoff's designs, expressed through one-third sized plaster models which Henschke then scaled to suit.[5]

Significant delays occurred during construction after a strike by the stonemasons. The stonemasons were demanding a 44-hour week and to be paid at "outside rates", (rates of pay for stonemasons were based on whether or not the work was to be constructed on site in the open air, or inside under cover— Tillett was paying the lower "inside rates", even though most of the work was to be conducted on the site). However, Tillett had tendered on the basis of a 48-hour week at inside rates, and paying extra would have caused significant financial problems. Tillett eventually won after the dispute went before the courts,[5] but the strike had caused considerable financial damage to Tillett's company, which went into receivership in 1930 and stayed in that state until after the memorial was completed.[33]

The South Australian Government had dedicated £25,000 for the memorial. It was estimated that bulk of the expense would be masonry at £15,300 with sculptural work and landscaping requiring £8,500 and £1,200 respectively. However, the final cost of construction pushed this out to approximately £30,000.[34]

The National War Memorial, circa 1940, showing its location in relation to Government House (visible to the left of the memorial).

The National War Memorial in South Australia became the fourth state World War I memorial to be opened when it was unveiled in 1931. Inglis notes that this is in keeping with the size of the constituency, arguing that "[t]he larger the constituency that each of these collective tributes had to represent, the later it was built".[35] It was unveiled before a crowd of almost 75,000 on Anzac Day, 25 April 1931, (the 16th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing), by the Governor Sir Alexander Hore-Ruthven.[34] The crowd, "as huge a crowd as anyone could remember assembling in the city",[36] was unable to fit in front of the memorial, so many thousands assembled at the Cross of Sacrifice in Pennington Gardens to await a later ceremony.[36] Hore-Ruthven was introduced by the acting state premier, Bill Denny MC, whose involvement in the unveiling, according to Inglis, was unusual for a Labor politician.[37]

The first dawn service to be conducted at the memorial was held on Anzac Day 1935,[38] and was attended by 200–300 people.[39]

In 2001, the memorial's 70th anniversary year, a three-month remedial project was undertaken, restoring the bronze and stonework details and reinforcing the foundations. The work was completed just days before the Remembrance Day services.[40] In 2002 the architects responsible for the restoration, Bruce Harry & Associates, were awarded a Heritage merit award for their work on the memorial by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.[41]