By Chris Johnson
Francis Greenway was Australia's first government architect and, along with his patron, governor Lachlan Macquarie, began the process of lifting the struggling penal colony in Sydney into a civic town with formal streets, significant public buildings and town squares to rival London.
Greenway had to battle for every project against unskilled convict labor, a suspicious military and then a commissioner sent from London specifically to curb what the Home Office saw as great extravagance. But he kept the flame of idealism alive, continually promoting a vision for a proud city.
His idealism lives partly in the buildings he managed to get built, but even more so in an incredible series of letters he wrote for the colony's first newspaper after he had lost his office and Macquarie had died.
Greenway's visions are the first strategic plan for Sydney, rivalling the importance of the Greater Sydney Commission and its strategic plan titled "A Plan for Growing Sydney".
There is renewed interest in Greenway, as on March 30, 2016, it will be 200 years since he became our first government architect or, more accurately, the acting civil architect. Since this date, there has been a continuous lineage of NSW government architects.
My fascination with Greenway comes from my 10 years as the 21st government architect and a book I wrote called Shaping Sydney – Public Architecture and Civic Decorum. The theme of this book was that public architecture had a civilising role that presented important buildings as signifiers of the continuum of a society's history. Greenway was steeped in the architectural learning of Georgian architecture, which interpreted late Renaissance classicism through architects such as Palladio and the Greek Revival.
While Greenway had architectural skill, like many creative people, he was not good at running a business and he became bankrupt. On April 27, 1809, a notice to his creditors was published, but with typical bravado, Greenway married Mary Moore on the same day.
In difficult financial circumstances, in January 1812, Greenway forged a note on a building contract that said the client would pay Greenway an extra £250. The client was not impressed and complained to the authorities, leading to Greenway being sentenced to death, but this was later amended to having him transported to Port Jackson as a convict. He arrived in Sydney in 1814 and a month later, on March 7, he was granted a ticket of leave by Macquarie, who had been desperate to have an architect design the colony's public buildings.
Greenway's idealism for civilising the random scattering of buildings around the tank stream was matched by Macquarie's desire to improve the structure and form of Sydney.
Lachlan Macquarie had arrived in December 1809 and he espoused the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment that connected nature, science and human thought to progress towards a harmonious society. This included the ideals of order, elegance, rationality, progress and proper social relationships.
On March 8,1810, Macquarie wrote to Lord Castlereagh at the Home Office in London saying: "A government architect should immediately be sent out to this colony to plan and superintend the erection of all public buildings ..."
Unfortunately, the Home Office was not keen on Macquarie's aspirations and there was no response to his requests. The arrival of an architect four years later, albeit as a convict, gave Macquarie the person he needed to build a proud town. For another four years, Greenway and Macquarie builtmany important public buildings, including Fort Macquarie, St James Church, the Macquarie Lighthouse and grand stables for a future government house.
The civilising must have gone too far, as the Colonial Office decided to send a commissioner of inquiry to the colony to rein in the excesses. Commissioner John Bigge arrived in September 1819 and, after many battles about the future of the town, a disillusioned Macquarie left for London in February 1822 and Greenway was dismissed in November 1822.
Greenway had been frustrated for years at the lack of respect he had in the colony and two events in 1824 gave him the opportunity to reposition his reputation.
In October 1824, W. C. Wentworth established the colony's first free newspaper, The Australian. A month later, the sad news of Macquarie's death reached NSW and this allowed Greenway to clarify his role without his patron's corrections. A series of letters to the editor flowed from Greenway that presented an incredible series of visions for the settlement.
He proposed a bridge from Dawes Point to the North Shore, new public squares and boulevards, a pyramid on Garden Island and many more visionary projects. Greenway laid the blame for his visions being curtailed on Bigge.
The first letter to the editor of The Australian from ''Your obedient Servant F. H. GREENWAY" was to enclose two letters to Macquarie – one from before Greenway accepted the office of colonial architect (dated July 27, 1814) and the other on his acceptance of that office (April 16, 1816). These are important letters, as they give Greenway's version of his aspirations.
Greenway's pitch to be Macquarie's government architect:
"... and if your Excellency will grant me the power as an architect, to design and conduct any public building or work, I will exert myself in everyday to do your Excellency credit as a promoter and encourager of the most useful art to society; which will add to the comforts of the colony, as well as the dignity of the Mother country ..." (July 27, 1814, to Macquarie, reprinted in The Australian, January 20, 1825).
Greenway's call for a proper plan for Sydney:
"It will be necessary to let me have a plan of the town of Sydney. To lay down a towner city, with the plans of public buildings, requires the greatest circumspection; however lightly it may be thought of by those who can have no just idea of it, to lay out streets upon paper ..." (April 16, 1816, to Macquarie, reprinted in The Australian, January 20, 1825).
Vision for the southern end of Macquarie Street next to Hyde Park with a Doric colonnade:
"At the same time a plan was prepared by me, and explained to them of the intended courthouse on the opposite side of Macquarie Street. The design of the building towards the park was intended to fill up one end of it, and to correspond in appearance, as to elevation toward the park, with the barrack, and to be connected together at the end of Macquarie Street by a screen of the Doric order, which would correspond with a Doric colonnade ... the court house which stood in the centre of the Ionic order, with a portico toward the street, forty feet high, on six Ionic pillars, similar to the temple of Minerva" (February 8,1825).
A grand square surrounded by public buildings:
"The church to stand in the centre of a large circus, similar to the plans laid down by Sir Christopher Wren, of St Paul's Church, London. At the four principal points, four streets were intended to be made, one to Parramatta, one through York Street, through the soldiers barracks, to the entrance to the intended fort, one mile in length, one street would have gone to Cockle Bay ... and about this grand quadrangle so laid out, all of the public buildings were to have been raised in a classical style, upon a level base, making as a whole as grand a square as any in Europe" (February 8, 1825).
Visions for a new government house:
"I was at the same time required to make a plan of a fort to be called Macquarie Fort, at Bennelong's Point, to correspond in style of architecture with the intended government house ... In my instructions for a plan of a government house given me by Governor Macquarie, I was allowed to design it in the castellated style. In my sketch of that design I took as a model Thornbury Castle, only much bolder ..." (April 28, 1825).
A pyramid on Garden Island complete with hieroglyphics:
"A plan was likewise drawn for a cenotaph on Garden Island to the memory of Princess Caroline. The design was a pyramid upon a particular base ... The outside of the pyramid was to have been formed in such a manner as to admit sculpture and hieroglyphics ..." (April 28, 1825).
Greenway saw the need for a harbour bridge a century before it was built:
"Thus in the event of a bridge being thrown across the Dawes' battery to the North Shore, a town would be built in that shore, and would have formed with these buildings. A grand whole that would indeed have surprised anyone on entering the harbour ..." (April 28, 1825).
Greenway was a very determined person and he continued his letter-writing until his last letter on July 7, 1837, when he was still describing his grand visions for Sydney he began 21 years earlier:
"The plan of the Metropolitan Church and the ground about it, was laid down with that Vicar, and approved of by the Governor. The enclosure about six hundred feet long and three hundred feet broad, was to contain the Cathedral in the Gothic style, the Bishop's Residence, a Library, Divinity School, Museum, with Offices & co. in corresponding style of architecture similar to Colleges in Oxford or Cambridge, to stand in that enclosure which was intended to be planted out in the modern way of landscape gardening, as many of the squares are now in London, enclosed by an elegant rail fence. The two sides of the square would have been bounded one by George Street, which was intended to be carried on straight to the Cattle Market, leaving the same room on the George Street side, one hundred and fifty feet from the end of the foundation of the transept, the same as the intended distance of the side of Clarence Street, making the other side of the square" (July 7,1837).
Ten weeks after this letter, on September 26, 1837, Greenway died in a dirt-floored shack on swampland near Maitland.
Chris Johnson was NSW government architect from 1995 to 2005 and is now chief executive of the Urban Taskforce.