Nationality Australian Name William Wilson Structures Eryldene, Gordon | Occupation Architect Role Architect | |
 | ||
Born 14 February 1881 ( 1881-02-14 ) Campbelltown, New South Wales Buildings Eryldene, Gordon, New South Wales (Built 1914)
Purulia, Wahroonga, New South Wales (Built 1916)
War Memorial, Newington College (Built 1921) Projects Domestic architecture in Australia (Published 1919)
Old Colonial Architecture of New South Wales and Tasmania (Published 1924) Died December 16, 1955, Richmond, Australia Education Newington College, Sydney Technical College | ||
Hardy Wilson
William Hardy Wilson (14 February 1881 – 16 December 1955) was an Australian architect, artist and author. He "is regarded as one of the most outstanding architects of the twentieth century".
Contents
Early years
Wilson was born in Campbelltown, New South Wales in 1881, the second son of William and Jessie Wilson, and attended Newington College (1893–1898). He was a younger brother of David Wilson KC (1870–1965). The following year he was articled to the firm of Kent & Budden and studied at the Sydney Technical College. During this period he took instruction in art from Sydney Long.
Career
Upon completion of his articles he went to England and successfully sat for the intermediate and final examinations of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In London his circle of friends included George Washington Lambert and Arthur Streeton, and he served as secretary of the Chelsea Arts Club. Wilson travelled widely in Europe and the United States of America and became interested in the American Colonial style of architecture. After returning to Sydney in 1910, he married Margaret McKenzie, and in 1913 he went into partnership with Stacey Neave. Wilson exhibited regularly with the Society of Artists, and with other artists he founded the Fine Arts Society. In 1923 his work was hung in the Exhibition of Australian Art at Burlington House, London.
Architectural legacy
Wilson designed mainly homes and small commercial buildings. Having been impressed by the Colonial Revival style in the US, he sought to do something similar in Australia. Nowadays he is particularly remembered for three of his homes, all of them on Sydney's North Shore and all of them now heritage-listed. He is regarded as a key practitioner of the Inter-War Georgian Revival style.
Published works
In 1920 he published The Cow Pasture Road, and Wilson and Neave invited John Berry to join the partnership. The following year Wilson visited China, and his architectural style started at that time to include Oriental elements. Wilson contributed to Art in Australia, The Home, and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 1924 he published Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania, a large book of his drawings undertaken between 1912 and 1922. His other published books were The Dawn of a New Civilization (1929), Yin Yang (1934), Collapse of Civilization (1936), Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937), Eucalyptus (1941), Instinct (1945), Atomic Civilization (1949) and Kurrajong: Sit-Look-See (1954).
Later life
In 1927 he left his architectural partnership and lived for three years in London before returning to Australia to live in Melbourne and then northwestern Tasmania. After the death of his first wife he married Elsie MacLean, and from 1940 they lived between a property at Wandin, near Mount Dandenong, and Kew in Melbourne.
Wilson was a notorious anti-Semite and during the 1930s and 40s an enthusiast for the cause of German and Italian Fascism which came to the notice of the security authorities on several occasions. He blamed Jews for thwarting his professional advancement and published in 1939 a plan for a guarded settlement for Jewish refugees in the Dandenongs.
Wilson died in Richmond on 16 December 1955, survived by his wife and by the son of his first marriage. [1]
Images
William Hardy Wilson made drawings of a variety of subjects including early Australian domestic architecture [2], colonial homesteads and churches [3] and poultry and other birds [4].