Way We Were: The secret history behind Brisbane City Hall clock tower
Money was tight in 1930, so a thrifty plumber used scrap metal from a cistern and old bed to put the finishing flourish on the state’s most expensive building, writes Dorothy Whittington.
QLD News
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The plan was to have an Angel of Peace, a huge winged female figure soaring in gleaming glory from the top of the magnificent new Brisbane City Hall clock tower. But then the money ran out.
And that’s when the plumber, Fred Johnson, stepped in to save the day. He didn’t quite produce a glorious bronze statue, but he did come up with an ingenious plan to cap off the new building – on a budget of £5.
A century ago, Brisbane City Hall was about to rise as the most magnificent and costly building in the state’s history, second only to the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the most expensive project in Australia.
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At a time when the average working-class family could buy a house for £300, the edifice cost £977,000 (more than double the original estimate) when it opened on April 8, 1930.
The City Hall foundation stone was laid on July 29, 1920, by the Prince of Wales (later Edward the VIII who abdicated in 1936) using an opal-encrusted 18ct gold trowel.
Money was always going to be an issue and one that would rile ratepayers for its extravagance.
But the building would make a statement. Brisbane may have been the last of the capital cities to have a proper town hall – most had been built the previous century – and it would be the grandest of them all.
It was hailed around the state as giving Queensland the edge on southerners:
“It was for long a stigma on Brisbane that it did not possess a Town Hall worthy of the name, and the subject was treated by visitors from other States as a joke,” it was reported.
Built in the neoclassical style with Corinthian columns, a sculptured pediment above the portico, and a 92m clock tower based on St Mark’s in Venice, with 573 rooms covering 8093sq m, it was designed to impress.
The main auditorium is a circular design based on the Pantheon in Rome, under an enormous 31m diameter copper dome, and enclosed by circular corridors.
The foyer floor took a year to complete, its black and white tiles a nod to the formal buildings of ancient Greece and Rome, while four Sydney stonemasons took three and a half years to cut and polish the marble in the King George Square, Ann St and Adelaide St foyers.
The marble came from Chillagoe in North Queensland, Orange in NSW and Belgium.
The Italian Carrara marble used for the grand staircase came from the same quarry that produced the marble for Michelangelo’s David.
There was no expense spared, with tons of copper, bronze, and fine Queensland timbers, huge chandeliers, a grand staircase and a Henry Wise organ, the finest of its kind in the Commonwealth.
With the total nearing £1m, the horses and chariots planned for the four corners were abandoned and by the time it came to adding the finishing touch to the clock tower, the budget was exhausted.
The great building rose majestically to the top of the clock tower, but ended there without a crown.
Fred Johnson, the plumber contracted for the City Hall job was given £5 and told to construct a copper sphere to top it off.
First, he went to Colmslie abattoir where he found an old copper kettle used to boil down the offcuts of meat and bone. He removed copper strips and rolled them into a ball.
Next, he visited a scrap metal merchant where he picked up the copper ballcock from a cistern, and some brass from an old bed. He welded and worked the metal and then mounted it on top of an old streetlight stand he had found among the building’s foundations.
In two weeks, Fred put the cherry on the cake for £5.
And there his handiwork has remained, gracing the top of Brisbane’s clock tower for the past 90 years.
In 1933, the most profitable feature of the “million pound city hall” was its tower, when 39,314 sightseers paid six pence each to go to the top of the clock tower and admire the city view from under Fred Johnson’s budget masterpiece.
It would take almost four decades for City Hall to be replaced as the tallest building in Queensland, in 1967.
The Museum of Brisbane offers free daily tours of the clock tower and Brisbane City Hall, where it is based on the third floor. For times and details visit museumofbrisbane.com.au