The flat roofs of Sydney

Flat roofs were an essential feature of modern houses during the twentieth century. Many fans of modernism believe that the style emerged with the white and glassy boxes designed by leaders of Germany’s Bauhaus school during the 1920s. Historians point further back, to Frank Lloyd Wright and his first flat-roofed Prairie house, the Gale residence, built in Oak Park, Chicago, in 1909.

But a handful of Sydney architects were notable predecessors of modernism’s main heroes. Between 1906 and 1909, they designed, built and published the designs of several flat-roofed houses. This was before Wright’s legendary Wasmuth portfolio amazed European architects in 1910–11, and long before any of the flat-roofed pavilions ‘pioneered’ by famous European modernists including Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius.

Sydney’s flat-roof phenomenon was led by three architects: George Sydney Jones, a grandson of the David Jones department store founder; Henry Austin Wilshire, son of Sydney’s third Lord Mayor; and James Rutledge Louat, son of a French marine engineer. Wilshire and Louat built flat-topped villas in Cremorne and Mosman, while Jones published the first concept sketches for a flat-roofed residence, followed by two villas in Beecroft and Pennant Hills. Other architects who built flat-roofed houses on Sydney’s North Shore in 1908–09 were Donald Thomas Esplin, Harold R Mead and Garton & Garton.

These Edwardian innovators — let’s call them ‘the North Sydney School’ — aimed for an enduring Australian style appropriate to the climate after Queen Victoria’s death and the Federation of Australia in 1901. They turned against the late-nineteenth century penchant for dark-chambered mansions with mountainous roofscapes, a trend exemplified by architect John Horbury Hunt’s tall gables, cylindrical towers, witch-hat turrets and Parisian mansards with projecting dormers.

Instead, Sydney’s proto-modern architects decided to update the roof terraces that topped traditional mudbrick houses found in many Mediterranean coastal towns. Aerial courtyards, sometimes shaded partly by vine-twined pergolas, provided families occupying small, dark dwellings with sunny, open spaces for entertaining and relaxation.

For architects dealing with Sydney’s comparable subtropical–temperate climate, roof decks seemed ideal to add valuable floor space and panoramic views to new houses built on hills and facing the harbour. Before World War I, savvy practitioners spotted business potential arising from new ferry services to the North Shore, new subdivisions of harbourside bushland, and the growing popularity of sunbathing and water sports. The splendid Clifton Gardens Baths, designed by Rutledge Louat, which opened in 1906, is one example.

George Sydney Jones and Henry Wilshire published magazine articles that explained their fondness for flat roofs. They highlighted the financial advantages of laying a ‘waterproof’ bitumen membrane over a roof plate of reinforced concrete, thereby avoiding elaborate timber roof frames that had to be floored, insulated, tiled and guttered.

Iron-reinforced concrete (using a system patented by French gardener Joseph Monier) and rolls of bitumen (especially Malthoid) were widely advertised, but were mostly used in government infrastructure projects and multi-storey office blocks. After checking detailed research on Wilshire’s houses with Cremorne resident and Wilshire expert Garry Webb, we are confident that the North Shore cohort (along with Irving Gill in San Diego and Edgar Wood in Stafford, England) were the first western architects to transfer these innovations to houses.

Who were the architects of Sydney’s first modern flat-roofed houses?

Henry Austin Wilshire

Wilshire was the architect of a ‘pretty flat-roof building in Mosman for Mr AR Harris’. This house, named ‘Takapuna’ in Sands Postal Directory, still stands at 49 Prince Albert Street, Mosman, but its façade has been remodelled and the roof is no longer flat.

Henry Austin Wilshire’s own house, ‘Fiesole’, built in 1907, is still standing at 15 Claude Avenue, Cremorne.

Between 1902 and 1907, Wilshire evolved an odd half-half house, with a high gable crashing into a flat-roof pavilion, at 28 Rangers Road, Neutral Bay. It is now demolished. Wilshire expert Garry Webb attributes the conflict of styles to a change of taste when Wilshire toured Europe and the United States in 1904–05.

Wilshire’s largest flat-roofed house, at 6 Bannerman Street, Neutral Bay, appeared in Building magazine, on 15 January 1909. It was demolished and replaced by a block of apartments.

J Rutledge Louat

James Rutledge Louat built a flat-roofed mansion for theatre entrepreneur Edwin Geach, on a harbourfront site at 6 Milson Road, Cremorne in 1908. It was recently demolished.

Harold R Mead

Harold R Mead was the architect for two flat-roofed residential buildings in Manly — The Mansions boarding house and a row of four terraces. Both were illustrated in Building magazine on 12 May 1909.

George Sydney Jones

George Sydney Jones built a flat-roofed house, ‘Rochester’, at 63 Beecroft Road, Beecroft, for a doctor client. It is now part of the Arden Anglican School.

Jones completed ‘Barncleuth’, a two-storey villa with a roof terrace, at 17 The Crescent, Pennant Hills. This is now rented as a duplex.Flat roofs were an essential feature of modern houses during the twentieth century. Many fans of modernism believe that the style emerged with the white and glassy boxes designed by leaders of Germany’s Bauhaus school during the 1920s. Historians point further back, to Frank Lloyd Wright and his first flat-roofed Prairie house, the Gale residence, built in Oak Park, Chicago, in 1909.

Dr Davina Jackson’s latest book is Australian Architecture: A history published by Allen & Unwin.

This story appears in Openbook spring 2022.