Our twenty-first treasure is a set of beautifully detailed plans for one of Townsville's iconic buildings. From the Library Archives comes the Townsville Custom House Plans.
Trisha Fielding answers the question "why is this significant?"
In the late 1890s the Queensland Government commenced a program to build new or upgrade existing customs houses, prior to Federation in 1901. The program saw new customs houses built at Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay and Townsville.
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| Townsville Custom House Sheet No. 7, Elevation to Wickham Street (including cross-section details), 30 December, 1899. Photograph by Michael Marzik. |
Townsville’s former Customs House is located on the corner of Wickham Street and The Strand. Completed in 1902, the building was designed by George David Payne of the Government Architect’s Office in the Queensland Department of Public Works. Payne was a London-trained architect who had emigrated to Australia around 1887.
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| Townsville Custom House Sheet No. 3, Ground Plan, 20 December, 1899. Photograph by Michael Marzik. |
Payne designed an impressive Romanesque-style building with a semi-circular corner entrance and low tower for shipping observation. The two-storey, L-shaped building was designed to suit the tropical climate with high ceilings and fanlights to maximise airflow and broad, colonnaded verandahs to provide shade for the interior rooms.
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| The Townsville Custom House during construction, 1901, North Queensland Photographic Collection, NQID 21834 |
Tenders for construction were called in early 1900 with the tender of £26,642 submitted by Brisbane contractors Messrs Crawford and Cameron being accepted in March 1900. The building was constructed of local bricks from the North Queensland Brick and Pottery Company and faced with granite quarried at Cockle Bay, Magnetic Island. The roof tiles were manufactured locally, and timbers sourced from throughout north Queensland, such as cedar and silky oak, were used internally.
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| Townsville Custom House. Photograph by Trisha Fielding |
The ground floor plan included a circular entrance hall, a Long Room with a public counter and work area, general offices, storerooms, two safes, two small strong rooms, and a large office for the Sub-Collector of Customs. The upper floor was designed to house offices for the Deputy Registrar, Harbour Master, and Stamps and Titles offices. A large strong room with a fireproof door was located at the end of the Titles office. The Strand frontage contained two entrances for access by the public, while the Wickham Street elevation contained two private entrances. One private entrance was for the exclusive use of the Sub-Collector of Customs, while the other was for the use of boarding officers and tide waiters.*
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Townsville Custom House. Photograph by Trisha Fielding.
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Although intended as functional plans, Payne’s hand-coloured drawings are also visually very beautiful. Subtly different colours have been used to represent the different external building materials of granite, brick and stone. Interestingly, Payne’s signature does not appear on the plans. The only signature discernible on the Townsville Custom House plans are that of A.B. Brady, the Queensland Government Architect. Though Payne was obviously a talented architect, at this time he was just one of a number of draftsmen who worked for the Department of Public Works, so his drawings were signed by the senior officer, Brady.
The plans for Townsville’s Customs House reflect an era of significant government spending on constructing buildings that made a statement about
Queensland’s prosperity, all in anticipation of the formation of the new Commonwealth of Australia.
* Boarding officers and tide waiters were customs officers who boarded ships on their arrival in port in order to examine their papers and to prevent smuggling.
Over the course of 2020, JCU Library's Special Collections will be unveiling 50 Treasures from the collections to celebrate 50 years of James Cook University.
Author Biography
Trisha Fielding is an historian and writer whose published works include the books 'Neither Mischievous nor Meddlesome: the remarkable lives of North Queensland's independent midwives 1890-1940', 'Queen City of the North: a history of Townsville', and the history blogs 'North Queensland History' and 'Women of the North'. She holds a Master of History degree from the University of New England and a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from the University of Southern Queensland. Trisha also works part time in JCU Library's Special Collections.
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