Works
- Old Treasury Building
Old Treasury Building is considered by many as one of the finest examples of Renaissance Revival architecture in Melbourne. Clark began designing this building in 1857 when he was nineteen. Construction began in 1858 using bluestone, sourced from Broadmeadows for its foundations, and sandstone, from Baccus Marsh, for its intricate external facade. The building was completed in 1862. Originally the treasury was designed to hold Victoria’s state gold, and also offices major colonial leaders. In 1874 the Treasury offices were relocated, however the building was still used weekly for meetings with the Governor General. In 1992 the building was restored, and from 2005 it was the home of the City Museum.
- Melbourne City Baths
Designed by Clark and his son Edward James in 1904, the Melbourne City Baths were the result of a winning competition entry to redesign the existing baths.
A significant example of the Edwardian Baroque style, the building uses a bold two tone palette of red brick and cream yellow rendered concrete. The highly articulated facade wraps around the corners of the site and displays multiple classical instances of cupolas, archways and triangular pediments that is considered by some as ‘Federation Freestyle’. These motifs also reflected a mesh of architectural styles popular in England and America at that time.
- Queen Victoria Women’s Hospital
Clark’s original design for the Queen Victoria Hospital occupied an entire block in Melbourne’s CBD. In later years the hospital was relocated and subsequently a significant portion of the building was deconstructed. Currently all that remains of the original design is one of the three pavilions that ran along Lonsdale Street. Designed by Clark whilst in partnership with his son Edward James, the hospital was completed in 1910 in an Edwardian Baroque style. The design worked as a network of pavilions connected by a large central corridor that ran through the site. Raised upon a bluestone base the red brick ‘blood & bandage’ building is ornamented with rendered concrete flanked by cupola topped turrets. The building’s remnants are currently occupied by the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre.
Read more about this topic: John James Clark
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Reason, the prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;Mis then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)