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One of Australia’s foremost architects, John Horbury Hunt was born on 8 October 1838 at St John, New Brunswick, Canada, the eldest son of eight children born to carpenter William Hunt and his wife Frances (née Horbury). He came to Australia in 1863, and after thirty years of extraordinary success in his adopted country, claimed to consider himself ‘an Australian, and, above all, a New South Welshman’. Hunt had commenced his training as an architect in 1856 under the direction of Charles F Sleeper of Roxbury, near Boston. He soon entered the office of the leading Boston architect, Edward Clarke Cabot, who nevertheless abandoned his young charge in 1862 to join the army of the North to fight in the American Civil War. Though left in charge, Hunt accomplished little in the way of work and spent most of his time, he later recalled, ‘drilling and learning how to handle a rifle’. Keen to escape this stultifying situation, Hunt sailed for India in 1863 aboard the Tropic. En route he passed through Sydney and was dumbfounded by the city’s lack of an organised architectural profession. He met the Acting Colonial Architect of New South Wales, James Barnet, who offered ‘the right hand of friendship’, and shortly thereafter decided ‘to follow my profession in this city’. He was soon employed by Sydney’s leading private architect, Thomas Blacket, who was deeply impressed by Hunt’s knowledge of construction, enthusaism and energy. By 1865, he was Blacket’s chief assistant. So influential was Hunt’s work on the supremely individualistic Blacket - whose papers are littered with drawings bearing the Canadian’s personal stamp and character - that the seven years he spent there have become known as Blacket’s ‘queer period’. In 1869, after an unsuccessful attempt to form a partnership with John Frederick Hilly, Hunt went into business for himself. He rented a large office in the Old Bible Hall on the corner of Pitt and Spring Streets which also served as his private residence for several years. Something of Hunt’s self-confidence - if not immodesty - was frequently displayed in both personal and public advertisements in which he boasted of the endless number of patrons who ‘will have pleasure in testifying to my professional skill and attention to works undertaken by me for them’. Even so, Hunt’s work proved time and again that these large claims were for the most part justified. He was a stickler for professional etiquette in architecture and his perfectionism was reflected in the vitality and originality of the buildings he designed over the next thirty years. He favoured the use of ‘natural’ materials - especially brick - and showed a remarkable ability to imbue complex forms with assymetrical balance. These characteristics featured prominently in Hunt’s ecclesiastical buildings, the best of which included St Luke’s Osbourne Memorial Church, Dapto (1882), the Anglican cathedrals at Armidale (1871) and Grafton (1880), and the magnificent Chapel of the Sacred Heart Convent at Rose Bay (1896). Hunt also designed homes for wealthy clients. The largest and most impressive of these was Booloominbah, a forty-five room mansion built for the Armidale grazier Frederick Robert White in 1888. Other examples of Hunt’s domestic work include Glendarrah at Bondi (1871), Claremont at Rose Bay (1882), Camelot at Narellan and Trevenna at Armidale (both 1888), and Hamilton House at Moss Vale (1891). Hunt’s commitment to raising the standards and etiquette of architecture in New South Wales led to his involvement in the formation in March 1871 of the Society for the Promotion of Archirtecture and Fine Art. On Hunt’s suggestion, the name was changed in October that year to the Institute of Architects of New South Wales. But Hunt’s crusading spirit, abrasive style and frequent attacks on the work of his colleagues rankled other members. When the Institute refused to publish one of Hunt’s ‘offensive’ papers, he resigned in protest in September 1872. He remained in the spotlight, publicly criticising decisions that went against him and brazenly condemning the ‘cheap and defective work’ of architects such as George Allen Mansfield. Hunt, finally welcomed back into the Institute in 1887, continued where he left off. Much of his scorn was directed at the Palladians, a movement led by John Sulman, whose work Hunt (indirectly) described as ‘huge in bulk, vile in conception, false and reckless in construction, piles that are revolting to the cultured taste and positively revolting to the public mind’. Sulman and eighteen other members resigned in 1890, decimating the Institute. The press dubbed the remaining body ‘The Horbury Hunt Institute’ or ‘Horbury Hunt’s Secret Society’. It was, however, reconstituted, and in 1890 incorporated. Two years later, the Institute was granted an alliance with the Royal Institute of British Architects, to which Hunt had been elected a fellow in 1891. In 1893 he became an honourary member of the American Institute of Architects. An eccentric by nature, Hunt’s pugilistic character was balanced by an unqualified love of animals (he insisted on his favourite dog sitting on a chair at the dining table), and he was an active member of the Animals’ Protection Society of New South Wales. He designed the Society’s seal and had it incorporated in 1895. In the early 1890s, Hunt’s fortunes began to deteriorate. His practice was crippled by the depression and never fully recovered. Even more debilitating was the death in 1895 of his wife Elizabeth (née Kidd), whom he had married on 4 September 1867 at St James’s Church, Sydney. Sinking into lethargy and suffering ever-more acutely from Bright’s disease, Hunt’s commission for the National Gallery was terminated in 1895 and a year later he was sacked from overseeing the erection of Newcastle Cathedral. With the debts mounting, Hunt mortgaged his home, Cranbrook Cottage at Double Bay, to the AMP Society in 1899. When he defaulted on payments the cottage was sold at auction in 1902. On 17 December 1904, Hunt was admitted to a charity ward at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where he died two weeks later. Virtually penniles, Hunt was spared a pauper’s funeral after John Barlow, the Reverend AA Aspinal and other friends paid to have him buried alongside his wife at South Head General Cemetery. Related Bodies:
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References:
JM Freeland, ‘John Horbury Hunt (1838-1904)’, in Bede Nairn, Geoffrey Serle and Russel Ward, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1851-1890, Volume 4 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972); Freeland, Architect Extraordinary: The Life and Work of John Horbury Hunt, 1838-1904 (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1970); and Peter Reynolds, Lesley Muir and Joy Hughes, John Horbury Hunt: Radical Architect, 1838-1904 (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2002)
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