Builder/architect and mayor Thomas English guides the ambitious Adelaide Town Hall towards opening in 1866
Builder/architect Thomas English, as Adelaide mayor, steered the Adelaide Town Hall project on its way to being completed in 1866. The hall's Albert Tower remained without clocks until 1935 when councillor John Lavington Bonython, a former mayor, donated electric versions.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Thomas English, a builder/architect and eighth mayor of Adelaide steered the young city to building its ambitious town hall, opened in 1866 in King William Street.
The Adelaide council, revived in 1852 with James Hurtle Fisher as mayor, five years later announced an architectural competition for designs for a town hall. The site was town acre 203, allocated by William Light on his plan for Adelaide city and originally used for a produce market, on the King William Street and Pirie streets corner. The nearby Victoria Square was already the site for government buildings and law courts. The first town hall design competition was won by Edmund Wright (briefly Adelaide’s mayor in 1859) but the building never proceeded for lack of finance.
Thomas English and his brother-in-law Henry Brown became Adelaide largest 19th Century building contractors, by also offering design, selling timber and accessing stone from the Glen Ewin quarry they bought at Tea Tree Gully in 1852-53. As mayor, English was a major advocate for building a town hall. A public meeting in 1862 voted 1,116 to 809 in favour of borrowing £20,000 to be build the hall. (Its final cost was about £24,000).
Another competition for the town hall’s design was again won by Edmund Wright, with J. Edward Woods, with a classical style featuring Corinthian order ornamentation. It prompted a gothic-versus-classical debate, reflecting those in Britain. Town hall construction began in 1863 with the foundation stone laid by South Australia governor Dominic Daly. The building contractor was Charles Farr, with English resigning as mayor in 1864.
After more heated discussion over using stone versus stucco, more funds were released in favour of stone from the English and Brown quarry at Tea Tree Gully. The carved keystones on the front of the building featured the heads of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and governor Daly. At completion, Adelaide Town Hall was said to be the southern hemisphere’s largest municipal building. It was significant as it was the only civic building outside of England to house a full peal of eight bells.
The bells were in its Albert Tower (named after Queen Victoria’s consort) at 146 feet (44 metres), later to be joined by general post office’s Victoria Tower at 158 feet as the two major markets on the Adelaide skyline.
The town hall was inaugurated on June 20, 1866, with a lavish banquet for 800, a ball on June 22 and concert on June 26. In 1872, visiting writer Anthony Trollope wrote: "The Town Hall is a fine room, and forms a portion of a very handsome building. In such luxuries as town-halls, large public concert-rooms, public ball-rooms, and the like, the Australian cities greatly beat our own”.
A campaign, with funds raised by the Adelaide Philharmonic Society matched by the council, saw a pipe organ from the London’s William Hill & Son, arrivie by ship in 1877. The town acre around the town hall was filled by a south wing (formerly the Prince Alfred Hotel) in 1869, Queen’s Chambers in 1869 on Pirie Street, Eagle Chambers in 1876, Gladstone Chambers in 1882, and a new council chamber at the rear of the building in 1880.
Adelaide Town Hall was the setting for forming three organisations important in Australian federation: the Australasian Federation League of South Australia, the Anti-Convention Bill League and the Commonwealth Bill League. The first governor of South Australia as a state, Lord Tennyson, was sworn in at the town hall on January 1, 1901. Almost a century after it opened, the town hall drew a crowd of more than 30,000 fans to its vicinity when The Beatles appeared on its balcony in June 1964. The hall also hosted many concerts, including by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
The town hall foyer was altered significantly in the 1950s, when the marble staircase was installed, with a “modern” entrance by architect Dean Berry. In the 1980s, the whole complex was refurbished and the first organ replaced in 1990.
