Original post 8 July 2020

This is Newspaper House, built in 1932-33 for the Herald as their city office, as it is, and as it might have been – just learned there was a competition, with 8 entries published, mostly quite conservative but mostly Art Deco more or less, showing how it had taken hold after first emerging in Melbourne in 1930.

There were some big names and some unknown ones. The winner was Stephenson & Meldrum, with a blocky stolid design, the best bit being a Napier Waller mosaic; they soon went on to do a lot of streamlined hospitals.

1st pic 2024.

The fabbo zippy zigzaggy confection is by C Alexander (who was he ?), next to that is Arthur Plaisted, who mostly did flats (Skyscraper Gothic), and next to that Stuart Calder (boring, but very Modernist things).

Next was Love & Marocco (boring) Bates Smart McCutcheon (Deco Gothic, and who were doing the fully Deco Buckley’s menswear that same year), then John Gawler with John Scarborough (interesting).

Equal second went to Schmerberg & Fisher (very stylish, but who were they?) and Norman Schefferle (who did the Catani clock tower a few years later) & Maxwell Dean (looks like simplified Tudor ?). So much talent.

A drawing of what was built vs the prize winning design of #NewspaperHouse by #StephensonAndMeldrum; all the same except the first two levels, notably the mosaic by #NapierWaller expanded from just a central panel to one that ran right across, and the shopfront is simpler, without the frame. Overall it’s a cautious move towards Art Deco, with a traditional base middle and top, and I guess stylised forms, but without the fluidity of later Deco, or the zippy ornament of early Deco. Interestingly the sign at the top isn’t just incised stone, it’s mainly #neon.

• artdeco