12 October 2023
The never built dome of Parliament House ….Adelaide! Just discovered the grand 1881 design for the South Australian parliament by EJ Woods had a dome that was pretty much the same as our 1877 design by Peter Kerr (2nd image). Seems like they copied us but it’s more complicated – the Adelaide design was a reworking of a more elaborate design of 1874 by Edmond Wright and Lloyd Tayler, which has a similar but taller dome (3rd image), so maybe Kerr took the idea when he was reworking his original very even more elaborate 1855 design and made it fit, then Wood copied this new version. Neither place ever got their dome, and Adelaide’s was even more incomplete than ours for ages, with only about 1/3 built by 1889, right up until the 1930s, when it was completed to a simpler design. All pics except Melbourne @statelibrarysa.
Storey of Melbourne 