Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:33:p1
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 33 (pt 1/3)
Character Range: 69497–72246

33   Minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, 'Australian Institute of Anatomy', 14 September 1928, pp. 1-2, CRS A431, item 59/450; PWC, 'Report … relating to the Proposed Construction of … the National Museum of Australian Zoology', 1927, p. iv.

  shortened and made two storeys high. This alteration, the Committee felt, would provide the same floor space at the same cost, but would enhance the design of the structure. The Committee also proposed that the front of the lecture theatre be faced with Fairy Meadow limestone and that the rest of the building be built of high quality Canberra bricks, with base mouldings and other architectural embellishments also rendered in Fairy Meadow limestone. By way of 'excellent examples' of what it wished to achieve by this mixture of brickwork and stone, the Committee cited college buildings in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and even Cardinal Wolsey's Hampton Court Palace in England. The mixture would also, the Committee hoped, keep costs down. As it was, the total cost estimate for the project, including the development of the animal reserve and the construction of three residences, amounted to £87,080.34

  Following the report of the Public Works Committee, Parliament voted unanimously on 24 March 1927 to proceed with the construction of the museum. The FCC, however, was still too heavily engaged in other projects to undertake the work and, as well, did not have on its staff at the time what it considered a 'first class designing architect' to draw up the new plans required for the building. Just as significantly, Butters, though he had won some important changes from the Committee, was still far from satisfied with the design. He felt that 'the layout of the building left much to be desired' and that 'a building with only a comparatively small stone feature in the front and the rest of plain brick work was losing a valuable opportunity in Canberra from an architectural point of view.' Butters was particularly unhappy with the proposed width of the museum (66 feet) and of its surrounding gallery. He wanted both

  reduced, but especially the gallery, an alteration that he hoped would allow the 'objectionable columns' to be eliminated. The entrances to the museum also bothered him, as he considered that they lacked 'architectural character'. As an example of the sort of design he had in mind, he put on file an article dealing with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.35

  The problem of a lack of a top-class designing architect, as the FCC saw it, was overcome in November 1927 when Walter Hayward Morris, just returned from a visit overseas, was appointed as the FCC's Principal Assisting Designing Architect. Butters immediately assigned him,