MOH 2008 HAS CONCLUDED

Believed to have been born in Cornwall, England, in 1823, Joseph Reed arrived in Melbourne in 1853. Less than six months later, he won the competition to design the Public Library in Swanston Street. That same year, he produced designs for the Bank of NSW, Collins Street (now at the University of Melbourne), and Geelong Town Hall. It was an auspicious start to a prolific career that embraced all manner of architectural styles and building types.

A dominant figure during Melbourne's period of greatest growth, Joseph Reed was a frequent competition winner and responsible for some of the largest and most important building commissions in the city. He arguably assisted in making Melbourne one of the great Victorian cities. An accomplished eclectic and a fine draftsman, his aptitude for skilful picturesque composition in virtually every stylistic idiom was matched by dogged professionalism. He established Melbourne's first major private office.

An active professional, in 1856, Reed became the first elected member of the Victorian Institute of Architects and later its president. In 1858, he became architect for the recently formed University of Melbourne and designed almost all of its 19th century buildings. Commissions also soon came in for the Wesley Church, the Royal Society Building, Victoria Street and a new classical temple front for the Collins Street Baptist Church.

In 1862, Reed went into partnership with Frederick Barnes (1824-1884). A trip to Europe in 1863 engendered an enthusiasm for the polychrome brick architecture of Lombardy and it found immediate results in Reed's Romanesque-inspired designs for the Independent Church, Collins Street, and Rippon Lea, FT Sargood's house at Elsternwick. For the Melbourne Town Hall and Menzies Hotel (1867, demolished), Reed & Barnes shifted to a grand Second Empire mode.

The practice prospered with ever larger and more complex commissions, including the Gothic Revival Wilson Hall (1878-82) and the massively grand Exhibition Buildings, complete with Florentine dome. In 1883, on Barnes retirement, Anketell Henderson and FJ Smart became Reed's new partners. In 1890, Henderson left, taking some of the firm's best clients with him and the practice became Reed Smart & Tappin. On Reed's death from 'inanition and exhaustion' that same year, the firm soon became Bates Peebles & Smart, eventually Bates Smart & McCutcheon and finally today, Bates Smart.

Source: "A guide to Melbourne architecture", by Philip Goad, 1999, p. 240. The Watermark Press, Sydney.