Joseph Plottel

Joseph Plottel
Joseph Plottel 1936
Born	(1883-01-01)1 January 1883 Yorkshire, Great Britain
Died	28 March 1977(1977-03-28) (aged 93) Melbourne, Victoria
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Footscray Town Hall, St Kilda Synagogue

Joseph Plottel (1883– 28 May 1977) was a British born architect who was active in Melbourne, Australia between 1911 and World War II, working in a modernist style with some significant Byzantine-Romanesque features.

Early life and career

Plottel was born in Yorkshire in 1883 and went to Australia with his family in 1895 at the age of 12, but returned to England soon after when his father died. He trained as a draftsman with London architect Robert Moore, where he was advised to head for the colonies for advancement.^[1]

He began working in Melbourne, accruing a number of large commissions including Michael's Comer Store in Elizabeth Street and the Footscray Barnet Glass Rubber Co. Ltd. factory,

He moved to South Africa in 1903, working in Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg, but took passage to the United States where he saw prospects for architects after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When he ran out of money en route, he decided to stay in Melbourne. Here he was embraced by the local Jewish community and soon found his feet, initially taking up a position with the Railway’s Engineering Department where he worked as a draftsman for about three years. He obtained work as a draftsman with the noted Federation-style architect Nahum Burnett and then set up his own office in 1911.^[2]

Immigration records show that a Joseph Plottel applied to be naturalised in 1939, and hint at his Austrian or Czechoslovakian heritage. It is likely that concerns about the rise of Nazism in Europe encouraged him. to do so.^[3] It is also likely that Joseph Plottel assisted friends or relatives to move away from the shadow of Nazi Germany about this time.^[4]

Melbourne architectural practice

Plottel enjoyed a very diverse architectural practice with commercial and residential commissions in an eclectic modern style drawing on the American Romanesque and Arts and Craft movement. Among his early commissions were Embank House at 325 Collins St in 1911, the Williamstown Municipal Buildings in 1914 and several flat projects such as ‘Chilterns’, Glenferrie Road, 1917 ‘Garden Court’ of 1918 in Marne St South Yarra and ‘Waverly’ at 115–119 Grey Street St. Kilda from 1920. These designs tended to fine detailing in brick, but in a restrained manner characteristic of the romantic movement of the Arts Crafts. The prominent use of rain heads and down spouts in the composition is an interesting pointer to Plottel’s later work.^[5]

In 1924 Plottel married and also was appointed to design the new St Kilda Synagogue, as the congregation had outgrown the 1872 building. As inspiration he presented a photo of the Temple Isaiah in Chicago, adapting the exterior to a ‘Byzantine Revival' style with an octagonal base and dome roof clad in Wunderlich tiles, while the interior was finished in what was to become Plottel’s trademark finely crafted woodwork.^[6]

The Jewish community provided many commissions, as he became close to several business people who had factories in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs including Footscray and Yarraville. Plottel’s wife Rachel was a doctor specialising in skin conditions. Their only daughter, Philippa May, married Cpl Rolf Hallenstein^[7] (the brothers Isaac and Michael Hallenstein established the vast tannery of Michaelis Hallenstein in Footscray with their cousin Moritz Michaelis) and obtained a Master of Laws at the University of Melbourne then went on to a prominent role in women’s affairs and law, as a member of the National Council of Women of Victoria, the Victorian Women Lawyers Society, the Australian Local Government Women's Association Victoria and many other organisations.^[8]

St Kilda Synagogue

The foundation stone of the new synagogue was laid 28 February 1926 (the contractor being H H Eilenberg) and the synagogue was consecrated on 13 March 1927. The Ladies` Gallery was also extended in 1957–58 to designs by Plottel.^[9] The Masonic Club, 164 to 170 Flinders Street Melbourne 1926 – 1927 again featured the extensive use of decorative brickwork, this time in a variation of the Neo – Grec theme, showing the style's usual chaste ornament, formed by swags, antefixes and a shallow pediment.^[10]

Joseph Plottel was joined in a partnership by H E Bunnett (1891–1965), in 1921. Bunnett's son, Linsday Harold Bunnett (1920–1995), also joined Plottel's firm after matriculating at Scotch College in 1936, completing his articles in 1941.^[11]

Plottel established a brief practice in Canberra in the partnership of Plottel Bunnett & Alsop, who were commissioned to design a number of residential housing projects for the Capital Territory, one example of which survives at 5 Baudin Street dated to 1928 and showing a Mediterranean influence.;^[12][13] The Canberra Electoral role for 1929 lists ‘Plottel, Joseph architect 31 Queen St, Melbourne’ by dint of his having purchased property in the territory.^[14]

Main commissions

Further commissions then came in a series of factories, shops and commercial buildings in Melbourne and the inner suburbs, including Brash’s at 108 Elizabeth Street and the Masonic Club Building in Flinders Street, both in the late 1920s, while two Footscray factories for Maize Products in 1933 and Bradmills in 1934 cemented his reputation in that suburb. Bradmill’s had previously been McPhersons Jute Works and Barnett Glass Rubber, but under the ownership of Bradford Cotton Mills the site was greatly extended with "Factory block No. 1" extensively reconstructed, in 1926-7 according to Plottel’s designs for a then massive £53,399.^[15]

He also carried out work on the Kayser Knitting Mill in 1933 and 1936 and Lamson Paragon’s paper mill in Richmond in 1937, extending his repertoire with functional industrial buildings, still exhibiting finely executed decorative effects such as the use of coloured brickwork and terra cotta.

The Footscray connections came to fruition in the commission for the new Footscray Town Hall for the municipality. The two storey building was designed in 1936, and erected by day labour under supervising contractors ARP Crow & Sons in 1936, to replace the first town hall built in 1875. It adopts the American Romanesque style reflecting the Chicago school, which had previously influenced Plottel for his St Kilda Synagogue. It is the only example of this style applied to a town hall in Victoria. The exterior incorporates a finely detailed entrance loggia with Corinthian columns, variegated brown brickwork highlighted with intricately modelled buff faience work and a terracotta tile mansard roof. It contains offices on the ground floor and the council chamber and reception hall on the upper level. The interior is designed in a contrasting Streamlined Modernist manner.^[16]

Footscray Town Hall

In the later 1930s, Plottel’s work became increasingly modern, with examples such as the 1935 Beehive Building (92 to 94 Elizabeth Street Melbourne) and 1937 Yoffa House (187 Flinders Lane Melbourne) reflecting the Functionalist/Moderne style of the Interwar period. The Beehive building has been described as ‘one of the most distinctive buildings in Melbourne’, while Yoffa House is ‘almost modern in concept, the Moderne note is sounded by the 'architectural terracotta' applied to the facade and the portholes intended for its walls’ Further flat designs also came in the 1930s such ‘Clovelly’ at 136 Alma Road, St Kilda of 1938, featuring the Old English style which was a fashionable and romantic style for flats in the period 1919–41, described as ‘a cheery tonic after the rigours of the Great War.’^[17]

In 1937 Plottel was again engaged by the Jewish community to design the Temple Beth Israel in Alma Road, St Kilda. This building points to his work on the Footscray substations in its highly modernistic design. Plottel was an Associate of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architecture, and while his last building appears to be a small speculative house venture in 1941, and he briefly assisted with an extension to the Ladies` Gallery at the Synagogue in 1957–58, he appears to have lived out a quiet retirement before his death in Toorak on 28 May 1977 aged 93.^[18] His wife Rachel Henrietta Plottel also died in Toorak two years previously on 2 January 1975 aged 88. Joseph's Parents' names were given as Philip Plottel and Sarah Hyams. while Rachel Henrietta Plottel's Parents' names were given as Maurice Gross and Celine Isaacson.^[19]

Other Works

N.B. Other Plottel designs have been identified from the work of the Art Deco Society and architectural indexes. Some of his original drawings are in the Latrobe Library collection on loan from the Melbourne University Architecture School.^[20]

• 325 Collins Street 1911
• 586 Bourke Street Melbourne 1911
• Kozminsky's Building, Grime's Lane, Melbourne, 1913, alterations by Plottel with Reinforced Concrete and Monier Pipe Construction Co added floors.^[21]
• Clarendon Flats 26–28 Blessington Street St Kilda 1915-1930s
• Williamstown Municipal Offices and Town Hall, (Plottel & Bennett) 1919
• Victoria Club 141 Queen Street. Melbourne, late 1920s
• Allens (confectionery) factory South Bank South Melbourne, 1922^[22]
• Rebuilding of Alma Hotel 32 Chapel Street, St Kilda East (now Dick Whittington Tavern) 1924
• Newport Masonic Hall, 405 Melbourne Road Newport 1924-5^[23]
• ‘Sandhurst’, ‘Maudlands’flats 101 Alma Rd St Kilda East 1925
• Charnwood Estate Synagogue 1925–27
• Yarra Yarra Golf Club c.1929^[24]
• Flinders Way c.1929
• H V Nathan House Trawalla Avenue Toorak, 1932
• Venetian Court dining room, Hotel Australia Flinders Street. Melbourne, 1933
• Bathurst Apartments, 24 Queens Road Melbourne (remodelling) 1934
• Cross Street electricity substation, West Footscray^[25]
• Flats, 5 Moorakyn Avenue Malvern, elegant Arts & Crafts design, 1934.
• House and Flats, cnr Toorak road and Evans Court Toorak (Plottel private residence) 1934
• House Palm Grove Deepdene, 1937
• Clovelly 136 Alma Road St Kilda 1937
• BYFAS spinning mills Abbotsford 1937^[26]
• Boys Home, Burwood, 1937, brick and cement render of four wings from an octagonal entrance hall.^[27]
• Female block, Mount Royal Hospital Parkville, 1938.
• Brighton Theatre Bay Street Brighton, (alterations), 1940
• Air Raid Precautions Centre, Footscray Footscray Library, 1940^[28]
• 122–128 Flinders Street Melbourne n.d.
• 6 room house 4 Maysia Street camberwell, 1941^[29]
• A W Allen’s Factory, 2 Byrne Street South Melbourne, n.d.
• Freemasons Club, Flinders Street Melbourne. n.d.^[30]

References