In 1883, English journalist REN Twopeny wrote that many architects in Australia were self-taught and had served little or no apprenticeship in the profession ‘which should rather be called a trade’. He made his condescending comment after judging buildings in Australian cities to be generally more ‘practical’ than ‘beautiful’.

He was only half-right. While Queensland’s early architects included carpenters, journalists, undertakers, hoteliers and many other diverse trades and professions, more had received formal training in architectural offices in Great Britain, continental Europe, North America or in other Australian colonies. Mining booms, rapid railway construction and expanding agricultural and pastoral settlement attracted architects of both strands to the unfolding opportunities of colonial Queensland. While a few amassed wealth, most experienced the fluctuations of fortune that remain part of architectural practice to this day.

Queensland Architects 1823−1895: A Biographical Dictionary is a major revision of Donald Watson and Judith McKay’s earlier biographical dictionary published in 1994. It incorporates new material and has a wider range of entries than its predecessor, not only for architects but also for related practitioners. It acknowledges that during the nineteenth century professional boundaries were less clearly defined than they are today, particularly between architecture, surveying, engineering and building. The extended experience of many practitioners in other Australian colonies and elsewhere is better documented.

The authors have undertaken years of research to identify hundreds of architects and the like who practised in what is now Queensland from the beginning of European settlement until the economic downturn of the late nineteenth century, highlighting their widespread presence in a sparsely settled colony and the challenges they faced. Their lives and many of their buildings are recorded in succinct entries illustrated with mostly contemporary images.

Queensland Architects 1823−1895 transforms our understanding of the Queensland built environment and those who helped to shape it over many years.