East Melbourne, Berry Street 051, 053, 055, 057

This terrace of four houses was designed by Wight and Lucas for William McLean and built by Peirson and Wright.  It was completed in 1890.  

William McLean (1945-1905) was born in Scotland and arrived in Melbourne as a child in 1853.  By 1870 he had founded a firm of ironmongers and general merchants known as McLean Bros and Rigg. In 1869 he married Margaret Arnot. In 1887 they moved into their newly built house on the corner of Vale Street and Wellington Parade South, known then as Torloisk.  The following year, at Torloisk, Margaret’s sister, Agnes, married architect, William Lucas.  

William Lucas was born in 1860 and was the son of Charles Thomas Lucas, a tailor, and Letitia Harriett Ings. He spent his early years in Carlton before he and his family sailed for England in 1876. They settled in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and in the 1881 census William is described as an architect.  He presumably had spent his years since arriving in Cheltenham serving an apprenticeship with a local architect. 

By 1884 the family had returned to Melbourne and the following year William joined with Gerard Wight, engineer, architect and surveyor, and graduate of Melbourne University, to create the firm of Wight and Lucas under which name he practised for the next nine years.  He was elected an Associate of the R.V.I.A. in 1884 and made a Fellow in 1888.

The pair were soon attracting important commissions.  The first was a bridge over the Merri Creek for the Fitzroy Council but the bulk of their work was the construction of banks. They designed eleven branches of the Melbourne Savings Bank, the closest one to East Melbourne being the Richmond branch at 182-184 Bridge Road. Needless to say, it is no longer used as a bank.  That Wight’s father, Edward Byam Wight, was chairman of trustees of the Melbourne Savings Bank, must have been of considerable assistance to the young firm. 

The Berry Street houses also are the result of having useful family connections.

Jennifer Fowler in her thesis, 'Boom Mannerism: The Architectural Practice of Gerard Wight and William Lucas from 1885 to 1894', (2020), points out some mannerist features of their design.  

Fowler refers to the ‘playfulness, distortions and creativity inherent in Italian Mannerism that subverted the laws of the classical orders’ and which inspired Wight and Lucas’ work.  She describes the Berry Street houses in light of these characteristics.  The houses appear unremarkable at first, with rendered facades and cast-iron balconies.  But some of the details are unusual. 

For instance, traditionally, a row of terraces might have a decorative element such as a pediment in the middle of the building, or perhaps over each individual house, but here the architects have placed a broken pediment, itself a mannerist feature, over the two end houses with the two middle houses left unadorned.  The terrace retains its symmetry but changes the rules.  

Another subversive detail appears on the face of the dividing walls, where the ground floor meets the first floor. Typically, this spot might bear a scroll with an acanthus leaf below, pointing downwards, here, however, it is as if the leaf has been turned upwards and it sits within the curve of the scroll.  Another small but significant rebellion.  

A for sale advertisement in 1902 describes the houses as ‘4 SUBSTANTIALLY-BUILT 2-STORY BRICK BALCONY RESIDENCES, with cemented fronts, each containing, on the ground floor, drawing, dining, and breakfast rooms, kitchen, front and back verandahs. On the first floor are 3 spacious bedrooms, bathroom, linen presses. &c.’

The houses did not sell and remained in William McLean’s ownership until after his death in 1905.  The next owner was William Henry Breen, a retired wheat farmer from Murtoa in the Wimmera. Breen died in 1920  at which time the houses were valued at £3000.  The houses were then sold to individual buyers.