Plans for living: House plans for a new century

The 20th century brought a new phenomenon for homemakers – the emergence of booklets of house designs and floor plans. It was no longer necessary to employ an architect. The plans enabled the prospective homeowner to choose the design they would like according to their budget and family needs, and proceed to build accordingly. The homes offered were variations on the Queenslander design – houses raised on stumps with generous verandahs.

State Library of Queensland’s collections include many books of house plans, which are a valuable tool when undertaking a house history. They allow the researcher to find the design that is the closest match to their own home, and include the name of the company or government scheme that built it, as well as its original cost.

Our homes are our castles. Finding the right design for the climate, the site and family needs at the right price became an Australian obsession in the 20th century.

House plans 

The first Queensland booklet of this kind was published by the Queensland Deposit Bank and Building Society in 1887. The catalogue contained designs from 2-room cottages to 2-storey villas. The designs were quite Victorian in style with elaborate ornamentation, yet set on stumps with generous verandahs. The Deposit Bank headquarters in Adelaide Street, Brisbane, was the centre of home building in Queensland at the end of the colonial era, and took advantage of the boom in fortunes and income during the 1880s. Loans were to be repaid in 10 years, and the company would lend 3 times what the depositor could pay on the land and house. In 1887, houses ranged in price from 125 pounds for a 3-roomed wooden house to 1800 pounds for a villa of 2 stories.

The next series of house design plans were published for various schemes designed to enable working-class people to build houses of their own. Most working-class families rented homes up until the 1920s. The Workers Dwelling Scheme of 1909 published popular plans throughout the World War I period and into the 1930s. These were published as part of the parliamentary papers. This was followed by the State Advances Scheme, another complementary scheme enabling workers to build houses so long as they could purchase a block of land first. During the mid-20th century, the Housing Commission offered plan books, as did the War Service Homes Commission.

While architects worked for those who wished to build unique homes, most homes through the 20th century were chosen from the available plan books, both from government schemes and commercial building companies.

What is obvious when comparing older home designs to contemporary plans is the smaller nature of earlier homes, often with just 2 bedrooms and one bathroom. A sunroom was often added to provide for a possible third bedroom. Compared with contemporary home plans available through building companies, the number of rooms and the size of living spaces were very small in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet these homes that were located everywhere in Brisbane suburbs and Queensland towns provided accommodation for families of 3 to 6 children and sometimes more. 

Despite the tendency towards smaller house design, house plans came in all sizes, from the more common 2 or 3 room options, like the one below, to those with 7 rooms and an L-shaped verandah, like the one built at Sandgate as a design available through the Workers Dwelling Scheme.

Building materials for the homes in the plan books

Timber was the chosen building material in Queensland, even after World War II. Brick housing did not predominate until the 1970s. The introduction of asbestos Fibrolite can be seen in the plan books and newspapers, as can brick veneer with fibrous plaster interiors. Tiles as a roofing material gained popularity in the 1930s, with the Wunderlich company providing catalogues of styles and colours.

“The plan is a piece of theory which one instinctively tries to apply to one’s own life,” said the Courier Mail in an 1938 article on house plans. Courier Mail, 13 December 1938, p 8. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38726236

The bungalow emerges

During the 1920s, the popularity of the California Bungalow infiltrated Australian markets and home designs. In 1924, J.V.D. Coutts published Queensland Bungalows, a book of 27 plans in the bungalow style. The booklet was republished in 4 editions up until 1937 and was very popular with intending homeowners. As Coutts professed, the “bungalow is perfect for our Queensland weather conditions” (Daily Standard (Brisbane), 22 July 1926, p 6). The bungalow had porches and courtyards under extensive roofs, often using a transverse gable parallel to the street. One noticeable feature of the bungalows was the removal of the Queenslander’s stumps, as many bungalows were built at ground level. The other noticeable difference was the separation of formal and guest areas from bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens. The Spanish Mission design features, so popular in California, became features of many of the bungalow designs in Queensland.

Ready-to-erect homes

Beginning in the period during World War I, a Brisbane company provided “ready-to-erect” homes called B & B Homes, sold by Brown and Broad Limited, a timber company at Newstead. Selection was through their detailed booklets. The home kits included all screws, nails, windows, and doors – they were indeed ready to erect. The kits, with all timber cut to measure, were railed throughout the state and can be found in regional towns and on pastoral properties. B & B Newstead Homes provided options, from small homes to substantial residences and even garages and sheds. Each home had a name relevant to Queensland, such as Kennedy and Carpentaria.

Porch and gable designs of the 1930s

The 1930s brought a new development in housing design. The Home Building Publishing Company’s 99 everyday homes for Queenslanders (1939) provides plans for houses with many new features including:

• Porch and gable designs: Instead of long and wide verandahs, the porch and gable designs had enclosed porches and verandahs and multiple roof gables. Designs were now more complicated than in the 1920s. Often called “Ashgrovian houses” after the suburb where the earlier designs were built, these homes were larger in size but still up on stumps for coolness. The roof lines were more complicated, and the homes had numerous gables, some facing the street and others facing outwards from the side of the building. State Library has an array of photographs featuring porch and gable houses. 
• Breakfast rooms: Long rooms on the side of the house with continuous windows were added for an informal space. They were a feature of many character homes in the Brisbane area.

The homes were primarily built in timber with iron roofs (sometimes with tiles), elevated on stumps with battens underneath the house to provide some shading and privacy for the understory. The understory housed the laundry, car accommodation and cool practical spaces for storage and gardening equipment.

In 1938 the prices of houses included in the State Advances Corporation designs of dwellings ranged from 400 pounds to 775 pounds.

Development of efficiency for living

While Queensland house designs were adopted for the tropical climate, using weatherboard, verandahs and stumps to raise the houses above the ground level, the 20th century also brought a new concept in house design – efficiency. Domestic spaces were designed for more efficient use, with the design of kitchen cupboards and benches, and hallways to allow better movement throughout the home.

Efficient movement became a concept in home design in the 1920s. The separation of guest areas and living rooms from kitchens, laundry facilities and bedrooms became a key design element in the new suburban bungalows. An inconvenient home was one where movement within the home had not been considered, according to a 1927 Sunday Mail article.

“you may have to traverse three rooms and six doorways to get from the kitchen table to the front door. All the goings and comings had to be carried on in full view of a guest in the living room. The kitchen had no place for a broom and the noble reception hall had no place for a hat or a coat” (Sunday Mail, 10 April 1927, p 20). 

According to the Courier Mail in November 1938, a dream house would include “a kitchen where all the cupboards would be flush with the stove, sink, draining board and refrigerator ... there would be no kitchen table ... the work would be done on the cabinet tops ... and a lighting point over the stove so that the cook can see the cooking! ... In the bathroom, there should be a separate shower room with a self draining floor ... let the woman do something more interesting than sopping up a wet floor” (Courier Mail, 14 November 1938, p 7). 

To aid efficiency, the idea emerged that women could have an input into the design of their homes, and female advice was sought. In 1918, a women’s subcommittee was appointed by the Minister of Reconstruction. The Minister acknowledged that in the past, sufficient acknowledgement had not been given to the comfort and convenience of the women who had to live in the homes. The committee was labelled in the newspapers of the day as a “scheme to save housework” (The Daily Mail, 11 May 1918, p 9). A commission to examine Commonwealth homes was formed in 1943, and Mrs Mary Ryan of Portland New South Wales was appointed to provide the women's point of view on efficiency and effectiveness (Daily Mirror, 13 April 1943, p 3).

Magazines like the Ladies’ Home Journal, The Australian Woman’s Mirror, The Australian Women’s Weekly and Australian Home Beautiful brought issues of efficiency in the kitchen and home to an ever-increasing readership. An array of Australian women’s magazines can be found in State Library’s One Search catalogue. As the 20th century drew to a close, publications for the design of green homes and energy efficient homes were added to State Library collections. 

The Australian dream to own a home expanded exponentially in the 20th century. Government schemes provided access to home ownership and allowed clients to select from a range of plans. The plans were costed accordingly, allowing the new homeowner to choose an appropriate and affordable design. While architects still played a role in the design of homes, many of Brisbane’s character and heritage homes have designs from this extensive array of plan books. Can you find your home?

Books

• Queensland Deposit Bank and Building Society Limited : plans of buildings, views of estates, map of the City of Brisbane (specially prepared for this work), with full information regarding the company.
• Approved designs of dwellings / State Advances Corporation
• Queensland bungalows / compiled by J.V.D. Coutts
• 'B & B' Newstead homes : a catalogue of 'Ready-to-erect' homes / Brown & Broad limited (1918)
• Featuring ten of the latest Newstead homes / Brown & Broad Newstead Homes Ltd (192?)
• Home designs / The Queensland Housing Commission (1947)
• Home designs / The Queensland Housing Commission (1954)
• House plans / Queensland Housing Commission (1959)
• Inala Estate Plans and House Plans ca.1950
• 1940s Brisbane House Plans (1940-1949)
• Catalogue for Hardie's Fibrolite (1927)
• A wallet of home plans / Wunderlich Limited (1964)
• Building communities : celebrating the achievements of the Queensland Housing Commission 1945-2003
• The Queensland Housing Commission changing people's lives 1945-2003
• Designing houses for Australian climates / J.W. Drysdale (1975) 
• Universal housing design / Queensland. Department of Housing (1998-2009) 
• Work faithfully performed ... : a history of E. Chapman & Sons Pty Ltd builders and contractors since 1869 / Helen Bennett with Don, Greg & Peter Chapman (2013) 
• Campbells in the 80s : everything for building (n.d.)
• To be at home : house, work, and self in the modern world / edited by James Williams, Felicitas Hentschke (2018)
  Ideal homes, 1918-39 : domestic design and suburban modernism / Deborah Sugg Ryan (2018)

Journal

• Report of the Workers' Dwellings Board for the year ended 30th June ... / Queensland. Workers’ Dwelling Board (1915/16), (1929/30), (1938/39)

Journal articles

• How the Queensland Deposit Bank shaped the suburbs in the 1880s / Jon Stanford. Queensland History Journal, 2018-08, Vol 23 (10), pp 693-708
• The rise and fall of Land Banks in Queensland / Jon Stanford. Queensland History Journal, 2020-05, Vol 24 (5), pp 502-518
• Valuing "Under the House": Women's Knowledge and the Architectural History of the Stumped Queensland House / Cathy Keys; Wendy Steele. Fabrications : the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2017-01, Vol 27 (1), pp100-119

Photographs and manuscripts

• Queensland Workers' Dwellings Photographs 1909-1914
• E. Chapman and Son business archive (1890-2015)
• Wunderlich Photographs and Catalogues (1929-1935)