page_title: Percy Edgar Everett
section_title: Public Works Department
hierarchical_section_title: Percy Edgar Everett / Public Works Department
caption_attribution_description: English: Court House at en:Geelong
context_page_description: Percy Edgar Everett, was appointed chief architect of the Victorian Public Works Department in 1934 and is best known for the striking Modernist / Art Deco schools, hospitals, court houses, office buildings and technical colleges the department produced over the next 20 years.
  His most well known design is the Police Headquarters at Russell Street, giving Melbourne “its first Gotham City silhouette”. Percy Edgar Everett's signature style reflected and often combined a range of sources including American Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and European early Modernism, such as Brick Expressionism, the German Bauhaus and even Russian Constructivism, drawn from magazines and his two trips abroad. He was also adept at designing in historicist, domestic and rustic styles when aproropriate.
context_section_description: Two years later, in 1934, Everett was appointed Chief Architect of the Victorian Public Works Department (PWD). This was an extremely important position, making him responsible for the design of the State's public buildings. This included new state offices, courthouses, police stations, hospitals (including tuberculosis (TB) sanatoriums and mental hospitals), schools, colleges, and even some leisure facilities on public land. Much of the output was additional buildings or wings expanding existing institutions.
  The designs produced by the PWD, where he insisted on absolute control over the designs, immediately changed from the polite simplified red brick Georgian of the 1920s to mostly dramatic modernist compositions. The first buildings to be completed by the office under his direction included the Streamline Moderne Drouin Primary School, and the Amsterdam School style Yallourn Technical School (demolished), which both opened in 1936.
  Under his direction, the PWD went on to create a range of modernist designs for numerous high-profile public buildings, with a large number built between 1936 and 1941, only slowing down as World War II restrictions came into force. Essendon Technical School (1939), Camberwell Court House (1939) and the William Angliss College (1940) are considered amongst the best of this period, and are all on the Victorian Heritage Register. Influences from various strains of Modernism can be discerned, including the 1920s Amsterdam School, the German Bauhaus and Brick Expressionism, and even 1920s Russian Constructivism. Some projects were influenced by the US skyscraper style, including the outstanding Russell Street Police Headquarters (1940–43) and the smaller Ballarat State Offices (1941). The curved and sweeping lines of the Streamlined Moderne was another influence, often used for the sometimes long school buildings and hospital wings, while a more typical Art Deco approach was also used, notably for the Shepparton Courthouse and Wangaratta Courthouse and State Offices, both of 1938.
  Everett, like all interwar architects, could also create historicist or domestic styles when it seemed appropriate. Examples include the rustic style Yarra Bend Golf House (1936), the Mediterranean influenced Geelong Court House (1938), and the Collegiate Gothic Melbourne University Chemistry School (1938). The many smaller police stations were quite domestic in character, with pitched roofs and simple detailing.
  In 1945, Everett went to North America to study recent trends in public architecture, but after WWII the style of buildings produced under his direction did not change. As public buildings were given priority, numerous public buildings with his distinctive flair, such as the TB wing at Hamilton Base Hospital (1945), Caulfield Institute of Technology (1947), and large TB Sanatoria at Heatherton and Greenvale (both 1946, now demolished) were major projects in the post war years. By then however, architectural progressives were calling for a more truly modern approach, as distinct from Everett's devotion to dynamic effects.
  One of many governmental projects the PWD executed at this time was the dramatic Department of Agriculture annexe to the 19th century Italianate State Government offices, built in 1948 (demolished 1997). The building housed sections for photography, films and radio, as well as a small cinema, because film and radio were seen as significant new methods of helping to educate and inform farmers. It also showed his interest in dominating older buildings, while at the same time responding to their layout.  His 1940s additions and alterations at the Gordon Technical College in his native Geelong also display this approach.
  One Everett design however did display some true innovation at this time; while still not reflecting the postwar International Style he developed a new prototype for primary schools based on hexagonal classrooms. Built in cream brick, with large timber window-walls and clerestory windows, they were designed to provide the largest floor area with a minimum of materials, and the a
caption: Geelong Court House, 1938
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