John Grainger was born on 30 November 1854 at 1 New Street, Westminster. His parents were John Grainger, Master Tailor and Mary Ann Grainger, née Parsons.

Little is known about Grainger’s early life prior to emigrating to Australia. Winifred Falconer, his companion later in life, wrote in an unpublished manuscript in the mid-1930s that he lived with an uncle who was an important influence on him during his childhood. We don’t know why Grainger was brought up in his uncle’s home. His parents were not deceased — they are listed as still living in Westminster in the 1881 census. Percy believed that his father received much of his education at a monastery school in France at Yvetot (between Le Havre and Paris).

The experience of French culture in his formative years left Grainger with a lifetime love of French architecture. At some point, early in his career, he made a detailed study of French revival styles, particularly Renaissance revival architecture — a style in which he proved to be very proficient.

Little is known about his early training. In Grainger’s unsuccessful application to become a Fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) he states he studied architecture with I.J. Eden & W.K. Green of Westminster ― presumably an architectural partnership. He records that he studied engineering with a W.E. Wilson, also of Westminster.

A clipping from the Australian Argus newspaper on 4 August 1879 states:

'Granger [sic] of Jenkins and Granger [sic] has been in the colony about 3 years. He came from London where he worked with Mr Wilson, the well-known engineer of the Metro. District Railways, and with him made a special study of iron bridge making.'

Marshall’s Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers lists a William Wilson (1822–1898) who acted for contractors on the Metropolitan and District Railway. Grainger was probably apprenticed to Wilson or was a junior in his company; either way he received a solid grounding in civil engineering practices, in addition to his considerable architectural skills.

By the age of 25 he had amassed the knowledge and experience to design the celebrated Princes Bridge in Melbourne. This complex project would have been demanding for a seasoned practitioner twice his age. He allegedly lied about his age to inspire confidence in the Public Works Department officials to whom he submitted the original design.

Grainger’s social circle in Adelaide, where he first lived, included a Mr George Aldridge who owned the Prince Alfred Hotel next door to the government offices where Grainger worked. He became a frequent visitor to the Aldridge family home and in 1880 married 22-year-old Rosa (Rose) Aldridge. On 8 July 1882, Rose gave birth to a son, George Percy Grainger in Melbourne.

The family lived in a brick house in North Brighton, where they employed staff. John Grainger’s business was on a firm footing and their future seemed very positive yet, during their residence in Brighton, Grainger contracted syphilis. And, as so often happened, he passed the then almost incurable disease on to his wife. In 1885 the Graingers moved from Brighton to the New England Hotel in Heidelberg. In a letter to his father, Grainger stated that he overspeculated in mining shares and lost money. This may explain the Graingers’ sudden change in living circumstances.

In 1890, due to health problems and following doctor’s orders, Grainger ceased working and set out for England on the S.S. Oruba. This virtually put an end to an already unhappy marriage and kept him permanently separated from his child. Deck life seemed to agree with him as he regained his health. Grainger returned to Melbourne but stayed briefly and travelled to Adelaide where he had maintained ties with his wife’s family. Without a business partnership or close family to give him direction he lived a transient life in the first half of the 1890s.

By 1915 Grainger was an invalid and was suffering the last stages of tertiary syphilis, while his companion Winifred Falconer nursed him. His son, Percy, sent him £30 a month from New York as neither he nor Falconer had any income. He died a pauper on 13 April 1917 and was buried in an unmarked grave at the Box Hill Cemetery.

At age 22 John Harry Grainger successfully applied for a position in the South Australian Government as an assistant architect and engineer. It is unclear why he chose to emigrate but, whatever his motivation, his career decision proved to be well made. In addition to his government position he developed a thriving private practice in Adelaide. Less than 18 months later in 1878 he resigned his government position to pursue private commissions.

In 1880, while Grainger was still living in Adelaide, he won the competition to design Princes Bridge over the Yarra River in association with surveyor and architect, J.S. Jenkins. Jenkins was Grainger’s partner, but the design is considered to be Grainger’s. Grainger and his wife Rose moved to Melbourne where he completed the finished drawings and hoped to oversee the construction of the bridge. Actual building work did not start until 1885 and the bridge took another three years to be opened.

In the same year that Grainger won the Princes Bridge competition he designed a swinging bridge over the La Trobe River at Sale in Gippsland. The late architectural historian Margaret Pitt Morison described it as an ‘elegant trussed structure in wrought iron with a balanced wing span of 45 metres supported centrally by eight pivot cylinders resting on bedrock’. It is believed that Grainger’s bridge was the first to use this technology in Australia.

In 1882, Grainger entered into a partnership with architect and civil engineer Charles D’Ebro and established an office in Collins Street, Melbourne. In the same year they successfully submitted a design in a competition for a town hall in Fremantle. Later that year they won first prize for the Masonic Hall Company’s building in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. In 1884 the partnership won first prize in a competition to design Auckland’s public library and municipal offices (now the art gallery). This substantial building was designed in the French Renaissance revival style. In 1885 his business partnership was dissolved, but his professional status seems not to have been affected. In 1886 he was responsible for the design of the Georges Building and the New Masonic Hall, both in Collins Street.

In the 1890s, after health problems and the end of his marriage, Grainger worked itinerantly in South Australia and Western Australia. He eventually found success as the chief architect in the WA Public Works Department. He resigned in 1905 due to ill health and travelled on an extended journey overseas. Again the experience of travel seemed to restore Grainger’s health and energy. He moved with his companion Winifred Falconer back to Melbourne where he entered into partnership with Phillip Kennedy and John Little. Grainger, Kennedy and Little practised as architects and civil engineers and had an office at 123 Queen Street.

This last period of his professional life began with a quite prestigious success. Shortly after his arrival in Melbourne he won first prize in a competition to design a northern wing to Melbourne’s Town Hall. Although a drawing by Grainger for the exterior of the wing exists in the Grainger Museum Collection, it is believed that his practice only worked on the interior. His firm was also responsible for the design of St Michael’s Catholic Church in North Melbourne. By 1910 the firm was reduced to Grainger and Little but continued to secure significant projects. Its commissions included the State Savings Bank and Collins House (both now demolished).

Grainger became increasingly troubled by rheumatic symptoms and his health deteriorated dramatically by the outbreak of World War I. His last building design was for an extension to Coombe Cottage, Nellie Melba’s house at Coldstream in country Victoria.

Grainger’s name lived on after his death in the name of his architectural practice. Grainger and Little became Grainger, Little and Barlow and finally Grainger, Little, Barlow and Hawkins — the latter existed until 1924. Posthumous use of his name is perhaps an indication of how this highly accomplished architect and engineer was viewed by his professional fraternity.

Of all the buildings and bridges designed by John Grainger, Melbourne’s Princes Bridge is the most iconic. On completion, the bridge was viewed as a badge of achievement, a visible manifestation of the rewards which Melbourne offered to those who strove and prospered there. The occasion of its opening, which took place at the height of the land boom in October 1888, presented the city fathers with a powerful and timely opportunity to represent and celebrate their colony’s remarkable progress.

John Grainger designed Princes Bridge to replace the existing bridge of the same name, which by the end of the 19th century was clearly too narrow for the volume of traffic. The new bridge was designed to function as both a conduit between the city and the affluent southern suburbs and as an impressive gateway to the booming Melbourne central business district. The resulting elegant structure unquestionably fulfilled its promise. Standing upon it, looking up Swanston Street, the eye was drawn to that great massed pile of newly-erected stone edifices which gave Melbourne its most commonly used superlative: ‘marvellous’. Most contemporary accounts agreed that the public was very impressed with the splendid new bridge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bird, John, Percy Grainger, 3rd edition, Sydney: Currency Press, 1999.

Falconer, Winifred, ‘The life and works of John H. Grainger, architect and civil engineer’, unpublished manuscript, c.1934, Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne.

Grainger, John H, Application for Fellowship of the RVIA, September 1906, RVIA Papers, Australian Manuscript Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Grainger, Percy, ‘John H. Grainger’, Museum Legend, 15 March 1956, in Malcolm Gillies, David Pear and Mark Carroll (eds), Self-portrait of Percy Grainger, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Grainger, Percy, Letter to Rose Grainger, 16 January 1904, in Kay Dreyfus (ed.), The Farthest North of Humanness: Letters of Percy Grainger 1901–14, South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985.

Grainger, Percy, ‘My father in my childhood’, 12 May 1954, from ‘Grainger’s anecdotes’, typescript and manuscript, 1949–1954, in Malcolm Gillies, David Pear and Mark Carroll (eds), Self-portrait of Percy Grainger, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Pitt Morison, Margaret, ‘John Harry Grainger, architect and civil engineer’, unpublished manuscript, n.d., Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne.

Schrader, Herman, ‘Reminiscences of J.H. Grainger and the Adelaide String Quartet’, unpublished manuscript, n.d., Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne.