Stewart & Lloyds Factory (former)

In 1882, Lloyd and Lloyds established an office in Sydney. In the early days there were few steel-making firms, with Stewart and Clydesdale (later Stewart and Menzies Ltd.) also establishing an agency in the southern States. When Stewarts and Lloyds Limited was formed in 1903, their long-time representative from 1882, James Brown, was appointed General Manager for Australia. In that year, Brown supervised the expansion of the company and an office and warehouse was opened in Brisbane.1 Stewarts and Lloyds tube manufacturers, managed by Charles Moore, was located at 97-99 George Street. By 1911 the company had expanded to include a bulk store in Fortitude Valley. In 1914 Stewarts and Lloyds had relocated their entire operations to Ann Street Fortitude Valley. Here they manufactured and supplied ‘wrought iron tubes and fittings, boiler tubes and steel plates, as well as artesian-well boring tubes’.1 Stewarts and Lloyds supplied pipes and steel to numerous local councils across Queensland, as well as being the successful tenderer for supplying tubular steel and galvanised iron aeroplane hangars for Qantas at Charleville, Cloncurry and Longreach.1 The Longreach hangar has been identified as having State and National heritage significance.

During the 1920s the company prospered and embraced corporate ideals of the time to provide for their employees’, and families’ welfare as well as being ‘good corporate citizens’. In 1928 the Sunday Mail reported that

Stewart[s] and Lloyds Ltd., the famous manufacturers of iron and steel pipes, whose world-wide organisation includes an important branch in Brisbane, devotes considerable attention to the welfare of its employees. They employ six welfare supervisors, who devote their whole time to devising and carrying out plans for the benefit of the employees and their families. The provisions of institutes and canteens, recreation grounds, safety-first regulations, schemes for assisting employees and their dependents who are in need as the result of sickness, old age, or misfortune.[sic] Thrift clubs, educational schemes, and housing schemes, are all included.

During the 1920s and ‘30s there were numerous reports of tennis and golf tournaments involving teams from Stewarts and Lloyds as well as enterprises such as the Commercial Bank, Taubmans and the Postal Institute.1 Indications of the company’s contributions to community benefits can be found in reports of donations. For example, Stewarts and Lloyds presented six tubular park seats to the Parks Seats League in Brisbane in 1926 and earned praise for their “civic pride”. The firm’s name was to be placed on the seats as well as a “gentle hint to men to be courteous” – “Mothers First”.1 The firm also supplied cars for a “great motor ride and picnic” for poor and crippled children of the benevolent homes and institutions of Brisbane organised by the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland.1

In 1925 Brisbane City Council resumed some of Stewarts and Lloyds’ land in Ann Street, possibly as part of the cutting of the hill in Ann Street between the city and Fortitude Valley. In the subsequent court-case, the company asserted that operating from a second storey on their building on the reduced land was much less efficient than their previous operations on the larger site.1 In 1937 the company was again in the Land Court claiming compensation from the Bureau of Industry for property resumed for the Story Bridge. No other suitable sites in the vicinity could be found for the relocation of the business. Although the company had purchased 5 acres in Montague Road, South Brisbane in December 1936, the company asserted that the site “had disadvantages compared with the Ann-street site”. The land required filling and was flood-prone which would increase insurance costs. The South Brisbane site was argued to also involve increased transportation costs.1 On 13 October 1937 the firm was awarded £37,500 compensation for the value of warehouse improvements and plant and machinery removal and other costs.1

Stewarts and Lloyds’ purchase of the Montague Road property from Australian Iron and Steel Limited was registered in April 1937. The former rich farming land of Montague Road in the nineteenth century, was, by the early twentieth century, developed with a predominance of residential buildings on either side with a scattering of industrial buildings. By the end of the 1910 however, industrial development had begun to increasingly encroach upon the existing residential nature of the road.

In 1937 Stewarts and Lloyds engaged architects Hall and Phillips to design their new premises. Thomas Ramsay Hall (1879-1950) and Lionel B. Phillips formed a partnership in 1930 which continued until Hall’s death in 1950. A son of noted architect John Hall, T.R. Hall was also an accomplished architect by this time, having designed the recently completed Brisbane City Hall (with Prentice). The partnership of Hall and Phillips designed buildings incorporating modern styles of architecture. Hall and Phillips designed Shell House at 301 Ann Street using the new manufactured Benedict Stone in an Art Deco design, the Old English inspired Shingle Inn in Edward Street and Elystan Court at New Farm. Stewarts and Lloyds’ factory, warehouse and office incorporated modern designs enhanced by attractively detailed facades. 

Hall and Phillips advertised for tenders for the erection of new premises in Montague Road, South Brisbane for Stewarts and Lloyds in May 1937. The tender of Blair Cunningham was accepted in July. In August Brisbane City Council accepted plans for an office block for Stewart’s and Lloyd’s (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. in South Brisbane to cost £17,000.1 This was seen as further evidence that the effects of the Great Depression were easing. Work began immediately with “debris from the old Town Hall … being tipped into the foundations of Stewart[sic] and Lloyds (Aust) Pty Ltd’s new building in Montague Road.”1

By 1938 the business was completely operational at the new site. The Post Office Directory of 1938 recorded the appearance of Stewarts and Lloyds (Australia) Pty Ltd [trademark S & L] on the right hand side of Montague Road after Bouquet St. This maker of “wrought iron and steel tubes and fittings, boiler tubes, steel plates and bars, tubular gates, artesian well-boring tubes, and steel tubes with patent Victaulic Joint” joined Monteath Bros Pty Ltd cast iron pipe manufacturers, Austin Glass Manufacturers Co Ltd, Hume Pipe Co. and Healy Bros, fibrous plaster manufacturers on this side of Montague Road. Stewarts and Lloyds applied for additions to its warehouse in November 1938.

The pattern of industrial development in Montague Road continued and by the 1940s factories, yards and warehouses lined both sides of Montague Road as far as Hockings Street. During World War Two steel manufacturing companies were extensively involved in the war effort with Stewarts and Lloyds plants forging shells of various types and sizes, as well as air-craft engine cylinder barrels and liners. During this time new companies and partnerships were formed. In 1946 Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd, The Broken Hill Pty Ltd Co Ltd and Tube Investments Ltd agreed to amalgamate their interests to form Tubemakers of Australia Ltd.1 Stewarts and Lloyds extended their operations on this site throughout the 1950s and ‘sixties with the addition of new sheds and extensions to existing warehouses. The office underwent some alterations and renovations in 1966.1 Stewarts and Lloyds / Tubemakers of Australia retained ownership of this more than five-acre site in Montague Road until 1985 when it was sold to Australian Consolidated Industries Ltd. (ACI); which in 1992 owned most of the block from Boquet Street to Hockings Street. 

The former Stewarts and Lloyds warehouse, factory and head office remain on the site attesting to the success of this industry in the twentieth century.

The single storey factory building consists of four large gable-roofed bays united by a long brick and render façade on the street alignment of Montague Road. The facade is divided vertically into bays by attached pilasters and horizontally into a red face brick dado, and rendered wall and parapet divided by a projecting string cornice. The pediments to the four roof gables are a combination of stepped and triangular shapes, but unified by colour and materials.

The façade has no windows but is modulated by pilasters, brackets and wall panels to reduce the apparent bulk of the wall. Plaster relief decoration consists of art-deco elements of diamonds and horizontal and vertical fluting to the parapet capping, cornice, brackets, dado and wall panels. The buildings behind the façade consist of large bays sheeted and roofed in corrugated galvanised iron, some with continuous ridge ventilators.

The decorative wrought iron gates and brick and render gateposts at each end of the façade repeat the diamond motif and materials of the front wall.

1. A.L.B. Thompson Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd: 1903-1953, A.N. Holden: London, 1953, pp.107-109

2. Alphabetical advertisement/listing 1914 Post Office Directory

3. Sir H. Fysh Qantas Rising, Qantas Founders Outback Museum, 1996, p.124

4. "Keen Interest” The Brisbane Courier 3 May 1933, p.8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article22171705

5. “Park Seats League” The Brisbane Courier 24 December 1926, p.8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article21075249

6. “Children’s Outing” The Brisbane Courier 27 September 1932, p.12 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article21997006 

7. “Ann-St. Land. Resumption Claim.” Brisbane Courier 12 May 1925, p.19 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20925461

8. “£30,967 Claim by Company" The Courier-Mail 14 September 1937, p.19 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37904856

9. “Resumption of Land” Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) 14 October 1937, p.7 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55005154

10. “Brisbane Building Activity” Queensland Times 2 September 1937, p.8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article124594731

11. “Rule found after 70 years” The Courier-Mail 17 August 1937, p.16 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37040142

12. A.L.B. Thompson Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd: 1903-1953 op.cit.

13. Brisbane City Council. Building Cards. 99 Montague Rd

14. A & B Journal of Queensland, 1937

15. A.L.B. Thompson, Stewarts and Lloyds Ltd. 1903-1953, London: A.N. Holden and Co, 1953

16. Queensland Certificates of Title

17. Trove digitalised newspapers. http://nla.gov.au/nla.newspapers

18. Brisbane City Council Building Registers

19. Brisbane City Council Building Cards

20. Queensland Post Office Directories