Glenora

In 1902 Robert Balloch Stark purchased two acres, three roods and thirteen perches of land on the Bulimba Railway Estate. Robert Stark was one half of the successful retail partnership of Allan and Stark. Stark immigrated to Queensland from Scotland in 1881 and began working for Duncan Sinclair’s drapery business in South Brisbane. In 1882 Stark established his own business and was soon joined by partner James Allan, creating the drapery and outfitting business Allan and Stark. The first business premise was in South Brisbane, but in 1893 moved to Queen St in the City. Allan and Stark Department Store was the foremost department store in Queensland throughout the first half of the twentieth century.  

Stark commissioned Dods to design his new house at Morningside. Prior to this in the late 1890s, Dods had designed a house named ‘Wairuna’ at Highgate Hill for James Allan, Stark’s business partner. This may have influenced Stark’s choice to commission Dods to design ‘Glenora’. Robert Smith (Robin) Dods was one of Queensland’s most innovative and respected architects in this period. Reputed for designing some of Brisbane’s most important buildings, such as St. Briget’s at Red Hill and the Mater Hospital, Dods’s designs followed the Arts and Craft movement and were innovative for the time in their design for a sub-tropical climate. The Stark house was recorded as costing £958. 

The Stark house is referred to several times in Robert Riddel’s Thesis, “RS (Robin) Dods 1868-1920”. It is compared to the ‘Littledike’ house in Clayfield (no longer extant), both sharing a similar design layout and features. Riddel suggests that ‘Glenora’ followed a similar plan to the ‘Littledike’ house but with a differing orientation. He also states that the Morningside house was not as grand or expensive as the Clayfield house, however several similarities exist and some of these similarities, according to Riddel, are uniform characteristics of a Dods’ house: ‘Glenora’ was constructed of timber, and on stumps that were hidden by timber boards, the single skin house was constructed with large verandahs on the north and west sides of the house with the entrance and portico on the west side facing Wickham Street; the verandahs were decorated by “a distinctive undulating and sinuous curved valance” (R.Riddel, p.381); the roof was constructed from corrugated iron and although not as steep as some of Dods’s other designs it was carefully shaped; the design included two chimney stacks, however, compared to other Dods’s houses these were fairly simple in design. The house was set back on the large block from Richmond Road and extensive tree planting was undertaken, several of the original plantings are still apparent. 

By 1903 Robert Balloch Stark was listed at the Richmond Road address in ‘Glenora’. In 1911 Robert Balloch Stark’s son, Robert Harold Stark, also a draper, constructed a house for his family across the road from ‘Glenora’ named ‘Wakool’ in Richmond Road. Robert Balloch Stark resided at ‘Glenora’ until his death in 1934. In 1976 ‘Glenora’ was converted into a boarding house. Much of the interior and exterior remains intact and this is supported by Riddel’s Thesis in which it is stated that the Stark house “when inspected…was found to have many carefully detailed elements internally"1.

1. Riddel, R. J., R.S (Robin) Dods 1868-1920, University of Queensland PhD, 2008, p.277

2. Riddel, R. J., R.S (Robin) Dods 1868-1920, University of Queensland PhD, 2008

3. “Wairuna”, Heritage Citation, Department of Environment and Resource Management

4. “Dods, Robert Smith (Robin) (1868-1920), Australian Dictionary of Biography

5. Apperley, Richard and Robert Irving and Peter Reynolds, A Pictorial Guild to Identifying Australian Architecture, Angus and Robertson Publishers, Sydney, 1989

6. University of Queensland, ‘Queensland Places: Morningside”

7. Judy Gale Rechner, Brisbane House Styles 1880 to 1940: a guide to the affordable house, Brisbane: Brisbane History Group Studies No. 2, 1998

8. Historic Titles, Department of Environment and Resource Management

9. Queensland Post Office Directories

10. Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Survey Maps

11. Queensland Electoral Rolls

12. The Courier Mail, Friday 16 March, 1934, p17.