79 Windermere Road, Hamilton

Several years after her husband’s death in 1931, Howes commissioned Horace Driver to design a new dwelling for herself and her son. Driver was a Brisbane-trained architect who had received acclaim while studying and working in the United States in the 1920s before returning to Brisbane to set up his architectural practice. Driver’s design, which features asymmetrical brickwork, half-timbering and a large gabled roof, was an extremely stylish and up-to-date replacement for the old residence. The Howes had ‘Lyndor’ removed in 1939 shortly after the construction of this house in 1938. Howes’ new brick residence, designed by Horace Driver and constructed by C.H. Schubert, was an interwar Old English style house featuring asymmetrical brickwork, brick chimney and a large terracotta-tiled, gabled roof. In the 1950s F. Schubert built garages at the property for Howes and her new husband J. Hardie. Howes sold the house in 1957. Subsequent owners added a pool in 1973 and extended the dwelling at a cost of approx. $10,000 in 1977. Alterations were approved in the early 1990s.

This fine interwar residence, designed in 1938 by Horace Driver, demonstrates the interwar trend of architect-designed homes in the latest styles in Brisbane’s wealthier suburbs.

1. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, Building Cards

2. Brisbane City Council aerial photographs, 1946, 2001, 2009

3. Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Maps, Town of Hamilton, Detail Plan No. 262, 13 August 1923

4. Brisbane City Council, Register of New Buildings, April 1938

5. Department of Environment and Resource Management, Queensland Certificates of Title.

6. Queensland Post Office Directories

7. The Brisbane Courier, The Queenslander, The Courier Mail, The Brisbane News.

8. Watson, Donald and Judith McKay. A Directory of Queensland Architects to 1940. (St. Lucia: U of Q Press, 1984)

9. Andrew Gildea, ‘Horace George Driver’, University of Queensland Bachelor of Architecture Thesis (1988)