Joseph Plottel


Joseph Plottel was a British born architect who was active in Melbourne, Australia between 1911 and World War II, working in a range of revival styles, as well as Art Deco in the 1930s. He is best known for the St Kilda Synagogue and the Footscray Town Hall.

Early life and career

Plottel was born in Yorkshire in 1883 and went to Australia with his family in 1895 at the age of 12, but returned to England soon after when his father died. He trained as a draftsman with London architect Robert Moore, where he was advised to head for the colonies for advancement.
He began working in Melbourne, accruing a number of large commissions including Michael's Comer Store in Elizabeth Street and the Footscray Barnet Glass Rubber Co. Ltd. factory,
He moved to South Africa in 1903, working in Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg, but took passage to the United States where he saw prospects for architects after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When he ran out of money en route, he decided to stay in Melbourne. Here he was embraced by the local Jewish community and soon found his feet again, initially taking up a position with the Railway's Engineering Department where he worked as a draftsman for about three years. He obtained work as a draftsman with fellow Jewish architect Nahum Burnett, and then set up his own office in 1911.

Melbourne architectural practice

Plottel enjoyed a very diverse architectural practice with commercial and residential commissions in a range of revival styles drawing on the American Romanesque and Arts and Craft movement, as well as Tudor Revival and Spanish Mission. Among his early commissions was the Williamstown Municipal Buildings in 1914, in a simplified Greek Revival style, and several flat projects that were amongst the earliest in Melbourne, such as Garden Court of 1918 in Marne St South Yarra and Waverly in Grey Street St. Kilda, 1920, which were relatively severe designs in unadorned redbrick, with some Arts Crafts or Tudor flavour. The prominent use of rain heads and down pipes in the composition is an interesting pointer to Plottel's later work.
In 1924 Plottel married and also was appointed to design the new St Kilda Synagogue, as the congregation had outgrown the 1872 building. As inspiration he presented a photo of the recently completed Temple Isaiah in Chicago, and his design was closely modelled on it, a smaller and simpler version of its exotic grand, domed, ‘Byzantine Revival' style. The dome roof was clad in green Wunderlich tiles, imitating copper, while the interior was finished in finely crafted woodwork, which was to become Plottel’s trademark.
The Jewish community provided many commissions, as he became close to several business people who had factories in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs including Footscray and Yarraville. Plottel’s wife Rachel was a doctor specialising in skin conditions. Their only daughter, Philippa May, married Cpl Rolf Hallenstein and obtained a Master of Laws at the University of Melbourne then went on to a prominent role in women’s affairs and law, as a member of the National Council of Women of Victoria, the Victorian Women Lawyers Society, the Australian Local Government Women's Association Victoria and many other organisations.
The foundation stone of the new synagogue was laid 28 February 1926 and the synagogue was consecrated on 13 March 1927. The Ladies` Gallery was also extended in 1957–1958 to designs by Plottel. The Masonic Club, in the heart of the city at 164 to 170 Flinders Street, in 1927 again featured the extensive use of decorative brickwork, this time in a variation of the Neo Grec theme, showing the style's usual chaste ornament, formed by swags, antefixes and a shallow pediment.
Joseph Plottel was joined in a partnership by H E Bunnett, in 1921. Bunnett's son, Linsday Harold Bunnett, also joined Plottel's firm after matriculating at Scotch College in 1936, completing his articles in 1941.
Plottel established a brief practice in Canberra in the partnership of Plottel Bunnett & Alsop, who were commissioned to design a number of residential housing projects for the Capital Territory, one example of which survives at 5 Baudin Street dated to 1928 and showing a Mediterranean influence.; The Canberra Electoral role for 1929 lists ‘Plottel, Joseph architect 31 Queen St, Melbourne’ by dint of his having purchased property in the territory.
In the late 1920s, like many architects, he undertook an overseas tour in 1929 to study the latest trends in both Europe and the United States, where he was impressed by the Spanish style houses of Pasadena and Beverly Hills.

Main commissions

Further commissions then came in a series of factories, shops and commercial buildings in Melbourne and the inner suburbs, including Brash's at 108 Elizabeth Street in the late 1920s, while two Footscray factories for Maize Products in 1933 and Bradmills in 1934 cemented his reputation in that suburb. Bradmill's had previously been McPhersons Jute Works and Barnett Glass Rubber, but under the ownership of Bradford Cotton Mills the site was greatly extended with "Factory block No. 1" extensively reconstructed, in 1926–1927 according to Plottel's designs for a then massive £53,399.
He also carried out work on the Kayser Knitting Mill in 1933 and 1936 and Lamson Paragon's paper mill in Richmond in 1937, extending his repertoire with functional industrial buildings, still exhibiting finely executed decorative effects such as the use of coloured brickwork and terra cotta.
The Footscray connections came to fruition in the commission for the new Footscray Town Hall for the municipality. The two storey building was designed in 1936, and erected by day labour under supervising contractors ARP Crow & Sons in 1936, to replace the first town hall built in 1875. It adopts an unusual eclectic Romaneque or even Byzantine mode, which had previously influenced Plottel for his St Kilda Synagogue, arranged in a formal Palladian manner with a central classical portico with attached receding wings either side. It is the only example of this style applied to a town hall in Victoria. The exterior incorporates a finely detailed entrance loggia with Corinthian columns, variegated brown brickwork highlighted with intricately modelled buff faience work and a terracotta tile mansard roof. It contains offices on the ground floor and the council chamber and reception hall on the upper level. The interior is designed in a contrasting Streamlined Modernist manner.
In the later 1930s, Plottel's work became increasingly Moderne, with examples such as the 1935 Beehive Building and 1937 Yoffa House reflecting the Functionalist/Moderne style of the Interwar period. The Beehive building has been described as ‘one of the most distinctive buildings in Melbourne’, while Yoffa House is ‘almost modern in concept, the Moderne note is sounded by the 'architectural terracotta' applied to the facade and the portholes intended for its walls’ Further flat designs also came in the 1930s such ‘Clovelly’ at 136 Alma Road, St Kilda of 1938, featuring the Old English style which was a fashionable and romantic style for flats in the period 1919–1941, described as ‘a cheery tonic after the rigours of the Great War.’
In 1937 Plottel was again engaged by the Jewish community to design the Temple Beth Israel in Alma Road, St Kilda. This building, like the Footscray substations, is almost modernistic, with little elaboration to the brickwork, though the tall square pillars of the portico still allude to the classical.

Later Life

In the late 1930s though is practice was busy, he took time off for nearly a year travelling again in 1938. In 1939, with the forced emigration of German and Austrian Jews, Joseph Plottel applied to be naturalised in 1939, and sponsored a number of friends or relatives to escape from countries then controlled by Nazi Germany.
His last building appears to be a small speculative house venture in 1941, and though he briefly assisted with an extension to the Ladies` Gallery at the St Kilda Synagogue in 1957–1958, he appears to have lived out a quiet retirement before his death at his home in Toorak on 28 May 1977 aged 93. His wife Rachel Henrietta Plottel had died in Toorak two years previously on 2 January 1975, aged 88. Joseph's parents' names were given as Philip Plottel and Sarah Hyams, while Rachel Henrietta Plottel's Parents' names were given as Maurice Gross and Celine Isaacson.

List of works

Plottel's works have been identified from the Art Deco Society article, architectural indexes, and original drawings in the Latrobe Library collection.