Compare the pair: Edmund Wright House, opened in 1878, and the Chelsea Town Hall opened in 1887.
You could argue the former – a spectacular Italianate building on King William Street in Adelaide – is the more impressive of the two, albeit smaller in footprint.
In London, the neoclassical town hall is now known as the Kensington and Chelsea Wedding Registry and is one of the most sought-after wedding venues in the United Kingdom, having hosted numerous glamorous celebrity couplings.
Edmund Wright House was once our Chelsea town hall – a beautiful place to get married when it housed the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry.
No more. The heritage-listed building is out of public hands, with the registry now in a nondescript room on Chesser Street.
The Kensington and Chelsea Register Office on Kings Road, London. Photo: Steve Parsons/PA Wire
The Chelsea town hall has recently been renovated, a prestigious jewel in the heart of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Edmund Wright House is closed to the public and has been vacant for the best part of a decade, including the past five years after being sold to a private buyer by the Marshall Government in 2019.
It is arguably South Australia’s most spectacular heritage building.
It sits demurely between the Mayfair Hotel and a bland office block, the forest of perfectly proportioned columns hidden behind the foliage of two flourishing street trees.
If you were to go inside, you would make your way to the gracious banking chamber – once home to all kinds of performances. The Adelaide Chamber Singers performed their first concert there and it hosted numerous recitals and Fringe shows.
In the grand offices, Len Amadio once ruled over a vigorous Arts Department and, more than a century ago, it was the first offices of the Bank of South Australia.
The old banking chamber of Edmund Wright House.
As Keith Conlon has pointed out, the building tells an important story about the state – it is a constant reminder of the early economic success of South Australia.
Its namesake architect, Edmund Wright, who oversaw construction of a design likely mostly completed by Victorian Lloyd Tayler, was also responsible for many of our most important civic buildings: Parliament House, the Adelaide Town Hall and the GPO.
The building, later to become known as Edmund Wright House, was home to three important banks over nearly a century before being sold to a corporation who proposed to demolish it in 1971 to replace it with an office block.
This was an appalling prospect for a city that was watching its beautiful heritage buildings disappear in favour of bleak modern replacements (the Exhibition Building on North Terrace is one of the saddest examples).
Overwhelming community outcry saved the building, which was bought by the Dunstan Government. The campaign led to the first heritage protection laws in South Australia passing in 1978.
Nobody could question the beauty and worth of Edmund Wright House, but its fate is uncertain.
At the time of the Marshall Government’s sell-off, then minister responsible Stephan Knoll said he was “looking forward to seeing how the purchaser intends to bring this beautiful heritage treasure back to life”.
Not even the Heritage Council was given an opportunity to have a say at the time. There was no heritage agreement governing how it would be maintained.
The ornate hallway inside Edmund Wright House.
The Sydney-based investor was silent on their plans. Their partner – international property group JLL – said future uses could run the gamut from office space to a boutique hotel.
JLL told InDaily this week that the plans hadn’t changed. The building is up for lease and has yet to attract a tenant.
It’s possible the building could find a tenant who will lovingly bring it back to life, with the community once again able to enjoy its glorious space.
It’s also possible that it will remain as it is for countless years to come, slowly crumbling away. We’ve seen this with other heritage treasures, such as Gawler Chambers on North Terrace.
The Exhibition Building was demolished because it was neglected and became hopelessly degraded. In heritage circles, they call this “demolition by neglect”.
The community can’t allow this – or anything like it – to happen to Edmund Wright House.
We have so few of these remaining treasures.
Surely it’s not beyond our means for the government to either buy it back and restore it for public use, or take a legislative stand to force building owners to do the right thing?
The Greens are pushing a bill designed to do just that – to force repair and maintenance work on state heritage buildings. The development sector has described this as “overreach”.
Meanwhile, one of our city’s great architectural treasures remains shuttered, its future uncertain and, largely, out of the community’s hands.
Notes on Adelaide is a weekly column reflecting on the city, its strengths and its foibles. You can read more Notes on Adelaide in SALIFE’s print editions.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
