Lloyd

26/10/1830

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London-born Lloyd Tayler was a well-known and prolific architect who practised principally in Melbourne but collaborated with Edmund Wright over two prominent buildings in the city of Adelaide.

Born on 26 October 1830, Lloyd Tayler was the youngest son of William (a tailor) and Priscilla (nee Lloyd) Tayler. He was educated at Mill Hill Grammar School, Hendon, and King’s College, London and possibly studied architecture at the Sorbonne, Paris (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006; Page 1986). Tayler arrived in Australia in 1851 where he had family in New South Wales and after spending some time on the Victorian goldfields he commenced practice as an architect in Melbourne in 1854 (Page 1986). On 9 September 1858 he married Sarah Toller at St Andrew’s Church of England, Brighton. They resided at Pen-y-Bryn, Brighton (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006).

Tayler’s first professional partnership was with civil engineer Lewis Vieusseux but after two years he was in sole practice (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006; Page 1986). In 1881 he joined with his pupil Frederick A. Fitts (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006).

Professionally, Tayler was a key figure in the movement to form the second Victorian Institute of Architects in 1856 (Sellers 2007). From 1858 Edmund Wright was one of those working towards such an organisation in South Australia; this mutual interest would have brought them together and laid the ground for their future design collaborations (Page 1986). Tayler was President of the Victorian Institute of Architects for various periods after 1886, supported the Architectural and Engineering Association, was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and a judge in the 1900 design competition for the Flinders Street train station (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006).

Tayler made various contributions to civic life. He was a Justice of the Peace, a founder of the St John Ambulance Association, Victoria, a councillor of the Australian Health Society and in 1880-81, a commissioner to the Melbourne International Exhibition. He was active in establishing the Brighton public library (Dunbar and Tibbits 2006).

Tayler practised at a time when Melbourne was experiencing a well-documented building boom due to the wealth created through the gold rushes. However, ‘Tayler’s designs were noted for their simplicity at a time of extravagance; he abhorred the decorative stucco work of others in the profession labelling it “the picturesque becoming the grotesque”’ (Sellers 2007). He appears to have made his initial mark with his bank designs in the 1860s and 1870s but he went onto accept commissions for a range of substantial and notable commercial, domestic and ecclesiastical projects in the city of Melbourne and its suburbs (Page 1986; Goad 1999; Dunbar and Tibbits 2006; Sellers, 2007).

In association with Edmund Wright, Tayler designed the Bank of South Australia (1875) now known as Edmund Wright House at 59 King William Street, Adelaide. Of Victorian era Classical style with Renaissance influences (AHPI), the interior is highly decorated in the palatial Rococo Victorian manner (Morgan & Gilbert 1969). In 1874 he and Edmund Wright won the competition for South Australia’s Parliament House which was begun in 1881 (Page 1986). Parliament House was designed in the Victorian Academic Classical style, demonstrating ideas about styles considered suitable for late nineteenth century civic buildings.

Tayler died at Brighton, Victoria, on 17 August 1900. He was referred to in his obituary in the Argus as ‘probably the best known figure in the architectural profession in Melbourne … one of the oldest and best respected’ (Sellers 2007).

Christine Sullivan

Citation details
Sullivan, Christine, 'Tayler, Lloyd’, Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2008, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=63]