William Jolly Bridge

About

The William Jolly Bridge is a heritage-listed road bridge over the Brisbane River between North Quay in the Brisbane central business district and Grey Street in South Brisbane, within City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Harding Frew and built from 1928 to 1932 by MR Hornibrook. The style of the bridge's design is Art Deco, which was popular at the time. MR Hornibrook company built the bridge that consists of two piers that were built in the river and two pylons on the river banks, which support three graceful arches. The rainbow arch type, as it was described, was claimed to be the first of its type in Australia. It is a steel frame arch bridge with an unusual concrete veneer, treated to make it appear like "light-coloured porphyry". When opened, during the worst year of the Great Depression, the bridge was known simply as the Grey Street Bridge. It was renamed to the William Jolly Bridge on 5 July 1955 in memory of William Jolly, the first Lord Mayor of Greater Brisbane. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 August 1996.

The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new Brisbane City Council and bears the name of its first Mayor, William Jolly. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking the Brisbane central business district and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and at North Quay at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.

The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.

Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant; however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those en route to the outstations at Coopers Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.

On 10 February 1842, following the closure of the penal settlement, the Moreton Bay district was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.

The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street c. 1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane (as the Brisbane CBD was then known) in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865-November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.

Brisbane's first burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street where it became known as Paddington Cemetery, site now partially occupied by Suncorp Stadium ), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington ) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.

The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive ) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The extension on the Main Line railway from Ipswich to Brisbane in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working-class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.

The opening of the Victoria Bridge on 15 June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.

In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. The South Brisbane dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established c.1885, and South Brisbane railway station was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton Reach.

The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on 7 January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the South Brisbane Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and South Brisbane railway station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the council to work out their rates. A series of floods of the Brisbane River in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Albert rail bridge at Indooroopilly in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on 8 February 1893 described the event as:

"What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation."

Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay–River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin (later Arnott's Biscuits ) factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.

On 3 October 1903, the Queensland Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross-river communication.

In the immediate period after World War I, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. In 1930 the completion of the Sydney to South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the Grey Street Bridge, there was scant opposition.

The Grey Street Bridge was conceived as a bypass for motor traffic between the southern suburbs and western suburbs of Brisbane to avoid increasing traffic congestion on the Victoria Bridge and on CBD streets such as George Street.

By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912 to 1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The Victoria Bridge also contributed to traffic congestion in the Brisbane CBD as all traffic between the suburbs on the north and south sides of the river had to pass through the CBD. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920 and 1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and Walter James Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.

The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on 20 May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on 11 January 1926 (chairman Roger Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, William Muir Nelson and Ronald Martin Wilson ). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc., and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A bridge at Grey Street would be a bypass for motor traffic between the southern suburbs and western suburbs of Brisbane to avoid increasing traffic congestion on the Victoria Bridge and on CBD streets such as George Street. A crossing at Kangaroo Point (where the Story Bridge was later built) was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from William John Earle, the City Planner, and Eneas Fraser Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.

On 7 June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the Grey Street Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated 25 June 1930.

The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on 10 July 1926. Harding Frew, a local but prominent civil engineer, was appointed Engineer for the bridge on 12 November 1926.