School of Arts | Old Town Hall

A meeting held on 31 July, 1850 resolved 'that the present state and position of this rapidly increasing town make it desirable to establish a public institution for the supply of news and the diffusion of knowledge generally'. The same meeting formed the 'Ipswich Literary Institution', its aim to provide a news room and library, with lectures on local politics but not religion. Six days later another meeting established a School of Arts committee, merging with the Library Institution, for the purpose of obtaining the colonial Government subsidy paid to Schools of Arts.

In 1858 the colonial Government was asked to grant land for a School of Arts, and the site of the old Court House and lock-up in Brisbane Street was chosen. In July 1861, the Government Architect notified the Ipswich Mechanics' School of Arts committee that the reading room and library building was to be removed, in one piece, to make way for the Post and Telegraph Offices. Mr. Trotter won the tender for the removal, he also won the tender to erect the new Hall.

The foundation stone for the new building, to be built next to the new Post and Telegraph Offices, was laid on 8 February 1861 by Governor Bowen. Bowen opened stage one later that year, on 24 September. This first section consisted of the 'hall and classrooms' built at a cost of £150, and much of the cost had been raised by donations of money and labour. The anticipated 'elegant extension' was added in 1864, taking the building to the Brisbane Street frontage.

Meanwhile in 1860 the Ipswich Municipal Council had applied to the Government for a grant of land on East and Roderick Street for a Town Hall and a depot for tools and other equipment. This request was granted in 1861, but a further request for money to build the town hall was refused, and the ratepayers likewise refused to contribute in 1862. In 1863 the Council decide to ask the School of Arts committee to make an addition to its building for town hall offices. A period of financial difficulty for the School of Arts ensued and finally in 1869 the control of the School of Arts property was transferred to the Council, although Title did not pass to the Council formally for another 25 years. When Council took over the property it included two allotments of 32 perches each, fronting respectively Brisbane and Limestone Streets, a two storeyed brick building fronting Brisbane Street, and a brick entertainment hall and a cottage fronting Limestone Street. The council became one of the tenants in the building, moving there in 1869.

Following the death of Governor Blackall in 1871, a memorial committee presented a turret clock to be erected on the School of Arts building, necessitating the construction of a tower which was essentially installed by the beginning of 1879. In that same year, a fountain and column to commemorate Blackall, was erected at the nearby intersection of Brisbane and Nicholas Streets. The memorial clock was later removed to the former Council Chambers at Sandgate, after the neighboring Ipswich Post Office clock tower was built.

The Ipswich City Council eventually outgrew its accommodation in the building and erected new premises in South Street. The School of Arts building was converted to various office and retail uses, with changes being made to the hall's interiors for those purposes.

Since 1999, the former School of Arts and Town Hall has been the home of the Ipswich Art Gallery.

The plan chosen in 1861, included a hall sixty-five feet in length by forty-five in width, with a spacious platform, orchestra, a large supper-room, and retiring-rooms.

In 1865 the building was described as follows:

The entire length of the building as now finished is 145 feet; the width of the front or new portion is 58 feet, and that of the older part, behind, 45 feet; the height of the whole is 42 feet. The dimensions of the great hall are 93 feet by 45, with the whole height of the building. The reading-room, lighted with handsome arched plate-glass windows, and divided with polished cedar folding-doors, also arched, is 53½ feet by 33. the library and committee rooms on the same floor are also spacious and handsome apartments. On the ground floor of the new portion of the building are eight convenient offices, with strong-room, cloak-room, &c. Most of these apartments are let as offices to respectable tenants, at a gross rental of something over £200 a-year; one is reserved as a class-room - for which purpose also the committee-room may be used when not required for meetings. The street elevation (stuccoed) is exceedingly chaste and elegant, and, notwithstanding that the different banks have within the last two or three years erected very fine buildings, and our principal mercantile firms have also invested largely and well in bricks and mortar, it is yet true that the Ipswich School of Arts stands pre-eminent among the architectural ornaments of the town.