Victoria and Albert are alive and well in Adelaide – but destined never to meet. By James Potter

PARK is the most commonly named thoroughfare (street, road, avenue or terrace) in Adelaide – but coming a very close second is Victoria, followed by George, Albert, Elizabeth and William. The common factor is the British monarchy. Many of Adelaide’s older suburbs have a street named after Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837. A street named Albert is therefore often found nearby.

Victoria married Albert (thereafter named the Prince Consort) in 1840, and the Prince of Wales, Albert (later Edward VII), was born a year later. Victoria and Albert streets are to be found in Prospect, Payneham, Camden, Semaphore, Glenelg, Goodwood, Mount Barker and Mile End/Thebarton (100 years ago they were also in Parkside, Highbury and Victoria Park). In true Victorian propriety, they never intersected each other and are always found running in the same direction.

British royalty was at the heart of our city’s nomenclature. King William IV chose Adelaide, the name of his Queen, for the new city (instead of what might have been Williamstown) thus allowing the main north-south thoroughfare to become King William St. This was split in two by the square named for the then heir to the throne, Victoria. At this time (1836) she had only just met Albert who, therefore, had not assumed his later importance. Otherwise there might also have been an Albert Square to add to the current traffic flow problems of King William St.

All other streets in Adelaide, incidentally, were named after commoners and, out of respect for royalty, no west-east street was allowed to continue across King William St with the same commoner’s name. In the later years of the 19th century, the names Victoria and Albert flourished in Adelaide. There were the suburbs (Victoria Park, Albert Park, Alberton, Queenstown), the theatres, the hotels (for example, the Victoria in Hindley St and the Prince Albert in Wright St) and assorted buildings and terraces that bore their names.

To the north of Adelaide, the town of Victoria on the River Light was surveyed and planned, but copper was found further south and we have Kapunda instead.

All this naming was a deliberate policy. A newspaper editorial in 1867 unashamedly stated that by making the monarch’s name a household word with street and town nomenclature, the population would never forget the importance of their relationship with their distant sovereign. This relationship was further enhanced in the 1870s when the Victoria Bridge and the Albert Bridge were opened. Queen Victoria and her consort prince were viewed as one of the great love matches of history, and in King William St this pairing has been symbolised for more than 140 years in the form of the Victoria Tower (part of the Post Office) and the Albert Tower (part of the Town Hall).

The Albert Tower appeared first, completed in 1865, six months before the opening of the Town Hall. In November of that year a temporary platform was erected just below the top of the tower which, at a height of 45 metres, was the highest point then in Adelaide. It was mounted by local dignitaries with apprehension, a newspaper report noting that “... several of those who came were afraid to mount to the summit, but about 30 gentlemen summoned up enough courage to climb the long succession of ladders which formed the only accessible mode of communication”. Some of these gentlemen, wishing for the notoriety of having reached the greatest height possible, climbed one last ladder to touch the extremity of the spire and one unnamed individual actually sat on the brass ball below the weather vane and made it revolve.

During the opening ceremony the Mayor, as well as quoting Keats (“a thing of beauty is a joy forever”), also stated that the “Albert Tower stood as memento to future generations of the esteem in which the people of the present day held the virtues of the illustrious Prince whose name it bore”. Albert had died four years previously, but his popularity had remained undiminished. The Albert Bells in the tower first pealed in June 1866, when they could be heard from as far away as the extremity of North Adelaide.

One aspect, however, remained unfinished. The three apertures intended for clock faces were empty and remained so for nearly 70 years when the clocks were donated and installed in time for the State’s 1936 centenary celebrations.

On the tower scaffolding in 1865, a local photographer, Townsend Duryea, took his panoramic views of the city. These are available on the internet and can be viewed in the History Trust’s new premises at the Torrens Parade Ground on Victoria Drive. They tell us much about photography in the mid-19th century. It took Duryea all day to complete the 14 photos that show a 360 degree view of early Adelaide. He began in the morning facing north up King William St and worked his way around the tower in an anticlockwise direction, to avoid the sun shining into his camera lens. This can be seen from the shadows in King William St – the western side showing morning shadows, while the eastern side is bathed in late afternoon light. The streets of Adelaide appear empty of people with the few ghost-like figures being those who had stood still long enough to have their image recorded.
Two years later, in 1867, the foundation stone for the new GPO Victoria Tower was laid by the Duke of Edinburgh during the first royal visit to Australia. The huge stone of Macclesfield marble (two metres long and 70cm high) can be seen today on the King William St frontage. It has a depth of more than half a metre and in a cavity beneath was placed a purse containing SA and Sydney minted sovereigns.

A reporter from The Register, no doubt affected by the presence of royalty and the warm November sunshine, inferred that the cosy proximity of Victoria Square, King William St and the Victoria and Albert towers meant that all was right with the world under the safe security of the British crown. The Post Office was completed by 1872 and the tower, with height above 50 metres, was said at the time to be the highest reached in Australia.

The eastern and southern sides of the tower contain niches at a height of six metres and these were intended to accommodate statues of Queen Victoria and King William. Presumably there was enough security without them and they remain empty. The tower clock was installed in 1876, from which date the Victoria and Albert bells have been able to peal to each other across the traffic in King William St.

The Post Office and Town Hall were built in the Italianate style of the period, with rectangular sections that imitated the Italian villa, flat roof lines, overhanging eaves and square towers. Such towers were sometimes referred to as “Tuscan” – though not the same architectural image suggested by that name today. Some early views of Adelaide do suggest a certain Italian appearance; this can be seen in the 1880s engraving which shows the two towers and other Italianate government buildings surrounding a piazza-like Victoria Square.

An oil painting showing King William St in 1881 was, until recently, exhibited at the Bournemouth Art Gallery, England. Being unaware of its title and origin, the gallery had labelled it “Somewhere in Italy”. Queen Victoria would not have been amused.