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PLAQUE CEREMONY HONOURING PROFESSOR LESLIE WILKINSON OBE (1882-1973) held on APRIL 29, 2024.

“Professor Leslie Wilkinson ‘s architectural work is now so well known in this country as to need no introduction” recounted artist, Lloyd Rees.  He arrived in Australia from England in 1918 to become the first Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney and made a deep impression, first on his students and then upon the community at large.

He departed from the Anglo-Saxon traditions and took into account the climate and physical environment of his adopted country, blending Mediterranean and Georgian influences.

Leslie Wilkinson designed some 40 private houses in the city and country,  undertook 44 separate commissions for the University of Sydney, as well as designing churches, chapels, blocks of flats, a Sydney City Council housing project and numerous alterations and extensions to existing buildings.

Many private houses can be found in the eastern suburbs at Vaucluse, Bellevue Hill, Woollahra, Point Piper, Darling Point and Double Bay and in rural NSW.

His first house was his own house, Greenway at 24 Wentworth Road, Vaucluse, designed in 1923.  It is named after the convict architect, Francis Greenway and it is a house in harmony with its setting with rocks and trees of the original site left undisturbed.  The pink-red bark of the trunks of the Angophora Costata trees was replicated in the colour of his exterior walls.  Its Mediterranean charm makes it a very unique and distinctive property.

The plaque commemorating Leslie Wilkinson’s architectural achievements was laid outside his home by Woollahra  Councillor for Vaucluse, Mary-Lou Jarvis, as a fitting tribute to his memory and architectural contribution to this country.

Reference:  LESLIE WILKINSON:  A Practical Idealist by Dupain, Johnson, Molnar and Wilkinson 1982.

Plaque in honour of Professor Leslie Wilkinson OBE laid outside his home at 24 Wentworth Road, Vaucluse, on April 29, 2024.

L-R:  Graham Humphrey, architect, Ashley Dawson- Damer, resident, Cr. Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra Council and Professor Andrew Leach, Professor of Architecture,  University of Sydney.

Greenway, 24 Wentworth Road, Vaucluse.