Guyon Purchas

Robert Guyon Whittlesey Purchas (6 September 1862 – 4 June 1940) was an Australian architect, especially noted as a pioneer of the Arts & Crafts style seen in a number of large residential projects in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

[1] After private secondary schooling, he sat for the matriculation examination of the University of Melbourne in February 1882, where he studied civil engineering and concurrent with this he commenced articles in his father's office.

In the 1880s he designed a number of houses and extensions in typical styles of the day, with the plain red brick picturesque Gothic and fretwork gables of Endion (now Kingsgate) at 252 Domain Road, South Yarra built in 1890 hinting at his developing interests.

that Guyon may have speculated a good deal in property during the Land Boom of the late 1880s, and with the bank crash and depression starting in 1893 he eventually had to leave his house, and sold all the furniture, including antiques, in early 1894.

[10] He was then engaged for his first project adding to and extending a large homestead in Victoria's rural Western District, then undergoing a period of growth.

The interiors included extensive use of plasterwork in the new Art Nouveau style, and a large timber fireplace with carved dragons on the corners, as seen at Tay Greggan.

Coragulac was for the Robertson family, and this was followed by the work for which Purchas is best known, the extensive alterations to Purrumbete, with its multiple gables and lofty great hall, compete with minstrel's gallery with an elaborate Art Nouveau carved screen and integral artworks.

Another large project continued in many stages was the rebuilding of the Children's Hospital in Carlton, beginning with a simply designed outpatients wing opened in 1899.

In 1913 they designed a new Wool Exchange in King Street in a very early example of the revival of the Neoclassical, complete with engaged columns and pediment, but still in Edwardian red brick.