Nahum Barnet (16 August 1855 – 1 September 1931) was an architect working in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, best known for his extensive legacy of commercial buildings in Melbourne's CBD, as well as his last design, the Melbourne Synagogue.
Barnet was born in the Melbourne Hospital on Swanston Street, the son of newly arrived Isaac Barnet, a Polish-born pawnbroker, tobacconist, and later a noted jeweller. Isaac was an active member of Melbourne's Jewish community throughout his life, as well as civic affairs, becoming a Councillor in the City of Collingwood in 1879.[1][2]
Nahum Barnet began practicing as an architect in 1879, and was an early advocate of red brick and terracotta, then gaining popularity in England, rather than the ubiquitous stucco or stone.[3] By the late 1880s he had produced some major works, including Rosaville, an unusual and highly elaborate two storey terrace in Carlton, the Renaissance Revival style Her Majesty's Theatre (1886), as well as the Moss White & Co Tobacco Warehouse (1888) and the Austral Building (1891) in Collins Street, amongst the first to introduce the red brick Queen Anne style to the city's streetscapes.
Barnet was active in Jewish life like his father; in 1882 he was elected secretary of the Anglo-Jewish Association, and was honorary architect to the Jewish Philanthropic Society, doing work at the Jewish almshouses (later the Montefiore homes). He was to develop an extensive Jewish clientele, designing many houses and a number of tobacco warehouses and factories, and his first major commission, Rosaville in Carlton, was for Abraham Harris, a prominent member of the Jewish Community.[1]
Unlike some other boom era architects, he weathered the economic crash of the 1890s, and became one of the most prolific commercial architects in Melbourne in the Edwardian era after 1900. He designed at least 32 offices, shops, warehouses and theatres in the central city between 1900 and 1925, ending up with various of his designs near each other. For instance the 1891 Austral Building in Collins Street was a few doors up from his 1905 surgery for Dr Barrett at no 127, the 1913 YWCA was just around the corner in Russell Street, the 1913 Auditorium Building is half a block further down Collins Street, and Clyde House, also 1913, is across the street from that.
Notable works after 1900 include a series of designs that were variations on the local version of the Romanesque Revival, combined with elements of the Queen Anne, characterised by the use of red brick and arches, often with projecting bays; examples include Mason, Firth & McCutcheon Printers in Bank Place, Love & Lewis in Bourke Street, and the Auditorium Building, which included a concert hall at ground level. Barnet embellished some of his essays in this style with Art Nouveau details, relatively rare in Melbourne, including Alston's Corner, the Paton Building, though most decorative elements were flowing floral designs. The striking Young Women's Christian Association clubrooms in Russell Street (demolished) was more eclectic, combining red brick, projecting squat turrets and a high stylised parapet. In this period he also designed in other styles, including the Arts & Crafts influenced Florida Mansions[4] in St Kilda Road, an early block of flats (demolished), the Edwardian Baroque of the Empire Arcade and Wertheims, and stylised Gothic of Francis & Co. His last work was the Baroque Revival Melbourne Synagogue (1929) in South Yarra.
The claim that there 'was not a street in the Melbourne central business district where a Barnet building could not be found' was coined by his friend Isaac Selby and reiterated in Barnet's obituary in The Argus in 1931.[5] The obituary relates that when challenged with the street "Carpentaria Place" (a short street opposite the Windsor Hotel, now pedestrianised), the reply was "You are wrong. You have overlooked the cabman's shelter." Barnet had designed this in 1898, and it still exists, though relocated to Yarra Park along Brunton Avenue some time in the interwar years.[6]
In 1885 Barnet married Ada Rose Marks in the Great Synagogue, Sydney; they had four daughters and from the mid-1890s lived next door to his parents in Alma Road St Kilda. He died at home in St Kilda on 1 September 1931.[1]