Alexander Stewart Jolly

Alexander Stewart Jolly (1887–1957) was a Sydney-based architect, published poet and children’s author in the early 20th century. His buildings are primarily in Sydney's northern suburbs and the north coast of New South Wales. His architectural work was strongly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s School in Chicago, as well as the Arts and Crafts movement of the time.

Jolly was born in 1887 in Wardell, near Ballina, New South Wales. His father was a furniture maker, a partner in a firm, Brown & Jolly, who specialised in cabinetry, furniture making and who occasionally designed houses and their furnishings. On a trip to Perthshire, Scotland in his late teens, Jolly encountered craggy stone inglenooks that would later be a strong feature in his buildings.

After finishing school, he returned to work at his family’s firm for several years. In 1908 he moved to Sydney and began work for the firm Wardell and Denning, where he completed a two-year architectural apprenticeship, following which he moved back to Lismore in 1910. He began his own practice as an architect and went into partnership with F.J.Board in 1914. Their first project was St Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Alstonville, which was followed by more buildings in that area. After marrying Kathleen Dill-MacKay in 1918, he returned to Sydney. Jolly began working in Bond Street in the City. He built mostly houses from 1918 until 1923, most on the North Shore of Sydney and influenced by the Californian Bungalow style that became popular in Australia after the Federation period.

In the 1920s, Jolly temporarily retired from architecture because of poor health. He found new work selling blocks of land in developing Avalon, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. To further his knowledge of the plots, he lived in small cabins or tents on the land until they were sold [2]. As a result, several new owners of the land commissioned Jolly to design houses. The Depression led to a decrease in building and land sales in Avalon. This, combined with financial problems, led to Jolly’s alcoholism. At one point, to prove to his family he had ended his problems with alcohol, Jolly cut off part of a finger. He began writing poems and short stories, mostly for children, two books of which, Adrift at Sea and Spirit of the Bush, were published in 1932.

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