Many Europeans and Euro-architects fled before, during and after World War II (1939-1945). They were escaping persecution from the German Nazis because of religious anti-Jewish holocaust activities or simply sought a safer life.

Australia was one of the farthest places from Europe with a democracy that was seen as safe.

Hugo Stossel (1905-2002) was one of those architects. He was highly skilled and highly educated. Born in Hungary he trained in Rome and Vienna and had travelled widely in Europe.

He designed Bayview in the 1960s, an eleven-storey, blonde brick block of 110 apartments as a large V-shaped building looking directly over Elizabeth Bay, hence its name, Bayview.

apartments featured ceiling to floor windows to enjoy the panorama and allow natural light.

While Harry Seidler is one of Australia’s most famous architects, little is known of his European-born contemporaries. Other modernists include Sydney’s forgotten émigré architects, interior designers, and furniture makers working here from the 1930s to 1960s. Their impact on our modernist designs was ground-breaking. Their work highlighted the direct connections between Sydney and the European design centres of Vienna, Berlin, and Budapest.

Stossel’s projects in Europe were featured in architectural magazines there and in the USA. He migrated to Australia in 1938, aged 34, in the year before German troops invaded Poland and plunging the world into chaos.

He was initially employed by the NSW Department of Works & Housing and then was one of a number of émigré architects to arrive in Australia. He then worked for Cody & Willis, architects. In 1947 he was registered as an architect.

By the 1950s, his projects were appearing regularly in the press. Several of his residential designs appeared in the 1954 publication “Sixty Beach and Holiday Homes” alongside architects such as Harry Seidler, Sydney Ancher and Arthur Baldwinson. Stossel’s most ‘elegant’ project, the St. Ursula apartments, 5 Onslow Avenue, Elizabeth Bay, NSW, where he once lived and completed in 1951, was a reinforced concrete and steel curtain wall structure with floor to ceiling steel framed windows. Other important commissions for H. Stossel & Associates include projects in the eastern suburbs; factories; and the redevelopment of The Rocks and 41-49 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay (Bayview). Projects in Ku-ring-gai included the Eisner house, Warrawee (demolished), 97 Lucinda Avenue, Wahroonga (family home of Sir Gustav Nossal). He designed Broadwaters (1957) and Yarranabee Gardens (1958), both in Darling Point, the former NSW Police Headquarters at 3 College Street (1973) and the Airport Hilton Hotel, Mascot (1981). Stossel also submitted an unsuccessful entry for the Sydney Opera House competition, his own residence, No. 72 Woodlands Road, East Lindfield (1951), Stossel Residence no. 2 at No. 63 The Bulwark, Castlecrag (1962) and Paul Kafka’s home (1948), Eton road, Lindfield.

He was last registered as an architect in NSW in 1991, when he lived in Woollahra, aged 97.

By

Andrew Woodhouse
Heritage Solutions