Elina Mottram
| Elina Emily Mottram | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Elina Emily Mottram 1903 Sheffield, England |
| Died | 1996 (aged 92–93) |
| Alma mater | Brisbane Central Technical College |
| Occupation | Architect |
Elina Emily Mottram, (1903–1996) was an England-born architect trained in Brisbane. She was Queensland’s first and longest practicing female architect, practicing and establishing her own business in Brisbane from 1924 to 1975. Mottram died at the age of 93, in 1996.
Elina Mottram was born in 1903 in Sheffield, England as the only child of Arthur Mottram, a building contractor and stonemason. She arrived in Brisbane in 1906 with her parents and started school at Nundah State School.
After finishing her studies at the state school, Mottram then undertook studies in Architecture at the Brisbane Central Technical College while simultaneously employed by architect Francis Richard Hall of Brisbane during the city’s 1920s construction boom.
She graduated with a diploma in Architecture in 1925.
Elina Mottram opened her own practice in an office in the T&G Building on the corner of Queen Street and Albert Street in Brisbane in April 1924. The Architectural Building Journal of Queensland announced that "Brisbane has at last a lady architect... we trust that she will get her fair share of public support".
As well as running her own architectural business, Elina Mottram taught building construction at her alma mater between 1926 and 1928.
In August 1924, the year she opened her practice, Elina Mottram designed a block of four flats at Moray Street New Farm for her client Frank Elliot and called for the tenders for the constructed building with specific requirements for reinforced concrete.
Elina designed a Tudor revival style residence for Zina Beatrice Selwyn Cumbrae-Stewart (an impassioned community worker whose husband Francis William Sutton Cumbrae-Stewart later became the registrar of the University of Queensland). Later called the Scott Street Flats it is one of the two remaining of Mottram’s architecture that still stands. These units boast of views to the Brisbane River and modern community-friendly walkways that were stylish during the 1920s with its use of wide bay windows and a distinctive view across to the Brisbane’s Custom house.
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