Leonard Cuthbert Lucas (1894-1978) was a soldier, architect and public servant. He served overseas in the First World War and at the end of the war furthered his technical education through an attachment to Bridgman & Bridgman, architects and surveyors, at Torquay, England. His A.I.F. appointment terminated in Australia on 14 March 1920 and he was employed that year as an assistant in the office of the architect H. J. Brownlee in Sydney, and as a draughtsman with the Commonwealth War Service Homes Commission from 1922. He was registered as an architect on 26 June 1923. (ref: entry in
Australian Dictionary of Biography).
The Hyde Park Barracks building in Macquarie Street Sydney was designed by convict architect Francis Greenway to house male convicts and erected 1817-1819. From 1848 to 1886 it served as an Immigration Depot for single females and in 1887 the central dormitory buildings and other buildings in the compound were converted to courts and legal offices. A series of additional buildings were later erected in the courtyard. The Industrial Arbitration Court occupied part of the site from 1912-1927.
