the memorial was not to be "utilitarian in character", and debate over the form led to the emergence of a number of suggestions, many of which were covered in the media of the day. These included Dame Nellie Melba's proposal to build a carillon of bells; a suggestion by Simpson Newland to turn Anzac Highway into a "Way of Honour" by adding triumphal arches to each end; and Walter Charles Torode's plan to build a "metal and marble" monument on the top of Mount Lofty with an electric car to carry people to the summit. In the end a total of 28 architectural firms registered their intent to submit entries to the competition—a lower number than expected, but Richardson suggests this may have been due to work on proposals for the new Adelaide railway station. Out of those 28, a total of 26 firms submitted designs by the deadline. On 10 November 1924, before judging could be completed, the Richards Building in Currie Street was destroyed by fire, taking with it all 26 proposals. Although most of the judging had been completed before the fire, suggestions at the time that the committee could use what they had learned from the entrants to propose a new competition with greater clarity as to the requirements led to naught: a 1925 letter to the then Premier John Gunn reveals that there was little to be learned from the competition, as the assessors had found that none of the designs were suitable. 1926 competition Little progress had been made on the memorial by 1926. While some debate occurred in respect to the form that the memorial would take, the focus of the discussions concerned the location of the memorial, and this centred on the future of Government House and the role of the Governor. A number of left-wing politicians argued that the grounds of Government House should be turned over to the State and used to build the memorial while the conservatives desired to retain the status quo. By 1925 the National War Memorial committee was prepared to accept the Government House grounds as the site of the memorial, but they delayed making an announcement. This proved to be fortuitous, as legal issues prevented the plan from going ahead. Instead a portion of the grounds, located at the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue, was put aside for the purpose. (The plan to