Gropius' Chicago legacy lost

Walter Gropius' extensive facilities at the Bauhaus in Dessau beautifully combined teaching, student housing, staff housing, auditorium, offices, eating and social facilities. These sections were all integrated: the school and work shops were connected via a bridge. Another very important architectural commission in Dessau in 1926-7 was an experimental housing project in Torten estate, not far from the School. Gropius was the architect, assisted by Hannes Meyer’s students. Following the principles laid down by The Bauhaus, Gropius ensured that architecture would be international in style, designed to be mass produced, simple and adaptable to all cultures.

Once he had fled Europe before WW2 started, Gropius was involved in a number of buildings in Britain and later in the USA. But there weren’t hundreds of projects in the New World for this very German architect. Let me highlight just three. For his own residence in Lincoln Massachusetts 1937, Gropius designed the home along side Marcel Breuer. Plus he designed the Harvard Graduate Centre in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1950, a group of eight buildings arranged round small and large courtyards on the Oxbridge pattern. And he was the leading architect working on The Michael Reese Hospital and Friend Convalescent Home which were designed from 1954, and completed by 1957.

Why is the Michael Reese Hospital important? Firstly because it was very well designed by one of Germany’s most significant educators and designers. Secondly symbolism is important too. Gropius was the bridge between the modernist Bauhaus style and USA’s International style.

Michael Reese Hospital, landscaping

Thirdly the hospital became the first private institution in Chicago to actively advocate for, and succeed in an urban renewal programme. Gropius was committed to a complete neighbourhood planning project that would include shops, housing and educational facilities for existing residents and for the staff who would live in or near the hospital.

Read this article and weep. It suggests a level of municipal vandalism and desecration of historical heritage that takes one’s breath away.

Cityscapes by Blair Kamin,
in Chicago Tribune, 28/10/2009

Chicago lets its savage side show: First Gropius building being demolished at Michael Reese; more still to be destroyed

In an act sure to live in infamy, city-hired contractors are tearing down the first of the buildings co-designed by Walter Gropius at the former Michael Reese Hospital campus that are targeted for demoltion. It's the Friend Convalescent Hospital, a once-sparkling modernist gem that was said to be more like a hotel than a hospital when it opened in the 1950s. Grahm Balkany, head of the Gropius in Chicago Coalition, gave the news. He says that it's the first time in decades, according to his research, that a permanent Gropius building has been destroyed.

As if to underscore the stupidity of the city's self-inflicted wounds, a well-informed source dropped by Tribune Tower yesterday to pass along a September 1946 issue of the late, great Architectural Forum magazine, which featured a big spread on the Michael Reese campus. The story's headline reads: "A hospital plans: Seven square miles of Chicago slums are scheduled for redevelopment under a unique planning program sponsored by Michael Reese Hospital."

The spread shows the "shanty housing," "derelict mansions" and "gutted sites" that made up the "slum community" around Reese. And it offers renderings and plans that show the bright new modernist world to come (complete with skip-stop elevators, those that would stop at every other floor) in the apartment buildings planned around Reese. Gropius is clearly and prominently credited as the "architectural consultant." In the following pages is another spread, headlined "Illinois Tech replans 16 city blocks," discussing how IIT and another German emigre associated with the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, were reshaping a nearby swath of land on the South Side.

Michael Reese Hospital, Bauhaus style architecture

What all this suggests is that Chicago is plundering its history, much as the city did when it allowed the destruction of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler buildings in the 1960s and 1970s. Tim Samuelson, the city's cultural historian, at least was able to get into three of the still-standing Reese buildings and get copies of the hospital's architectural drawings. The drawings and photographs will allow these buildings to live on in the archives, but they should have lived on in real life. Of the 8 Gropius-related buildings at Reese, only the Singer Pavilion--a psychiatric and psychosomatic institute--may be saved. That's appropriate, in a bizarre way: What Chicago's doing is crazy.

Ferdinand Waldmüller: Biedermeier artist and story teller

In the last post, I was very interested in James Collinson (1825-81), Abraham Solomon (1824-1862) and George Smith (1829-1901), three English artists who were born in the reign of George IV but flourished in the mid-Victorian era.

I want to contrast Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) who was the most important Viennese painter of the Biedermeier era. Waldmüller was a little older that the Englishmen, but he too flourished in mid century. His paintings were also detailed and complex narrative tales, set in rather ordinary settings, but Waldmüller was no mere observer and commentator on modern life. He specifically extolled the health-giving qualities of rural life, and the moral virtues of family life.

There was of course a big difference between Victorian Britain and Biedermeier Vienna. The Austrian Empire was ruled by tough, secret intelligence agencies. Lodges, clubs and societies were shut down; members were imprisoned. This effectively forced people from the coffee houses and meeting halls into the privacy of their homes. Private life and social contacts were restricted to a circle of true and reliable friends. Bourgeois geniality and charm were celebrated; poverty, disease and an omnipresent police force were not!

CorpusChristi Morn, 1857, Belvedere

Although many of his paintings were chock full of characters, I have chosen a simple image by Waldmüller’s standards: The Grandmother’s Birthday 1856. The catalogue of the Queen’s Pictures suggested Waldmüller’s success stemmed from his powers of observation, from his measured style and his wholly sympathetic treatment of subject matter. The Grandmother’s Birthday was purchased by Prince Albert and given to Queen Victoria. Presumably Albert saw the royal family as being a model of family unity, and knew his wife would share that ideal. Today this painting, full of tenderness, is in the Royal Collection in Britain.

The Happy Family by Waldmüller (no date or size) told of a happy family enjoying life, even though the three generations did not live in the lap of luxury. Vanilla Joy blog and her correspondents all loved the image and its message of family cohesiveness, suggesting that Waldmuller was indeed a sensitive artist who understood his audience well (and still does). The Visual Art: Work and Inspiration blog saw Am Fronleichnamsmorgen 1857 (65 × 82 cm) and other paintings. She enjoyed Waldmüller’s realist landscapes and scenes of everyday rural life, particularly noting the changing society of Austria during Waldmüller’s painting career.

Joy of Motherhood, 1857, 54 × 42 cm, Neue Galerie Vienna

Most of Waldmüller’s landscapes depicted sites in the woods around Vienna eg Early Spring in the Wienerwald 1864, now in the National Gallery Berlin. This spring scene was one that captivated him towards the end of his life, painting it in a number of different versions. Pink cheeked, smiling children were looking with interest at the wonders of nature. His style made light of all possible problems. Here was the true Biedermeier spirit of ease, serenity, apolitical concerns and an interest in nature.

Grandmother's Birthday, 1856, 72 x 58 cm

We may find sentimentality in art unacceptable these days, but Waldmüller understood the dire consequences of political comment in Biedermeier Vienna.

George Smith: Victorian artist and story teller

Why did complex narrative tales, set in rather ordinary settings, make their mark in the mid Victorian era? What happened to heroic history scenes and ponderous religious themes? The sense of a long standing cultural tradition, somewhat less confidently proposed in British countries than in European countries, came under the influence of middle class values. Middle class families increasingly participated in art patronage, art academies, art journal publication and thoughtful newspaper critiques. Even the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had an interest in revitalising history painting through complex stories and an accurate use of historical details.

I have to assume that the Victorian viewer did indeed understand the elements of the paintings. The paintings were set in contemporary times, in middle-class homes or court rooms or trains. Victorians audiences worked out the deep meaning of the paintings from the characters’ facial expressions and body language. Symbolic details were the biggest aid to decoding the story, although I am not sure if the artist's goal was moralising about peoples’ behaviour or discreetly peeking in on it. Certainly the titles of the pictures helped the viewer.

Many Victorian artists loved the contemporary, the complex and the meaningful. Think of James Collinson (1825-81)'s paintings of broken families after one child emigrated. Or the anxious court room scenes of Abraham Solomon (1824-1862), an artist I have already discussed in this blog.
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London-born George Smith (1829-1901) was born at the same time as Collinson and Solomon. Smith was well trained, being a pupil of the Royal Academy schools of art and working under the artist C W Cope. Plus he exhibited at the Royal Academy and other important professional exhibition spaces. Smith often painted landscapes and genre scenes that focused on children, but in this post I want to note a series of four of his paintings that hung together thematically: The Will Lost, Searching for the Will; The Will Found; and Reading the Will.

Smith, The Will Found, 1868, 74 x 112 cm.

The Will Found was a complex narrative painting. A family had lost the will after their father and grandfather died, and everyone was in a flurry of searching activity. After searching through every document in the home, the will was located. A young man, holding the prize in the air, was giddy with excitement and relief. On the left, a ne’er do well who had been cashing in on the confusion, was escorted out of the room as quickly as possible. Children were being kissed, elderly aunts were weeping with relief. Even the dogs could sense the excitement.

Bearded Roman blog thought it most likely that George Smith produced The Will Found to be a print, from the very beginning. Prints and contracts with printers were often more lucrative for painters than the sale of the original work.
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We know George Smith was popular. Firstly it is possible that an early patron of George Smith was the Prince Consort Albert. Secondly, when his paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1851, The Art Journal admired them in its review. Later his work was indeed reproduced as engravings in the Art Journal (1863, 1867). And thirdly at least four of Smith's works are in important national collections: 3 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and one in Nottingham Museum. 

At least two more complex stories painted by George Smith can be found in the super Victorian Paintings blog:  Paying the Legacies, 1872  and The Last Scene in the Gambler's House, 1871.

Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia

Czar Catherine II established the Pale of Settlement in 1791 as a territory in which Russian Jews were obliged to live. Presumably she had been convinced to design this system to rid Moscow of Jewish businesses and to concentrate the Jews in a relatively narrow and well-defined space.

And because Russia annexed a large area of Poland soon after Catherine the Great’s announcement, Russia now included areas that had a VERY high concentration of Jewish inhabitants. According to Alden Oreck, the Pale of Settlement made up only a small proportion of European Russia. The map of the Pale below looks large, so I assume Oreck meant that the designated area was gradually reduced by the edicts of successive czars. Yet it clearly included territory inside modern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia.

A liberalisation period in the 1860s, which granted Jews some of the rights of ordinary citizens, was reversed under the May Laws of 1882. As the Museum of Family History blog has shown, these laws of Czar Alexander III pushed Jews back into the Pale, to towns that were often overcrowded and offered limited economic opportunities. And even within the Pale, Jews were limited: for example they were not allowed to lease land or own farming land.

Jewish (and other minority) boys were conscripted into the army at the age of 12 and placed for their military education in Cantonist Schools. Then they were required to serve in the Russian army for 25 years after the completion of their studies. I had imagined that the plan was to denude the Pale of potential fathers for a new generation of Jewish families, but The Russian History Blog reported it as a Christianisation and Russification programme. He is correct. The goal was to convert the boys, by whatever method it took.

In addition, thousands of Jews were terrorised by devastating pogroms in the 1870s, 1880s and into the new century. Ironically it was these very pogroms inside the Pale that led to mass immigration of Russian Jews to establish vibrant communities in America, Britain, Palestine and South Africa.

Did the Pale of Settlement work? If the goal was to control the Jewish communities and keep their numbers down, clearly not. The Jewish population in Russia grew from 1.6 million in 1820 to 5.6 million in by the time World War One broke out. If the goal of the Pale was to keep Jews out of certain important cities, it worked well. The largest Jewish communities were Warsaw, Odessa, Lodz, Vilna, Kishinev, Minsk, Bialystok, Berdichev, Vitebsk and Kiev – NOT the capitals of Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev. As Max Grossman noted, the Jews were successfully kept out of these cities, as well as Nikolaev, Sebastopol, Yalta, Rostov, Riga and Tallinn.

Even as late as 1911, when the Duma began debating whether to eliminate the Pale or not, extreme nationalists demanded the retention of the system. Only after the overthrow of the Czarist regime by the Bolsheviks in 1917 was the Pale of Settlement finally dismantled.

One side of my own family came from Berdyansk and Mariupol, via the East End of London, to Melbourne. The other side came from Odessa and Simferopol, via Jaffa in Israel, to Melbourne.

St Petersburg's most beautiful synagogue

St Petersburg was beyond the Pale of Settlement, so how did Jews settle in that city? The History of the Grand Choral Synagogue of St Petersburg noted that young Czar Alexander II held liberal ideas. As a result some Jews, (retired soldiers, guild merchants, university graduates, craftsmen), were allowed to reside outside the Pale.

By mid C19th, there were ten small Jewish houses of prayer in the then Russian capital, but there was no Grand Synagogue to serve the entire Jewish community. However this always seemed a pipe dream since NO prayer hall could be big enough to seat 15,000 people at a time.

In 1869 the Czar gave permission to construct the synagogue to replace the existing chapels and fund-raising for construction began.

In 1870 the community board purchased a building, used as temporary premises for the period of synagogue’s construction. The community leaders wished the synagogue to become not only the house of prayer for local Jews, but also the symbol of imminent civil equality for Russian Jewry.

Grand Choral Synagogue of St Petersburg

But there were problems in finding a site. The new building could not be close to a Russian Orthodox church, in a residential area on in a road where the Czar travelled. Finally in 1879, 10 years after the beginning of negotiations, the community finally got permission to purchase a block of land.

The discussion on the architectural project started in 1878. L.O Gordon maintained that “when building their temples, Jews never adhered to any hereditary style, but borrowed the style from the leading nation in that time and place”, and retained the inner sense of their religion “paying little attention to the outer looks”. But art critic V.V Stasov believed that the style of the future synagogue should be definitely close to Moorish.

After much discussion about design, it was decided that the building should be in the Moorish style which was then popular throughout Central Europe, as Ivan Davidson Kalmar showed. A jury selected the winning design, but when in March 1880 the design was submitted for Czar’s approval, Alexander II unfortunately ordered them to “remake the design at a more modest scale”. Fortunately, the architects agreed to make a new design for free.

Dome

Finally in 1883 Czar Alexander III approved the draft design of the synagogue and building work started. In 1888 the cupola of the Grand synagogue was decorated with an ormanental design and the construction was finished. So the architects of this first grand synagogue in St Petersburg modelled it, in part, after Berlin's Oranienburger St Synagogue. The main entrance was a Moorish archway, a large horseshoe flanked by elegant minarets. The mass of stucco squinches and stalactite mouldings in the yellow and white decoration, was a combination of local taste and Moorish motifs. I suppose it was best described as a combination of Moorish, Byzantine and Arabesque elements.

In the next five years, interior decoration was completed. In Dec 1893 the ceremony of official consecration of the Grand synagogue took place. It was a real feast for all Russian Jewry. The leaders of the community opened the central door with a silver key and brought seven Torah scrolls into the hall. After a 24-year epic struggle, St. Petersburg Grand Choral synagogue was opened. The new fence, with an iron grille and two gates, finally went up in 1909.

Why was it called a choral or cathedral synagogue? Not because it could hold thousands of congregants and had stained glass windows. Rather because modest prayer houses in the past could barely afford to fund their rabbi's salary. Now the choral synagogue proudly funded a chazan/chief cantor, a choir master and a large male choir.

The Great Choral Synagogue of St Petersburg was always an architectural monument of federal importance, and it is now the second largest synagogue in Europe. But by the 1990s, the lovely ceramic floor covering, door and window infills were worn out and decayed. A large part of coloured stained-glass covering, as well as the decorative etching glass, were in a sorry state of repair. Panels and cornices looked tatty. Worst of all, unless complex restoration drainage and hydro isolating works were performed, drainage problems from the neighbouring blocks of land would destroy the foundations. Fortunately major reconstruction was carried out between 2000-3.

It was strongly believed that the special status of St Petersburg and its Jewry required a special approach to the city's 300th anniversary in 2003 e.g a classical music concert by a world-famous orchestra held in the synagogue. So they invited conductor Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to perform. To Mehta, the Indian-born maestro of Israel's main orchestra for 34 years, the concert had a special meaning: half the musicians were born in the former Soviet Union; some were educated in the St Petersburg Conservatory.

Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, 2003

In the same synagogue, Cantor Marlena’s Blog heard an excellent musical performance but on a smaller scale. The cantor was good and the five-voice, male choir sang music from Salomon Sulzer and Louis Lewandowsky, my two most favourite Jewish choral composers in the universe.

You might like to read Reviving Forgotten Synagogue Music in Samuel Gruber's Jewish Art and Monuments blog.

Mildura: a rural city full of Art Deco gems

Following the establishment of a rich irrigation colony in 1887 by the Canadian Chaffey brothers, Mildura was always a well planned city, laid out on a grid. The first buildings in the town were in the Victorian and Federation styles, using local red brick, corrugated iron roofs and wide verandas. This was to be expected from a small town where all the original buildings were completed by 1910.

However Art Deco was unexpected. What caused Mildura to embark on an ambitious building-programme during the Depression, throughout the difficult 1930s and into World War Two? One significant date might have been August 1934, when Mildura was proclaimed a city. Mildura Base Hospital was the first new large rural community hospital after the terrible Depression. It opened in August 1934, in response to the Victorian Government's call for a hospital system that provided services for ALL classes of the community. The semi circular ends of the building, designed as solaria to maximise light and ventilation, demonstrated the medical profession’s faith in light and fresh air.

T & G Tower

I was given a copy of the Art Deco Walking Tour Guide from the tourist bureau, and found it very simple to follow the map on foot. To assist the tourist to identify the buildings, typical Art Deco architectural features were listed:

1] Dominant vertical lines and horizontal lines.
2] Simplicity: stripped-down facades and features.
3] Upper levels of buildings set back in stages from the vertical.
4] Combinations of materials: stone, brick, metal
5] Geometric ornamentation: circles, diamonds, chevrons, zig-zags, triangles, pyramids, spirals, octagons and stylised floral motifs.
6] Motifs: sunbursts, plant and animal life, gears, lightning bolts, relief sculpture embodying justice, truth, knowledge, industry, labour, strength, work ethic, achievement, commerce and bounty.
7] Decorative methods: relief sculptures, painted murals, tile mosaics, decorative metalwork and flat-to-the-wall fluted columns.

A R T  D E C O  W A L K

1. The Mildura Brewery, Langtree Ave. The brewery and bar have been incorporated into the former Astor Theatre which had originally opened in 1924. As with many cinemas, The Astor enjoyed its heyday during the 1930s & 1940s. Inside the brewery, the key interior Art Deco style indicators of line, form and colour have been retained and enhanced with Art Deco styled light fittings, bar and floor pattern.
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Bearly Sane blog noted that Mildura had been established as a temperance colony and the Grand Hotel was originally the Mildura Coffee Palace. From the amount of wonderful wine we drank in the city this year, I would say that Mildura do-gooders have got over their desire to get citizens to Take The Pledge!

2. Capitol Theatre, Langtree Ave. Built in 1935–38 on the site of Mueller’s Department Store c1890, the theatre incorporates into the upper wall area the typical Art Deco chevron pattern derived from Mayan civilisation.

Commercial Bank, now Sandbar

3. Commercial Bank Of Australia, Langtree Ave. Now the Sandbar this building was completed around 1932, on the site of a small bakery. It features decorative brickwork and streamlining with fluted columns at the entry.

4. The T&G Tower, 8th St, was built in the 1920s. It is one of a number of similar styled buildings constructed in regional centres. The symmetrical stepped detailing to the walls and top section of the clock tower are a classic Art Deco feature. The blog Art Deco and Modernism in Tasmania showed some splendid photos of a very similar T & G Tower in Hobart.

5. Mills Court, Deakin Ave. This commercial building completed in the early 1940s was influenced by Art Deco styled patterning and features a symmetrical, stepped upper wall facade with geometric parapet detailing and integrated facade lettering.

6. The Mildura Urban Water Trust, Deakin Ave, is modest a building from the 1920s. Now WIN Television, it features a typical Art Deco stepped parapet and door, and geometric parapet detailing.

Etheringtons the Jewellers

7. Power Supply Substation, along Deakin Ave’s median strip. The electrical substation was built in 1936 and features the typical symmetrical lines of Art Deco, including handsome relief lettering.

8. Etheringtons the Jewellers, Deakin Ave, was established in 1932 on the site of the former Williams Store c1890. The Art Deco shop front and interior is still intact, including signage and internal fittings. The front door is in the streamline style.

Art Vault

9. The Art Vault, Deakin Ave, is a recently developed complex. The front of the building is an original Art Deco three storey building that houses two galleries, workshop areas, artist' studio spaces and artist in residence units.

10. Mildura RSL, 10th St & Madden Ave. The building has wonderful stained-glass windows completed in 1954 by Mervyn Napier-Waller. At the time the artist was working on his greatest achievement, the wall mosaics for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The repeated coffin-shaped motif of the RSL windows is reminiscent of Egyptian mummies and symbolises the spirit of fallen soldiers ascending to heaven.
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11. Royal Victorian Regiment, San Mateo & 12th St. The Drill Hall was built in the mid 1920s and is a handsome symmetrical Art Deco building with decorative brickwork.


Base Hospiral, opened 1934

12. Mildura Base Hospital, 13th St. Built in 1933-34, the hospital was considered ‘moderne’ in design, with the main building a stream-lined horizontal linear block. It incorporated curved glassed in solaria at either end and an interior central Art Deco staircase.  Sadly this super building has stood empty for 10 years.

Alice Jean’s blog found Deco buildings both elegant and classy, in Mildura of course but in other parts of Northern Victoria as well.  2009 East Coast Trip blog also took super photos of the Deco in Mildura, then continued to find architectural examples in Griffiths, on the NSW side of the border.

Mechanics' Institutes III - Schools of Arts in NSW

I have long been fascinated with the history of Mechanics’ Institutes in Australia, and have discussed them twice in this blog: Mechanic’ Institutes I – the Victorian history and Mechanics' Institutes II - who did they serve? But I had imagined that the 19th century, Schools of Art in New South Wales and Queensland were something altogether different - perhaps a more refined, more humanities-based system of adult education than the Mechanics’ Institutes had been. Clearly that is not so.

Based on its Scottish origins, the first mechanics' institute to be established in the Australian colonies was formed in Hobart in 1827. Dr James Ross, from Aberdeen University, lectured to the ambitious young men on topics which included engineering, mechanics and steam engines. Within a few years, in 1831, classes were held on board the Stirling Castle for 52 Scottish mechanics travelling to settle in New South Wales. Scottish Presbyterian ministers and teachers emigrated with the group, loaded up with workbooks on economics and mathematics.

Sydney School of Arts, Pitt St, opened 1833.

I am indebted to Joan Beddoe’s paper Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in Australia for the information. The Sydney School of Arts was formally established in 1833, the aim of the new institution being to provide further education for working men through public lectures, classes, and the establishment of a library. Major Mitchell, the Surveyor-General and well known explorer, was elected as president of the committee, whose first task was to find a suitable site. Library facilities were to be made available, along with activities such as lectures, debating and essay writing, provided that the topics did not involve politics or religion. 250 lectures were given in the first 10 years on topics covering engineering, mechanics, natural sciences and the arts. Note that very little attention was paid to the science of agriculture, even though the economy of the colony was almost entirely agriculture-based.

Kogarah School of Arts, former

Sydney - City and Suburbs blog has a much better photo of the Kogarah School of Arts which opened in 1887. The two storey school was used for various art classes and technical education while the hall at the rear was used for meetings and local cultural productions. The good citizens of Koragah may have made the building more beautiful and Italianate, but the goals of this School of Arts were identical to any of the Mechanics' Institutes found in Victoria at the same time: to raise the moral fibre of society via educational classes and cultural activities; and to help working men to acquire vocational skills necessary to improve their working lives.

I still have no idea why some NSW organisations chose to call themselves Schools of Arts, rather than Mechanics' Institutes. The School of Arts in Young, Newcastle School of Arts and Clifton School of Arts chose one classification; The Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts and The Lawson School of Arts and Mechanics Institute chose both; many of the others simply called themselves Mechanics' Institutes.

Another useful reference is  Pioneering Culture: Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in Australia by Philip C. Candy. Note that Candy and Beddoe used used both terms in their book titles.

Old Government House Queensland - newly renovated

In June 1859 Queen Victoria signed Letters Patent, the documents that created Queensland as a separate colony. Just six months later, in December 1859 Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, arrived in Brisbane. But there was no palace for him to move into.

Government House Brisbane, after 1862.

The newly-appointed Government Architect, Charles Tiffin, must have moved quickly. Within a few weeks of being given the commission, he completed the plans for this important site. They selected the right man: Tiffin went on to design more than 300 of Queensland’s public buildings.

This Classical Revival building was built during 1860-62 from sandstone and cast iron, with a slate roof. And the Director of the Botanic Gardens, Walter Hill, began laying out the gardens. Government House was thus the first public building to be designed and built in the new colony of Queensland. Amazingly the population of Brisbane was only 6,000 when the building started. Therefore, as Eat, drink + be Kerry blog said, Old Government House was a very significant a heritage building.

Official garden party, 1899

The building was well located: in the heart of Brisbane, at the river end of George St, close to Parliament House and the Botanic Gardens. It housed the first Governor Sir George Bowen and served as his family home, administrative centre and social centre for the new colony. In fact it was home to Queensland's first 11 governors. The blog called Your Brisbane Past and Present has a fine image of Governor Baron Lamington and the official party leaving Government House for the opening of Parliament in 1897.

Eating, drinking, receiving official visitors and listening to music were always important official duties of the governor. And where else might vice regal entertainment be conducted? Old Government House was the elegant social centre of Brisbane’s emerging society. Apparently, since there was no ballroom, the three main rooms on the ground floor had to be used for dancing.

Of course the original building, as charming as it was in 1862, was never going to be large enough. So over the years, additions have emerged as needed - upper veranda (1873), billiard room (1899) and southwest balcony (1906). And the exterior of the building, including the gardens, had to be kept in perfect condition. This would be true in all states, but even more so in Brisbane because Queensland weather is so conducive to garden parties.

Old Parliament House 2009, front entrance
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In 1909, on Queensland’s 50th anniversary as a colony, the decision was made to move the governor to a larger house. The building had remained the Governor's official residence since 1862, but by 1910 it was changed into the first building on the campus of the University of Queensland. Lectures started in 1911.

Old Government House is now open to the public as an historical site and exhibit space, and is available as a special events venue. No blogger has mentioned seeing photos of the interior before the last renovation, but I Love Brisbane blog warmly recommended the relaxed feel of the courtyard now and noted that the main rooms were architecturally splendid.

Hall set up for a function 2009

Your Brisbane: Past and Present noted that Brisbane's Supreme Court building in George St, was designed by the Colonial Architect, FDG Stanley, and built by the Petrie Construction Company in the 1870s. Given that all of Brisbane's significant public buildings had to be completed as soon as possible after Queensland became a separate colony in 1859, it is not surprising that the Supreme Court was another very large, very elegant edifice in the centre of town.

Cultural tourism: lectures, languages and learned tours

There is absolutely nothing wrong with holidays that are about the Four Ss: sun, sea, sand and sex. Many people are exhausted from work during the year; they want to drop their bottoms onto a poolside lounge, looking out at a panorama of palm trees and drinking daiquiris, in an attempt to refresh and revitalise. It is a holiday that is guaranteed to be safe, predictable, very restful, health-giving and non-challenging.

Even if many people are a little more adventurous than just swimming and sunbaking all holiday, they are clearly aware of the awkwardness of travel, particularly in countries very different from home.

MS Columbus, art history tour

I thought there had to be more, so I set out to locate tourist packages that specialised in educational or cultural matter. P&O had begun began schools cruises in the 1930s. They offered two cruises to Norway for students and their teachers, during the summer holidays, on the ship The Neuralia. On each cruise there were well over a thousand pupils. By the 1960s these educational cruises had become popular and P&O ran two school cruise ships, both offering year-round programmes. Gill’s Cruise Centre said that many British travellers had their first experience of foreign travel through these ships, especially the SS Uganda and SS Nevassa.

Over the years cruise lines have expanded their cultural programmes and it makes sense to me that theme-cruises can enhance the entire travel experience. Their programmes offer lectures on a wide range of topics, chosen to complement the trip's itinerary. They will, for example, include talks on the history of the next port city to be visited, its local culture and the regional cuisine. They may well add language classes so that disembarking passengers will be able to ask basic questions in the next port they visit.

Viking Neptune, lecture on board ship

Lectures and classes are usually scheduled for at-sea days, when the only competition is the swimming pool or the bar. Lecturers often prepare three or four formal talks, but they will also expect to mingle with passengers and may be asked questions about their specialty in non-academic settings.

I don’t want to advertise but I do want to see if cultural travel is widespread. Olsen Cruise Lines’ Civilisation Cruises provide destination lectures, they say, to open peoples’ eyes to a range of cultures. They focus on a wide range of topics including Celtic History, Ancient Civilisations, The Great Artists and In the Wake of the Navigators. Newer topics include Ancient Polynesian Culture, Ages Of Discovery, Baltic Monarchies, Polar Exploration, Ages of Conflict, Baltic Literature and Ancient Mythology. Each course has been designed to appeal to lovers of culture and the arts. They are clearly targeting travellers who expect to cruise in comfort AND to learn about the places they will be touring.

Martin Randall Travel notes that many of their tours involve elements of various categories eg a combination of art history, architecture and music. For their Baltic States cruise, for example, they cover three countries with different languages, diverse histories and distinct cultural identities. Plus they are interested in an extensive legacy from German, Polish, Russian and Swedish occupations. So the focus of the Baltic tour is history, politics and general culture, both in lectures on board and in on-shore visits.

Ace Cultural Cruises have smaller groups that are led by specialists in the fields of archaeology, history, art, architecture, wildlife and music. They say they select their lecturers for their academic expertise, of course, but also for their ability to communicate well in the cities they are visiting. On their Ephesus and The Cities of The Aegean cruise, one of their lecturers studied archaeology then theology before working overseas as an archaeologist, specialising in Roman frontier systems and Byzantine mosaics.

Note that one company wrote on its pamphlets "No Dumbing Down. There is no casino, no piped music, no cabaret, no disco. The major source of entertainment is conversation with like-minded passengers". "The number of passengers is limited to engender a more cohesive and congenial atmosphere socially and allow greater access to museums and historical sites". A bit precious, but that is the type of holiday I'd like.

Abu Simbel, Egypt (left)

Ephesus (centre)

                           Caravaggio's Syracuse (right)

Of course it comes at a cost. Matt's Samoa Blog registers the implications of a sudden arrival of a cruiser-load of tourists on a small nation like Samoa. There are stories of tourists using up the locals' precious drinking water supply, leaving plastic rubbish in the bins or needing productive farmers to leave the land to become non-productive waiters for tourist hordes. I wonder if the cultural lectures can include warnings about treading lightly on other peoples' homelands.

Julia Cameron, Lord Tennyson and the Isle of Wight

British woman Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79), raised in India and educated in France, did not take up photography until the age of 48, when she was given a camera as a present. Yet her work had a huge impact on the development of modern photography, especially her closely cropped portraits. Foto-Tube blog noted her soft focus and said that Cameron became known for her Arthurian legends in pictures. You can see beautiful examples of Cameron's photos in the Pre Raphaelite Art blog.

Cameron, Gareth and Lynette, 1874
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The Earthly Paradise blog made particular mention of the new Julia Margaret Cameron Exhibit . Her photography is on display at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine during 2009. This travelling exhibit will move to the Frick art and historical centre in Pittsburgh during the period Oct 2010 - Jan 2011.

The exhibition is called "For My Best Beloved Sister Mia: An Album of Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron." The works included in the showing were put together for Julia Margaret Cameron's sister, Maria Mia Jackson. Cameron originally gave her sister the partially filled album as a gift in July 1863, at the beginning of Julia's experiments with photography. Over the years, Mia filled the album with many of her sister's most iconic images.

Induro and Little Augury blogs added new information. As well as being the grand dame of Victorian photography, Cameron was the great aunt to sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell (both nee Stephen) . That was one, very impressive family.. The girls were avid amateur photographers during their young years, and became two visually creative adults in their aesthetic and personal lives. And feminists, of course.

The Gentleman Amateur's Blog said that Julia Margaret Cameron was known for two things: illustrations of poems & other texts, and portraits of her Victorian contemporaries. The illustrations look a little contrived today; but the portraits, especially the monumental head-shots, remain mesmerising to us moderns.

Since very long exposures were needed, typically up to quarter of an hour, two elements were set in place: a] Cameron had to use a tripod device to keep the camera still. And b] she used the collodion wet plate process. Those long exposures are partly responsible for the wonderful softness and blurring in her images, but there may have been something else as well. At a time when photographic sharpness was valued, Cameron ran the risk that her images would be seen as feminine and soft edged. But Cameron didn't seem to be operating accidentally. She created an ethereal sense that has survived well.

Clearly there are many bloggers interested in Cameron. I became particularly interested in her photographic art career via Alfred, Lord Tennyson. So if I want to add something special to the blogging world, I will need to focus on her time on the Isle of Wight, as did Graphic Arts blog.

Cameron, Lancelot and Guinevere 1874

Cameron’s career was a short one, covering no more than the last 11 years of her life. In 1874, she was living near to Alfred, Lord Tennyson at Farringford Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. Tennyson had taken Morte D’Arthur, published in 1842, and expanded it into Idylls of the King in 1859. He asked Cameron to make illustrations for a new publication of these poems and she produced 200+ prints from wet-plate collodion-on-glass negatives. Unfortunately, the publisher chose only two to be reformatted as wood-engravings and she wasn't very happy with the results.

With Tennyson’s encouragement, as Graphic Arts blog showed, Cameron did in fact publish her own work with albumen silver prints interspersed with texts by Tennyson, lithographed from Cameron’s hand-writing. One volume appeared in Jan 1875 and the second in May, selling well. Both frontispieces had a portrait of Tennyson.

And it was her home on the Isle of Wight that gave her access to the Tennysons’ neighbouring home and to all the celebrities (eg Charles Darwin) who visited them. Of course Cameron's portraits were loved for their romantic quality and became well known because of their close association with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. But if it wasn’t for her closeness to the Tennysons, her career might well have stalled. In any case, she died in 1879, only five years after moving to the Isle of Wight.

Cameron, Sir Galahad and the Pale Nun, 1874

Her island house and studio, Dimbola Lodge, can still be visited today - it is open to the public as a photographic museum and exhibition space.

Alexandra Palace London: a peoples' palace

Alexandra Palace was to be built in the Muswell Hill part of North London in 1873 as a public centre of recreation and education. The Great Northern Palace Company had been established by 1860, but financing the project was so difficult that by July 1863, only the park had been opened to the public. Alexandra Park was named after Alexandra of Denmark, who had recently married Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales.

The original design suggestions came from architect Owen Jones (1809-74). People at the time suggested the complex was North London's counterpart to the 1851 Crystal Palace in South London. This may have been even closer to the truth than they realised: Jones had been responsible for the interior decoration and exhibits for that Great Exhibition building, Crystal Palace. And after the building was moved to Sydenham, Jones was jointly responsible for the decoration and layout for the new Crystal Palace  which opened in 1854 as a "permanent" venue for education and entertainment.

However when construction of the Alexandra Palace commenced in Sept 1865, the design was somewhat different from the glass structure initially proposed by Jones. Architects John Johnson (1807-78) and Alfred Meeson (1808-85) took over formal responsibility for the building.

Parliament declined the plan to purchase the main building from the 1862 World Exhibition in London, so it was demolished and the materials were used to build Alexandra Palace instead. Set in its own gardens of 196 acres, this lovely new palace covered 7.5 acres.

In 1871 work started on a railway line to connect the site to Highgate Station. Work on both the railway and the palace was completed in 1873 and, in May Alexandra Palace and Park was opened. Ordinary working families must have loved the site; hundreds of thousands visited in the first fortnight.

Sometimes I cannot believe how lucky I am. William Parrott (1813-75) painted a View of Alexandra Palace on the Hill before the Fire, a painting I had never heard of. Would you believe that Victorian Paintings blog posted that very painting a fortnight ago, showing the height of the hill and the density of the bushland.
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Alas only 16 days after the Palace was inaugurated, a fire destroyed the palace and some members of staff. The magnificent exhibition of English porcelain, containing 4,700 important objects, was destroyed.

Alexandra Palace today

Fortunately the palace was quickly rebuilt, the glass expanses replaced by stronger materials. Pillars provided storage for tons of water in the four corner towers and in reservoirs built into the end walls of the Great Hall. Reopening in May 1875, the rebuilt palace contained a concert hall and theatre, art galleries and a museum, a lecture hall and library, and a banqueting room. They were certainly ambitious.

Apparently an open-air swimming pool and a race-course with grandstand were built in the surrounding park, but I haven’t seen any photos of them. What I have seen photos of are the Japanese village, a lovely boating lake and a golf course. Cricket and football club have played within the grounds since 1888. TravelBlog said Alexandra Palace - A palace for the people gives a panoramic view of the city because the location is London’s highest natural point.

In a disastrous move that sounds eerily modern, the owners of the Palace and Park were threatening to sell them for redevelopment at the turn of the century. It literally became the People's Palace by the Alexandra Park and Palace Act 1900 that gave the facilities to the people of London, with its Park, in trust for all time. As with all great buildings, according to Ali’s Blog, Alexandra Palace was converted to other uses at times of national need. During the 1914-8 war, for example, the park was closed and the palace and grounds were used as a refugee camp.

Later, in the 1930s, it was used as transmission centre for the new BBC Television Service. Success Mastermind Alliances blog described visiting the Palace this year to see the old BBC studio, where the first high definition TV was transmitted, and the Alexandra Palace Theatre.

Palm Court, today. Compare this image to Crystal Palace's glass covered courts

The cavernous Great Hall and West Hall are now used as an exhibition centre and conference centre, operated by the “trading arm” of the charitable trust that owns the building and park on behalf of the public.