Frank LLoyd Wright I and Ennis House

Ennis House is an impressive home in Los Angeles, designed in 1923 by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) for Charles and Mabel Ennis, the owners of a men's clothing chain. Built in 1924, the first thing a viewer notices is that the property is spread over half an acre, along a ridge with awesome views of the Hollywood Hills.

The second thing to notice is the design. The structure is the largest of Wright's Los Angeles-based “textile block designs” i.e using thousands of interlocking, pre-cast and patterned concrete blocks. Concrete was still a new material for home construction in the 1920s, so Wright’s materials were certainly cutting edge. But more than that. The detail that immediately stands out is the relief ornamentation on its concrete blocks, inspired by the symmetrical reliefs of ancient Mayan temples.

Ennis House exterior, with amazing views

Wright built four houses with the textile block design – La Miniatura/Millard House, Ennis House, Freeman House and Storer House. But I did not think it was attractive. Even Wright himself said “What about the concrete block? It was the cheapest and ugliest thing in the building world. It lived mostly in the architectural gutter as an imitation of rock-faced stone. Why not see what could be done with that gutter rat? Steel rods cast inside the joints of the blocks themselves and the whole brought into some broad, practical scheme of general treatment, why would it not be fit for a new phase of our modern architecture? It might be permanent, noble beautiful.”

Architectural Digest (October, 1979) agreed, saying: "The Ennis House is one of the first residences constructed from concrete block. Wright transforms cold industrial concrete to a warm decorative material used as a frame for interior features like windows and fireplaces as well as columns. His 16” modular blocks with intriguing geometric repeats invite tactile exploration. The art glass windows and doors, reminiscent of examples from the earlier prairie period, here achieve greater colour suddenly as they graduate in intensity from darker at the top to lighter at the bottom. The metal work based on Mayan imagery is not of Wright's design, and may have been included at Mr Ennis' request. Yet from the very large iron grill at the main entrance to such minute details as light switches and lock plates, there is a unity of conception and materials that complements the entire structure."

I wonder why the house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but built and supervised by his son, Lloyd Wright. And I wonder why the early, horizontal Prairie Style was not utilised here. Because California was substantially different, in climate or in taste, from Chicago? Was the Prairie Style too arts & craftsy, and too early C20th for the sophisticated 1920s? It seems that Wright felt typecast as the Prairie house architect so he used the Los Angeles era to broaden his architectural vision.

In any case Mr Ennis was a passionate scholar of Mayan art and architecture, even before he had discussions with the architect.

The house had 2 buildings, the main house and a staff flat, separated by a paved courtyard. Unlike the vertical orientation of the other three textile block houses, the Ennis House has a long horizontal loggia spine on the northern side connecting public and private rooms to the south.

living room, then steps up to the dining room

In 1940 the house was sold to a new family and then altered by Wright, adding a pool and some rooms. Augustus Brown, who owned the property from 1968 to 1980, was the last private owner of the Ennis house. To ensure its safe keeping, Brown created the Trust for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, now the Ennis House Foundation.

There had been structural problems with the Ennis House since the beginning; the concrete blocks had cracked and the lower sections of the walls had moved. The concrete was a combination of gravel, granite and sand from the site, mixed with water and then hand-cast in aluminium moulds to create the blocks. It took 10 days for each block to dry before it could be stacked into position. Perhaps using decom­posed granite from the site, to colour the textile blocks, introduced impurities to the concrete mix. And combined with Los Angeles’ specific air pollution problems, perhaps this had caused the concrete to moulder.

Nonetheless Wright firmly believed concrete held potential as a material for affordable housing.

More damage occurred due to the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the record rain in 2004-2005. The Ennis House Foundation was very worried about the millions of dollars it would take for the full restoration project.

In 2005 the house was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of the Most Endangered Historic Places. In 2006 a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant was issued and the restoration work went ahead. The house has since been declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.

dining room

In June 2009 the Ennis House Foundation put the house on the market, with an asking price of USA $15 million. In July 2011, The Ennis House Foundation announced that the sale would ahead, but for only $4.5 million (£2.8 million), as long as the new owner agreed to allow public open days on 12 days of the year. He did.

More recently, Frank Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura/Millard House (1923) in Pasadena has come up for sale. For amazing photos of the patterned concrete blocks inside and out, see the Glamour Drops and Rich of Eve blogs. The Millard House is listed on the USA's National Register of Historic Places.

Harbin - China's Paris of the Orient

Harbin was once a small snow-bound village, 1000 ks N.E of Beijing. In 1898 a city was established because the Russians needed to build the Chinese Eastern Railway. This railway line was to be an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway, greatly reducing the travelling time across northern inner Manchuria to the Russian port of Vladivostok. I wonder if the planners saw any problem in having a Russian railway line, using Russian currency, Russian timetable, Russian passports and Russian equipment going through a foreign country!

The Harbin section of the Chinese Eastern Railway was built 1898-1902.

It seems not. In 1896 China gave permission for the railway to be built and for Russia to control a strip of land along both sides of the long railway. In a very short time, some 70,000 Russians and other citizens had moved to Harbin – railway workers, engineers, architects, shop keepers, teachers and road builders. By 1910, they had built a fully functioning, lovely European city de novo. Those who did well built themselves lovely villas and art nouveau apartment houses.

European architecture, Zhongyang Dajie (High St)  in Harbin's old quarter

China Travel proudly reports that so many businesses were doing well that Harbin established itself as an international metropolis, a the centre of north eastern China. The Russians established a top class educational system for their citizens and published Russian language journals and newspapers. Other nations set up hundreds of commercial and banking companies in Harbin. The surrounding area had enormous reserves of gold, diamonds and timber, providing a reliable basis for new industries to be developed.

Saint Sophia Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1907.

The city became a centre of commerce, of course, but also of religion and culture. The Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Sophia was given a majestic front with large doors and great arches. Completed in 1907, the traditional Russian architecture would have felt at home in Moscow or St Petersburg.

Because of its rich cultural life and ornate, European-inspired architecture, this Paris of the Orient became the City of Music.

Among the people who flocked to Harbin, Russian Jews arrived in their thousands. It is difficult to tell if they arrived because the Russian authorities were encouraging shop keepers, doctors and small business owners to move to Harbin, and so Jews were likely to be recruited. Or if the horrific pogroms in Eastern Europe forced young Jewish families, in particular, to look abroad for safely. What is certain is that in Harbin, Jewish citizens enjoyed all the economic, political and residential rights unavailable in Czarist Russia. And of course these rights were guaranteed (to all citizens) when the Soviet Union acquired the railroad zone later on.

Jewish cemetery and model of Old Synagogue, 1909

Jews in Harbin were furriers, bakers, shopkeepers, café owners, teachers and musicians, timber mill owners and factory workers. They built a moderate sized prayer centre, Old Synagogue, in 1909. This Synagogue was reopened in June 2014 after 12 months of renovations. The women’s gallery on the second floor, the men’s prayer hall and rabbi’s bimah platform have all been restored, complete with elaborate decorations that combine Jewish and Chinese symbols. It is now a concert theatre.

When the community became bigger after the Russian Revolution, they built a larger prayer centre, New Synagogue, in 1921 (now a museum). The community also built its own school, hospital, music centre, sports organisation and welfare facilities.

By the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Harbin started to look like a safe haven for about 150,000 refugees, largely White Russians, making the city the largest Russian community outside the Soviet Union. And the Jewish community grew and grew. Between 1918 and 1930, 20 Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in Harbin, mostly written in Russian. Russian was the shared language for all ex-pats, as well as for their Chinese business associates and employees.

I don’t know much about Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in Sept 1931. But I do know that the Chinese army were forced to retreat from Harbin after bombing from Japanese aircraft. In 1935, the Soviet Union sold the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Japanese, which resulted in the first exodus of Russian emigres from Manchuria, in general and Harbin, in particular. Many ex-pat Russians went back to the Soviet Union, or to Shanghai.

New Synagogue, 1921, now a Jewish museum

Nor is it clear what happened to Harbin after WW2. Clearly the city's administration was transferred to the Chinese People's Liberation Army in April 1946 and became part of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. Within a couple of years, the rest of the European community quickly returned to their home countries or emigrated to Australia, the Americas or Israel.

Today Harbin's population is 10 million people, making it China's 8th largest city. Yet despite two generations (1896-1946) of Russian culture and development, nothing remains except the European architecture. Visit Harbin's old quarter today, near the Songhua River,  and you will find many intact baroque and byzantine buildings that were constructed by the Russians.

Useful reading includes: Passage Through China: the Jewish communities of Harbin, Tientsin and Shanghai, written by Irene Eber. This catalogue accompanied the 1986 exhibition held in Tel Aviv’s Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. And The Jews in China by Pan Guang, published by China Inter-continental Press in 2005. This book provides an extensive, mainly photographic record, with one chapter on Harbin.

map of the Chinese Eastern Railway 
to Vladivostok and Beijing, via Harbin

History is weird - the Hiram Bingham story

On 24/4/2010, I wrote a post about the American Varian Fry: hero and rescuer of thousands. Varian Fry (1907–67) was a journalist. While working as a foreign correspondent for an American paper, Fry visited Berlin in 1935 and was very distressed by Nazi violence against Jewish citizens.

He went to Marseilles as an agent of the newly formed Emergency Rescue Committee, in an effort to help persons wishing to flee the Nazis. At first Fry only had a rather small pot of money and a short list of refugees under imminent threat of arrest by the Gestapo. But soon anti-Nazi writers, avant-garde artists and musicians were begging for his help.

Despite the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, Fry and his small group of volunteers hid refugees in a safe home until they could be smuggled out. 2,200 people were taken across the border to the safety of neutral Portugal from which they made their way to the USA. Others he helped escape on ships leaving Marseilles for the French colony of Martinique. He was an absolute hero, a truly moral man who became the first American ever to be recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations in Jerusalem.

A year and a half later, on 2/9/2011, I was writing about a totally different continent and a totally different era: Machu Picchu in Peru - luxury exploration. Hiram Bingham III (1875–1956) was the American explorer who revealed the remains of the Inca citadel, Machu Picchu, in July 1911. He had traced Simon Bolivar’s footsteps, including the historic trade routes through Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, funded largely by his wife, an heiress to the Tiffany jewellery fortune.
*

Hiram Bingham III, in Peru, 1911.

Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, is one of the most famous examples of Inca architecture and is located 112km from Cuzco, 2,350 ms above sea level. The ruins, probably built in the mid-C15th by the Inca Emperor, are surrounded by lush jungle. The ruins are situated on the eastern slope of Machu Picchu in two separate areas - agricultural and urban. The latter includes the civil sector (dwellings, canals and sophisticated irrigation systems) and the sacred sector (temples, mausoleums, squares and royal houses). The Machu Picchu citadel combines stunning natural scenery with a historic treasure trove, and is now recognised as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

Hiram Bingham III has often been cited as a possible model for the Indiana Jones character. His book Lost City of the Incas became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948.

**

What did these two apparently disparate history posts have in common? The Bingham name! The most important task for Varian Fry was obtaining the visas needed for the artists, writers and academics. He could not have succeeded without Hiram Bingham IV (1903-1988), an American Vice Consul in Marseilles who fought against US State Department anti-Semitism. Like the Japanese consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, Bingham was personally responsible for issuing thousands of legal and illegal visas.

Hiram Bingham IV, in France, 1941.

Note the stamp was issued in 2006. 

As it turned out, the Hiram Bingham who was the American vice-consul in Marseilles was the son of the discoverer of Machu Picchu. Though young Bingham has also been singled out for his help to artist Marc Chagall, Nobel prize winner Otto Meyerhoff and writer Lion Feuchtwanger, it was probably even more impressive that he provided assistance to a number of obscure refugees who would have otherwise been doomed.

The Varian Fry Institute has proposed to Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem that Hiram Bingham IV be honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations. The Institute also nominated five other colleagues who were working in Marseilles until 1941 of whom I shall mention only one.

Charles Fernley Fawcett also worked with Varian Fry. Fawcett was the groom in a series of six bigamous and bogus marriages, helping six Jewish women to get out of internment camps where they too faced certain death. Another truly moral hero of our times.

Oscar Wilde in Paris: insensitive or nasty?

Was Oscar Wilde anti-Semitic? One character in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890 was a greasy, monstrous theatre manager, Mr Isaacs. Isaac’s Jewishness was so unsympathetically presented by Wilde that the reader felt sickened. What was worse, Wilde had written the character Dorian Gray as a vicious anti-Semite who attacked the theatre manager over and over again.

Wilde in London, in the great days pre-gaol

But I had forgotten about Mr Isaacs and Dorian Gray until reading “Oscar Wilde, Captain Dreyfus' Reluctant Hero” written by Eddie Naughton in 2009. No longer able to write, and living down at heel in Paris, Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) survived for three years after he was released from wretched imprisonment in Britain.

Wilde's arrival in Paris coincided with the infamous Dreyfus trial of 1894 and its fall out, including the nasty role of Count Ferdinand Esterhazy (1847–1923). Wilde first met Esterhazy in a Paris cafe, and immediately the two men were drawn to each other. Wilde was fascinated by this unkempt, tubercular crook while Esterhazy pounded his new friend with relentless outbursts against Jews in general and supporters of Dreyfus in particular.

Count Ferdinand Esterhazy, the true spy in the Dreyfus Case

While Captain Dreyfus was shackled to the bed on disease-ridden Devil's Island, Esterhazy had been secretly unmasked as the real traitor by an intelligence officer, Colonel George Picquart (1854–1914), who was promptly court-martialled by the French and sent to prison for revealing secret documents. The French army elite preferred to see an innocent Jewish officer rotting in a hellhole than have their establishment boat rocked.

But it was Esterhazy's confession to Wilde at a dinner one night that brought the whole Dreyfus affair to a head. Along with Wilde and Esterhazy were an anti-Semite English journalist, Rowland Strong, and a pro-Semite young Irish bohemian poet, Chris Healy. At the behest of the pro-Dreyfusards, an indifferent Wilde prompted Esterhazy during his usual delirium about Jews into blurting out that it was he, Esterhazy, who'd been selling secret military intelligence to the Germans. Esterhazy proudly shouted that he put Dreyfus in prison, and all of France couldn’t get him out! Oscar Wilde’s reluctant role, according to Naughton, was in “outing” the real traitor, Esterhazy. As it happened, Wilde cared little for the pro-Dreyfusards.

Not so Chris Healy, who immediately made contact with French writer Emile Zola.  Zola was serving a prison sentence for libel after publishing his famous J'accuse, a devastating indictment of the French government, army and courts and their role in the framing of Captain Dreyfus. Zola tried to contact Wilde, but Wilde refused to co-operate with him. Why? Apparently because Zola had refused to sign a petition on behalf of Wilde at the time of his own conviction in Britain. Zola contacted other sympathetic journalists, and eventually they exposed and destroyed the corrupt cover-up that had been built around the Dreyfus case.

13 Rue des Beaux Arts, Wilde's last residence

Healy left Paris soon after this and never saw Wilde again. Wilde died alone and penniless in the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris.

Dreyfusian France is a subject I know very well, so I had ask myself if Naughton had the entire story? I soon found “A Tale of Two Scandals” by Nigel Jones. After parting from Alfred Douglas in Italy in late 1897, an unemployed, impoverished Wilde returned to Paris in early 1898, during Emile Zola’s trial over the J’accuse article. The political firestorm following Captain Dreyfus’ imprisonment and Emile Zola’s guilty verdict threatened the very survival of the Third Republic. Frenzied mobs, howling anti-Semitic hatred, were supported by the army, government, Catholic church and most of the press.

Jones certainly knew that the apparent villain of the affair, Count Esterhazy, was a crappy soldier, boastful, malicious, a gambler, drinker and womaniser. However Jones tended to believe the Esterhazy was really a double agent, deliberately planted on the Germans, rather than a true traitor. Even if Jones was correct, would that have made any difference to Wilde’s attitudes?

Oscar Wilde’s intimate friendship with Esterhazy seems bizarre to us. Wilde had himself been a persecuted martyr and victim of a viciously punitive homophobic morality in Britain. Surely liberal, socialist Wilde would have been on the side of the innocent man, not aligning himself with the forces of reaction, Church power and punitive right wing politics. Yet if Esterhazy had been innocent, Wilde suggested, the British author would have had nothing to do with the Frenchman. Thus Wilde was being paradoxical, provocative and ironic in his denunciation of Capt Dreyfus, not specifically anti-Semitic.

Esterhazy didn’t care. He saw himself and Wilde as the two greatest martyrs of humanity; Captain Dreyfus was a pushy, German-speaking Jew who, if he did not spy for Germany, probably wanted to.

In the end, Wilde contracted cerebral meningitis, was baptised into the Catholic Church in 1900 and died in poverty. Zola was asphyxiated in Paris in 1900. Commander George Picquart, the hero of the entire sordid affair, was freed from gaol and made a minister in the Clemenceau government. He died in 1914. Esterhazy escaped to Britain where he received a pension cheque every month from France and lived out his life in splendid comfort in Hertfordshire. He died in 1923.

What was the difference between Naughton’s and Jones’ attitudes to Oscar Wilde? Naughton saw Wilde as disinterested in the Dreyfus affair, so his role in exposing Esterhazy was accidental and reluctant. Jones saw Wilde as vitally interested in the Dreyfus affair and in Zola, so his role was intentional, paradoxical and in the end very risky.

Jones gave a reference to J Robert Maguire, “Oscar Wilde and the Dreyfus Affair” in Victorian Studies, vol 41, #1. I haven’t located the journal yet, but note that Maguire wrote the article way back in 1997. This story has been around for 15 years!

Wilde's tomb, Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Bacardi Rum's building, Havana

With an ever-increasing European demand for sugar came the need for a larger work force and that need was met by bringing slaves from Africa to the Americas. Rum distilleries sprung up in the Caribbean and North America. This rum was then shipped around the Americas and to Africa where it was used to pay for new African slaves, bound for the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. The trade of slaves, molasses and rum was very lucrative.

Bacardi Rum Building, built in 1930 in Havana, as it looked in 2001

Emigrating from Spain to Cuba in 1830, Don Facundo Bacardi and his family worked hard establishing themselves as business owners in Santiago de Cuba. Life must have been brutal, but Cuba had become the largest producer of sugar in the Caribbean. In 1862 the family bought its own rum distillery in Santiago and called it Bacardi. When Don Facundo’s sons took over, the secret rum formula was improved even further. During the 1880s and 1890s Emilio Bacardí (1844–1922) and his family were heroic supporters of Cuban freedom and independence.

By the end of the century Cuba had become very wealthy from exporting sugar, rum, tobacco and bananas, and the tiny island was a ready target for predatory super powers. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish troops outnumbered the much smaller rebel army of locals who therefore had to use guerrilla tactics to save their own homeland. The Spanish military governor of Cuba herded the locals into fortified camps where a quarter of a million Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease.

Spain and USA declared war on each other in Ap 1897. A year later the war ended when the two countries signed the Treaty of Paris; Spain ceded Puerto Rico and other more distant islands to the USA. But what a nightmare for Cuba. From 1898-1902, and again from 1906–1909, Cuba was occupied by the USA. Under Cuba's new constitution, the USA retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to supervise its finances and foreign relations! Self-government was not restored to Cuba until 1909.

central tower, Mexican free-tailed bat symbol 

During the time of Prohibition (1920 on), Emilio Bacardi and the next generation of the family exacted revenge on the USA government. Cuba had become a popular destination for American tourists and by the 1920s the family was inviting those same tourists to come to Cuba to beat Prohibition at home. These were the boom years for Cuba, when Deco became the symbol of a vibrant future, with its distinctive buildings and colourful, extravagant shapes.

The Bacardi Building is one of Havana’s principal landmarks, standing on the western edge of the city’s historical centre. Its architect, Esteban Rodríguez Castells, originally won the international competition for its construction with a neo-Renaissance proposal. But after visiting the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, he completely reworked his design into the Art Deco style. Located on the Avenida de Belgica/Belgium, the Bacardi building of 1930 is one of Havana’s first sky scrapers (12 storeys high) and remained the highest point in Havana for a long time.

Cubaism described the building in great detail. The façade was lavishly decorated with red Bavarian granite, inlaid with brass embellishments. The upper floors and the tower, both raised in a pyramid shape, were of the exquisite and bright design that combined blue and dun stripes with bright gold panels. The upper part of the building was faced with glazed terracotta reliefs of geometric patterns, flowers and female nudes by the American artist Maxfield Parrish.

Its sumptuous interior details included blue mirrors; stucco reliefs; brushed and polished brass; mural paintings; mahogany and cedar panelling; stained and etched glass; richly coloured inlaid marble from Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, France, Belgium and Hungary. The lamps and other fittings throughout the building were of course in the most modern Art Deco style. The colour of the ceramic flagstones covering the upper floors was bright yellow, referencing the white and gold rums exported by Bacardi.

1930s advertisement for Cuban Bacardi Rum. Note the yellow and the bat.

The building’s central tower was crowned by a three dimensional Bacardi bat, a figure that appeared throughout the building. I presume Bacardi rum featured the Mexican free-tailed bat as its icon because the bats were great pollinators of the sugar cane and because they devoured the insects that damaged sugar cane. In addition, as would be found in any Art Deco building, the decorations included sun-bursts, fans, waves, spirals and geometric patterns, and Art Deco roses, pineapples and other tropical fruit. And there were many other Art Deco objects, both functional and decorative, like lamps, lift doors and iron grills.

The company opened rum production facilities in Mexico in 1931 and Puerto Rico in 1936, as well as the New York based imports company in 1944. After the Cuban revolution, the company moved from Cuba to its Mexico and Puerto Rico factories, and build new facilities and offices in the USA, the Bahamas and Bermuda. Bacardí family members were now reputed to be strongly right wing and anti-Cuba, having close ties to the American right wing and to the CIA.

bar, mezzanine floor

In any case there was no money in the island nation for supporting its architecture, once the USA's obscene and brutal embargo on Cuba started in 1960. There was barely enough money for the 11 million Cubans to have food and medicine. Buildings start to moulder and crumble, including the once beautiful Bacardi edifice.

In 2001 the building was largely restored by an Italian firm to its original condition, including beautiful marbles and Cuban Art Deco accessories. And then the work was completed in 2003 by the Office of the City Historian of Havana. The building is now the headquarter for representative agencies of tour operators. Visitors can inspect the lower floors and enjoy the bar located on the mezzanine floor, but cannot go up to the top storeys.

Ground floor entrance, iron grills and marble floor

I have not yet seen the book Havana Deco, written by Alonso, Contreras and Fagiuoli. Published by WW Norton in 2006, the book explains the relationship between Cuban culture and the development of the Deco style there. The book places a heavy emphasis on Edificio Emilio Bacardi's exterior and interior because it serves as a good example of Cuba Deco.

Saving a historical industrial site in Brisbane

We know a lot about the heritage-listed Colonial Sugar Refinery 1893 in New Farm Brisbane, thanks to the State Department of Environment and Resource Management.
 
Founded in Sydney in 1855, the Colonial Sugar Refining Co (CSR) started to dominate the Australian sugar industry in a time of enormous change in the history of sugar; it fuelled the growth of sugar as a new industry in places with suitable growing conditions i.e Queensland. Technological advances in the refining process transformed sugar from a luxury item to a staple food, at least in western countries.

The Refinery and wharf, 2011, Brisbane

Attempts at growing sugar cane had already been made in Queensland prior to statehood, but new government encouragement of the growing of sugar cane in the colony strengthened in the 1860s. Plantations in new areas along the north coast quickly opened up in the 1870s, including in the Maryborough, Bundaberg and Mackay districts.

By 1874, Queensland was exporting sugar to the other Australian colonies. CSR moved north and acquired large tracts of land for sugar growing near Mackay. In total CSR established 3 large mills in Nth Queensland where  Pacific Islanders comprised the majority of the workforce.

By the 1890s, the plantation system was no longer dominant; the industry increasingly required large companies. CSR needed to concentrate more on the value adding end of the market i.e. milling and refining. CSR's Brisbane refinery was the 4th in a chain of refineries that they established in Australia's capital cities; refineries were opened in Sydney (Pyrmont 1878 Australia’s largest), Melbourne (Yarraville c1875), and Adelaide (Glanville 1891).

The original red face bricks

Brisbane was rapidly growing. In 1892 CSR acquired a riverside site of 3.5 hectares on the New Farm peninsular by buying up allotments on a recently sub-divided estate. The location had two major advantages: it enabled access for large ships and was also close to the city's markets. So the wharf (1893), on the river in the front of the main building, became a central part of the plan.

The 1893 complex consisted of the refinery building comprising char house, cistern house, pan house and refined sugar store; raw sugar store; melt house; boiler house; workshop; a two storied building containing offices, laboratory and hessian rooms; and the wharf. Most of the original machinery was made in Scotland. The char house, by the way, was middle step in the sugar refining process, in between the melting stage and the crystallisation stage.

Built during a time of economic depression, the Brisbane refinery was important in demonstrating the company's dominance of both the Queensland and Australian sugar industry for over a century. This was thanks, one assumes, to the Queensland Government's protectionist trade policies in the decade prior to Federation.

New Farm was already the industrial and warehousing district of Brisbane. But CSR added something new; they successfully lobbied for the building of the Bulimba branch railway (completed 1897). Later development of the area benefited from the availability of both wharfs and rail facilities, and included the woolstores (1909) and the New Farm Power House (1928).

The Refinery’s main building (1893) was a long narrow structure, facing the river. The walls were composed of face bricks laid in English bond, around a combination of timber and cast iron framework. It was four storeys high at the southern end and five storeys at the northern end. Rising above the corrugated iron roof line was a hexagonal shaped tower, originally used for the storage of char.

But nothing stays the same. In 1988, the residence was removed from the site; in 1989 the rail link to the refinery was closed; and CSR totally ceased operations at the New Farm refinery in 1998. The buildings fell into ruination.

Industrial feel to the apartment interiors

Now the exterior of The Refinery has been totally restored; the transformed interior now houses 30 apartments, thus converting a large industrial processing building to a residential use. And saving it. The main 1893 refining building still demonstrates the principal characteristics of a C19th industrial building, including use of fully visible face bricks, restrained embellishment and a narrow, vertical form. Note the char tower with its decorative brackets and finial, the grassed banks, fence, wharf and river. Directly behind the central core is the raw sugar store, flanked by warehouses on the southern side and ancillary buildings.

Internally many modifications have been made, resulting in some alterations to the floor levels, most notably in the char house. The framing in the southern end (refined sugar store and pan house) is timber, whilst that in the northern end (cistern and char house) is of cast iron. The renovated interiors retain this industrial image.

The refinery is now one of the last surviving industrial sites on the inner city reaches of the Brisbane river and one of the last to retain its wharf. So it is important. It had to be saved, and it was!

River frontage

Questions to ask, as a result of this experience:

1. Do important industrial sites deserve heritage protection, like churches and historical homes?

2. If the original industrial architecture was not aesthetically pleasing, can it be tarted up?

3. Should a preservation order cover the industrial building's interiors as well?

4. Do the outbuildings in industrial sites need to be protected? 

Leica cameras and its Jewish employees: 1938

In 1849 Carl Kellner had established an optical institute in Wetzlar for the development of lenses and microscopes. Ernst Leitz I (1843-1920) became a partner in the company in 1865 and took over sole management in 1869. Ernst Leitz was a socially aware employer whose humanitarian attitude to his employees was best seen in his whole-hearted acceptance of health insurance, pension and housing schemes, and, by 1899, an eight-hour day. The number of his employees expanded to 120.

The first Leica camera prototypes were built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke, in Wetzlar (north of Frankfurt) in 1913. Intended as a compact camera for landscape photography, particularly for challenging mountain trips, the Leica was the first practical 35 mm camera. Soon after Ernst Leitz II (1871-1956) became sole owner of the business in 1920, the Leica prototypes had moved to the manufacturing stage. It was very successful.

Leica advertisement, 1938

Ernst Leitz II ran the company with the same humanitarian values his father had held, but in the years just before WW2 erupted in 1939, many companies were moving in the other direction - fostering a close association with the Nazi regime. So although there was still time to help their Jewish employees escape, very few companies bothered. Yet the Leitz family, designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, actually tried to save all its Jewish workers.

As soon as Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933, Ernst Leitz II increasingly got worried calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were protected from Nazi Germany 's Nuremberg laws, which controlled the work, movement and liberties only of Jews.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz carefully designed a programme that would allow Jews to leave Germany; they were Leitz employees who were simply  being "assigned" overseas. Employees, retailers and family members were each given a Leica camera and were assigned to Leitz sales offices in USA, France, Britain & Hong Kong.

And not just long-standing members of the firm. The Guardian said he began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar, to train them from scratch so that they could work abroad. After their training, Leitz personally applied for an exit permit to send the new employees abroad, to assist in generating sales.

Particularly after the Kristallnacht catastrophe of November 1938, German employees travelled on the ocean liner Bremen and made their way to the Manhattan, London or Paris offices of Leitz Inc. Apparently an editor of the Leica Magazine called every Leitz account in Britain, France and the USA, to help place the new employees in local jobs in the photographic industry. Leitz paid full salary for 3 months, and half salary for the next three months! It must have been difficult at first since the recent arrivals couldn’t speak a word of English or French, but out of this migration came some of the best designers, repair technicians, salespeople and writers for the photographic press.

Ernst Leitz II (1871-1956)

The Leica Freedom Train, as the programme came to be called, peaked in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to safety every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland in Sept 1939, Germany sealed off its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had already escaped abroad, thanks to Leitz's heroic efforts. The programme saved their lives and the lives of their children.

How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it? Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognised brand that reflected credit on the powerful Third Reich and Leitz was a man above suspicion. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also the German government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the USA. To the Nazi government, the programme was transferring skilled salesmen abroad, to generate hard currency sales.

How ironic that, due to the Nazis' dependence on the military optics that Leitz's factory produced, as well as their belief in the importance of the Leica camera for their propaganda purposes, the company was able to get Jewish workers and their families out of Germany! The Guardian said that the government actually DID know what he was doing; that the Gestapo turned a blind eye, so important was it to them that production at the plant continued.

Even so, members of the Leitz family did not get off scot-free. One Leitz executive, Alfred Turk, was gaoled for helping Jews. Ernst Leitz's own daughter, Dr Elsie C. Kühn-Leitz (1903-85), was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. Both Turk and Kühn-Leitz were eventually freed, but the risks were clearly very high.

In all, nearly 300 people benefited from the programme, perhaps two thirds in the USA and one third in Britain and other parts of Europe. Yet when Ernest Leitz II died in 1956, his efforts remained unrewarded, as far as I can see. His daughter Dr Kuhn-Leitz, on the other hand, received many honours for her humanitarian efforts. So if the story was known after the war, why has it been forgotten since? And why did the family insist that no story be published until the last member of the Leitz family was dead?

Read the book The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train, written by Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith. And a film is being made about the great courage of the Leitz family/company during the years leading up to WW2. The film, called One Camera, One Life, is being produced by Liz Boeder and Doris Bettencourt, and directed by Mark de Paola.

Ballets Russes: 1936-1940

When Sergei Diaghilev died in 1929, a number of Ballets Russes dance companies were formed. In the years just before WW2 erupted, three of the companies were brought to Australia via theatrical agents JC Williamson,  performing 44 works on tour. Thus the Australian public was introduced to a brilliant and exotic company of dancers, productions, stage designs, costumes and music, the likes of which could not have been imagined, this far from Europe. And so shortly after the Great Depression!

Presented in Australia by Diaghilev’s successor, Colonel Wassily de Basil, the Ballets Russes revitalised the art form of ballet and had a profound impact on Australian cultural life in the years 1936-40. Australians of all backgrounds were captivated by the dancers, who in turn came away with fond memories of Australia and its people.

Some dancers elected to remain here during the tours, and thanks to them, The Australian Ballet is able to trace a direct link to the Ballets Russes. Madame Helene Kirsova, for example, started a Russian ballet school at Macquarie Place in Sydney in 1940. In the following year, she started Australia’s first professional ballet company.

Mark Carroll ed, The Ballets Russes in Australia and Beyond, 2011.

In 2006, The Australian Ballet launched a great celebration as part of the research project Ballets Russes in Australia: Our Cultural Revolution. The project focused on the legacy of those pre-war visits to Australia, and culminated in 2009, the centenary of the founding of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris. I discussed one of their exhibitions, Ballets Russes art and design, in this blog some time ago. Another part of the project was an analysis of legendary Russian choreographer, Leonide Massine, who was Serge Diaghilev’s third and most influential dance maker.

The Legacy the Ballet Russes project concluded with a 4-city, 12-day tour of central Europe, with a luxury travel tour company, Beyond the Curtain. Although this tour in April 2010 seemed to have me in mind when it was designed, I didn’t read the review in Luxury Travel Magazine until just recently. Perhaps a kind reader will provide some feedback on what was possibly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The tour couldn’t have been led by a more qualified person. Amanda Clerke-Moulds began her ballet training in Sydney with Edouard Borovansky, one of the original stars of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. Later she successfully auditioned for the Australian Ballet. Under the direction of Sir Robert Helpmann and Dame Peggy van Praagh, she danced with Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and the company all over the world.

The travellers’ task was to explore the inner workings of some of Europe’s greatest ballet companies; they could watch the dancers in rehearsal, attend receptions with the stars of the ballet world, and take the best seats in the house for the performances. Tour guests could stay in grand old hotels close to the theatres in every city. You can find the detailed itinerary easily.

The tour began in Zurich, home to one of Europe’s most respected Ballet companies, the Zurich Ballet. There the visitors went on a private backstage tour of the Zurich Opera House, a building gilded with a history of famous composers and their music. Tour guests could meet the dancers before taking their seats for the company’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Leaving Zurich behind, a first-class train journey took the tour through the stunning Swiss Alps and the quaint Bavarian countryside en route to Munich. The hotel was in Maximilianstrasse, a royal avenue known for its art galleries, designer stores, luxury boutiques and its proximity to the National Theatre.

The Bavarian State Ballet was preparing for the week long Munich Ballet Festival. The rehearsals for all the ballets in the Festival repertoire provided a behind the scenes look at a day in the life of a ballet company, the dancers and famous principal artists in action. Guests could explore the Bavarian State Opera House and then stay for a performance of Fiery Mazurka, a passionate, modern dance.

Hélène Kirsova and Igor Youskevitch, Le Carnaval, Sydney,1937. Nat Library Australia

A four-day stay in Prague was based in a hotel with views of Prague Castle. There was of course a private backstage tour of the National Theatre and a day tour of the Karlstejn Castle. And while Prague normally evokes a bygone era with its opulent architecture, the Prague Opera Ballet’s performance of Causa Carmen was a sultry, contemporary interpretation of the operatic classic.

In Vienna guests stayed at the historic Grand Hotel Wein, once the hub of Viennese society. This hotel is close to the Vienna State Opera House, a sumptuous neo-renaissance opera house with its world renowned Wiener Staatsoper Orchestra and Ballet. A meal with the artists of the Wiener Staatsballet was arranged and a private backstage tour of the historic Weiner Staatstheatre. The highlight of the evening was seeing the performance of Coppelia. I would not have wanted to go home!

Has any other Behind The Curtain Ballet Tour been organised before or since, from Australia or from anywhere else?

For a comprehensive analysis of the Ballets Russes in Australia between 1936 and 1940, read Australia Dancing. Or find the book The Ballets Russes in Australia and Beyond, a series of essays discussing how the tours of the Ballets Russes companies created a lasting legacy in dance, visual art and music. It was published by Wakefield Press in August 2011.

Costume for a squid, designed by Natalia Goncharova, Nat Gall Australia 

Current exhibitions of British landscapes

It is a truism to say that the first half of the C20th witnessed some of the most destructive and yet creative decades in Europe’s history. These were eventful and brutal years! But they were also exciting times for artists, with the inter-war generation responding to changing social, political and religious values, as well as responding to the Empire’s military exigencies.

Two British art galleries have just held special exhibitions that a] examined the nation’s response to tough financial times and b] went some way to display the spiritual quality of landscapes.

Sir Alfred Munnings, The Caravan, 1910, Art Museum at Castle House Dedham

Falmouth Art Gallery in Cornwall recently finished a major project called British Impressionism. The location was appropriate, since Cornwall played a major role in 20th century British Impressionism, arguably one of the most popular movements in British art. The exhibition featured important loans from Cornish collections and included works by Dame Laura Knight, Sir Alfred Munnings, Henry Scott Tuke and John T Richardson.

As Richard Moss noted, Cornwall’s pleasant climate offered the chance to capture the local landscape in impressionist paintings which relished bold colour and highly visible brushstrokes, both before and after WW1. The artists were soon producing boat and harbour scenes around Falmouth Bay, a place that captured the frailty of the English sun and the way it played upon the sea.

Together with scenes of pastoral and coastal harmony, the everyday figurative elements of Cornish Impressionism were shown in works such as The Caravan by Alfred Munnings c1910 and Abbey Slip by Stanhope Forbes 1921. Hazy, romantic and harmonious – with hindsight, interesting responses to a time of rapid social change and war.

Stanhope Forbes, Abbey Slip, 1921. Penlee House Gallery & Museum

Restless Times, Art in Britain 1914-45 was curated by Museums Sheffield as part of the Great British Art Debate. After Norwich Castle Museum, the exhibition moved to Tate Britain where it stayed open to the public until Nov 2011.

The exhibition told the story of what would become a turning point in the history of Modern British Art. Again with hindsight, the inter-war era was a period defined by the devastating experience of two world wars, an era that saw fundamental changes in British society. During the mass upheavals, Britain became a destination for displaced people from across Europe. This migration brought foreign artists from across the continent and with them, an influx of new and influential ideas.

Exploring the impact of this remarkable cultural exchange, Restless Times considered how artists sought to redefine the changing face of the nation -  from the horrific impact of war and a retreat from the harsh realities of life, to the celebration of the pastoral idyll and the embracing of new ideas and technologies. The exhibition examined how artists engaged with both the uncertainties and possibilities of the time, especially Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Barbara Hepworth, Cyril Power, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Christopher Nevinson, Vanessa Bell and Henry Moore.

Following my previous post on Inter-war landscapes in general and the South Downs in particular, I was delighted to see The Cornfield painted by John Nash in 1918. The Tate said that The Cornfield was the first painting he made after WWW1 which did not depict the subject of war.

John Nash, The Cornfield 1918, 94 x 101cm, Tate (Country Life 23/3/2011). 

In its ordered view of the landscape and geometric treatment of the corn stooks, The Cornfield  prefigured his brother Paul's landscapes. As That’s How The Light Gets In explained, John and his brother Paul used to paint for their own pleasure only after 6 PM, when their work as war artists was over for the day. Hence the long shadows cast by the evening sun across the field in the centre of the painting. It is difficult to remember that The Cornfield was painted as early as 1918 – a full decade or more before by South Downs landscape artists were painting in a similar style.

George Henry, Hikers at Goodwood Downs, 1930s, Graves Gallery Sheffield

Hikers at Goodwood Downs, by George Henry (1858-1943), dated from the 1930s and showed ramblers enjoying Goodwood Downs in West Sussex. Rambling was a fashionable pastime during the 1930s, particularly amongst the working classes, since the activity was both free and health-giving. At weekends hundreds of walkers would leave the city to explore their rural surroundings. The Restless Times exhibition was showing that art and social history were almost indistinguishable.

James Russell's book, published 2011

Readers might like to locate the book Ravilious in Pictures: The War Paintings 2011. Written by James Russell and published by The Mainstone Press, the book celebrated and commemorated the wartime career of Eric Ravilious, until he tragically died in 1942. The images created a vivid portrait of life in the wartime Britain, including coastal defences, observation posts and rolling countryside filled with the detritus of war.

Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer was written by Alan Powers and published by Lund Humphries in 2013. Powers already examined the design revolution that took place in the early C20th led by our favourite artists eg Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. In this book Powers examines Ravilious' cool colours, pure style and classical decorum that jumped off the canvas and into popular taste. Ravilious' chalk downs and other landscapes evoke a sense of the sublime, rare in modern art but sustained 70+ years after the artist's death.

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During the early C20th, the remote hamlet of Lamorna in West Cornwall attracted a fine list of leading artists, including artists like John Noble Barlow, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight, Harold Knight, Charles and Ella Naper, Augustus John and many others. The early Lamorna Group was one of the most important creative episodes in British art, but it was also beset with jealousy and tragedy, as told in a very fine novel,  Summer in February by Johnathan Smith. The Group effectively dispersed by the end of the Great War.

Now there is an art exhibition called Summer in February - Art in Lamorna 1910 - 1914 which will remain open until June 2013 at Penlee House, Penzance.

Sir Alfred Munnings, The Morning Ride

51 x 61 cm

private collection, but currently at Penlee House, Penzance.

A student at the Forbes School of Painting, Florence met the charismatic Alfred Munnings in Newlyn and they married in 1912, but their disastrous marriage ended in 1914 with her suicide. Munnings' painting, The Morning Ride 1913, is on display at the Summer in February exhibition. This beautiful painting, one of four he painted of Florence, seems to have predicted the sporting portraits that people came to love.