Library and cultural institute in Perth, Western Australia
Pre-1914 bookplateLooking west along Hay Street, on the left is the 1851 building. The Perth Town Hall (built 1867) is in the distant right and appears to be under construction. The building in the centre is the Freemason's Lodge (1866) which later became the first premises of the R&I Bank.The new Institute building, c.1900
The Swan River Mechanics' Institute was the Swan River Colony's first cultural centre, established on 21 January 1851. In time it was to house an extensive and well-used subscription library and a natural history collection, including botanical, zoological and mineral specimens. A new building replaced the old in 1899, and in 1909 the institute was renamed Perth Literary Institute.
In 1957 the institute became the City of Perth Library, which moved to another building in 1963. The original building, which was located on the south-west corner of Pier and Hay Streets in Perth, was demolished sometime in the 1970s.
Foundation
The Swan River Mechanics' Institute was established on 21 January 1851.[1] Its founding president was Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe, who held the position until his death in 1878. Other officers included Joseph Hamblin (chairman), Bernard Smith (treasurer) and Harry Hughes (secretary).[2][3] Roe's botanical collection, which was kept at the institute, won him membership of the Linnean Society of London. The second president was Luke Leake, who held the position until his death in 1886.[1]
Although ostensibly formed for the educational benefit of the working classes, the Mechanics' Institute, like many in the Australian colonies, was mostly dominated and sponsored by men of the middle class[4] and tended to pursue mostly literary goals as well as providing a recreational facility for that group. Hay describes the activities: "the educated gentry 'improved' the workers through the medium of occasional lectures, discussion classes which emerged from literary meetings, the establishment of a reading room and a project to build a scientific museum".[5] Institute rules prevented discussion of current political issues; in 1856 a carpenter by the name of Joseph Chester was expelled from the Institute for criticising government policies.[6]
The Swan River Mechanics' Institute was the first such organisation formed in the colony, followed closely by the Fremantle Mechanics Institute on 8 August 1851.[7] Other mechanics' institutes were formed in Albany in 1853, Busselton and York in 1861, Guildford (as a branch of the Swan River Mechanics' Institute) in 1862, Greenough in 1865, Northam and Toodyay in 1866, and Bunbury in 1867.[8]Ex-convicts were not accepted as Mechanics' Institute members and hence a number of alternative working men's associations arose in the 1860s to cater for working classes. Membership was by subscription, and required no qualification other than that the applicant be a respectable member of the community.
Premises
Early meetings took place at the Court House and at a temporary reading room at the Boys' School in Murray Street.[9]
A site for a Mechanics Institute building in Howick Street (later Hay Street) was gifted by the government and surveyed in August 1851. The land was vested in trustees, and managed by a committee appointed by its members.[5][10] The corner stone for the new building was laid by Governor Fitzgerald on 25 May 1852.[11]
Moves to establish a permanent museum in the city during the 1880s saw the institute's specimen collections move to premises at the recently closed Perth Gaol in 1892. These collections laid the foundations of what became the Western Australian Museum.
In 1899 the original building was replaced by spacious two storey premises on the same site, which included a concert hall with seating for 400 people and a lodge room with accommodation for another 200. The building's architect was William G. Wolf, who also designed His Majesty's Theatre and Hotel in Hay Street.[12] The foundation stone for the new building was laid by the PremierSir John Forrest on 20 June 1898.[13] The premier was a former Institute president. The West Australian described the building:
[The hall] is a magnificent apartment, 70 feet x 31 feet, with platform, dressing rooms, and so forth. This and all the rooms on the same floor facing the street have French casements opening on to the balcony which surrounds the building. The edifice is in the Italian style of architecture, and the main entrance to the institute is from Hay Street. There are six shops in the building facing the same street, and a block of offices in Pier-street for letting purposes. The room in which the lending library is to be situated is 40ft. x 25ft., and faces Pier street, and the reading room measures 40ft. x 24ft.
At the time of its opening in 1899, the library contained 6,000 volumes and membership was 389.[12] The cost of the building was £10,721.
Perth Literary Institute
Its name was changed to Perth Literary Institute in December 1909,[14] and at about the same time its inventory showed the library to contain 564 books related to history; biography, 359; essays, 382; travel and geography, 421; general science, 275; social science, philosophy, and theology, 238; poetry and the drama, 199; serial and miscellaneous, 333; statistical and works of reference, 398; and fiction, 6,274, and a grand total of 9,443 volumes.[15]
In 1957 the institute was taken over by the Perth City Council and became the City of Perth Library.[18] Soon after, its subscription library was replaced by a free lending library.
The City of Perth Library was established in the Council House in 1963 and remained there until 1995.
The Perth Literary Institute building[19] was demolished sometime in the 1970s and the site now includes the Perth Law Chambers.[20]
↑ Alison Gregg (Encyclopaedia of Western Australia p. 531) suggests that the Perth Literary Institute 'moved to new premises on the corner of Hay and Pier Streets' in 1931. This conflicts with other sources which state that the Institute had been at that site since 1851 and photographic evidence that the building was extant in 1969.
The Swan River is a major river in the southwest of Western Australia. The river runs through the metropolitan area of Perth, Western Australia's capital and largest city.
Mechanics' institutes, also known as mechanics' institutions, sometimes simply known as institutes, and also called schools of arts, were educational establishments originally formed to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working men in Victorian-era Britain and its colonies. They were often funded by local industrialists on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. The mechanics' institutes often included libraries for the adult working class, and were said to provide them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs.
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, a member of Western Australia's legislative and executive councils for nearly 40 years, but also a participant in the Pinjarra massacre on 28 October 1834.
Subiaco is an inner-western suburb of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. It is approximately 3 km (1.9 mi) west of Perth's central business district, in the City of Subiaco local government area. Historically a working-class suburb containing a mixture of industrial and commercial land uses, since the 1990s the area has been one of Australia's most celebrated urban redevelopment projects. It remains a predominantly low-rise, urban village neighbourhood centred around Subiaco train station and Rokeby Road.
The Causeway is an arterial traffic crossing in Perth, Western Australia, linking the inner-city suburbs of East Perth and Victoria Park. It is carried over the Swan River at the eastern end of Perth Water by two bridges on either side of Heirisson Island. The current Causeway is the third structure to have been built across the river at this point.
WAY 79, also referred to as WAY '79 and WAY 1979, was the official 1979 sesquicentennial celebration of the European colonisation of Western Australia.
Barrack Street is one of two major cross-streets in the central business district of Perth, Western Australia. Together with St Georges Terrace, Wellington Street and William Street it defines the boundary of the main shopping precinct of the central city.
Perth is the capital city of Western Australia. It was established by Britain as the Swan River Colony in 1829. The area had been explored by Europeans as early as 1697, and occupied by the Indigenous Whadjuk Noongar people for millennia.
The Perth Gaol was a gaol built in Perth, the state capital of Western Australia, between 1854 and 1856 to house convicts and other prisoners. It is located just west of Beaufort Street.
Hay Street is a major road through the central business district of Perth, Western Australia and adjacent suburbs. The street was named after Robert William Hay, the Permanent Under Secretary for Colonies. Sections of the road were called Howick Street and Twiss Street until 1897. One block in the central business section is now a pedestrian mall with extremely limited vehicular traffic, so that it is necessary to make a significant detour in order to drive the entire length of Hay Street.
Mosman Park is a western suburb of Perth, Western Australia on the north bank of the Swan River in the local government area of the Town of Mosman Park. It was historically known as Buckland Hill (1889–1909), then Cottesloe Beach (1909–1930) and again Buckland Hill (1930–1937). From 1937 it was named Mosman Park, derived from Mosman in Sydney, the birthplace of Richard Yeldon, a member of the Buckland Hill Road Board. Mosman Park is now considered an affluent suburb, but prior to the 1970s was one of Perth's major industrial centres.
Rottnest Island was first settled by European colonists in 1830 following their arrival at Western Australia and the Swan River Colony. Soon after, construction of a variety of private and public buildings commenced, many of which were built with Aboriginal convict labour and which remain today. This is a list of extant colonial buildings of Rottnest Island, constructed between 1830 and 1896.
Claise Brook is a stream which empties into Claisebrook Cove before running into the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia. The area surrounding the stream is on the outskirts of the Perth CBD and is part of the suburb of East Perth. Claise Brook was once an important water course from which the numerous interconnected fresh water lakes north of Perth emptied into during the wet season before entering the Swan River.
William Lane Milligan (1795–1851) was a British military surgeon. He became an early resident of the Swan River Colony in Western Australia.
Richard Gallop was among the first European settlers to arrive in the newly established Swan River Colony of Western Australia. He landed there on 6 October 1829 aboard the ship Lotus, accompanied by his brothers James and Edward. They were recruited as agricultural labourers from the English village of Sullington in West Sussex, and were indentured to work for Colonel Peter Latour for seven years.
The City of Perth Library is a public library service provided by the City of Perth. The library is located on Hay Street, next to the Perth Town Hall. It is part of the redevelopment of Cathedral Square, located between St Georges Terrace and Hay, Barrack and Pier Streets.
Andrew Oswald Wilson (1866–1950), known professionally as A. Oswald Wilson, was an early-20th-century Western Australian architect. Born and trained as a carpenter in Victoria, he moved first to Perth and then to the Eastern Goldfields, where he worked for Murdock McKay Hopkins. He was president of the Mechanics' Literary and Debating Society in Boulder from 1904 to 1908, as well as active in the Boulder Benevolent Society. One of his best-known buildings is the Boulder town hall for which he submitted designs in 1907. In December 1908, he moved back to Perth and practised from Forrest Chambers.
Pier Street is a street in the central business district of Perth, Western Australia. It runs from St Georges Terrace to Wellington Street, continuing immediately north of the railway until Brisbane Street very close to where Brisbane Street meets Bulwer Street.
Mechanics' institutes were a Victorian-era institution set up primarily to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working-class men, which spread to the corners of the English-speaking world, including the Australian colonies, where they were set up in virtually every colony. In some places, notably throughout the colonies of Queensland and New South Wales, they were often known as schools of arts.
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