VOLUME 11 No. 8 September 2018 ISSN 1835-7628 (print) 2207-8401

FROM THE EDITOR PRESIDENT’S REPORT

It is always amazing, once you begin to research an apparently We have had bumper roll-ups to the past couple of monthly simple story or topic, where you end up. This happened (yet meetings. Although part of the reason is presumably the again) with the article in this month’s issue on Windy Drop- interesting nature of the talks presented, and certainly the down, the house built on the headland at North Curl Curl in quality of the presenters, a significant contributor has been 1948. Although I knew it had been built by Mr. Farley of the publicity provided by the news item that usually appears concrete fame, I had no idea how interesting the back story in the Manly Daily on the Wenesday prior. This is the work would be. I hope that you share my assessment. of John Morcombe and the publicity is invaluable. I wish to thank John publicly. If the story does whet your appetite, you may also be interest- ed in a visit to the Penrith Regional Gallery and Lewers Be- During the month I was invited by Council quest, based on the former property of Gerald and Margo to participate in a workshop on the proposed public art for Lewers on the , and containing the Sonia Farley the also-proposed coastal walkway from Manly to Palm Studio. Farley and Lewers again! Beach. Mingling with the more creative items, the organisers anticipate some installations that will refer to places or The architect of Windy Dropdown, Ancher, has anoth- occurrences of historical interest along the walk. er landmark connection to our area. He was one of the three (albeit the junior) designers of the striking, modern-style surf I must confess to being very ambivalent about the entire lifesaving pavilion at South Steyne that was built in 1939. The project. I feel that we have a remarkable situation and building and associated shark watch tower were demolished heritage on the Northern Beaches. Where else in the world in 1980, victims of concrete cancer. is there natural coastline within 20 kms of a world-scale city? I could nominate hundreds of places in our council area There is an architectural theme in this issue, with a further where public art would enormously enhance the immediate item in the Pot Pourri section. environment, but none of those places is on a rocky headland Richard Michell exposed to the wonderful and endangered wildness of nature and the ocean. However, I appear to be in a minority. DIARY Re the history portion of the project, if the workshop that I Meetings at the Curl Curl Community Centre, cnr. Griffin attended is typical, someone is going to be kept busy sorting and Abbott Roads out fact from plausible fiction. Of the dozen or so items raised by attendees as potentially suitable for memorialising 8 September, 2018 2.00 pm along the walkway, probably 70% were apocryphal rather than strictly factual. Richard Michell Keith Amos The Legend of Reynold’s Farm

Keith will talk about the story that, for many years, was believed (wrongly as it turns out) to link the origin of the name with the Reynold’s family.

13 October, 2018 2.00 pm

Geoff Searl Barrenjoey before the light house (the Stewart Towers)

Geoff will show a documentary and talk about the navi- gation aids that were installed on Barrenjoey prior to the erection of the lighthouse.

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 1 NEWS AND VIEWS

NEXT MEETING, Saturday 8 September, 2018

In the not so distant past a number of theories com- peted with each other as to the origin and meaning of the name Narrabeen. One of these involved Rey- nold’s Farm.

Keith Amos will talk about the farm and the story that circulated for many years linking it and its inhabitants to the name.

LAST MEETING REPORT, Saturday 11 August, 2018 Remains of observation post, West Head

Another large audience of members and visitors was present to hear a very interesting and comprehensive presentation by Ross Clements on the fortifications that were installed at West Head in WW2. He showed the installations both as they were in 1942 and as the remnants that can still be seen today. A lot of credit for uncovering the remnants and pressing the NSW government to allow and install access to them can be given to Rohan Walker, the Co-ordinator of the West Head Awareness Team. Rohan was in the audience for Ross’ talk and was able to add some interesting detail of the work over the past few years.

POT POURRI

The post-WW2 revolution in architecture

The Northern Beaches was impacted by the mod- ern architectural design wave that flourished in post the Second World War. However it was far more widespread in industrial and com- mercial architecture than domestic. This was probably a reflection of the value of real estate in this area at that time . Houses were modest, re- flecting the available budgets of their purchasers and builders.

With the manufacturing boom that Australia expe- rienced in the 1950s, areas of land such as at Top Dog Building, c.1950 (State Library of NSW) Brookvale were rezoned from residential to indus- trial and brand new factories were built. Probably the most prominent one in the modern style was the Top Dog building on the corner of and Harbord Roads. It won the 1950 Sulman Medal. However it was not alone. Another landmark building in the Streamlined Modern style was the Marco factory on the corner of Sydney Road and Wanganella Street, Balgowlah - today a retail lighting outlet.

As the 1950s progressed the Internationalist style of modern took over. It was far simpler in presen- tation and took advantage of advances in structur- al steel and light weight building materials. Again there were numerous examples in factories on the Northern beaches but even pubs were not im- Hotel Brookvale, c. 1954 mune. The rebuilt Brookvale Hotel and the later Hotel were in this style.

Richard Michell

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 2 ARTICLE

Windy Drop Down

In 1942 two men from apparently very different backgrounds met at Army headquarters in Melbourne at the height of World War 2.

Sydney Ancher and Mervyn Farley were both serving in the Royal Australian Engineers. Ancher was about 38 years old at the time. In civilian life he had been an architect, having received his Dip. Arch. From Sydney Tech in 1929. In 1930 he was awarded the NSW Board of Architects Australian Medallion and Travelling Scholarship. He took full advantage of it, travelling and working in Europe from 1930 to 1936. When WW2 broke out he enlisted in the RAE and served in the Middle East from 1940/41, before returning to Army Headquarters in Melbourne.

Farley, at 49, was about ten years older than Ancher. He had trained and worked as a surveyor before enlisting for the First World War, on the 11 August 1914, from his home in Queenscliff Road, Manly. He was 21 years old. He joined the Naval and Military Mervyn Farley in WW2 Expeditionary Force (Tropical Unit) and sailed for German-held New Guinea just eight days after enlisting, on HMAT Berrima. He returned to Australia in May 1916.

On demobilisation Farley went back to his surveying livelihood and married Gretch- en Lewers. Gretchen was the same age as Mervyn and also lived in Manly. She was the daughter of Robert David Lewers, the banker who built The Kiosk at Freshwater (which is now a restaurant called Pilu) and also the 24m tunnel through Queenscliff Head (John Morcombe, Manly Daily, January 27, 2017).

In 1926 Farley formed a company, Farley and Lewers, with his brother-in-law Gerald Lewers, one of Gretchen’s three brothers and four sisters. Initially the company was mainly engaged in general excavation and road construction in , one of its earliest contracts being the construction of The Serpen- tine down to Bilgola Beach. By the mid 1930s they were winning road, bridge and railway building contracts. In 1938, they acquired their first leases on the Nepean River for the extraction of sand and gravel. There they installed their first crushing and screening plant to supply materials to outside customers as well as providing for their own construction needs.

However Farley’s career was once more interrupted by war. He enlisted when World War 2 broke out, this time in the Royal Australian Engineers, and in 1942, Berrima undergoing conversion to a after serving overseas, he found himself, not only receiving an MiD for being troop ship at Cockatoo Island mentioned in dispatches, but also transferred to Army Headquarters in Melbourne. There he met Sydney Ancher.

At work on The Serpentine at Bilgola, 1928 (Sonia Farley)

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 3 The story goes that the architect, who had encountered and become enthused by modern architecture and building materials in 1930s Europe, and the forward-looking construction industry supplier, hit it off. However, there may be a little more to the relationship than this chance encounter (see the Postscript).

On demobilisation, both men hit the ground running. Ancher won the 1945 Sulman Medal for his house at Killara and Farley continued the process of vertical integration of his company. Farley and Lewers expanded from extraction of sand and gravel deposits into quarrying. From there it was just a small step into the very new field of the batching and supply of ready mixed concrete. This process and approach had been invented earlier in the century in Germany and Ancher had no doubt seen it in use there.

So, in 1947, when Farley, who was living at Lindfield, decided to build a weekender at North Curl Curl, it was no surprise that he turned to Ancher to design it and no further surprise that the main building material was to be concrete.

The site was a spectacular 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres) on the edge of the windswept headland at the northern end of Curl Curl Beach ( Head). Overlooking the sea, and fully exposed to the south, the house obviously would have to resist the elements but Farley also wanted it to be amenable to simple future enlargement once post-war austerity ended.

The design that Ancher came up with could hardly have been simpler. Set on a concrete slab which extended out beyond the footprint of the house to also form a suspended terrace as the land dropped to the east, were a few strategically-placed brick columns and walls. These marked the outline of the house and were in-filled with floor to roof sheets of plate glass. The columns and walls also supported the flat concrete roof which projected out by about 1.5 metres on three sides of the house to give protection from rain and sun. A brick chimney and a semi-circular concrete water tank projected slightly above the roof line while three pergolas and a pool slightly softened the uncompromising lines of what was a very modern house for its time.

But the softening was not enough for the Warringah Shire councillors. They approved the plans but with some “special conditions”, the most significant of which was that the house must have “a continuous parapet wall at least 2 ft. high above the roof”. Ancher and Farley did not wish to compromise and sought the reasons for the conditions. The council advised that they were reasons of a) design, b) public interest, c) nature of the building, and d) policy of Council. On this latter they stated:

It is the policy of this council to require flat-roofed buildings to be surrounded with a low parapet to hide...the ugly view of a flat-roofed building...It is this Council’s endeavour that design of buildings in the shire should be as pleasant and pleasing as possible. They added:

You are advised that Council will be very pleased to consider plans for a similar type of residence with a roof of orthodox design...

If by this additional statement the Councillors hoped to appease Farley they did not succeed. He appealed to the Land and Valuation Court of NSW and the hearings were held before Mr. Justice Sugarman in December 1947.

During the hearing Councillor Harris, Chairman of the Health and Building Committee, said that “In my position I have to represent what I believe to be the opinion of the community and for that reason I must object to any startling innovation”. The Chief Health and Building Inspector, W.R. Roach, felt “the building looks grim and because of its bareness and starkness it is not like a house but rather like a gun emplacement”.

Farley and Ancher took a broader approach, arguing that unconcealed flat roofs had become accepted in contempo- rary design in Europe, America and elsewhere, as had the use of modern building materials such as concrete. Their expert witness Walter Bunning described the use of a par- apet to conceal a flat roof as “a jerry builder’s trick” and felt that, in design, Australia was about 30 years behind some other parts of the world.

Mr. Sugarman upheld the appeal. In a comprehensive and considered judgement he pointed out that the sole ques- tion was an aesthetic one. He considered that the building had been designed by a highly skilled architect, applying principles that were widely recognised and adopted in contemporary design. Council’s objection was based on Windy Dropdown c1955/64 after addition of a bedroom. The the novelty and unfamiliarity of flat roofs in Australia. original house as built did not have the wing to the right. (Dee However it was not in the public interest to arrest progress Why Local Studies Library)

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 4 The spectacular setting (Dee Why Local Studies Library) A flat-roofed house in Narraweena with an “approved” parapet wall and development in architecture, nor in culture (which architecture was part of).

The judgement not only freed Farley’s house, it gave other architects the basis to introduce new house designs and solutions in Australia. It was a watershed case that, as building materials became more readily available, unleashed a wave of architectural creativity.

Windy Dropdown, as the house was called, was built in 1948, its construction being carried out by Mervyn Farley’s concrete firm. The inherent flexibility of the design was confirmed when, over the next few years, a garage and flat were inserted into the space under the terrace and a second bedroom was added to the ground floor.

Following Mervyn Farley’s death in 1975, the house was converted from a weekender to a residence for two branches of his family. A second storey was added, maintaining the style of the original building. Then in the late 1990s the property was sold and subdivided, creating a gated community called the Windy Drop Down Estate. However the original house has been preserved.

Richard Michell Post Script

Mervyn Farley’s business partner, his brother-in-law Gerald Lewers, had a strong artistic streak. Although the business was expanding, Gerald visited Vienna briefly in 1931, where he studied painting and drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule.

Back in Sydney, in 1932 Gerald married Margo Plate (they had met at Antonio Dattillo-Rubbo’s evening art classes in the late 1920s) and in 1934 they went to London to study. They travelled in France, Belgium and Germany and Margot was enthused by the Bauhaus and Scandina- Sleeping bird (c. 1950). Gerald Lewers vian modernist design that she saw. It influenced her approach in the © National Gallery of Victoria interior design shop and consultancy, Notanda Gallery, that she opened In Rowe Street, a few years after their return to Sydney in 1935.

It is perhaps noteworthy that Sydney Ancher was in Europe from 1930 to 1936, also visiting Germany and studying Bauhaus principles of architecture. Did he meet Gerald and/or Margo? Did they reconnect when Ancher returned to Sydney in 1936? When, inspired by modern European architecture, he moved back into the Sydney architecture scene did his path cross with Margo Lewers, attempting to introduce those same design principles into interior decoration? If it did then Sydney Ancher could well have met Gerald’s brother-in-law and busi- ness partner Mervyn Farley - or at least they may have been aware of each other - some years before they found themselves together by chance at Army Headquarters in Melbourne in 1942.

Gerald Lewers combining quarrying with sculpting

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 5 Notice of a Special Resolution

Back in 2012 the Society held a meeting, with appropriate notice given, at which a revised version of its Constitution (Rules) was agreed on. The revisions were relatively minor. The revised constitution was forwarded to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission but there is no apparent evidence that it was also forwarded to the NSW Department of Fair Trading.

To remove any ambiguity, it is proposed to submit the 2012 Manly, Warringah and Pittwater version to the Department. Notice is hereby given that, at Historical Society Inc. the general meeting that will be held at 2.00 pm on Satur- Established 1924 day 13 October at North Curl Curl, the following Special Resolution will be moved: Patron Currently vacant “The meeting reconfirms the version of the Constitution that was adopted in 2012 - complete with the change of President the quorum required for a committee meeting from five (5) Richard Michell to three (3) that was adopted on 10 March, 2018 - and 0417 255 726 authorises its submission to the Department of Fair Trad- [email protected] ing and any other relevant body”.

The 2012 version of the Constitution, with the March 2018 Senior Vice President amendment, can be viewed on our web site at Kevin Martin www.mwphs.com. Please contact the President if you [email protected] cannot access that version. Treasurer Richard Michell Venue for our meetings [email protected] Following the Member survey at the end of last year, we agreed that some of our monthly general meetings would be held at the Tramshed Commu- Secretary and Membership Secretary nity Centre at Narrabeen once it reopened. The reopening has been Di Farina announced and then postponed several times in the past few months. It [email protected] is now imminent.

However there is a major problem for us - car parking. Not only is the car Editor park now completely full on Saturdays - a consequence of a cafe being Richard Michell opened in the revamped building - but parking is also limited to two hours. At the moment we are staying at Curl Curl but will reconsider the situation 0417 255 726 in a few months’ time. [email protected]

Postal Address Christmas Party PO Box 695 Manly, NSW 1655

Early notice I know but, this year, we will have our Christmas Party in lieu of the November general meeting. The venue will be the North Curl Curl Website Community Centre and the time will be 2.00 pm. www.mwphs.com

More details in future issues.

Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 6 Manly Warringah & Pittwater Historical Society JoinInc. now and get 15 months mem- bership - 2018/19 Membership Renewal/Application Form - 2018

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Peninsula Historian Vol 11 #8 September 2018 Page 7