Origins Never Stand Still Newsletter of the UNSW Archives No 14 April 2012 IN THIS ISSUE 2 University Archives in 2011 2 Byera Hadley 4 Chemical Engineering 6 Law’s 40th Anniversary 8 UNSW Researchers 9 Elias Duek-Cohen 12 C. S. (Jim) Smith 14 Ellis D. Fogg Lightshows 15 Accessions 16 Contact the Archives ORIGINS No. 14 1 THE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES IN 2011 Staff activities during 2011 were very been Secretary first to the Developmen- sketches of university staff drawn by much dominated by routine behind the tal Council and later the Council of the C. S. (Jim) Smith who was an electrician/ scenes work which consists of receipt University as well as Assistant Registrar custodian at the university from the and processing of official record trans- before becoming the first Director of early 1950s until 1973, a time when fers and donations, the preservation of Unisearch, the university’s research the university was much smaller, more our holdings and making them acces- company. personal, something that shows in the sible for use. As part of our preservation A U Committee grant allowed the caricatures. The sketches had a pride work this year we transferred all our Archives to carry out five interviews of place on the walls of the university’s DAT tapes to storage on the university documenting the achievements of maintenance workshop until it gave server ensuring regular backup and some of UNSW’s Scientia Professors. way to the building of new student long-term accessibility. As part of our While one of the interviews still needs accommodation in 2008. A short series description project we have been to be completed, a report on the project article in this issue of Origins will tell able to add a substantial number of by Sue Georgevits, Oral Historian and you more about this accession. items to our Tabularium database, up- interviewer, can be found elsewhere in The UNSW Archives are a date disposal references for all our State this newsletter. rich resource, especially its large archives and appraise and reappraise The Archives has been lucky to have photographic collection. Our reference some of our archival holdings. This the assistance of Dr Michael Bogle services are in demand and we can included two collections, the Brodsky with describing photographs of the assist with creating exhibitions, the Collection and the Fraser Papers, which Byera Hadley collection. Read more writing of school and faculty histories were among the first accessions of the about Byera Hadley in the article Dr as well as the preparation for events University Archives. Brodsky had been Bogle has written for this issue of and alumni functions. Please feel free the first person at UNSW charged with Origins. to contact us to discuss how we may be collecting records of long-term signifi- We were pleased to see Facilities able to assist with your projects. cance to the university and Fraser had transfer to the Archives the framed Karin Brennan BYERA HADLEY (1872-1937) Michael Bogle, PhD (RMIT) is a historian specialising in the history of Australian architecture and design. He is an occasional lecturer in the Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW. Dr Bogle recently assisted UNSW Ar- chives by listing and identifying the photographs of Byera Hadley – part of a deposit of material that had been transferred to the Archives by the School of Architecture. Byera Hadley’s career as an architect lead the architecture programme at the teaching recruit and by 1899, Hadley and teacher has been overshadowed Sydney Technical College. was working for the STC as ‘assistant by his bequest establishing the Byera Byera Hadley (1872-1937) lecturer, architectural classes’ and that Hadley Travelling Scholarship adminis- was born in Cotham, North Bristol, same year, he was elevated to ‘assistant tered by the NSW Architects Registra- Gloucestershire, into a merchant family teacher of Architectural and Trades tion Board. ‘[He was] of a retiring na- and arrived in Australia in 1887. By Drawing’.4 The Sydney Technical College ture,’ a friend recalled, ‘he was not easy Australia’s Centennial year, he was course in architecture is the forerunner to know intimately […]’.1 The architec- enrolled in the Sydney Technical of the Faculty of the Built Environment’s tural press of the era illustrates that he College’s (STC) architecture programme architecture programme at UNSW. did very little self-promotion, preferring and taking first-year course in Model With his schoolwork behind him, to remain a sole practice as ‘B. Hadley, Drawing (awarded 1st grade) and the comfort of a part-time salary from Architect’ and to lecture and later to Freehand Drawing (honours).2 In 1890- a STC teaching appointment could 91, Hadley also began receiving external supplement his income and support the awards for his work and finished his founding of a practice. By 1897, he was Front cover Architecture students in 3 the doorway of St Stephens Church, year with a STC scholarship. Hadley’s soon advertising for tenders under the Newtown, c. 1900s [S1927/47] Byera drawing skills ensured that he would name of ‘B. Hadley, Architect’. Based Hadley Collection be identified as a potential STC on a search of Sydney Morning Herald 2 ORIGINS No. 14 notices, it appears his private practice in the press as ‘…a Town Hall which the three-storey Sydney United Friendly was founded in 1897.5 Continuing to seems to have been well designed, and Societies Dispensary and Medical construct his career, he also became a is a decided architectural feature of the Institute building in ‘Macquarie Street- Fellow of the Institute of Architects NSW borough. The building, which is in the south’ (commemorative stone laid in in 1899.6 Early Italian Renaissance style, occupies 1902); the commission for the By 1899, the 28-year old architect a site on the main road. […]’ Willoughby Town Hall (opened by the was celebrating Earl Beauchamp’s Following his commercial-scale Premier of NSW Sir John See) completed well-publicised opening of the Hadley- commissions, Hadley’s office began to in 1903 and the Baumann Café (1904) designed Botany Town Hall described receive substantial civic works including in Pitt Street, opposite the entrance to the Strand Arcade next to Washington Soul’s drug store. By 1905, Hadley was fluent in a number of 19th and early 20th century period revival styles and generally reserved his Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival vocabulary for ecclesiastical work; employed variations of the Renaissance Revival for medium scale commercial work; and used a more assertive Classical Revival expression for large-scale commercial commissions for the urban warehouses to the west of George Street in the city. His most grand ecclesiastical work, on the other hand, is typically drawn from the Gothic Revival style and is exemplified by the original wing of the Wesley College, Sydney University (designed in 1916) and its 1919 chapel.7 8 His more modest commissions include the 1900 Greenwich Con gregational Caricature of Byera Hadley, c. 1913 Hugh MacLean, from “Sydneyites: As we see ‘em 1913-14-15”, Newspaper Cartoonists’ Association of New South Wales, 1915. Bowral High School, Annesley School, after 1923 [S1927/76] Byera Hadley Collection ORIGINS No. 14 3 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING’S QUIET ACHIEVERS In the 20-something years I have families to even consider such a the particularly influential Neville worked at UNSW, I’ve had the good for- possibility. And with this gratitude Whiffen, were sufficiently inspired tune to be privy to the stories of many comes a touching humility. That they by their studies and Doc Murphy remarkable people. These include staff, went on to make substantial himself, to form a committee in the alumni and those who for other reasons contributions to their disciplines and late 1930s to lobby for degree status have chosen to support the University. society at large is often passed over for STC diplomates. They succeeded In producing the 60-year histories of quietly. in obtaining professional recognition the Faculty of Engineering and three of Despite their commonalities, from Britain’s Institution of Chemical its four founding schools – Mechani- the histories of these engineering Engineers in 1938, but they were still cal, Electrical and Mining Engineering schools are, of course, as individual not being paid at the same rates as – some broader themes emerged. The as the people within them. Working their university-trained counterparts. sense of excitement, even in distant now on the last history of this series, The ASTC group, along with Murphy, memory, that surrounds the University’s the History of the UNSW School of who went on to become Principal of early days; the difficult conditions at the Chemical Engineering: 1949-2009, the the STC, and others began lobbying for University’s incubator, the Sydney Tech- flavour is different again. Unlike the the formation of a technical university. nical College in Ultimo and later, at the other engineering schools, Chemical This led to the drafting of the 1940 desolate Kensington campus; the sense Engineering was part of the Faculty of New South Wales Technical Education of duty to make do and get on with Applied Science for most of its 60 years, Act, however, war broke out and the things; the unbridled optimism gener- not the Faculty of Engineering. Of the government’s priorities changed. Post ated by the new wartime technologies disciplines first taught by the University, war, however, the committee was back including electronics and computing, it was the newest and followed closely with renewed enthusiasm and finally, plastics and life-saving pharmaceuticals, the work of the man credited with being in 1949, they achieved their aims with and the glorious feeling that things the ‘father’ of chemical engineering the founding of the NSW University of could only get better.