Yasmar House: Gentleman’s Colonial Villa to Reformatory for Delinquent and Wayward Youth

Posted on by sabinebuena
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Natural Environment, Town planning
Through the arboreal jungle: Road to juvenile remand

In the West Connex neighbourhood that is Parramatta Road, Haberfield, there’s an entire block on Cadigal land with the street frontage almost completely camouflaged by a dense outgrowth of foliage, overgrown Moreton Bay figs and other assorted large trees. If you stop and peer through the ancient but imposing gates, beyond the locked high wire fence, you’ll see a deserted, winding driveway, bisecting the sprawling green maze. At the end of this serpentine path is Yasmar House in the inner west suburb of Haberfield. The name sounds vaguely Middle Eastern (Arabic female name?), but is actually less exotic than it sounds, “Yasmar” is simply “Ramsay” spelt backwards. Ramsay is the name of an early 19th century landowner in what was originally called the Dobroyde Estate, David Ramsay𖤓. Ramsay’s son-in-law Alexander Learmonth and daughter Mary Louisa Ramsay commissioned architect John Bibb to design their Yasmar House as their family residence on a parcel of the estate land.

(source: Stanton & Son)

Yasmar House (1854–56), still extant today, is the sole remaining villa estate on Parramatta Road, Australia’s oldest and busiest road. The once grand building is U-shaped with rear wings (originally servants’ quarters and service rooms) and stables, the buildings set well back from the front entrance…architecturally, it is a Regency designed villa in the Greek Revival Style (John Bibb’s speciality). The classical gateposts, made of Italianate style sandstone with Gothic recesses and a ball motif atop them are connected to a high, ornate iron palisade fence. After Yasmar became a borstal the entrance was widened to accommodate prison trucks. The garden design of the arboretum and Georgian landscaping adhered to JC Loudon’s “Gardenesque” principles. During this period many exceptional and unusual species of flora were planted…to a large part this was the work of Mrs Learmonth’s brother Edward Ramsay who had a keen botanical interest. Among the rare or uncommon plantings that survive are palo blanco trees, Chilean wine/coquito palms, Pacific kauris and a Chinese midenhair tree [Jackson-Stepowski, Sue, Yasmar, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yasmar, viewed 02 Nov 2024].

Yasmar House in its juvenile detention period

Yasmar House has had only three owners in its nearly 170-year history – the Learmonth family, the Grace family (co-founder of the iconic Grace Brothers Department Store Joseph Neal Grace and his wife Sarah Selina Smith) and the NSW state government.

.

Beyond these gates… (photo: Michael Wayne)

Yasmar House has bore many names and many uses over the course of its existence, including Yasmar Hostel, Yasmar Detention Centre, Yasmar Child Welfare Home, Yasmar Shelter, Yasmar Juvenile Justice Centre, Ashfield Remand Home. It also functioned as a Sunday school in the 1860s. At one point the site included a reform school facility for girls, the Sunning Hill Education and Training Unit.

Carpentry class, Yasmar Shelter, 1948 (source: www.findandconnect.gov.au/)

Currently, the complex operates as the Yasmar Training Centre (administered by the Department of Corrective Services). The state government acquired the villa in 1944 after it had served as army officers’ quarters during the war. In 1946 Yasmar House became a remand centre for delinquent boys, with its grand reception rooms serving as a children’s court and other rooms assigned for attending magistrates.To accommodate the increase in juvenile inmate numbers at Yasmar, timber structures were built on top of the property’s tennis courts and croquet lawns§ (Jackson-Stepowski).

183–185 Parramatta Road

 In 1991 Juvenile Justice relocated away from Haberfield and Yasmar House became vacant, leading to a marked deterioration in the condition of the heritage-listed villa and the gardens. Consequently, Yasmar has been described as “a landscape at risk”, prompting locals from the Haberfield Association to volunteer their labour to try to restore the garden to its comely former state.

𖤓 nearby the Yasmar site there is both a Ramsay Street and a Yasmar Avenue

§ former inmates of the Yasmar institution from decades ago paint a picture of harsh living conditions, brutal treatment, beatings at the hands of the guards and other abuses of authority [‘Yasmar – Ashfield, NSW’, Past/Lives of the Near Future, (Michael Wayne), www.pastlivesofthenearfuture.com]

Malvern Hill Estate, a “Choice Part” of Croydon in Early 20th Century Inner West Sydney

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Built Environment, Social History, Town planning
Prior to the creation of the Malvern Hill estate, there were earlier subdivisions in Croydon which were unregulated, poorly planned and haphazardly implemented

In earlier (July 2018) blogs on this site I presented the backstory of two socially desirable but very different garden suburbs in Sydney – Daceyville in Sydney’s east, ‘Planning for a Working Class Lifestyle Upgrade, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Daceyville, NSW’, and Haberfield in Sydney’s inner west, ‘Planning for Suburban Bliss, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Haberfield, NSW’. Just a kilometre away from the centre of Haberfield is Croydon, contained within this small suburb is the Malvern Hill estate, known for “its salubrious residential streets” (Johnson, John, Malvern Hill, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/malvern_hill, viewed 10 May 2024) (including Edwin, Thomas, Walter, Reed, Murray, Tahlee, Dickinson, Lea and Highbury streets, Malvern Avenue and Paisley Road).

The subdivision of the Malvern Hill estate proceeded in two phases (May and September 1909)

Gads Hill to Malvern Hill dress circle: The Malvern Hill estate came into being from a 1909 subdivision, prior to that the area was known as Gads Hill and already boasting a rich colonial architectural stock, famous for its stately 19th century villas…Gads Hill Villa, two-storey mid-Victorian home of Ashfield mayor Daniel Holborrow from 1873–1904, and ‘The Hall’, the residence of Samuel Dickinson (which with fellow publican George Murray owned an early estate in the suburb𝐚. The new estate was intended to a “quintessential Federation period “garden suburb”𝐛, with complex designs, multiple gables, tall chimneys and generous verandas. The estate’s growing affluence was reflected in a great number of the new buildings being architect-designed, a notable surviving example is the Malvern Hill Methodist (now Uniting) Church, a red brick Federation Gothic-style structure designed by prominent architect Alfred Newman (Johnson). A sense of what the estate was offering in prestigious residences can be gained from this description of a Federation house in the Crescent (2 Dickinson Ave) valued at in excess of £4,700 in 1917….”one of the finest houses in Croydon, interior fittings elaborate and costly, 8 rooms, including a billiard room, large area of land, beautifully laid out, having motor garage etc” (Johnson).

Uniting Church, cnr Murray St & Malvern Ave (Newman: red brick Fed style)

Acquiring an American taste in architecture: By around 1912 Californian bungalows started to be built alongside the Federation homes. In contrast to them the bungalows had low pitched roofs (and thus low ceilings), squat chimneys, dark brick roughcast walls and deep verandas supported by massive pylons [‘Malvern Hill Estate – Croydon, NSW, Australia – Australian Historical Markers’, www.waymarkers.com]. Attached to residential approval was a covenant requiring all buildings to be of high-quality brick or stone (or both), with slate or terracotta tiled roofs. Semi-detached and terrace dwellings were banned, with no commercial buildings within the estate (these were strictly confined to The Strand shopping strip [‘C29 Gads Hill, Croydon Heritage Conservation area’, Inner West Council, www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au].

Calif. bungalows: One-time homes of 1930s NSW premier Bertram Stevens in the MH estate (above) 15 Malvern Ave (below) 26 Malvern Ave

The Strand: The Strand, lined with Canary Island date palms, “was designed as a broad and elegant shopping street and promenade” running south from the train station, leading to the residential streets. The Federation-style post office was the first building construction on the Strand (1913), followed by a line of shops on the western side (the eastern side shops didn’t start to appear until 1917) (Waymarkers.com). A fruiterer, a florist, grocery, bakery, pharmacy, bottle shop, a couple of cafes, Italian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Indian/Sri Lankan eatery and spices shop, two pizza places, dance studio, art studio, hairdressers, Scottish speciality shop, but NO supermarket Goliaths!

1913 Fed style Post Office + dentist + chocolate shop

Due to the high-quality structure and distinctive character of many of the Malvern Hill dwellings the area was placed under heritage protection as early as 1983-86, this is in stark contrast to Croydon’s adjoining suburbs Ashfield and Burwood which are both characterised by an abundance of high-rise units and high density living. The desirability of living in the Malvern Hill estate makes it Croydon’s expensive pocket with realty prices soaring upward with a North Shore-like trajectory.

Burwood’s “toweropolis” (photo: Issuu)

Endnote: Mystery of the name The name “Malvern Hill” is not locally significant, and its origin is not known. Topography offers no real clues as the only elevation in the estate is no more than the mildest upslope running from the rail line to the Liverpool Road ridge. Possibly the name references Malvern Hills, a rural district in Worcestershire, UK (Johnson).

𝐚 both men have streets named after them in the estate, as was the practice with early landowners

𝐛 spaning the years 1909 to the 1920s

London’s Worshipful World of Liverymen

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Commerce & Business, Local history, Town planning

One of London’s most colourful traditions which continues to the present day is the veritable institution of livery companies, the city’s ancient and modern trade associations. The liverya⃞ companies (LC) are Medieval in origin, established in the 12th century by groups of tradesmen, craftsmen and merchants with similar skills and interests. Like the guilds before them they functioned as kinds of trade unions in an embryonic state before the establishment of unionised labour associations.


Boundary lines of the “Square Mile”

Photo: London Toolkit
Traditionally, the core role of the LCs has been to maintain standards and regulate prices in the various industries. The LCs fostered apprenticeships upon completion of which the apprentice became a “freeman” with licence to operate within the city walls (until the 18th century you couldn’t ply your trade within the city unless you were a freeman). An increasingly important auxiliary role of LCs has seen them engage in benevolent and charitable activities aimed at livery members and their families who have fallen on hard times (‘The History of London Livery Companies’, Black Taxi Tour London, 12-Feb-2020, www.blacktaxitourlondon.com).

How one becomes a Livery freeman
There are two pathways to LC membership: serving a term of seven-plus years as an apprentice to a LC “master”; and patrimony, membership passed down from a parent who holds the status of freeman at the time of the child’s birth. There is in addition the entity of honorary freeman, mostly granted to celebrities and politicians by LCs…honorary Company members include Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher and Stephen Fry.

Guiding the flock over the Bridge (Source: Metro UK)
With club membership comes privilege
A freeman is by definition a “Freeman of the City of London”, which carries certain privileges, one is the right to stand for election as aldermen or sheriff and if they get that far, even lord mayor. Another popular office open to freemen is ale conner, an elected official who gets to test the quality of new ales (somebody has to do it!). Another quirky privilege for freemen historically was the right to drive a flock of sheep over London Bridge without having to pay a toll. Recently some LCs—specifically the Worshipful Company of Woolmen—have revived this sheep herding exercise across the Thames. A key feature of livery activities is the ceremonial. LC membership affords an excellent opportunity to engage regularly in cosplay. All manner of Liverymen like to don ceremonial robes and march in processions like the Lord Mayor’s Show with no pomp or spectacle spared. Liverymen also indulge in other traditions such as pancake races and the Loving Cup ceremony (‘The traditions of the City of London and its Livery Companies’, CityandLivery, 27-Apr-2018, www.cityandlivery.blogspot.com).

Lord mayors from all walks of life
The office of Lord Mayorb⃞, the annually elected administrative boss of the fabled “Square Mile”, the City of London, has been filled by freemen from the broadest cross-section of vocational backgrounds. Recent lord mayors have been merchant tailors, solicitors, haberdashers, shipwrights, grocers and musicians.

Order of Precedence
As the number of LCs grew a hierarchy of companies evolved with each company designated the prefix “Worshipful Company of ________” and an “Order of Precedence“ established, headed by the Great Twelve Livery Companies – they are in order, Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors, Skinners, Haberdashers, Salters and Ironmongers (due to a historic disputation over their place in the seniority, #6 and #7 swap places in the pecking order every 12 months!). The Great Twelve were determined on the basis that they were “the most powerful and influential companies controlling all sorts of aspects of daily life and trade” in the city at the time the sequence was settled (Inspiring City, 27-Jul-2013, www.inspiringcity.co).

Crest of Worshipful Company of Bowyers
The monumental changes in fashion and technology since the LC were in it’s infancy has led to many historic trades, crafts and professions withering away. Others haven’t disappeared entirely, like the Worshipful Company of Bowyers (AKA Longbowstring-makers), but their fundamental raison d’être has shifted markedly…despite the disappearance of the long-bow as a weapon used in war and hunting, the weapon retains a more limited usage today in the sport of target archery. Accordingly the Bowyers Co’s primary focus these days is on charitable workc⃞. In 2010 the LCs of London made benevolent gifts to the sum of nearly £42 million, the majority for education and welfare (‘British Institution: Livery Companies’, Matthew Engel, Financial Times, 22-Dec-2022, www.ghostarchive.org).

A lot of the LCs are still identified by their historic name…the famous black taxi cabs ubiquitous in the city fall within the purview of the quaintly named Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers which harks back to the horse-and-cart era. Likewise, the Worshipful Company of Scriveners represents London’s qualified notaries public. Professional practitioners of calligraphy, heraldry and genealogy also come under its ambit. The Worshipful Company of Carmen once represented the drivers of produce carts (carters), now obsolete, so like many in its modern form it devotes it’s energies and finances solely to charitable and ceremonial pursuits.

Tallow Chandlers Co dining hall (Source: tallowchandlers.org)
The Livery Halls
At the present time there are some 110 livery companiesd⃞, 39 of which possess their own premises and some of these have very lucrative property portfolios. Many LCs share with others, eg, the Master Mariners Co’s “hall“, appropriately enough a historical ship HQS Wellington moored in the Thames, is also a venue used by the Scriveners Co. One of the longest functioning livery halls is that of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in Blackfriars, parts of its building dates to the 13th century.

༒══━一══━一══━一══━一══━一══━一══༒

a⃞ the word livery originally described the form of dress worn by retainers of noblemen and by extension was attributed to the specific attire for different trades or crafts

b⃞ not to be confused with the political office of mayor of London (Boris Johnson’s previous gig before Westminster beckoned) whose jurisdiction, Greater London (GLA), is much larger

c⃞ in 1371 London’s arrow-makers split off from the Bow-makers to establish their own distinct LC, the Worshipful Company of Fletchers

d⃞ with several other groups awaiting approval of their LC membership

Brasília, Brazil’s Modernist Capital in the Interior: An Unliveable Utopian Showcase?

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Built Environment, National politics, New Technology,, Society & Culture, Town planning

Brazil’s bold experiment in creating a new capital city from scratch in five years, Brasília, won much praise as a modern architectural marvel upon its inauguration in 1960. With project town planner Lúcio Costa’s radical, artistic urban plan (the Plano Piloto) for the central city in the shape of a bird in flight⦑a⦒, and the symmetry and spacing of architect Oscar Niemeyer’s stark white, curvilinear, futuristic structures with sculptural silhouettes⦑b⦒, Brasília was heralded as “a modern utopia (expressing) optimism and trust in the future” and a demonstration of Brazil’s capacity for modernising progress (Dr Steffen Lehmann, cited in ‘60 Years Ago, The Modernist City of Brasília Was Built From Scratch’, Stefanie Waldek, AD, 21-Aug-2020, www.architecturaldigest.com).

↟ Costa’s plan for Brasília (Source: nickkahler.tumblr.com)

Bland homogeneity?
Detractors of the futuristic urban ‘miracle’ in Brazil’s central west however have been many and varied. Brasília’s inner city residential zones comprising superquadras (“superblocks”) were characterised by French writer Simone de Beauvoir as all exuding “the same air of elegant monotony”. The city’s large open lawns, plazas, and fields have been likened to wastelands. Structures intended 65 years ago to represent the future, now crumbling, accentuate this sense of decay and obsolescence (‘Brasília, national capital, Brazil’, Britannica, www.britannica.com)

↟ Highway hell? (Photo: BBC)

The car is king!
In a city built for the automobile, Brasília is uber-pedestrian-unfriendly. “With long distances and harrowing six-lane highways connected by spaghetti junctions, Brasília presents challenges for walkers” (Lonely Planet) – which is good news at least for the city’s car hire firms! Transport options for the non-driver in Brasília have been meagre…the subway was basically an afterthought; footpaths are confined to a scanty few, where they exist they are dwarfed by the criss-crossing gargantuan highways; the first set of traffic lights in Brasília didn’t get installed until the 1970s (‘Lost and Found – Brasília’, Blueprint, ABC Radio (broadcast 21-Jan-2022).

Source: airshipdaily.com

A lack of a pulse?
Some critics point to the Brasília lifestyle’s deficit in “humanness”. The city centre is bereft of “the typical street life of other traditional Brazilian cities”. It is merely a place to work…night life is unstimulating, city workers tend not to hang around after hours, few stay to “live and play in the Pilot Plan” centre (Kobi Karp in Waldek). According to Prof. Ricky Burdett (LSE), Brasília flounders on the basics of what constitutes a city…no messy streets, no people living above shops, no mixed use neighbourhoods – rather it’s “a sort of office campus for a government” (‘Niemeyer’s Brasilia: Does it work as a city?”, Robin Banerji, BBC News, 06-Dec-2012, www.bbc.com). The scope for improvement is hamstrung as a result of restrictions on development and expansion in accordance with the city’s world heritage covenants.

↟ Taguatinga, one of Brasilia’s irregular satellites (Photo: Frederico Holanda/ Researchgate)

The creation of two segregated communities
Overpopulation is part of the Brasília problem…designed as a city for 500,000 people, it has five times that many residents today, hence the growth of satellite towns which the poorer residents of Brasília have been shunted into⦑c⦒. Allocation of resources is another…whereas in the centre everything was zoned, over-organised city blocks to the point of impracticality, the satellite towns have been neglected and left in a disorganised state without adequate infrastructure, services and civic spaces (Britannica; ‘Lost and Found – Brasília’). Accentuating the imbalance between the centre and the outliers, only 300,000 of the 2.5 million Brasiliense live in the Pilot Plan area where the jobs are!

Source: modern diplomacy.eu

”A monument to technocratic rationalism”
One of the biggest savagings of Brasília’s architectural merit came from trenchant art critic Robert Hughes who brutally summed up the capital city’s shortcomings: “a ceremonial slum…this is what you get when you think in terms of space rather than place and about single rather than multiple meanings, when you design for political aspirations and not real human needs. Miles of jerry-built, platonic nowhere infested with Volkswagens” (The Shock of the New, Ep. 4 (BBC documentary, 1980). The “utopian” city of Niemeyer and Costa, lauded at its onset as ilha da fantasia has acquired other, less glowing epithets such as “concrete carbuncle” (‘fast:track’, BBC News). For Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of American Cities, the failure of Brasília and other such utopian dreamscapes was in making the mistake of trying to substitute art for life – with unworkable consequences for the inhabitants. Brasília has also come under fire on environmental grounds, the impact of its footprint has contributed to the deforestation of the Amazon region.

↟ Niemeyer’s Alvorada (Presidential) Palace, Brasília (Photo: wikimapia.org)

Postscript: the whole purpose of Brazil’s new capital in the interior for President Kubitschek⦑d⦒ and the urban planners was to create a modern city that avoided the excesses of Río and São Paulo (overcrowded slums, the preponderance of favelas). Costa’s “grand vision” envisaged a new urban centre that was deliberate, orderly, rational, dignified and systematic. In practice, the endgame to the myopic focus on the Plano Piloto was a city of inequality (with a good quality of life only for a minority of the inhabitants), congestion and urban sprawl (‘Inside Brazil’s ‘cautionary tale’ for utopian urbanises’, Diana Budds, Curbed, 07-Jun-2019, www.archive.curbed.com). Rather than being transformed into the shining exception, Brasília is “a mirror of Brazilian society…those with power live in a little island or cocoon. Those who don’t—which is the majority—live on the outside” (Prof. Vincente Del Rio).

—————————————-———
⦑a⦒ alternately it has been likened to the Crucifix, to an airplane or even to a bow and arrow
⦑b⦒ and avant-garde landscape design by Roberto B Marx
⦑c⦒ 90% of the Brasiliense, in the lower or lowest income brackets, live outside the centre in satellite towns
⦑d⦒ the politician in power who initiated the Brasília project in the mid-1950s