Castlecrag After the Griffins, Modernism and the Sydney School

Posted on September 29, 2022May 19, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Castlecrag is an affluent suburb on Sydney’s lower North Shore with an abundance of bushy vistas and water views. The other thing Castlecrag has in abundance is architectural heritage, and the foundation of that heritage was laid by Walter Burley Griffin (WBG), the suburb’s American planner, early in the 20th century.

WBG’s bold experiments in living
The 15 houses that Griffin completed in the northern peninsula suburb (>30 more remained on the drawing board) are low-rise dwellings constructed in concrete, sandstone or brick, mainly locally sourced. Most of the houses are modest dwellings, small and squat, and for the most part the exteriors could be said to be aesthetically challengeda⃞. WBG’s credo was “designing for nature”, his enunciated goal—subordinating the Castlecrag houses to the surrounding landscape thus preserving the natural features—was realised…WBG left a legacy that inspired the projects of later architects in Castlecrag, notwithstanding that much of post-war Castlecrag housing development has not however been sympathetic with the Griffins’ architectural vision (‘Sydney — Castlecrag’, Walter Burley Griffin Society, www.griffinsociety.org).

. . .
The Glass House
Two architects drawn to Castlecrag in the 1950s to create Modernist residential buildings that are both innovative and in synch with the bush environment are Bill Lucas and Peter Muller. Lucas, a WWII veteran, with his wife Ruth, also an architect (cf. Walter and Marion Griffin) designed the “Glass House”…built in 1957 by Bill and his brother Nev and a friend and financed by Bill’s war service loan. The Glass House is like no other dwelling in Castlecrag, open plan in design, all four walls are of glass and thus the house is open to the landscape on all sides. The Lucas House (which was constructed as the Lucas family home and a studio for Bill’s practice) has been lauded for its economical design, providing the bare essentials while maintaining its sustainability…its “featherweight structure float(ing) miraculously about the tree canopy”b⃞ (with rocks and creek below) (‘Revisited: ‘Glass House by Bill and Ruth Lucas’, Peter Longeran, Architecture Australia, 17-Aug-2022, www.architectureau.com). The Glass House has been described as an “excellent seminal example of the shelter-in-nature minimalist composition constructed in Northern Sydney post World War II by architects of the ‘Sydney School’” (’Aus_Modern_House_Lucas_GL’, Docomomo International, 2003, www.docomomoaustralia.com.au).

The radical Glass House was a reaction by the Lucases to WBG’s restrictive covenants and building controls in force in Castlecrag. WGB’s covenant forbid housing construction in materials other than stone, concrete or brick, but the all-glass Lucas House somehow circumvented the stringent building restrictionsc⃞.

Lucas House,
80 The Bulwark
Castlecrag, NSW

◬ ◬ ◬

. . .
Audette House
Muller’s House (built for an American client in 1952) was the 24-year-old rookie architect’s first completed commission. Intended as an American colonial house, however Muller won the client over to something more Antipodean, devising a technique for the walls which became known as “snotted brick” – mortar oozing out the grout lines between the bricks (‘Striking a chord: Peter Muller on Audette House and why architecture is like music’, Architecture and Design, 17-Sep-2014, www.architectureanddesign.com.au. Muller drew on his recent experience studying in the US for his project which bears the strong influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic ‘Fallingwater’ and Muller’s liking for traditional Japanese motifs in residential architecture.

Audette House
265-267 Edinburgh Rd
Castlecrag NSW

Sydney School v International School: “Nature-responsive” v purist “white painted walls” Lucas and Muller were part of a loosely-connected group of Australian architects in the mid-20th century labelled the “Sydney School”. The group rejected the prevailing trend in architecture, the International School of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Van Der Rohe (whitewashed masonry, steel framed glass houses) as unsuitable in an Australian context. Sydney School architects, influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright‘s organic (“natural”) principles for designing houses, and WBG’s Castlecrag project which was visually sensitive to the natural bushland, “displayed distinctive choices that were driven by the natural environment and employed simple, ‘minimally processed’, low-cost materials”. ‘Sydney School, the virtuous case of Australian modernism’, Tommaso Picciioli, Domus, 27-Mar-2020, www.domusweb.it. The School was sometimes referred to as the “Nuts and Berries” Style for its preference for rustic materials (stone, brick, timber).

. . .

Footnote: Modernist Castlecrag
Castlecrag architecture is interesting in that it contains examples of both of these rival Modernist styles. In addition to Lucas and Muller, many of the leading local architects of the second half of the 20th century (quite a number of them émigrés from Nazism) including Neville Gruzman, Harry Seidler, Hugh Buhrich and Andre Porebski, contributed to the residential profile of the suburb. The variety of architecture sitting under the umbrella of Modernism can be seen in houses as different as Gruzman‘s ”organic” monolithic Gowing House (8 The Bulwark) (1969) and the two Hugh Buhrich family homes, 315 and 375 Edinburgh Road (No. I constructed 1940s, No. II constructed 1968-72)d⃞. Both Buhrich Houses are in the European Bauhaus style, the later one rated by architect Peter Myers as “the finest modern house in Australia“, and an example of Brutalist domestic architecture (‘Brutalist Architecture in Sydney’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Sep-2017, www.smh.com.au). Architect and urban designer Glenn Harper extends the Brutalist tag to include the Lucas Glass House, despite Lucas eschewing the use of one of Brutalist architecture‘s key materials, raw concrete, in his Glass House (”How the ‘Sydney School’ changed postwar Australian architecture”, Davina Jackson, The Conversation, 28-Jun-2019, www.theconversation.com).

╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾

a⃞ with the exceptions of Fishwick House and Grant House

b⃞ the house has been described as being “barely there” (www.archinform.net)

c⃞ one explanation is that the construction being engulfed in dense bush was overlooked by Willoughby Council (Longeran)

d⃞ Buhrich also designed the Duval House at 2 The Tor Walk

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A Linguistic Potpourri of Mondegreens, Mumpsimus and Eggcorns

Posted on April 19, 2022September 14, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Music history, Popular Culture

“Arfur D” Malapropising (Photo: ITV/Scope)

The chances are most folk with a passing interest in words and language have come across the odd Malapropism and Spoonerism in their travels. For these two terms for errors in natural speech (or if you prefer, modes of original linguistic inventiveness) we have the fictional “Mrs Malaprop” and the real life “Reverend Spooner” to thank. Myself, I tend to associate Malapropisms (the accidental substitution of a incorrect word in place of another, usually similar-sounding one) in fiction with Arthur Daley, the small-time, dodgy as-they-get wheeler dealer in TV’s Minder (“From now on the world is your lobster”, the “Arfur” Daley variation on “oyster”) and in real life with former Australian PM Tony Abbott (“the suppository of all wisdom” (should have said “repository”)). Spoonerisms are another type of verbal misstep where the speaker makes a “slip of the tongue”, accidentally transposing the initial consonants of two consecutive words, often with humorous results. One of the most referenced examples is “you have hissed my mystery lecture”, instead of “you have missed my history lecture”.

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

Would the latte-sipping, smashed avocado inner city set recognise a Mondegreen, Mumpsimus or Eggcorn when they see one? Probably not, these three linguistic odd fellows are the domain of dedicated language buffs and word nerds. If the ABC conducted a vox-pop in Martin Place “Mondegreen” would likely draw a blank, however the concept itself is a different story…anyone exposed to popular music would have at some point either unknowingly committed a Mondegreen or observed someone else in the act. A Mondegreen is where you mishear or misinterpret a phrase—especially a song lyric but it could also be a line from a poem—with the result that you give it a new and different meaning. I can hear the ranks of the slightly incredulous intoning “I didn’t know there was a word for that!”

Given the associated factors of diction and high volume noise, Mondegreenisms in modern pop music are legion, one of the most iconic is the misinterpretation by untold number of listeners of Jimi Hendrix’s line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” (“Purple Haze”) as “Excuse me while I kiss the guy“. Two more classic confusions warranting honourable mention are The Beatles’ “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” transformed by an erring ear into “The girl with colitis goes by” (from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”) and Johnny Nash’s “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone”, reinterpreted as “I can see clearly now, Lorraine has gone”. As these examples indicate, where the lyrics come unstuck it’s a fair chance that the culprit is a quasi-hononym.

Coining of Mondegreen: the word (but not the act) originated in 1954 with American writer Sylvia Wright…as a girl listening to her mother readIng a 18th century romantic poem she erroneously heard “Lady Mondegreen” instead of the actual lyric, “layd him on the green”. On being advised of her error Sylvia thought her interpretation “better than the original” and stuck to it, even inserting a character named “Lady Mondegreen” into her published stories.

Incoherent or indecipherable words in a song can be the source of “great storms in a teacup”. The Kingsmen’s 1963 recording of “Louie Louie” (vocalised incomprehensibly by Jack Ely) prompted an avalanche of complaints from outraged parents of teenagers about a supposed litany of obscene and pornographic lyrics in the single. Knee-jerk misinterpretations abounded from the morally-incensed in Middle America. One irate father even wrote to US attorney general Bobby Kennedy moaning about the lyrics’ “moral degradation” leading bizarrely to the FBI investigating the song (the Bureau failed to unearth any such obscenities)! All of which lends credence to the axiom that “people will hear what they want to hear” – which goes to the very heart of Mondegreens※.

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

Mumpsimus are a different kettle of aquatic, craniate gill-bearing animals. Practitioners of Mumpsimus stubbornly insist on an incorrect usage…even after being proven wrong” (Fritinancy). Mumpsimustas obstinately cling to an error, bad habit or prejudice, even after the foible is exposed. Examples include the use of “all intensive purposes” in lieu of the correct phrase, “all intents and purposes”; the verbal substitution of “nuclear” with “nucular” (a proclivity of George W Bush)§.

The Eggcorn: slight of hand or sleight of hand?

Another, related form of expression that derives from mishearing and involves reinterpretation is “Eggcorn”. Eggcorns, like Mondegreens revolve around the near-homonym while differing from Mumpsimus in that their use is unconscious and unintentional. It often occurs when people are ignorant of the precise words in stock phrases and substitute what they erroneously believe to be the correct words or expression. Examples are manifold – saying “mute point” instead of “moot point”; “tenderhooks” instead of “tenterhooks”; “pass mustard” instead of “pass muster” etc ad nauseum. An essential feature of the eggcorn is that it must retain some of the original meaning as the speaker understands it (eg, Alzheimer’s disease is rendered into “Old-timer’s disease”). The term itself is an “Eggcorn”, it’s genesis can be traced back to a creative utterance from an anonymous individual who inserted the word “eggcorn” where the similarly sounding “acorn” would conventionally go (Mark Lieberman, 2003).

°° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡°°°
※ Steven Connor suggests that cognitive dissonance is in train in the creation of Mondegreens – the brain is constantly trying “to make sense of the world by making assumptions to fill in the gaps when it cannot clearly determine what it is hearing” (‘Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens’, 2009)

§ the word Mumpsimus, a confused misinterpretation of the Latin term “Sumpsimus” (“we have received”), was accidentally coined by an old monk who doggedly persisted in using the invented word. Mumpsimus first appears in the correspondence of famous humanist scholar Erasmus Roterodamus, dating from 1516

420 Years Ago, VOC Makes the World’s First IPO

Posted on February 28, 2022November 17, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Commerce & Business, Economic history, Financial history

Stock Exchange 1.0
The world’s first known stock exchange is thought to be a market established in Bruges, Belgium, around 1309. This operation was a family concern conducted in the home of textile merchant Robert Van der Burse (or Van “ter Buerse/Buerze”). This type of early market which primarily deals with the exchange of commodities, ie, various agricultural products—and in its modern connotation, also with gas, oil, coal, etc—acquired the name ‘bourse’ from its founder. A bourse (typically European in location) is “a market organised for the purpose of buying and selling securities, commodities, options and other investments” [‘Bourse’, Investopedia, www.investopedia.com]. Another early bourse was located in Antwerp<a̷>.

𝕍𝕒𝕟 𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝔹𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖: 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕤𝕖

The Van der Burse exchange was the first organised market, before this landmark development such transaction processes were unorganised and informal – sellers and buyers would meet up one-to-one at specific meeting places such as town squares to conduct their trade <b̷> [‘Creation of the first stock exchange’, www.citeco.fr].

The Dutch, pioneers of capitalism
For the first ‘modern’ securities market we need to look to Belgium’s neighbours, the Dutch. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is the oldest such market, founded in 1602 with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). Amsterdam was the first bourse to deal in securities ~~<c̷~~>. The VOC was empowered with quasi-government and monopoly status by the States General of the Netherlands, granted a 21-year charter to conduct all Dutch trade in Asia. In so doing, financial history was made…the VOC was a world first, a public company founded by a state government. Hitherto the Dutch trading environment comprised a number of competing private companies known as voorcompagnieën or “pre-companies”. By the 1602 Charter, the government merged those small, private companies into one “nationalistic Goliath”, VOC, creating a proto-megacorporation.

Raising capital
At VOC’s commencement of business it held an unprecedented initial public offering (IPO). The company’s directors opened up share-holding to all Dutchmen by subscription (while investing 12,000 guilders of their own money up front). The public nature of the share issue was its revolutionary feature, hitherto predecessor companies (like the Oude Compagnie) had raised capital from a small circle of private investors. Some investors balked at the opportunity offered by VOC, wary of tying up their precious savings for such a long period (ten years). Concessions made by the VOC eased these concerns – in a subsequent amendment to the charter, investors were permitted to on-sell their shares to a third party prior to ten years [‘The world’s first IPO’, Lodewijk Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange’, 15 October 2020, www.worldsfirststockexchange.com].

What would NOT have seemed novel to financial market investors of the day was the ‘office’ for doing business…initially lacking a business premises the VOC—after the fashion of the Bourses’ 14th century Bruges exchange—issued an open invitation for would-be investors to come to the private home of the company co-founder Dirck van Os to do the paperwork and deposit their money. Ultimately, by the time subscriptions closed, some 1,143 individuals <d̷> had invested a total of 3,674,945 guilders in the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (including Dirck van Os’ own maid!) [Petram].

ℕ𝔸𝕊𝔻𝔸ℚ (ℙ𝕙𝕠𝕥𝕠: 𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕖𝕥𝕤𝕎𝕚𝕜𝕚)

Footnote: the VOC’s IPO had profound ramifications, fundamentally altering the nature of investing. Originally intended to facilitate the financing of risky capital-intensive ventures, it “inadvertently created an alternative for investor beyond fixed income investments, marking the beginning of retail investing in equities” [‘World’s First IPO: Dutch East India Co’, Suede Investing, www.suedeinvesting.com].

~~•°¯`••••´¯°• •°¯`••••´¯°•~~

<a̷> the most famous bourse today is that of the Paris Stock Exchange

<b̷> including the square in front of the Van der Burse residence

<c̷> printed stocks and bonds, debt and other interests in companies, government and private businesses

<d̷> in addition to the six directors

Sydney’s Long-vanished Iconic Boxing Stadiums

Posted on December 16, 2021November 17, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Inter-ethnic relations, Leisure activities, Local history, Memorabilia, Music history, Popular Culture, Sport, Sports history

Any Sydneysiders born in or prior to the 1890s would have been aware of the opening of Sydney Stadium. 1908 was the year this iconic boxing arena on the eastern outskirts of the city’s CBD first saw the light of day…literally saw the light of day as it was originally built as an open air stadium. The brainchild of promoter Hugh D McIntosh who constructed a ‘temporary’ outdoor boxing ring on the site of a former Chinese market garden in Rushcutters Bay to hold the world heavyweight boxing contest featuring Canadian title-holder Tommy Burns and Australian challenger “Boshter Bill” Squires. The fight was however just a warm-up for a legendary pugilistic bout in the same arena four months later between Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson. The fight garnered a lot of attention in Australia and internationally as Johnson was the first black boxer to contest (and win) a world title… and the heavyweight title at that!

The Australian press of the day predictably invoked the race card in the lead-up to the fight, racist descriptions of Johnson abounded, “coloured pugilist” was one of the few politer characterisations of Johnson (Bush Advocate, 28th December 1908). Burns’s thrashing at the hands of his much bigger black opponent—physically it was a real “David and Goliath” mismatch—prompted a backlash from white supremacists. Writer Jack London (ringside at the fight) put out the call for a “Great White Hope” to restore the white man to his ‘rightful’ place atop the professional boxing tree. The decisiveness of Jack Johnson’s triumph tapped into the prevailing currents of eugenic belief of the day, doing nothing to soothe anxieties about the “moral decay and decline” of the white race.

Stadiums Ltd
For almost its entire lifespan (from 1915 to its closure) Sydney Stadium was owned by Melbourne entrepreneur and gambling identity John Wren’s Stadiums Ltd…during that epoch the company enticed most of the top Australian professional boxers including Vic Patrick, Fred Henneberry, Dave Sands, Jimmy Carruthers and Tommy Burns (not the Canadian heavyweight champion) as well as renowned international prize-fighters such as Emile Griffith, Freddie Dawson and ‘Fighting’ Harada, to Sydney Stadium (‘The Wild Ones: Sydney Stadium 1908-1970’, Sydney Living Museums, www.sydneylivingmuseums.com).

“The old tin shed”
In 1912 the stadium was given a lid, an octagonal shaped roof of corrugated iron, and equiped for a capacity of 12,000 seated patrons. As the decades passed, hosting countless boxing and wrestling matches (in operation several nights a week at one point), it acquired the affectionate sobriquet “the old tin shed”❈. From the 1950s while boxing was still its core entertainment, the Sydney Stadium became a venue for popular music entertainers and television stars (eg, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Walt Disney’s Mouseketeers, and so on⚘. This continued into the Sixties with “The Samurai” star Koichi Ose, and perhaps its pinnacle, the Beatles performing there on their 1964 Australian tour (‘Sydney Stadium’, Milesago – Venues, www.milesago.com; ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Championship Title Fight 1908’, Woollahra Municipal Council), www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au).

Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.

ᗝ 𝔚𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔱 𝔏𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔱 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1936 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔟 𝔬𝔣 𝔑𝔖𝔚

ஓ๑ஓ

‘Blood’ sports and ”show biz” mash-up
Like it’s older relative at Rushcutters Bay, Leichhardt Stadium’s “bread-and-butter” remained pro-boxing and wrestling. However, during the Depression, the suburban stadium, perhaps anticipating Lee Gordon, innovated by incorporating the prevailing popular form of stage entertainment…Saturday night featured a program of boxing contests intermixed with “Vaudeville entertainment” acts (‘Leichhardt Stadium. 1922.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 08-Dec-1930 (Trove); Milesago).

𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔉𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨

ஓ๑ஓ

By the mid to late 1960s Australian professional boxing was in the doldrums and the stadium itself at Rushcutters Bay closed in 1970. Three years later the complex was demolished to make way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Leichhardt Stadium’s demise as a boxing venue occurred not long after in 1975.

◥ 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴 (𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓱𝓻𝓪 𝓜𝓾𝓷. 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓵)

Footnote: White City’s fleeting existence
In 1913 another landmark was erected in Rushcutters Bay, a 9-iron’s distance from Sydney Stadium. The White City Amusement Park, also built on former Chinese market gardens, was a precursor of Sydney’s better known Luna Park. White City offered pleasure-seekers a smorgasbord of lakes, canals, river caves, “pleasure palaces”, “fun factories”, the city’s first roller coaster and it’s pièce de résistance, a gigantic (Pennsylvanian-constructed) carousel. White City lasted less than four years before being burnt to the ground after a lightning strike in 1917 (‘Lost Sydney : White City Amusement Park’, Pocket Oz, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au). In the early 1920’s the White City tennis complex was erected on the site.

𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬

❈ also known as ” the old barn”

⚘ expat American promoter Lee Gordon was the brains behind this move into pop music, bringing out big US bands, singers and duos for concerts at Rushcutters Bay, backed by Australian support acts

Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

Author: funambulator@live.com

Castlecrag After the Griffins, Modernism and the Sydney School

A Linguistic Potpourri of Mondegreens, Mumpsimus and Eggcorns

420 Years Ago, VOC Makes the World’s First IPO

Sydney’s Long-vanished Iconic Boxing Stadiums