Germania: From Nazi Showcase Airport to the People’s “Symbol der Freiheit”

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Aviation history, Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Regional History

Few places in Germany and Berlin have experienced the journey of change and transition that Tempelhof Airport (Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof) has. The Nazis commenced the construction of its colossal showcase airport in 1936 on the site of a pre-existing (Weimar Republic-built) airport. Even in its pre-airport days, it’s land use had a nexus with aviation – from 1887 it was home to a balloon detachment of the Prussian Army.

⇡ der Berliner Garnison

Prior to it becoming an airport in the 1920s Tempelhof Field was used primarily as a military parade ground, and in addition it played an early role in the development of Berlin football (the pioneering BFC Fortuna club). It’s next brush with aeronautical endeavour came in 1909 when US aviator Orville Wright took the brothers’ bi-plane, the ‘Wright Flyer’, for a spin around the field.

A mega-scale marvel of civil engineering
Built on a scale❋ to be in synch with the values of strength and power projected by the rest of Hitler’s Germania building ‘Fantasia’^^, Tempelhof—the name derives from it having originally been land occupied by the medieval Order of Knights Templars—was an “icon of Nazi architecture: (with a complex of) huge austere buildings in totalitarian style (in the shape of a quadrant up to 1.2 km in length), replete with imposing imperial eagles made from stone” [‘Berlin: A historic airport reinvents itself’, (Eric Johnson), Julius Bär, 28-May-2019, www.juliusbar.com]. Designed for the Führer by Ernst Sagebiel, the out of all proportion complex boasted 9,000 rooms, multiple entrance doors, reliefs and sculptures including a giant aluminium eagle head◰.

Located just four kilometres south of Berlin’s central Tiergarten, the Nazi airport was notably innovative in its day – eg, separate levels for passengers and luggage; windows spanning the floor-to-ceiling to convey as much light as possible inside the terminal [‘The story of Berlin’s WWII Tempelhof Airport which is now Germany’s largest refugee shelter’, (Sam Shead), The Independent, 20-Jun-2017, www.independent.co.uk].

⇡ The vast and cavernous main hall
(Tempelhof Projekt GmbH,www.thf-Berlin.de)

Tempelhof Airport was only ever 80% completed (constructed halted in 1939 with the outbreak of war), and ironically, never used by the Nazis as an airport (they continued to use the original terminal for flights). Instead, the regime used it for armament production and storage, and during the war it served as a prison and a forced-labour plane assembly factory [‘A brief history of Tempelhofer Feld’, (Ian Farrell), Slow Travel Berlin, www.slowtravelberlin.com].

Cold War Tempelhof
After WWII the airport was placed under the jurisdiction of the occupying American forces (under the term of the Potsdam Agreement which formally divided Berlin into four distinct occupation sectors). The airport played a key role in the Berlin Airlift (1948/49) and throughout the Cold War was the main terminal used by the US military to enter West Berlin. To increase Tempelhof’s civil aviation capacity US engineers constructed new runways. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification, the American military presence in Berlin wound up (formally deactivated in 1994). Tempelhof continued to be used as a commercial airport but increasingly it was being used primarily for small commuter flights to and from regional destinations [‘Berlin Tempelhof Airport’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

(Photo: www.urban75.org/)

A post-aviation future space
In 2008 Tempelhof, partly derelict, was discontinued as an airport. Berliners were polled about its future with the majority wanting to keep it free from redevelopment, a free space for the community. Accordingly, the land was given over to public use. Once a symbol of Nazi brutalist architecture, today its grounds are open to the citizenry as an expression of their freedom. The place is regularly a hive of multi-purpose activity, Berliners engaging in a range of leisure, exercise and cultural pursuits – jogging, cycling, roller-blading, skateboarding, kite-flying, picnicking, trade and art fairs, musical events, etc…the former airport has also been used as film locations (eg, The Bourne Supremacy, Hunger Games) and even as the venue for Formula E motor-racing⧆.

⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅⑅
^^ see the previous post, ‘Germania: Mega-City Stillborn: Hitler’s Utopian Architectural Dream’

⌓⌓⌓   ⌓⌓⌓   ⌓⌓⌓

❋ the terminal is 300,000 square metres including hangar space, with an inner, 306- hectare airfield (Tempelhofer Feld)

◰ “the mother of all modern airports” (British architect Norman Foster)

⧆ at other times it has been a shelter for refugees

Nancy Bird Trumps Badgery & Co: Sydney’s Long and Tortuous Journey to a Second Airport and the Contest for Naming Rights

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Aviation history, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Regional History, Social History

Sydney’s long-debated second international airport is slated to be completed—in so far as anything can be asserted with any confidence in the post-coronavirus age—by 31st December 2025❋. The site selected and given final approval by the Commonwealth government in 2014, Badgerys Creek, is on 1,780 hectares of land in greater western Sydney in indigenous Darug country.

F28FD2C8-82FE-4B01-A18A-E85F1C1DB945

(Source: SMH)

The saga begins in 1946. Towra Point (in Sydney’s south) is mooted by the NSW state government as a likely site for the second airport◲…over the next 40 years at least 20 sites are put forward as prospective locations for another airport to ease congestion at the existing Kingsford Smith Airport. Successive federal governments of differing political hues cast the net far and wide—to the north, south and west of Sydney—in the hope of finding a site that best meets the needs. When the government flags that it favours Somersby (Central Coast) and Galston (northwest) in the early 1970s, outbreaks of NIMBY-ism (vocal grass-roots protests from the locals) leads Canberra to back down. Another candidate, Holsworthy (southwest), is rejected because of an unknown number of unexploded military projectiles littering the site from a nearby army base and its proximity to a nuclear facility, only to be unfathomably resurrected as a prospect in the mid-1990s by the Howard government and then quickly dropped again on grounds of “environmental unsuitability”. Goulburn, 200km southwest of Sydney, too gets shelved – because of the high capital costs involved [‘Second Sydney Airport – A Chronology’, Parliament of Australia, www.aph.gov.au/].

4374F91D-4A65-4DFD-B081-6EE1F2803629

(Source: www.aph.gov.au/)

Frustrated at the ongoing failure to resolve a viable site for the second airport, the Commonwealth toys with the idea of ditching the whole project and looks at an alternative plan sans second airport – the construction of a third runway at Kingsford Smith Airport and complimenting it with a VFT (very fast train) connecting Sydney and Canberra (the VFT never materialises). By the mid-1980s only two sites remain in the running – Wilton and Badgerys Creek⊞. By 1986 Badgerys Creek is ”last man standing” and the Crown purchases land there. 

Even after settling on the location, progress on the second airport mimics the more inane capers of TV’s Yes Minister – a stop-start pattern of self-limiting actions, deferment of decisions, vacillations. Feasibility and EIS studies come and go, budgetary problems always loom, the Commonwealth and the state government bickers over what form the airport should take, engaging in political points-scoring, etc. The achievement of anything tangible, actual progress, is grotesquely underwhelming. One example will suffice: 1988, the incumbent government proposes to fast track the construction of Badgerys Creek, but no action follows the words. In 1991 another study contradicts this, finding there’s “no pressing need” to rush the second airport. Three more years on and fast tracking is back on the agenda, the new urgency is the 2000 Olympics. But in 1995 it is reported there “has been little or no development at Badgerys Creek” (“token construction works to date”) and later that year the Commonwealth announces that “the airport won’t  be ready for the Sydney Olympics”… and so it goes (‘Second Sydney Airport’). 

456B1F4F-9C55-4F47-9F33-23DE05918D8F

⌂ Blue Mountains anti-airport bumper sticker

Consistent with the past fraught nature of the second airport issue, the choice of Badgerys Creek is far from consensual. Opposition from Blue Mountains Council and its residents’ groups is particularly vocal – the litany of objections include its likely impact on the national park’s ecology, the threat to its UNESCO World Heritage site status, health hazards, air and noise pollution, [‘Council study finds airport noise on natural areas overlooked’, WSROC, 08-Dec-2017, www.wsroc.com.au]. Some have again raised the question of whether a second airport is really necessary, arguing that existing airport capacity at Bankstown and Richmond airports could be expanded to lighten the domestic passenger and cargo transport burden on Kingsford Smith [‘Is a new airport at Badgerys Creek really needed?’, (Peter Martin), Sydney Morning Herald, 15-Apr-2014, www.smh.com.au].

30749A09-63C1-4869-8F03-B3F2C877B311

⌂ Future aerotropolis?

✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑ ✑

Sorting out the nomenclature
Once the Commonwealth red-inks the Badgerys Creek site in 2014, a media debate ensues over whose name the new airport should bear. The early favourite is Sydney Harbour Bridge engineer John JC Bradfield, strongly lobbied for by politicians from both sides (LNP prime minister and premier, Labor state opposition leader, etc) [‘Bradfield Airport has universal approval’, (Danile Meers), Daily Telegraph, 06-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au]. Others including Wollongong councillors and the Royal Aeronautical Society plump for Lawrence Hargrave, a seminal figure associated with advances in the field of aeronautical pioneering (unlike Bradfield). From a western Sydney viewpoint, a Penrith City councillor makes a pitch for William ‘Billy’ Hart, who flew a box-kite plane (based on Hargrave’s earlier breakthrough invention) from Penrith to Parramatta in 1911 [‘Penrith Council defer naming of Western Sydney Airport site’, (Krystyna Pollard), Liverpool City Champion, 02-Mar-2017, www.liverpoolcitychampion.com.au].

Badgery of Badgerys Creek
The most intriguing candidate, is one with both pioneering credentials like Hargrave and Hart, and real geographical “skin in the game”…(Andrew) Delfosse Badgery, whose family gives its name to the suburb encompassing the airport site—great-grandfather James Badgery settled the area in 1799—was the first person to fly a plane of his own construction in Australia. Badgery flew from Sutton Forest to Goulburn, a distance of less than 50 miles, in 1914)❂. The case for “Delfosse Badgery Airport” is supported by the aviator’s family and the St Marys Historical Society [‘Pilot’s claims has wings: Aviation pioneer Andrew Delfosse Badgery built the first plane in Australia at Badgery’s Creek…and Flew It!’, (Ian Walker), Daily Telegraph, 12-Nov-2014, www.dailytelegraph.com.au].

B8E4A57E-99FF-43C4-9515-19A0DA69126D

⌂ Del Badgery & his 1914 bi-plane
(Picture: Liverpool City Council)

And the winner is? With one eye on gender-inclusiveness and PC “brownie points”, and a nod perhaps to North American precedents◗, the Morrison government in 2019 opts to name Sydney’s second international airport after Nancy Bird-Walton, a pioneer aviatrix icon of Australia  – for a brief summary of Bird-Walton’s achievements in flight see my blog dated 27-May-2017, ‘Equality at 10,000 Feet: The Pioneer Aviatrix in the Golden Age of Aviation – Part I’. 

453D4202-628D-432F-8C9B-8B32DD6469F8

__________________________________________

❋ no bets on the chances of this being a lay down misère, given the vicissitudes of the second airport story

◲ after opposition from the Sutherland Shire local government over concern about noise levels, the Gorton government kills off the scheme in 1969, citing “environmental difficulties”

⊞ indicative of government indecisiveness, Badgerys Creek is on and off the short list of candidates several times over a span of 45 years before the final take-up by the Abbott government   

❂ it is a matter of uncertainty whether Badgery built the plane (a Cauldron bi-plane) on the family farm at Badgerys Creek or at Sutton Forest in the Southern Highlands (Pollard) 

◗ airports in Niagara-Ontario and Kansas named (respectively) after pioneering aviatrixesDorothy Rungeling and Amelia Earhart 

DeMille’s Lost “Egyptian City” Found in the Sand-dunes of Central Coast, CA

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Archaeology, Cinema, Environmental, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Memorabilia, Popular Culture

Mention “The Ten Commandments” to cinephiles and almost invariably they’ll think of the 1956 epic with Chuck Heston as the resolute Moses. But that was Cecil B DeMille’s second attempt at filming the Old Testament story, or his (Cold War-inspired) interpretation of it at least. Back when Hollywood was still in it’s adolescence, 1923, DeMille made a silent version of The Ten Commandments, in black and white with some sequences in Technicolor.

(Image: www.bestplaces.com)

The location chosen by DeMille for his first go at shooting the biblical epic was a barren 18-mile stretch of sand some 170 miles north of LA, at Guadalupe on California’s central coast. Today, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as they are called, are a protected sea coast and wildlife refuge (eg, for the endangered western snowy plover) and largely unchanged, but for three months in 1923 it was a hive of mega-budget movie-making activity as DeMille transformed the empty dunes into a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian city. DeMille chose the Guadalupe dunes for the movie set because he thought it might pass for the Egyptian desert (or at least the Sahara Desert) [‘Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes’, Atlas Obscura, www.altasobscura.com].

𐅉 ‘10 Commandments’ of California in glorious “techni-tint”

Hollywood scale extravaganza
The set was massive scale, destined to become the director’s trademark – 120 foot high by 720 feet wide, erected by 1,500 construction workers, a twelve-story tall “Egyptian city” of plaster, wood and straw. The city’s human population comprised a further 3,500 actors✖and technicians plus 125 cooks to feed the assembled masses. Add to these impressive numbers some 5,000 animals, 300 chariots and 21 plaster sphinxes. Statues of Pharaoh Rameses were eleven metres tall and the facade had a 110-foot high gate enclosure✧ [‘The Ten Commandments, (1923 film)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, (2013); www.lostcitydemille.com].

(Source: G-N Dune Center)

A Virtuous Camp DeMille?
DeMille had a huge makeshift tent city erected (nicknamed “Camp DeMille”) to house all of the personnel on the set. Perhaps, in keeping with the overtly religious theme of the film⊡, DeMille laid down strict rules of non-engagement for everyone involved on the production…men and women were billeted separately with no fraternisation allowed, no gambling, no alcohol and no coarse language [‘The Ten Commandments of 1923: The Exodus, Take One’, Patheos, 20-Apr-2012, www.patheos.com]. The alcohol ban adhered to the Prohibition rules in place in America at the time, but subsequent generations of beach-combing visitors to Guadalupe’s dunes have discovered evidence that participants on the movie set found a way round that…the debris of empty bottles of alcohol-laced cough syrup strewn all over the dunes [PJ Grisar, ‘How DeMille made his ‘Ten Commandments’ Jewish again’, Forward, 08-Apr-2020, www.forward.com].

A vanishing “Egyptian metropolis”
After filming of The Ten Commandments on the Central Coast finished in August 1923✥, what DeMille did next astounds. Instead of dismantling and hauling the costly set (the overall budget for the movie was a staggering $1.5M or more) back to Hollywood, DeMille had it bulldozed and buried in the Guadalupe dunes. The film-maker just didn’t want to be bothered with the logistics or expense of an enormous removal task and/or he didn’t want rival Hollywood film-makers or studios to get their hands on the set.

(Photo:www.fws.gov)

Unearthing cinematic artefacts
And there it sat—or shifted around in the constantly swirling winds of the dunes—for sixty years, one of Hollywood’s most expensive-ever film sets. Then in 1983 film-maker Peter Brosnan became intrigued after a chance encounter with the story, got hooked on it and spent the next 30 years searching for the site, finding it and trying (frustratingly) to excavate it. The project is ongoing, and has taken this length of time due to a combination of factors – local “red tape” (jurisdiction of the dunes falls under two separate counties); the site is a bird-life sanctuary with limited, seasonal access; plus there’s the extremely high cost of funding excavations. Over the years, archaeologists, both professional and amateur, have joined the quest to dig up DeMille’s treasure-trove. Buried replicas from DeMille’s Lost City have been unearthed including a 300-pound plaster sphinx which now resides in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center [‘There’s a Fake Egyptian City Buried in California’, (Marissa Fessenden), Smithsonian Magazine, 15-Oct-2015, www.smithsonianmag.com]. Brosnan compiled his years of research, including interviews with surviving actors, extras and other crew members, into a documentary film, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, screened in 2016.

▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️

✖DeMille also bused in some 250 Orthodox Jews as extras to give the movie a more authentic Hebrew look
✧ Rameses’ ‘temple’ contained recreations of hieroglyphics copied from the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922
⊡ certainly in keeping with the sternly moralising tone of DeMille’s film
✥ only part of the film was made on the Guadalupe dunes, the wonky parting of the Red Sea scene was shot at Seal Beach in Orange County, and a modern-day morality tale DeMille tacked on to the film was shot back at the studios

Sydney’s Bridge Street, but Where is the Bridge?★

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Social History, Town planning

Bridge Street in the city is one of Sydney’s oldest streets dating back to the formative days of the colony. Where Bridge Street is today, 500 metres south of the Circular Quay railway station and ferry terminus, was the site of the first bridge in the Port Jackson settlement. It was a simple log construction, erected in October 1788 just months after the colony was founded, and allowing passage over the Tank Stream, the source of Sydney’s main fresh water supply in the early days.

After several timber bridges came and went, they eventually put up a more substantial (supposedly ‘permanent’) stone bridge in its place (near the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets), which also had to be replaced owing to it being considerably less substantial than first thought and not permanent at all◵. Bridge Street at that time was called Governors Row as it housed the colony’s first seat of government and the governor’s residence (on the corner of Phillip Street). A commemorative stone on the site (now housing the Museum of Sydney) marks the historic location.

An early painting of the city (a facsimile of which can be viewed on a wall in The Rocks) shows Governors Row (Bridge Street) extending all the way from the water at Darling Harbour up the hill to the first Government House.

Governors Row became Bridge Street when Lachlan Macquarie took over the colony’s governorship in 1810 and initiated a renaming project of Sydney’s streets as part of his reform program. In 1846 Bridge Street was extended up to Macquarie Street and Government House was relocated to its present location as a domain within the Botanic Gardens.

Lower Bridge Street: Residential to Commercial

Early on, the lower part of Bridge Street contained many fine houses, but these were gradually replaced by the head offices of shipping and trading companies because of the advantage of being close to the harbour.

Upper Bridge St: Chock-full of Heritage sites

From the mid 19th to the early 20th century construction in the upper part of Bridge Street formed the architectural character that distinguishes it today. A series of government buildings—grand in scale and elegance and richly elaborate—were built using sandstone quarried from nearby Pyrmont.

Treasury and Audit Office building (1849-51)

Corner of Macquarie and Bridge Sts. Architect: Mortimer Lewis. During the NSW gold rush shipments of gold were stored here. Today the building with a high vertical extension added is the huge, 580-room Intercontinental Hotel with a section housing the Sydney annex of Southern Cross University.

Chief Secretary‘s Office⍟ (1869)

Victorian Italianate building directly opposite the Treasury building. Architect: James Barnet. Equally impressive sandstone block. One of the most aesthetically endearing features are the five carved figures of women on the corner of the facade. The megasized building block wraps around into the western corner Phillip Street.

Department of Education (1914) and Lands Department (1877-90) buildings

These two havens of state bureaucrats, further down Bridge St, round out the classical sandstone quartet. The Lands Dept block, built to the design of James Barnet, is a Classical Revival style building. Like many of the public buildings of the era it’s built from Pyrmont sandstone. The Education building (Architect: George McRae) is of a later architectural trend reflecting the popular Beaux-Arts fashion.

Commercial buildings dominate the lower end of Bridge St. The Royal Exchange Building (1967) at № 21 Bridge St stands on the original site of the Royal Exchange building (1857) – the first home of the Sydney Stock Exchange. Numerically next to the REB (at № 17-19) is the Singapore Airlines House (1925), an elegant example of the Commercial Palazzo style of architecture.

Perhaps the standout architectural piece of the lower commercial sector is the old Burns Philip and Co head office building (1898-1901) close to George Street, with its elaborate sandstone and brick Neo-Romanesque facade. Architect: Arthur Anderson. Burns Philip were big players in the Australian shipping and trading business. Originally, a convict lumber yard sat on this site.

The pick of the rest of the commercial buildings for compact elegance are probably the brace of adjoining buildings, № 4 Cliveden and № 6, (across the road from BP&Co). The street’s first commercial high-rise building, constructed 1913 in the Federation Free Classical style. Next door to the left of Cliveden is Anchor House (1960), for many years the HQs of the NSW Liberal Party. The site in the early Colonial period contained a female orphan’s asylum which later relocated to a site in Parramatta (now part of a Western Sydney University campus).

Postscript: Macquarie Place

Halfway up Bridge Street, making a refreshing break of greenery from all the high monolithic buildings dominating the streetscape, is Macquarie Place. A diminutive triangular park which in colonial times was part of the governor’s garden. The park which now backs on to a trendy bar frequented by big-end-of-town ‘suits’ contains some gear salvaged from the First Fleet (anchor and cannon of HMS Sirius). A feature of interest of the park for passionate monarchists are two plane trees planted by the Royal duo Liz and Phil back in 1954 (now very tall and expansive).Macquarie Place as it was in the early colonial period, unrecognisable today (Source: http://dictionaryofsydney.org/)

⧝┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅⧝

◵ the bridge was finally demolished in the 1840s when the Tank Stream got channelled into an underground tunnel where it remains, what’s left of it that is

⍟ previously the Colonial Secretary’s Office

❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞

★ The genesis of this piece resides in my curiosity about the street name’s origin. The first association anyone has with Sydney, especially the city itself (ie, the CBD), is the Harbour Bridge. The city is the Harbour Bridge! It’s part of its lifeblood. So I guess I’d always just took it for granted that the street was named in honour of THE Bridge and thought no more about it. Then one day I was casually flicking through the pages of a 1922 Sydney street directory —as you do—when I had the (mini) eureka moment, Bridge Street was listed, it was there on the map, a good ten years before the Harbour Bridge made its debut! That set me off searching for what actually lay behind the naming of the street.

❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞ ❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞❝❞

Reference sites consulted:

‘The History of Sydney: Early Colonial History 1790-1809’, (Visit Sydney),

http://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/history-6-early-col.html

‘Bridge Street Heritage Walk’, Pocket Oz Travel and Information Guide – Sydney (Visit Sydney),

http://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/bridge-street.html

‘Bridge Street’, Dictionary of Sydney, http://dictionaryofsydney.org

‘Bridge Street, Sydney’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/