28 Jim Gibbney, Canberra 1913-1953, Canberra, AGPS, 1988, pp. 73, 159, 167, 258; British Medical Journal, 17 January 1923.
29 Dennis Shoesmith, ‘“Nature’s Law”: the venereal disease debate, Melbourne 1918-19’, ANU Historical Journal, vol. 9, December 1972, pp. 19-23; Michael Roe, ‘The establishment of the Australian Department of Health: its background and significance’, Historical Studies, vol. 17, 1976, pp. 176-92.
30 Minute, C.S. Daley to Secretary, Home and Territories Department, 12 June 1925, CRS A431, item 59/450; PWC, ‘Report … relating to the Proposed Construction of … the National Museum of Australian Zoology’, 1927, pp. iv, vi; Second Annual Report of the Federal Capital Commission for the period ended 30th June, 1926, p. 9.
Figure 3: Early site of Institute of Anatomy, Acton, Mildenhall Collection 1901–1948 (National Library of Australia, 2018)
In July 1925, the Department of Works and Railways was given responsibility for preparing, in consultation with MacKenzie, preliminary plans and cost estimates for the project. MacKenzie himself produced sketch plans in March 1926 for the Department’s architects to work with. A.S. Robertson, a departmental architect, began to work up detailed plans and specifications, completing them by mid-1926. At this point, the Chief Commissioner of the FCC, Sir John Butters, who was probably being pressed by MacKenzie for an early start to the building program, informed the Minister for Home Territories that the FCC could not possibly embark on the work until other more urgent projects had been completed. Taking Butters’s advice, federal Cabinet decided in September to defer work on the museum.31
Figure 5: Site plan showing the entrance from both McCoy Circuit and Liversidge Street, 1925 (NFSA 2018)
While Butters was informing the government of the FCC’s inability to start work on the museum,he was also beginning to have misgivings about the design that the Department of Works and Railways had produced for the building. He raised with the Minister for Home and Territories ‘the general question of the policy to be adopted in carrying out buildings such as this, which I hope will be of a somewhat monumental character.’ One way to achieve the character he desired for the building was, as he pointed out to the Minister, to hold a design competition, the sort of approach favoured by the Federal Institute of Architects. But while such competitions had already provided an economic bonanza for certain architects, it had proven a very expensive exercise for the federal government. The alternative was to have government architects prepare the designs for Canberra’s buildings. Butters had no great faith in this method, however, as he believed that there was a ‘danger of monotony’ appearing in the designs.32
Section 28 - National Film and Sound Archive Heritage Management Plan 2021 - Jim Gibbney, Canberra 1913-1953, Canberra, AGPS, 1988, pp. 73, 159, 167, 258; British Medical Journal, 17 January 1923. | Zoe
Butters soon enlarged on his views before the Public Works Committee. Because the FCC had indicated to the government that it could not even properly consider the current proposals for the museum until April 1927 at the earliest, the government decided as a time- saving measure in February that the Public Works Committee should examine the plans drawn up by Robertson of the Works and Railways Department. Robertson’s scheme was for a single-storey museum building surrounded by a gallery twelve to fifteen feet wide, with an entrance from what is now Liversidge Street. The project was to include a small lecture theatre, and single- storey administration and research blocks were to be placed at the front and sides of the museum building at its McCoy Circuit end, creating a T-shaped complex. There was to be another entrance from McCoy Circuit. The buildings were to be built of brick or concrete, with part of the exterior of the complex faced with ‘some sort of stone’.33
Appearing before the Committee to give evidence, Butters savaged the Works and Railways’ design. He stated that the museum, occupying as it did a dominant position in the city and located near the proposed university, should be ‘of a permanent and impressive character’. He strongly opposed the Works and Railways’ proposal to construct the building in brick and concrete, recommending that the whole building be redesigned ‘to give it a more imposing appearance’. In the face of Butters’s forcefully expressed opinions, the Committee determined on some major design changes for the building. Acting on suggestions put forward by Butters, and with MacKenzie’s concurrence, the Committee recommended that the two wings of the building be
31 Memo, ‘Construction of Buildings for National Museum of Australian Zoology at Canberra. Resumé of Action taken’, February 1927; and minute, J.H. Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, p. 1, CRS A431, item 59/450; memo, A.S. Robertson, ‘Scheme for National Museum of Zoology, Canberra. Notes to Accompany Drawings’, 21 October 1927, CRS A6269, item E1/30/51.
32 Minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘National Museum of Zoology and Zoological Park’, 14 July 1926, CRS A6269, item E1/30/51.
33 Minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, pp. 1-2, CRS A431, item 59/450; PWC, ‘Report … relating to the Proposed Construction of … the National Museum of Australian Zoology’, 1927, p. iv.
shortened and made two storeys high. This alteration, the Committee felt, would provide the same floor space at the same cost, but would enhance the design of the structure. The Committee also proposed that the front of the lecture theatre be faced with Fairy Meadow limestone and that the rest of the building be built of high quality Canberra bricks, with base mouldings and other architectural embellishments also rendered in Fairy Meadow limestone. By way of ‘excellent examples’ of what it wished to achieve by this mixture of brickwork and stone, the Committee cited college buildings in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and even Cardinal Wolsey’s Hampton Court Palace in England. The mixture would also, the Committee hoped, keep costs down. As it was, the total cost estimate for the project, including the development of the animal reserve and the construction of three residences, amounted to £87,080.34
Following the report of the Public Works Committee, Parliament voted unanimously on 24 March 1927 to proceed with the construction of the museum. The FCC, however, was still too heavily engaged in other projects to undertake the work and, as well, did not have on its staff at the time what it considered a ‘first class designing architect’ to draw up the new plans required for the building. Just as significantly, Butters, though he had won some important changes from the Committee, was still far from satisfied with the design. He felt that ‘the layout of the building left much to be desired’ and that ‘a building with only a comparatively small stone feature in the front and the rest of plain brick work was losing a valuable opportunity in Canberra from an architectural point of view.’ Butters was particularly unhappy with the proposed width of the museum (66 feet) and of its surrounding gallery. He wanted both
reduced, but especially the gallery, an alteration that he hoped would allow the ‘objectionable columns’ to be eliminated. The entrances to the museum also bothered him, as he considered that they lacked ‘architectural character’. As an example of the sort of design he had in mind, he put on file an article dealing with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.35
The problem of a lack of a top-class designing architect, as the FCC saw it, was overcome in November 1927 when Walter Hayward Morris, just returned from a visit overseas, was appointed as the FCC’s Principal Assisting Designing Architect. Butters immediately assigned him, as his first job with the Commission, to the museum project. Before the month was out, Morris, armed with the scheme approved by the Public Works Committee and with Butters’s criticisms of it, was dispatched to Melbourne to discuss the new proposals with MacKenzie. MacKenzie readily agreed to Butters’s proposals to reduce the size of the museum and to eliminate one of the two entrances. This latter change, in fact, allowed the inclusion in the design of a small research room, a literature room and a room for the hall attendant. But MacKenzie also proposed some alterations of his own. These were: the provision of a small strong room, a basement workshop, a waiting room next to the Director’s office and an elevator from the basement to the first floor; an increase in the size of the lecture theatre to accommodate an audience of 150 as against 114; the combining of the spaces reserved for the artist and photographer into one room and the creation of a separate dark room; and the omission of all windows and addition of a gallery to the library to allow greater wall space for shelving and to allow for ‘the possibility of lighting from the roof’.
At Morris’s suggestion, MacKenzie later sent him five sketches of Australian animals – the kangaroo, koala, echidna, platypus and reptiles – to serve as models for Art Deco figures that Morris had in mind for the exterior of the building.36
It is extremely likely that Morris’s inspiration to adorn the exterior of the building with fauna and flora figures derived from the Sydney Technical College at Ultimo in Sydney. Built in 1891–93, the building’s exterior featured sandstone sculptures of native Australian animals and plants. The use of such distinctively Australian ornamentations was strongly influenced by the French- born artist Lucien Henry, who was a teacher at the temporary premises the college occupied before the Ultimo building was erected. Henry was a fervent advocate of the incorporation of nationalist elements such as representations of native fauna and flora in local art and architecture.
The actual precedent for ornamenting the exterior of buildings with figures of animals and plants was set by the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, which opened in 1881. Drawings of the building by its architect, Alfred Waterhouse, had been displayed at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 where they excited much local interest and admiration, notably from Henry. When Morris came to design the Institute of Anatomy decades later, he could scarcely have been unaware of the sculptures of Australian animals and plants that graced the exterior of Sydney Technical College as it was, of course, the place where he had studied architecture and where, moreover, he had won the Kemp Memorial Medal named in honour of its architect, William Edmund Kemp.37
34 PWC, ‘Report … relating to the Proposed Construction of … the National Museum of Australian Zoology’, 1927, pp. v, vi, vii.
35 Third Annual Report of the Federal Capital Commission for the Year ended 30th June, 1927, p. 12; MacKenzie, ‘Brief Resume …’, c. 1930, CRS A2644, item 70; minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, p. 2, CRS A431, item 59/450; extract from the Literary Digest, 16 April 1927, on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in CRS A6269, item E1/30/51.
36 Minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, pp. 2-3, CRS A431, item 59/450; letter, MacKenzie to W. Hayward Morris, 16 July 1928, CRS A6269, item E1/30/51.
37 http://sydneytafe.libguides.com/SydneyTAFEHeritage/ArchitectureDesign; Joan Kerr, ‘The architecture of scientific Sydney’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 118, parts 3 and 4, March 1986, p. 190; Kirsten Orr, ‘The realisation of the Sydney Technical College and Technological Museum, 1878-92: aspects of their cultural significance’, Fabrications, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007, pp. 46-67 (especially pp. 52-4 and 57-60).
While Morris worked on detailed plans and specifications for the revised design, MacKenzie’s patience with the government was wearing thin. In January 1928, he wrote to Howse, who was a Minister without portfolio in the Cabinet and the Australian Army’s former Director of Medical Services in France during World War I. MacKenzie pointed out to him the importance of his research to military medicine and urged the government to get on with the building of the museum. The representations to Howse brought an immediate response. Howse took the matter to Cabinet the same month and secured its approval for the construction of the museum to be given top priority; the FCC was duly instructed to regard the building of the museum as ‘of urgent importance’. Cabinet agreed as well to transfer responsibility for the museum from the Department of Home and Territories to the Department of Health, both of which portfolios Howse was about to take over. The transfer was effected on 1 February. Finally, Cabinet also gave Howse leave to consider a change of name for the institution. It was undoubtedly Howse’s role in getting the project moving that led to the erection of the portrait-in-relief of him that still exists in the southern museum hall.38
Even before the transfer to the Department of Health took place, the need for a change in the institution’s name was becoming evident. Apart from his zoological specimens, MacKenzie was accumulating a substantial collection of Aboriginal skeletal remains. As MacKenzie intended to house this material in his museum, the name ‘Zoological Museum’
was clearly no longer appropriate. In August 1928, MacKenzie and the government signed an agreement changing the name to the ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’. The change was formalised in the Australian Institute of Anatomy Agreement Act of 1931.39
The name change was appropriate for another reason as well. In 1926, the government had acquired the extensive ethnological collection that had been assembled by Dr Horne and his niece Miss Bowie, and soon afterwards had been promised the Edmund Milne ethnological collection of Australian Aboriginal material which was the largest private collection of its type in the world. With the acquisition of these two collections, the Australian government found itself under an obligation to provide proper museum accommodation for them.
This need to house the collections soon became bound up with proposals to establish a National Museum in Canberra. In September 1927, federal Cabinet affirmed the principle of establishing such a museum, but decided not to proceed with it immediately. A year later, a government committee that had been appointed to consider the question of the museum reported that the need for a national museum was, in its opinion, ‘not great’, largely because excellent museums already existed in each of the Australian states. During its deliberations, however, the committee suggested that the Institute of Anatomy might, in time, be constituted as the first unit of the proposed National Museum. In the meantime, there remained the problem of providing suitable accommodation for the Horne-Bowie
and Milne collections. The Institute of Anatomy was an obvious location and, in this way, the building came to be a repository for ethnological material, in addition to its anatomical specimens. It was probably this new ethnological aspect to the Institute’s functions that led to the inclusion of the Aboriginal-style motifs that adorn the exterior of the building.40
2.8 The Final Design and Construction
Morris completed his plans for the building in mid-1928, at which point Butters submitted them for review, along with the two earlier schemes devised by Robertson and the Public Works Committee, to the Committee of Public Taste. This was a body of five leading Australian architects chaired by G.H. Godsell. On examining the various plans, the committee found that it could not recommend the Robertson or Public Works Committee schemes, but that Morris’s design was acceptable with some alteration. The substance of the desired alteration was the conversion of the building from a T-shaped to a U-shaped structure, with provision for eventually closing in the end of the ‘U’ to create an internal quadrangle. MacKenzie, when told of the proposed alteration, would not agree to it at all, even though the new U-shape would give him two museum halls instead of one. As the Committee of Public Taste would not budge on the issue, Butters organised a meeting involving MacKenzie, Morris and the committee, and here they succeeded in talking MacKenzie around to the idea.41
38 ‘Copy of letter’ (MacKenzie to Sir Neville Howse), January 1928; and minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, p. 2, CRS A431, item 59/450; Cabinet Agenda No. 72, ‘National Museum of Australian Zoology’, 18 January 1928; and letter, Acting Secretary, Dept of Home and Territories to Director General, Dept of Health, 31 January 1928, CRS A1928, item 695/2.
39 Letter, Claude Nevins to MacKenzie, 10 June 1927, CRS A1, item 27/20249; indenture between the Commonwealth of Australia and William Colin MacKenzie, 16 August 1928, CRS A432, item 1931/1837; ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy Agreement Act 1931’, CRS A2863, item 31/44. See also CRS A1, item 29/1896.
40 Dr Helen Wurm, ‘The Institute of Anatomy Ethnological Collections’, address to residential school entitled ‘Canberra – Our National Capital’, ANU, Canberra, 24-30 May 1964, p. 2; minute, MacKenzie to Acting Prime Minister, 5 November 1930, CRS A2644, item 70; Minister for Home and Territories, Cabinet Agenda, ‘Establishment of National Museum at Canberra’, 16 April 1928, CRS A1, item 32/514; ‘Report of Committee of Enquiry appointed to advise on the General Question of a National Museum at Canberra’, October 1928, pp. 2-5, CRS A485, item AJ120/6.
41 ‘Notes taken at the first meeting of the Committee of Public Taste in Sydney’, 1928, CRS A6269, item E1/30/51; minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, pp. 1-2, CRS A431, item 59/450.
Figure 6: Australian Institute of Anatomy by W. Heyward Morris, 1929 (National Library of Australia 2018)
All now seemed set fair for work at last to commence on the project. But when, in early September 1928, the agreed-upon plans were presented to the Public Works Committee for its formal endorsement, the committee failed to consider the matter; it then broke up for the year and was not scheduled to re-convene until the following February or March. The first that Butters or apparently MacKenzie heard of this was when they read about it in the newspapers. Infuriated, MacKenzie promptly contacted Butters and warned him darkly that, because of the long delay with the project, he was seriously re-considering his position. Butters, deeply embarrassed by the incident, composed a long memorandum to his Minister, setting out the project’s history and requesting him to bypass the Public Works Committee by moving a motion as soon as possible in Parliament to the effect that the project proceed according to the latest revised set of plans.
The Minister did not oblige. Butters, MacKenzie and Morris thus had to cool their heels until the Public Works Committee met again early the following year. MacKenzie, for his part, may not have been inclined to press the issue any further at this time. Major events in his life were in prospect. The first occurred on 22 December 1928 when, at the age of 51, he married Dr Winifred Smith in Melbourne. The second was that the possibility of a knighthood was in the wind for him; the honour was duly conferred on him in June 1929.42
The plans for the Institute were eventually considered by the Public Works Committee in March 1929 and approved with some minor changes. Confident of the outcome, the FCC had already called for tenders for the construction work, a move of which the Committee took a very dim view. The budget for the building program was set at £96,306. Additional sums had previously been allocated: of £14,080 for development of the
zoological reserve; and £7,000 for construction of the Director’s residence and a residence each at the zoological reserve for the curator and caretaker. The contract for building the Institute was won by the Canberra firm of Simmie and Company. Building work commenced on 8 April 1929, with a scheduled date of completion of mid-April 1930. The executive architect for the project was Robert Casboulte. Along with the Black Mountain laboratories for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Institute was one of the last two projects commenced by the FCC in Canberra.43
42 Minute, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, ‘Australian Institute of Anatomy’, 14 September 1928, CRS A431, item 59/450; MacCallum,
ADB, vol. 10, p. 307; Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 1929.
43 PWC, ‘Report together with Minutes of Evidence relating to the Proposed Construction of Buildings for the Institute of Anatomy, at Canberra’, 1929, pp. vi, ix; and minute, Executive Architect to Assistant Secretary, ‘Institute of Anatomy’, 3 April 1929, CRS CT86, item 229; contract and building specifications, CRS 86, item 408; Gibbney, Canberra 1913-1953, p. 161.
Figure 7: Excavating Institute of Anatomy, Mildenhall Collection 1901–1948 (National Library of Australia, 2018)
Four months after work commenced on the Institute building, Cabinet approved the construction of the Director’s residence at a cost of £3,900. In order to keep the costs of construction down, it had previously been decided to shave £800 off the budget for the residence by doing away with a proposed garden court, pergola and covered way. Despite these economies, all of the tenders received for the erection of the residence were too high. After further economies had been made by some unspecified alterations to the plans, three of the previous tenderers were invited to re-submit.
The contract was eventually awarded in January 1930 to Ernest Spendelove, whose quote of £3,547 for the job was the lowest. Spendelove started work on the residence almost immediately and, with the exception of some minor adjustments, completed it in August 1930.44