LMI Furniture Gallery

The Mechanics' Institute Library effectively ceased operation in 1945. The grand old building was demolished in 1971. The books survive, and are celebrated on this blog. And so do a few precious objects – pieces of furniture and equipment.

Our photographer Nienna Fontana captured some of these objects in situ at Launceston Library a couple of years ago. Here are a few of Nienna's images;

Desk Organiser

Document Box

Lectern

Impressed Stamper

Reading Room Chairs

Library Stairs

Wall Clock

Remembering the Institute building

Readers of this blog will be aware of the history of the building which once housed our collection. Recently we were very pleased to receive a letter (reproduced below) describing the building as the writer remembered it in the 1960s. The image below was taken on 9 September 1969 from the roof of the Town Hall. At the foot of the post is a photograph from the front page of The Examiner newspaper, on October 6 1971, illustrating the demolition of the building.

Mechanics' Institute North Facade 1969

Dear Friends of the Mechanics Institute,

A friend in Launceston sent me an article in the Examiner last November concerning your organization. I just wanted to write and say how pleased I was to learn of your efforts to save the collection. I have many memories of the Institute which was an important place in my childhood. My mother worked there for many years and I knew nearly everyone who was associated with it when it was the Launceston Public Library. I first began going to the library there in 1962 and from 1965 I took music lessons from Walter Sutherland whose parents, Walter and Edna Sutherland, lived in the elegant Librarian’s flat at the top of the building.

The place always enchanted me and it was with shock and disbelief that we and many of our friends learned of its fate. Everyone I know did everything possible to save the building and was horrified when the State Library overruled local decisions on the matter. The debate on this subject raged for several years the beautiful building was deeply missed from the moment it was closed and to this day many of us are still aggrieved by its destruction. The decision to demolish was very unpopular amongst certain groups in Launceston and it was seen as arrogant and interfering on the part of the Hobart-based State Librarian, Mr A. E. Browning who was more or less demonised over the issue not that he had been greatly popular anyway. Phil Leonard was distressed by the whole issue as he had to straddle all boundaries on the matter and satisfy everyone.

My mother bought the bricks from the demolished building and had them delivered to our house in West Launceston where they remain to this day in the form of a courtyard and a wall. As children my sister and I spent many tedious weekends and afternoons cleaning thousands of those bricks of which a great many were handmade and retained the thumb print in the corner where the clay had been removed from the mould. I very much doubt that the present owners of the house have any idea of the provenance of the bricks which surround them now.

Most people will not remember the areas of the building that were not open to the public in the second half of the 20th century because very few people ever went into them. They were quite splendid and included several lecture theatres and a magnificent auditorium replete with a gilded proscenium arch. All of the rooms were of massive scale and had perfectly made Italianate tiling, highly decorative wrought iron, pressed tin and exquisite mouldings, all of the highest quality, which remained until the building closed. The children’s library, adult lending library and reference library were wood-panelled with beautifully wrought wooden bentwood chairs and more substantial reading chairs in the reference room. I think the library remained more or less as it was when it opened in the 1850s and its loss was unique and great.

There are so many wonderful stories of the building and of the remarkable people who worked there, many of whom I knew and some were remarkable characters. It was delightful to learn that the collection survives and that you are doing what you can to preserve it.

Kind regards

Marc Ellis

Our New Display Case

Introducing the latest addition to our collection, a display case designed to house travelling exhibitions featuring the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection and the activities of FOLMI.

Our commission was beautifully executed by Tony Mitchell of TJM Woodturning and Joinery who cleverly married a secure perspex display case with an old cedar table frame to produce this very attractive and easily moved unit.

We are most grateful to Arts Tasmania, and particularly the Lynne Stacpoole Caring for Your Collection program, for their financial support.

Watch out for our display at Launceston LINC in 2016.


Prior to 1891 the Launceston Mechanics' Institute also maintained a museum collection. The illustration below, a detail from a drawing by William Charpentier held in the QVMAG collection, shows one of the Institute's original display cases. It would be fascinating to discover the identity of the figure seen squatting in front of the exhibit.

Launceston Mechanics' Institute Building

 The foundation stone for the Launceston Mechanics' Institute was laid on 24 June 1857, and the building was officially opened on 9 April 1860. 

Tragically, a life was lost in the construction of the building, and we are indebted to FOLMI member Angela Prosser-Green for this transcription of a report on the accident from the Cornwall Chronicle;

DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE.

FRIGHTFUL AND FATAL ACCIDENT AT THE NEW MECHANICS' INSTITUTE.

About seven o'clock on Saturday morning last, the men employed in raising the girders for the roof of the new Mechanics' Institute were loosing the tackling from a girder which had been lifted to its place on the previous evening, for the purpose of raising another. Charles Trinder, a stonemason, and a very efficient active man at such work, was standing on the girder, loosing and handing down the tackling with the blocks to the Fore man, when, unfortunately, one of the carpenters shifted the foot of the girder next St John-street with a crowbar. It had been rested on a beam of wood, which was very wet with the heavy night dew, and this caused the girder to slip round, until it got off its support on both walls, and only rested in an angular portion on the beam, where it had originally been placed. The men had not got to their stations at the windlass in Cameron-street, and   the guy-rope attached from the girder to it slacked, allowing the girder to cant over and fall with poor Trinder on it to the first floor, a distance of 26 feet. The unfortunate man saw his danger, and screamed out to his fellow-workmen to hold on by the girder; but the damage was done, and nothing could avert the consequences. The immense girder,   formed of strong beams, fell with a tremendous crash, breaking one of the beams in two as if it had been a mere sapling. Poor Trinder's head struck against a rafter, and that injury alone would no doubt have caused instant death,— but, in addition to that, the front bones of his chest and his ribs were crushed in such a manner as must have caused almost instant death The Foreman, who was standing under the girder taking the tackling from Trinder at the time it swayed round, had a most miraculous escape, for it was impossible for him to know under the circumstances which way to run for safety. Immediately after the accident the Foreman ran to Dr. Maddox's, and found that gentle man ready to step into his gig, to go down the river, so that in five or six minutes after the accident occurred he was beside the injured man, but prompt as he was in his attendance, before he reached the spot poor Trinder had expired. All Dr. Maddox could do was to ascertain the nature of the injuries which had been the immediate cause of death, and direct that the deceased might be laid out where he was to await the coroner's inquest. The corpse of the healthy robust man who had cheerfully commenced his work about half-an-hour before was then covered over, and the ladders which gave access to the first floor where he lay were taken down, to prevent any person from visiting the place until the coroner and jury should see it, just as it appeared immediately after the accident. The wife and several of the children of de ceased heard but too soon of what had occurred, and lingered long about the building, looking up with weeping eyes to the spot where they were told the dead man lay. The jurors were summoned, and met the coroner, Francis Evans, Esq., at the London Hotel at two o'clock. The following were sworn : — Messrs. Bruce R. Harvey, (foreman,) Henry   Button, Henry Turner, Robert Bain, Joseph Grigg, R. H. Price, and S. Joscelyne.     Accompanied by the coroner, they ascended to the floor where the body, beside the fragments of the ponderous girder, lay. Having heard the particulars of the accident described on the spot, they returned to the London   Hotel, and the facts being so clear, the jury   were satisfied of the cause of death on hearing   the following evidence : — Dr. Maddox sworn — I have just viewed the of Charles Trinder now lying dead ; I was   called at half-past seven o'clock, this morning, to see him ; I found him lying nearly in the   same position he is in now ; I examined the body externally, I believe that the whole front part of the chest is fractured ; there is a wound   on the head on the left frontal bone ; I think   the skull is fractured ; the right arm is broken above the elbow ; I should think the immediate cause of death is the fracture of the front part of the chest ; the injuries are such as   would be inflicted on a body by falling from a   great height.   William Hawkshaw, sworn— I am a mason by trade ; I am foreman over the masons employed at the Mechanics' Institute ; I was employed there this morning, the deceased and   I went up to the scaffolding to release the blocks from the girder ; he went on the girder and released the blocks ; we were pulling down the blocks to take up another girder ; in   doing so the girder swung round with deceased on it until it accidentally slid off the wall and fell a distance of 26 feet and deceased with it ; after the accident John Lewis came to my   assistance, and we found deceased lying on   the girder, he moaned three times faintly and then expired ; I was pulling down and he was lowering the blocks when the girder swayed over ; I ran to the angle next Cameron-street and only in that way escaped being struck by it in its fall; deceased was a very expert man with such tackling ; I believe that every precaution was used that could be thought of, and  when we go to raise another girder it must be by the same means ; one of the workmen lifted the end of the girder with a bar, and   that was the cause of its sliding, and as the   other men had not got to their stations, of the   accident ; the wood was slippery, not with frost, but with heavy dew; I believe the fall of the girder was altogether accidental.   The jury then recorded a verdict of "Accidental Death."  Cornwall Chronicle 8 June 1859 p5 col 2-3.

Buildings

Launceston Mechanics' Institute Buildings

Earlier temporary premises

The first two meetings were held at the Frederick St Infants’ schoolroom on 2 March & 26 April 1842

The first ‘home of our first institute’ was a room in a public school in Cameron St attached to Holy Trinity Church where general meetings & other institute activities were held until October 1843. It was open three evenings/week and continued to be used for lectures until 1849.

Elizabeth St schoolroom attached to St John’s Church:

The room was offered by Rev. Dr Browne when the institute was required to quit the Cameron St premises; It was used from 10 October 1843 to March 1844.

The Government granted a block of land in Wellington Street for an institute building in October 1843.

A building 23 feet  by 15 feet was erected by Alexander Kidd in St John Street (‘adjoining his cabinet manufactory’) as a reading room & library for the institute.  It was occupied from March 1844 until the permanent building was occupied in 1860, initially for a rent of £30 p.a.

The Institute Board offered to trade the Wellington Street land for a block in St John Street, and eventually the Government granted land at the corner of Cameron and St John streets on 27 January 1846.

Lectures and larger events held in the Temperance Hall and Assembly Rooms from 1849.

After lengthy discussion which began in 1843 about a permanent building and continued for over a decade with little money raised, in 1856 strenuous efforts led to a substantial sum being accumulated, and tenders were called for a grand, purpose-built edifice designed by W H Clayton. G R Russell’s tender for £5370 was accepted; the foundation stone was laid in June 1857 on the institute’s land on the corner of Cameron and St John streets.

The new Launceston Mechanics' Institute Building in 1861. 

A detail from a stereograph by Alfred Abbott.

Permanent premises

The Launceston Mechanics’ Institute building was opened 9 April 1860 by the president, Dr Casey. It was Italianate in design, 60 feet long fronting Cameron Street by 70 feet along St John Street, and 45 feet high with two storeys. It featured a reading room, a library, a classroom, a museum and a lecture room on the ground floor, and a laboratory and a lecture hall capable of holding an audience of 700 on the first floor.

Launceston Council sold land adjoining the Institute to the Institute Board in 1869, and in 1870 quarters for the librarian were erected there.

The Librarian’s quarters were pulled down in 1884 to allow for the expansion of the main building with a new committee room downstairs, the museum moved upstairs and enlargement of caretaker’s quarters. The new building opened in September1885.

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery began construction in 1887 and the Institute’s paintings & exhibits were transferred to it by 1891. The upstairs space left vacant became the free reading room and repository of the Launceston Library Society’s collection which passed to the Institute in 1889.

Tenders were called for a major redevelopment of the Institute in Feb 1907 because of lack of space and poor condition of the building. Renovations concluded in Feb 1909: the Cameron Street front now uniform in style, a new section three storeys high topped with a dome, the Librarian’s rooms in the top storey, and toilets and other facilities modernised (The building continued in this form during the period in which the name of the institute was changed to Launceston Public Library.)

A 1941 postcard of the Institute building

Renovations to modernise the building and its facilities were undertaken in 1944-45 to establish it as a free public library; the holdings of the institute were transferred from the Launceston Library Board to the Launceston City Corporation and administration passed to the State Library.

In the 1960s with such a large use of library services and the building being in a bad state of repair,

In 1964 Council accepted  a Government proposal to establish a northern regional library under the control of the State Library Board and granted land for the construction of a new building next to the Institute site.

In 1971 the old Mechanics’ Institute building was demolished and the new Northern Regional Library building opened.

ADFAS Mechanics' Institute Project

The Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (ADFAS) have commenced a special project to explore the roles of Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in Australia. They have invited members to explore Schools of Arts buildings and their roles in their local communities. Their stories are on the ADFAS website (http://www.adfas.org.au).

An illustrated account of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute has been contributed to the project by Maureen Mann;

http://www.adfas.org.au/downloads/schools/Launceston%20Mechanics%20Institute.pdf