WOMAN ARCHITECT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 24, 21 September 1931, Page 5

WOMAN ARCHITECT

REMARKABLE CAREER OF TOWN PLANNING PIONEER. MALE OPPOSITION. "It was at this stage I learnt that the biggest invitation I could get to do a thing, or to enter a place, was tb be told to keep out!" Mrs. Florence Taylor, well-known town-planning advocate and pioneer woman architect in Sydney, told the Society of WomenvWriters an inter- 1 esting story the other day: She began I work 33 years ago as a clerk in an architect's office at 15s a week. For eight years she travelled every evening from Parramatta to Pyrmont to attend the Technical College. The fares were 8d retUrn, second class, and the fees 4s a quarter. The 1 college was sanctuary to Mrs. Taylor, 1 for most of the boys eonfined their disapproval of the only girl student to stony looks. Mr. Cyril Blacket and Mr. James Nangle, teachers at the college then, were kindly and appreciative, but some of the instructors never looked at Mrs. Taylor's work. .In those days, after her father's death, Mrs. Taylor looked after her two sisters in Parramatta, then a marvellously cheap place in which to live. The three girls had four immense I'ooms over a bicycle shop, for which they paid a rental of 15s a week. Fruit and vegetables were sold only in the market by auction, so Mrs. Taylor used to go and bid and find herself the possesser of a dozen pumpkins or a bushel of beans for a few eence.

Finding Parramatta too far from her studies, Mrs. Taylor came to Sydney, and she and her sisters lived in Elizabeth St., in a flat rented at a cost of 11s a week. Theh the sisters began to earn money, one going into Farmer's millinery department for 2s 6d a week and the other adopting "the millionaire profession" of photography and receiving 5s a week. "Find out" were two invaluable words to this pioneer, for "find out" was almost the invariable reply of men to her quest for information — and find out she did. By 1906 she had built a number of houses, among them being 50 for Mr. A. Saunders, costing from £1500 to £4000 each. About 1907 Mrs. Taylor was proposed for the Institute of Architects by Messrs. Blacket, Nangle and Burcham Clamp. Although the meetings of the institute frequently lapsed for want of a quorum, there was a full house on this occasion, and, almost to a man, it blackballed the pioneer. The proceedings were afterwards deelared informal, as it was discovered that many of the votes had come from unfinancial members, and later the institute accepted its first woman member. Only the threat of writ of mandamus, however, enabled Mrs. Taylor to be present at the dinners given by this body!