Robert Freestone and Bronwyn Hanna, Florence Tailor's Hats: designing, building and editing Sydney.(Book review)

Robert Freestone and Bronwyn Hanna, Florence Tailor's Hats: designing, building and editing Sydney, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2007, 252 pages; ISBN 978 192083 136 3.

Florence Taylor (nee Parsons, 1879-1969) was Australia's first professionally qualified, practising woman architect. The 'tall, handsome, elegant and ambitious' Florence Parsons' nomination for membership of the New South Wales Institute of Architects in 1907 caused an unprecedented uproar--her later retelling of the fracas was that she was blackballed--and she was not admitted to the Institute until 13 years after her application. The rejection of her nomination for formal professional accreditation coincided with the year of her marriage to George Taylor and their embarking on an extraordinary professional partnership as publishers and critics. They became the 'progressive Taylors', the 'swanky Taylors', the 'triumphing Taylors'.

For historians with more than a passing interest in architectural, town planning and garden history, Building (1907-72), the magazine established by George and Florence Taylor, provides a wealth of information on architectural projects, construction and town planning. As architect and town planner John Sulman stated in 1927, it is 'simply marvellous for information, illustrations, and a general feeling of the interests of Australia'. For garden historians it is one of the few sources from the early 20th century which regularly published the editors' attitudes to garden design as opposed to horticultural advice.

Strident in their views, the Taylors' venture into publishing coincided with an escalating interest in town planning in Australia. Building, as Freestone and Hanna point out, 'set out not merely to describe events but to point out what was good, bad and indifferent'. Among the many other journals on engineering, building construction and radio they published was Town Planning and Housing (1915-16), the only specialist town planning serial published in Australia before the 1940s.

The Taylors provoked controversies--one of the more spectacular being their initial welcoming and support for Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin, and then their dramatic falling out between 1914 and 1915. It was a falling out ...