James Firmin

05/06/1874

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J. Firmin Jenkins certainly will have been South Australia’s most productive regional architect during the first 40 years of the twentieth century, and quite probably for all time.

Of the seven children of James (1844-1920) and Rosetta Jenkins (1852-1907) – a daughter of Firmin Deacon, an Advertiser journalist – James Firmin was the eldest (PPR 12.10.1907). James senior was by turns a jockey, a horse-trainer ‘of the old school’ and a publican. He rode in the Melbourne Cup before training winners at Flemington, Geelong, Randwick and the Adelaide courses. Triumphs in the Adelaide Cup and South Australian Derby persuaded Sir Thomas Elder to put him in charge of his stable (PPR 21.4.1919). After twelve years spent running the Fountain Inn, Parkside (1886-97), James senior transferred to the Holdfast Hotel, Glenelg (1898-1902) (Hoad: passim.), closer to his home of 35 years in Penzance Street.

Born in Adelaide, young Firmin was sent to Pulteney Grammar School and Prince Alfred College. At the latter he excelled at sports and at drawing under the tuition of James Ashton but needed little invitation to attend his father’s training track outside Gawler. Having been virtually brought up in the saddle, he rode the legendary Umslopogaas first past the post at Victoria Park in 1890 at the age of 16 (R 30.12.1926; 16.2.1944). A period labouring at Fulton’s iron-casting foundry in Kilkenny or, more likely, draughting at their Peel Street office, preceded his indenture in the office of the prolific architects, English & Soward (Burgess 1909: 526).

In mid-1898, at the end of six years obtaining a grounding in the profession in Adelaide, Firmin Jenkins was assigned to manage a branch of the partnership in Port Pirie. He had just turned 24. Among his earliest undertakings in the service of the ‘Liverpool of the South’ was to redraw, uncredited, W.K. Mallyon’s design of the sizeable St Paul’s Church of England (R 28.2.1944).

Making a success of his assignment and seeing a future in a port equally as busy as Adelaide’s, Firmin launched his own solo practice in 1900 while continuing to act on behalf of English & Soward. In October of that year, he was elected Associate Member No. 47 of the South Australian Institute of Architects (SAIA Roll Book). Lacking competitors aside from his parent firm in the growing town, Firmin’s career took off. Exactly a year later, he was elevated to a Fellow of the SAIA – asserting his worth and independence. Within ten years he had designed and overseen the construction of some 29 houses, 24 shops, five banks, two or three churches, two institutes, two hotels and several offices, not counting assorted alterations and additions. His hand was shown in the bulk of the ‘business premises’ of Ellen Street, the port’s curving main artery. Dwellings, from cottages to mansions, were ordered by shopkeepers, shipping and estate agents, managers of BHP’s zinc and lead smelters, businessmen and speculators. Banks, halls and hotels were spread across the Mid-North from Gulnare to Quorn. Of these, (Sir) Henry Barwell’s house, St Vincent, and B.J. Knight’s Family Hotel, both in Port Pirie, and the Savings Bank of SA at Kadina were admirable examples of contemporary architecture (Tendered Works, AM). The architect was fortunate to be working in this era with local master builders like T.Y. Freeman, H.M. Pimlott and the swaggering contractor, Henry Smerdon. Accordingly, their joint work was liberally illustrated in the second, 1909, volume of the prestigious Cyclopedia of South Australia.

Although Firmin’s dealings were helped by a prevailing commercial opportunism, he helped himself by joining numerous associations, accepting positions on the committees of many sports clubs, and by volunteering his expertise generously within the community. And, putting himself at no disadvantage, in 1902 he married Edith Haslam, daughter of John Cyrus Haslam, a prominent general trader in Ellen Street and former three-term mayor of the town. Mr Haslam’s brother, James, was a senior minister in the Methodist Church. Another brother, William Haslam MLC (d.1898), shared the directorship of the Globe Timber Mills with his brother-in-law, Simon Harvey (Burgess 1909: 517; Indices). Firmin and Edith brought up a happy family of four girls and two boys in the Haslam house, 113 Gertrude Street, Pirie West (‘next to the Fire Station’ and opposite the Recreation Ground), at which modest address they remained for 40 years. Athletic and thoroughly convivial, Firmin engaged in nearly every sport on offer: horse-riding, tennis, cricket, golf, swimming, motorcycling, billiards, quoits and dancing, but his favourite activity was horse-racing. Joining what became the Port Pirie Racing Club in 1901, he served 25 years as its ‘energetic and courteous [honorary] secretary’ (R 16.2.1944). Keen on trotting, too, he owned Sand Speed, a pacer spelled on a 560-acre property of which he was a co-lessee between 1902 and 1913 (CT 416/51).

Connections within racing circles brought the architect repeated requests to upgrade the grandstands and ancillaries of courses at Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Laura and Kadina. But the call of educational bodies was met equally, often gratuitously or concessionally. Port Pirie’s Institute – largely driven by W.K. Mallyon, the altruistic local bank manager who prescribed the stage-one design (1884) carried out by English & Soward – was doubled in size, while those of Jamestown and Crystal Brook were expanded. Firmin himself taught drawing and construction at Port Pirie’s School of Mines where classrooms were built at half price by Smerdon & Co. (Adv. 18.2.1909, 25.2.1902). And the Young Men’s (Christian) Association gained a gymnasium on generous terms. Work was initiated for the Catholic Diocese and continued throughout the nineteen teens for the trustees of other churches – those ‘social condensers’ of scattered rural communities. This ranged from ‘a church in a day’ when 130 volunteers combined under Firmin’s direction to erect a Christian Chapel at Solomontown in 24 hours flat (PPR 9.10.1912) to the extensions which made St Anacletus, Peterborough, into the grandest non-cathedral church in SA (Adv. 15.6.1916).

Although awarded fewer commissions to design houses (seventeen) or shops (eighteen) in his second decade of practice, Jenkins executed more offices (seven) and renovated more hotels (seven). It took time for hoteliers in the country to appreciate the graceful tiers, turnery, curves and valances of the new century’s decorative styles – Federation and Edwardian Free – which the architect could apply. Notable works of the period, crowned by The Alhambra, a cinema-shops-and-offices complex worth £13,000, included the Adelaide Steamship Company’s and Amalgamated (Waterside) Workers’ Association buildings. A further one, sizeable offices for the A.M.P. Society represented, however, one of only thirteen jobs secured by Jenkins during the four years of World War One. The nationwide economic pinch was first brought home to the architect and his builder by a losing battle to claim repudiated fees – a second instance within six years. Not quite in desperation, paying work was sought among family in Adelaide. Firmin’s brother-in-law asked for shops in Brighton (Adv. 4.2.1919) while Simon Harvey, Edith’s late aunt’s husband, helpfully approved of a fortified, farmhouse-like bungalow in Unley Park (BRG 359/1 SLSA; Tendered Works: AM). By remortgaging his house and exercising thrift, Firmin was able to retain two pieces of land intended for deferred resale until values picked up a little post-war (CTs 255/238, 982/182). At that point, he was even able to afford a motor car in which to make his widening rounds of inspection.

The Jenkinses, young and old, luckily dodged the war but faced its consequences in the town. Perhaps inspired by his compatriots’ dutiful sacrifice, Firmin allowed himself in 1919 to be elected president of the Liberal Union (Adv. 4.11.1919) and to be nominated for Councillorship. A presidency of the Institute, leading positions and participation in sports and social clubs, and work honorarily undertaken for churches, schools, hospitals and memorial projects made him a well-known, popular figure in Port Pirie. Edith, with childbirth finally behind her, joined him to dedicate herself to municipal and charitable causes. Edith’s father died in 1917; Firmin’s, who had at a second attempt in 1910 to come to Port Pirie to run its Coffee Palace before falling back to Glenelg and the turf, would live to see his son assume the honour of representing the North Ward but not the mayoralty which was bestowed only one year later in 1921 (R 10.12.1920).

Despite earnest hopefulness expressed following 11 November 1918, a commercial resurgence did not ensue; 1919-21 continued to be lean years. A mere eight commissions, the best of them offices for a shipping line and for A.M.P., again, at Kadina, allowed Cr Jenkins to devote more time than expected to his electors. But his first mayoral year realised even fewer jobs: one church, one rectory and one kindergarten hall (Tendered Work: AM). Selfless efforts made both to ease industrial trouble at the smelters and to create employment, as well as compassion shown to scrimping labourers, won him praise and a second, unenviable term in 1922. Within a further year, though, a corner was turned. Vessels visiting the port reverted to their pre-war numbers; the tonnages carried inwards and outwards by rail increased threefold (Obs. 25.9.1926); SAIA members won the right to charge an extra 1% on the overall cost of a building. Notwithstanding, the Jenkinses sought no personal advantage from their position. Edith was dubbed ‘Queen of the Children’ owing to her civic benevolence (Chr. 14.6.1945); Firmin designed monumental Memorial Gates free of charge for the Pirie Recreation Ground; local tradesmen were preferred when any tenders were called. Yet, after 25 years of honorary service given to the Port Pirie Racing Club, Firmin resigned from the secretary’s job on principle; the Methodist adherent left the running to new management by the Licensed Victuallers (R 12.6., 7.8.1925). Instead, having been appointed a Justice of the Peace, he sat on the bench and on the board of the hospital.

Churches, notably the Gertrude Street Methodist and Crystal Brook Catholic, and schools, including one in Port Augusta, proved to be the mainstay of the practice during the restorative middle years of the 1920s. Alterations to hotels – describing unremitting competitiveness in that sector – and to institutes and halls maintained trends emerging in the previous decade. A tin-clad motor showroom and garage built in late 1926 for a Ford dealer at Laura symbolised the height of Mid-North prosperity. But, from that point, the rural economy positively shrank. 1927 and 1928 together brought Firmin a Savings Bank and hospital maternity wing, both at Jamestown, and three renovations. Except for a Catholic school in Whyalla, 1929 would be just as dire (Tendered Works: AM). As the Depression denied him his livelihood, he undertook a property-letting agency to help make ends meet (R 19.3.1931, 29.11.1933). 1930 saw the architect in hospital; he was then 56 with three of his children still at home. Responsibility weighed heavily upon him; it seemed that he did all his own drawing, never employing a draughtsman or assistant.

Altogether, the 1920s yielded Firmin seven houses, three shops, seven offices, one bank, six schools and six churches or church halls. Interventions at community halls and hotels amounted to seven and ten, respectively – a poor haul by his standard. A worldwide scarcity of funds in circulation enchained the early 1930s, such that the business climate resembled that of the early 1920s. No work whatsoever arrived for Firmin in 1930. Only at the end of 1931 did he begin separating the Port Pirie Institute into a formal Town Hall and Library, a task which occupied all of 1932. Although this commission signified the promising incidence of a ‘returning client’, others – mainly the local hoteliers, again – delayed their investment. But for three minor jobs in 1933, tumbleweed blew through the Ozone Buildings office. Two jobs, one a large warehouse for a general store, would not pay the rent in 1934. In the following year, however, six renovations were signs enough for the architect to say ‘activity was picking up’ (R 15.5.1935). Conversion of the Central Hotel in ‘moderne’ style then triggered similar render-tile-and-chromium makeovers of all the other Port Pirie hotels which Firmin had already much more elegantly remodelled to suit an erstwhile Neo-Georgian taste (Tendered Works: AM).

Appreciable work at the Booleroo Centre and Crystal Brook hospitals, three houses, four shops, a bank and an electrical substation comprised the bulk of Firmin’s undertakings until the end of 1939, by which time he had been readmitted to the Memorial Hospital in Adelaide. Late in both 1941 and 1942, he oversaw yet another modification of the Family Hotel and further repairs to the Town Hall – establishments with which he had started his career 40 years before (Tendered Works: AM).

In the twilight of that career, Firmin found time by default to take holiday trips, to visit his daughters (three of whom were trainee nurses posted at country hospitals) and receive guests, to play lawn bowls more intensively – and even more successfully in tournaments – and to indulge his undying interest in horse-racing. On 50 or more occasions, 43 of them consecutive, Firmin attended the annual Easter meeting at Oakbank (Adv. 26.3.1940). His knowledge of the turf and his collection of racing memorabilia (in addition to a mass of architectural documents) were probably unrivalled in South Australia. Five of the children had married or become engaged, and grandchildren had arrived, before he died from a severe infection of the heart, aged nearly 70, in 1944. Edith, bereft, lasted only one further year. Maurice, the younger son, was so attached to the truly happy family home that he chose to spend his honeymoon at 113 Gertrude Street. A jackeroo for a while, he came closest to share his father’s interests, but Firmin’s all-round achievement remains unparalleled.

Giles Walkley

Citation details
Walkley, Giles, 'Jenkins, James Firmin’, Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2014, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=138]