Abstract
Soap manufacturer William Hesketh Lever funded the establishment of the world’s first known university department of town planning in 1909. As part of this pioneering venture, he also funded a Chair in Civic Design which a chain of eminent men would hold over the next 100 years. These so-named Lever Professors played an integral role in the development of the Department of Civic Design, town planning education, and town planning more widely. Though a number of their accomplishments are known, many are not, and even less is generally known about their backgrounds and personal qualities. Such knowledge allows for greater appreciation of their efforts, contributions, and legacy as it is experienced today. Also explored are the Lever professors’ changing concepts of civic design and some overarching themes. Insofar as historical research invites learning from the past and contemplating the future, the lives and ideas of the Lever Professors should be of interest to planners, built environment educators, architects, and anyone with an interest in planning history or with a connection to the University of Liverpool.
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Notes
- 1.
The first university-affiliated program in city planning was the 1907 Seminar on City Planning at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg, organized by professors Felix Genzmer and Joseph Brix (Collins 2005; Ladd 1990). The University of Liverpool though has the first department and degree program in town planning.
- 2.
The site and building were paid for by Lever and Lever’s son, the Second Viscount Leverhulme, honoring Lever’s 1910 pre-war promise to pay for a new building for the School of Architecture.
- 3.
Reilly, for example, designed in 1909 the University of Liverpool Students’ Union and co-designed the Leverhulme Building housing the School/Department of Architecture since 1933.
- 4.
Holford was invited to build a munitions factory in Kirkby near Liverpool. In less than three months from accepting, he had a staff of 150 men and in little more than a year the factory had been built. In relation to these types of efforts, one who worked with him commented that “the three remarkable Holford qualities that struck everyone [were]: his capacity for work up to a genuine sixteen-hour day; his power to preside unruffled over complex and costly programs of work of which he had almost no previous experience; and his kindness to all, and specially to juniors, on both technical and personal matters.”
- 5.
His report (Kelly 1981, p.303) read thus: “Behind these questions of practicality and procedure there is a moral question. Unlike the ancient Universities, Liverpool has grown out of and become part of the fabric of a great commercial city, …. It is very largely a civic university: and as an offset to all the disadvantages of its closely-built-up urban surroundings, it derives a large measure of its support, a considerable field of research, and much of the interest of its daily life, from the City and Port of Liverpool, and from the population—numbering over a million and a quarter—that clusters round Merseyside. This region has suffered severely from the war and from its aftermath. The University can contribute to its recovery, not only in the material sense by rebuilding a part of the town …, but also in the social sense by continuing to live in the center of its region…Thus it is clear that, even if the site and the money and the manpower could be found, Liverpool University, removed to a rural setting, would be of far less service to the community than if it remained.”
- 6.
For example, the Holford Rules of 1959 still form the basis for the approach to routing overhead transmission lines in the UK (DECC 2009).
- 7.
Holford also has inspired many individuals and planners in England (e.g. Parfect and Power 1997, p.xiv). Learning about Holford in 2008 is what inspired the research and writing of this chapter.
- 8.
This must have been a great disappointment. In his autobiography (p. 154), Stephenson recalled: “Our plan to return permanently to MIT and New England had gone sadly awry. After living through World War II in England my wife was to return home, and I was to be head of the most important planning school in the English-speaking world. It was not to be.”
- 9.
Dix is the last Lever Professor to have occupied the Lever Chair of Civic Design, for after 1989, the title changed to Lever Chair of Town and Regional Planning.
- 10.
This was co-authored with Constantinos A. Doxiadis (1913–1975), a Greek architect and town planner and the father of ekistics, the science of human settlements. Ekistics draws on the research and experience of professionals in various fields, such as architecture, engineering, town planning, and sociology.
- 11.
Begun in 1985, the Mersey Basin Campaign is a government-backed partnership bringing together local authorities, business, voluntary organizations and government agencies to improve water quality and promote waterside regeneration throughout the Mersey Basin.
- 12.
As part of a major reorganization of the of academic structures across the University, a new Department of Geography and Planning, incorporating the former Department of Civic Design, was established in 2010. Following Professor Batey’s retirement in 2015, as of the time of writing (June 2017), no new Lever professor has been named.
- 13.
It is reported in Cherry and Penny (1986, p.236) that Mumford became a personal friend and correspondent of Holford’s and influenced Holford’s ambitions as a planner.
- 14.
This is a description of Mrs. Lever given by landscape architect and departmental lecturer Thomas Mawson. At the opening of The Lady Lever Art Gallery that Lever founded in her honour, Lever said “I venture to say that without the gracious influence of my wife, I doubt whether there would have been a Port Sunlight; I doubt whether there would be a firm of the dimensions of Lever Brothers”(Purcell 2014, p.42). Lever also took his wife’s surname Hulme, and added it to his own when he was made a peer after her death, which was unprecedented.
- 15.
As described by (Wright 1982, p.169), the Holfords shared their house, accommodation permitting, throughout Holford’s life, and at one time Stephenson, ‘the Bulgarian,’ an impoverished painter and his child, and student helpers all lived at ‘80 Beds,’ which was kept together by their housekeeper Amelia. Stephenson remarked it was a wonder Mrs. Holford put up with them all!
- 16.
Dix goes on to say that in their pre-Liverpool days and prior to Doxiadis’s death in 1975, Dix and Lois met from time to time with the distinguished—and lively—group of professionals associated with the application of Doxiadis’s ideas of ekistics, including designer and innovator R. Buckminster Fuller, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, and town planner and educator Jaqueline Tyrwhitt.
- 17.
This was held at the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery and Museum from July 3 to November 28, 2009.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dr. David Massey for giving her a copy of Myles Wright’s book, which launched this undertaking. She is grateful to have shared the journey of historical discovery with then University Archivist Roy Lumb, retired University Archivist Adrian Allan, and Emeritus Professor Gerald Dix. They, Professor Batey, Joanne Schwandes, and Matthew Cocks are thanked for their support and for reviewing earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Posas, P.J. (2018). The Department of Civic Design at Liverpool University and Its Lever Professors: Influence and Wider Legacies. In: Frank, A., Silver, C. (eds) Urban Planning Education. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55967-4_3
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