To mark International Women's Day 2023, we honour a woman of many firsts, and one who wore many hats. Florence Mary Taylor was a remarkable woman, having accomplished so much more during her lifetime – beyond the label of ‘Australia’s first woman architect’.

The eldest of three daughters, Florence was born in 1879 in Somerset, England to John and Eliza Parsons. The family migrated to Australia in 1884, settling down in Sydney where Parsons found employment in the sewerage construction wing of the NSW Department of Public Works while also clerking as a draughtsman with the Parramatta Council.

Forced to take care of her sisters when Parsons passed away in 1899, she took up a clerical position in the Parramatta office of architect Francis Ernest Stowe. The same year, she enrolled in night classes at the Sydney Technical College to study architecture – the only woman student in the class – and trained under architect Edmund Skelton Garton as an articled draughtsman.

Completing her studies in 1904 to become Australia’s first qualified woman architect, she went on to work for architect John Burcham Clamp, who nominated her for an associate membership of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales in 1907. Her application to become the first female member of the Institute was rejected following resistance from the all-male members – despite Clamp’s recommendation that “she could design a place while an ordinary draughtsman would be sharpening his pencil”.

It would take another 13 years before she was invited to become a member when the NSW Institute of Architects decided to accept women members in 1920. Though she was no longer a practising architect, she accepted the invitation, formally becoming Australia’s first professionally qualified woman architect. The only reason she accepted the membership was to ease the way for other women pursuing the profession.

Not much is known of Florence’s architectural work, though she is believed to have designed up to 100 houses until her marriage in 1907 to George Augustine Taylor, an artist, inventor, and craftworker, who shared her passion for architecture, urban planning and the built environment. Together, they established the Building Publishing Co. Ltd., which published several trade journals on building, construction and engineering, through which they not only campaigned for better urban planning, construction methods and building materials, but also promoted the interests of engineers, architects and builders.

The couple became leading advocates of progressive town planning, with Florence advancing several urban renewal ideas for improving Sydney’s built environment, most of which were based on her travels to the United States and Europe, but unfortunately for her, not welcomed or adopted at the time.

Florence’s architectural legacy remains her trade journals, which became her platform for expressing her architectural and urban planning ideas. After her husband’s death in 1928, she continued publishing Building (later Building, Lighting and Engineering), Construction, and Australasian Engineer.

Beyond the labels of ‘Australia’s first woman architect’ and ‘The Grand Old Lady of Publishing’, Florence was also the first Australian woman to fly – in a biplane glider built by her husband in their garage. Also a qualified marine engineer (another first), she received an OBE in 1939 and a CBE in 1961, and was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

A woman who wore many hats (she also owned 32), Florence passed away in 1969 but her legacy continues to be an inspiration for the women architects who followed in her footsteps.

Branko Miletic

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