Explore the Walsh Street Archive
The Walsh Street Archive is a collection of over 4000 items: the known and visible library, furniture and artwork collection, and alongside these, hidden treasures including manuscripts, correspondence, slides, films, architectural drawings, and newspaper clippings found in the house. The archive makes the culturally significant collection housed in Boyd’s 1958 family home accessible online and offers new insight into Boyd’s seminal contribution as an architect, author, critic and public educator, as well as a view into life at Walsh Street.
In celebration of its launch online through Victorian Collections, the Foundation curated an exhibition of archive highlights for Open House Melbourne 2022. Recommended searches include:
Robin Boyd’s Slide Collection:1950 slides; Year in USA 1956-57; 1964 slides; 1971 slides; Le Corbusier Buildings in India; Kenzo Tange; Minoru Yamasaki buildings; Sydney Opera House
Robin Boyd’s Writing: Australian identity; The Australian Ugliness; Canberra; The Flying Dogtor; Television; Walter Burley Griffin; Walter Gropius; Suburbs
Boyd Home Items: Walsh Street Artwork; Arthur Boyd; Medals; Records; Featherston
Expos: Expo manuscripts; Robin Boyd’s Expo 67 Slides; Robin Boyd’s Expo 70 Slides
Built Projects: Domain Park Flats; Stegbar; Tower Hill Visitor Centre
To search the Walsh Street Archive follow the link and scroll down to ‘Items featured online’ and enter your search item in the box provided.
Walsh Street Archive Tips:
- Click any item to view its media and description.
- An arrow on the right/left moves between media items. Click any image to expand. To download an image, click ‘Media reuse’ below the image for reproduction permissions and download link. Audio and video files can be played in place.
- PDFs with multiple pages can be browsed with the arrows beneath the preview, or clicked to open in browser. PDFs are searchable and downloadable – check ‘Media Reuse’ for reproduction permissions.
- Some PDF and audiovisual items are large and take time to load.
Walsh Street Archive enquiries: collections@robinboyd.org.au
Slide Identification
The collection of over 1500 slides still contains ones whose location has us stumped. If you can identify the location of any of these slides, please email the Identifier (S and four digits) and your suggestion to collections@robinboyd.org.au
Acknowledgements
Since 2014, the Walsh Street Archive has been catalogued, researched, digitised, and conserved by a team of Robin Boyd Foundation volunteers.
The Walsh Street Archive project has been generously supported by the Angela Gehrig Bequest 2017. Angela Gehrig was part of the first group of volunteers to start this ambitious project in 2014. As an academic librarian, she brought invaluable expertise to our team. Angela was a warm, much loved friend of her Research and Collections team colleagues and is missed dearly.
The Robin Boyd Foundation warmly thanks the volunteers who contributed countless hours working on the Walsh Street Archive project as part of the Research and Collections team: Violet Barnes, Elly Buckley, Christine Cummings, Phoebe Florance, Angela Gehring, Philip Goad, Mitchell Grant, Mandy Hanegraaf, Lucy Heath, Anna Hyland, Robyn Ho, Kimberley Hui, Simmone Howell, Kait Jordan, Hannah Joyner, Yowhans Kidane, Cormack Kirby, Isaac Laker, Kerry Landman, Madeleine Lo-Booth, Carrie Lu, Tania Mariani, Vicki Mclean, Meher Nishchal Bahl, Jesse Oehm, Corinna Orscheg, Phillip Pender, Joan Poon, Jonathan Russell, Anna Scollo, Preeti Shukla, Carol Shumba, Brigit Skilbeck, Tania Hardy Smith, Jean-Marc Tang, Charlie White, Sam Willis and Jing Zhang (apologies to anyone we have missed).
We want to especially acknowledge Kerry Landman’s dedicated leadership of the Research and Collections team and project, and Jonathan Russell’s unwavering, committed assistance and support to her and the project throughout – both have been involved since its inception in 2014. We thank Kerry and Jonathan for co-curating the Walsh Street Archive exhibition held at Walsh Street from 25 July – 4 August 2022, and also Professor Philip Goad for providing guidance and expertise.
Thank you to the Boyd Family – Amy, Mandie and Penleigh. We are grateful for your invaluable knowledge about life at Walsh Street and your generosity in providing context to items in the archive.
Thank you to Lynda Bernard and Amelia Marra from AMaGA Victoria for their advice and assistance with the Victorian Collections management system. We also extend our appreciation to Restore Conservation Services for imaging parts of our archive.
Volunteer
Our Research & Collections volunteers meet regularly at Walsh Street. If you are interested in joining our volunteer Research and Collections team, please contact us at information@robin.org.au.
Photos: Mainroad Property Marketing.
