Nauru House was once the tallest building in Melbourne, if not in Australia, with a height of 600 feet or 183 metres. Its architect was a man recruited to Australia as a builder’s labourer. Ernst Kesa was one of the refugees on the First Transport.
Ernst was the lead architect for other Melbourne landmarks. They include 50 Queen Street, the Southern Cross and Travelodge hotels and the Hotel Hilton, the YMCA Building in Elizabeth Street, the Trades Hall Council Chambers and the Gas and Fuel Corporation headquarters. He also designed Fiji’s Customs House.
By the time he was doing this, he had become a partner in the firm of Perrott, Lyon, Timlock and Kesa. The firm specialised in hotels and office buildings and, at its peak, had over 100 employees and offices in all States of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
Portrait of Ernst Kesa by DW Hughes
(Courtesy Erika Kesa)
Ernst’s road from builder’s labourer and, before that, Estonian art student, to senior Australian architect was not all smoothness, however.
When Australia’s first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, obtained the approval of his Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, to bring refugees from Eastern Europe to Australia, the country had an critical need for people who could help it back to its feet again quickly after the impact of World War II.
A total of nearly one million Australians had enlisted in the military during the War, out of a total population between six and seven million. In construction, those who remained in Australia had focussed on building military camps rather than new houses for families.
With the return to civilian life and the delayed marriage of sweethearts, anyone who could help construct new homes for new families was needed urgently. The need was so pressing that anyone presenting to the interviewers who had even helped put up a shed on the family farm was pulled to one side. They sent immediately for a medical to check that they were fit enough to become a builder’s labourer in Australia.
Though born on 15 January 1910 to a farming family in central Estonia, Ernst was more than a builder of farm sheds. After high school he undertook compulsory military training, which he left with a rank equivalent to second lieutenant.
Next, in 1931, he started as a student at the esteemed and still active Pallas Higher School of Art in Tartu for less than one year. The experience made him realised that, although he was a fine artist, he lacked the creativity of the best. He would be better off studying some form of applied art.
Bust of his brother, Elmar, by Ernst Kesa
Later in 1931, he moved to Brno, now in the Czech Republic, where he studied architecture in German at the Technical University. He completed his degree in 1936 with excellent results.
He joined the Estonian Ministry of Roads and Building where he worked under Alar Kotli, one of the most esteemed Estonian architects from the 1930s to the 1960s. Together with Kotli and independently, he was successful in many architectural competitions.
No other Estonian at that time had been awarded as many prizes as Ernst. Due to this success, he was able to join the Estonian Institute of Architects without the customary two-year probationary period. He was receiving many private commissions so he left the Ministry to establish his own practice.
He continued his interest in the arts, which led to an invitation in 1939 to become the Director of the Jaan Koort School of Applied Art in Tallinn. He started to re-organise existing programs and establish new courses.
The Soviet Union invaded Estonia in August 1940. Ernst lost his job at the School of Applied Art. German forces replaced the Soviet ones in June 1941 and occupied Estonia for the next three years. During this time, Ernst enrolled for doctoral studies in the Brno Technical University, in 1943, but the War did not allow him to continue.
The War and its aftermath also meant that those prize-winning plans never became realised buildings.
With news of the Soviet advance towards the west arrived in the later summer of 1944, Ernst would have reasoned that he had no future in Czechoslovakia or Estonia, having been fired once already by Communists. He left for Germany, where he reached the port of Lubeck. There he was able to help the Royal Engineers in the rebuilding of the historic city.
He heard that the Australians were taking migrants. He decided to go because he was told that he would be under contract to the Government for only one year. The Government decided to lengthen the contract period to two years while his ship was sailing to Australia.
It wasn’t until after they had arrived in the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, in early December, that Ernst and his fellow refugees learnt to their dismay about the extension of the contract period.
One of the English language teachers at Bonegilla remembered Ernst as “a charming, well educated man”. It was in Bonegilla that Kesa met his first wife, another English language teacher, Zoë Ritchie.
He was sent to pick fruit in Ardmona in January 1948. He returned to Bonegilla in early April, leaving at the end of the month for Iron Knob in South Australia to labour for BHP. He also had a job with a building firm in Sydney. In February 1949, when still under contract, he described himself as being employed by the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service in Melbourne, his work “being associated with the planning and supervision of hostels”.
The description was contained in a letter he sent to the Architects’ Registration Board of Victoria, asking if he could be registered to work as an architect in that State based on his previous experience. Ernst’s hope of quick registration must have been based on experience of this in Estonia.
Another Kesa achievement, the Travelodge Hotel, St Kilda Road, Melbourne
(Photograph courtesy Perrot, Lyon, Mathieson)
The senior partner in a Melbourne architectural firm, Lesley Perrott, had heard that one of the Displaced Persons was an Estonian architect with a Czech degree. In his letter of support for Kesa’s application, Perrott wrote that he had been “in fairly close touch with Mr Kesa” and that he had “also seen something of his work”. Perrott pointed out that, “The university at (Brno) was one of the well-recognized seats of learning in Europe”.
The Registrar told Ernst that the Board had exempted him from five of its examination subjects. He was still required to sit examinations for the remaining four subjects.
What followed was a classic example of many European refugees’ struggle to obtain recognition of their previous qualifications. Most gave up the struggle. Kesa might have too if he was not working with Lesley Perrott.
In 1955, Kesa wrote to the former Registration Board, by now the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, to inform them that he had been transferred interstate and had not sat for the examinations for this reason plus “certain circumstances of a private nature”.
Due to his work experience since 1949, Kesa sought exemption from two of the four subjects for which the Board had required examinations when it replied previously.
Perrott wrote to the Institute about this time to admit he had sought a meeting with the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, one year after Kesa arrived, to discuss his obligation to work for two years. Some of the first Baltic refugees had been released already from their two-year obligations to work in Australia after just one year. Perrott had asked Calwell to release Kesa.
He told the Institute that, “the release was not granted when the Government realized his service was being sought by an outside architect. They quickly drafted him to their own Department of Labour. In a very short time Mr Kesa experienced a series of promotions until he was in charge of all migrant hostels.”
While the Institute exempted Kesa from eight of its current subjects, it still required him to sit for examinations in three subjects. The results were a pass in Professional Practice with a mark of 69 per cent, but failures in both Specifications and Services and Equipment. One year later, he was told that he had again failed the Specifications examination.
Kesa’s reply to this latest knockback was it was not a true reflection of his abilities and knowledge. His current duties did not involve him in “a great deal of this specific type of work (but he had) so far been able to do this work to the satisfaction of everybody concerned”.
He offered the time limit as the main reason for his failure, given that he was sitting for the examination in a foreign language. He did not remark that this language was at least his third, after his native Estonian and German—and maybe Czech too.
He thought that he would not be able to complete the examination in a timely manner at his third attempt without first attending a course on the subject. This would be difficult for him for domestic reasons. One of the domestic reasons would have been his son, Peter, then just two years old. He asked the Board to either reconsider exempting him or allow him to attend for an oral examination.
This time, the Board’s response was to regret its inability to grant either of his requsts. However, it did offer an alternative: a meeting with one of the examiners.
The meeting seems to have been what Ernst Kesa needed. Early in 1957, the Board certified that he finally had passed that Specifications examination. Midway during the following year, the Board confirmed that it had admitted him to registration as an architect under the provisions of Victoria’s Architects Act.
Admission had taken only eight years and a half years after Ernst first applied.
He had able to continue working professionally with Lesley M Perrott & Partners because his Brno degree actually was in engineering and engineers did not require registration to work in Victoria at the time.
When Lesley Perrott retired in 1966, his son, also Lesley, took over as the senior partner. Ernst Kesa was offered the vacant partnership. The name of the firm changed to Perrott, Lyon, Timlock and Kesa (PLTK).
Ernst remained a partner until he retired on his sixty-fifth birthday, in January 1975. For all this time at PLTK, he had been known as “Crusher”, apparently a tribute to the time in 1948 he had spent with BHP. After retirement, he continued as a consultant to the firm.
Like the “flaxen-headed ploughboy” of the traditional English song, Ernst came a long way from his beginnings in rural Estonian province of the Tsar Nicholas II's Russia. His Nauru House, now called 80 Collins Street, is still number 24 on a list of the highest buildings in Melbourne, which now has more skyscrapers than any other city in Australia.
The 1940s, with World War II, flight to Germany and re-establishment in Australia, were the toughest decade in Ernst’s long life. They coincided with his thirties, when he was still young enough to show the resilience which enabled him to climb back from the edge of disaster.
Many former refugees have contributed greatly to Australia but the life and work of Ernst Kesa provide an outstanding example.
Sources
Anonymous, Eulogy, Ernst Kesa, 15.1.1910–15.1.1994.
Beaumont, Joan, Australian Defence: Sources and statistics, 2001,Oxford University Press, Melbourne, as cited in Enlistment statistics, Second World War, Australian War Memorial. viewed 5 January 2020, <https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww2>.
Carrington, Lois, A Real Situation: the story of adult migrant education in Australia, 1947 to 1970, 1997, Canberra, Lois Carrington.
Carrington, Lois Griffiths, personal communication, 2000.
Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Eestirahvuskulturi Fond, 1994, Ernst Kesa, 15.1.10-15.1.93 (sic), Sirji, (in Estonian).
Eesti Sõjamuuseum/Kindral Laidoneri Muuseum (Estonian War Museum/General Laidoner Museum) n.d., Ohvitseride andmekogu, Eesti ohvitserid 1918-1940 (Officer database, Estonian officers 1918-1940, in Estonian), viewed 5 January 2020, <http://prosopos.esm.ee/index.aspx?type=1&id=20092>.
Freymuth, Lydia, personal communication, 2003.
Kesa, Erica, personal communications, 2005 and later.
Kesa, Ernst, Letter to Secretary, Architects' Registration Board of Victoria, Re State Registration, 2 February 1949, in SLV MS 9454, Box 32.
Lillemets, Enn, Gunnar Neeme ja Ernst Kesa, email to A. Tündern-Smith, 1 July 2018.
National Archives of Australia (NAA): Department of Immigration; A434, Correspondence files, Class 3 (Non British European Migrants), 1939-50; 1949/3/7658 Attachment, SS General Heintzelman [Nominal Roll], 1947-1947.
NAA: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla (Victoria); A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; 126, Kepes, Jeno Matyas to Kilberger, Jindrich.
Oja, Urmas, Ernst Kesa – meie mees Austraalias (Our man in Australia) (in Estonian), 2008, Eesti Ekspress, viewed 1 November 2020, <https://ekspress.delfi.ee/areen/ernst-kesa-meie-me es-austraalias?id=27681171>
Oliver, Helen and Peter Hilyer, Perrott Lyon Mathieson, personal communications, 2005.
Perrott, Lesley, Letter to Secretary, Architects' Registration Board of Victoria, Re Application of Mr Ernst Kesa, 9 February 1949, in SLV MS 9454, Box 32.
Pihlak, Vella, personal communication, 2001.
Records of the Victorian Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, MS 9454, Box 32, State Library of Victoria (SLV), Manuscript Collection.
Salasoo, Tiiu Jalak, personal communication, 2000.
Tallinna Ülikooli Akadeemiline Raamatukogu, TLÜAR väliseesti isikud (Estonians abroad), 2003, TLÜAR (Tallinn University Academic Library), viewed 4 January 2020, <http://isik.tlulib.ee/index.php?id=1301>.
Tündern-Smith, Ann, USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 2008, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, viewed 5 January 2020, <https://www.immigrantships.net/v10/1900v10/generalstuartheintzelman19471128_01.html>, based on National Archives of Australia (NAA): Department of Immigration; A434, Correspondence files, Class 3 (Non British European Migrants), 1939-50; 1949/3/7658 ATTACHMENT, SS General Heintzelman [Nominal Roll], 1947-1947
Vilder, Valdemar, personal communication, 2001.
Wikipedia, 2020, Nauru House, viewed 6 January
2020, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_House>.
Zeugnis über die zweite Staatsprüfung aus dem Hochbau- und Architekturfache, Brünn, 22 Juni 1936 (Certificate of the second state examination in building and architecture, Brno, 22 June 1936, in German), in State Library of Victoria (SLV) Manuscripts collection, Records of the Victorian Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, MS 9454, Box 32, Membership subscription and general: 1946-1963.
Please contact Ann at tundern@yahoo.com.au if you would like the full-length version of Ernst Kesa’s life story.
