History
In 1908 the Prahran Mechanics' Institute established the Prahran Technical School which operated on the High Street site from 1915 until 1971. In 2004 the High Street building was included in the Victorian Heritage Register for its architectural and cultural significance.
Today Swinburne University of Technology partially occupies the buildings under the auspices of a lease granted to the Victorian Minister for Education in 1947 for the accommodation of the Prahran Technical School. The lease was for a shilling per year for a term of 99 years.
Since 1980 the library collection at Prahran Mechanics' Institute has specialised in the history of Victoria and, as the only lending collection of its kind in Australia, is a valuable resource for researchers.
In the long tradition of mechanics' institutes around the world, Prahran Mechanics' Institute runs a programme of educational activities including free public lectures. It also operates Prahran Mechanics' Institute Press, a not-for-profit publishing service for authors of works about aspects of the history of Victoria.
On 26 May 2009 Keith Dunstan OAM accepted patronage of the Institute.
Read more about this topic: Prahran Mechanics' Institute
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)