Résumé

Apprentice, William Perkin and Son, Architects and Surveyors, Leeds, England, c. 1868-1875.

Draftsman, Basil Champneys, Architect, London, England, c. 1875. Champneys (1842-1935) was a significant English architect who often worked in the Gothic and Queen Anne Revival Styles for prominent buildings in London, Oxford and throughout England.

Draftsman, Charles Eastlake, Architect, London, c. 1876. Eastlake (1836-1906) was a very well-known Englsh architect, furniture designer and interior designer, whose book Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details (1868) was widely read during the 1860s and 1870s in England and the US. Between the years 1866 and 1877, he was also the Secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London, a position that would have provided him and his employees wide-ranging connections for professional advancement. Eastlake focused furniture design and articles on interior design, and executed few architectural commissions.

Draftsman, William Burges, Architect, London, England, c. 1876. Burges (1827–1881), like Eastlake, had a large reputation, and unlike Eastlake, Burges designed a large number of high-profile buildings across England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland between 1850 and 1880.

Draftsman, Architectural offices in New York, NY, and Boston, MA, c. 1876-1877.

Partner, Kysor and Hennessey, Architects, Los Angeles, CA, c. 1878. With this background working for renowned English architects, Hennessy would have found it easy to gain employment in most American achitectural offices of the time. He immediately came to the uncouth but growing town of Los Angeles in 1878 and found employment as a junior partner with the city's primary architect, Ezra F. Kysor (1834-1907).

Partner, Kysor, Morgan and Hennessey, Architects, Los Angeles, CA, 1879-1880. This arrangement lasted a short time, it is possible that Kysor was difficult to work with, as his earlier partnership with Walter J. Mathews (1875-1876) also lasted only a year. In any event, Hennessy chose to use his connections to forge a new future in Australia, like Los Angeles, also rapidly expanding.

Draftsman, City of Sydney, City Architect's Office, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1881.

Assistant City Architect, City of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, c. 1882-1884.

Partner, [Joseph I.] Sheerin and Hennessy, Architects, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 1884-1912. Joseph Ignatius Sheerin (1846-1915) and Hennessy became friendly with the local Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick Francis Moran (1830–1911) and through him obtained a number of commissions various buildings in New South Wales.

Partner, Hennessy, Hennessy and Company, 1912-1923. John F. Hennessy, Sr., practiced with his son, John F. Hennessy, Jr, for eleven years until the former retired in 1923.

Training

Hennessy received an education good enough to allow him to pass the Oxford senior local examination in 1868. He pursued an architectural apprenticeship in Leeds during the period 1868-1875. After this, he undertook academic study in London. His biographer Rod Howard said: "On completing his apprenticeship in 1875 he was awarded the Ashpitel prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a silver medal for measured drawings. While attending the architectural schools of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, he gained practical experience with Basil Champneys and Charles Eastlake, and the noted Gothic Revival architect William Burges." (See Rod Howard, "Hennessy, John Francis (Jack) (1853–1924)," in Australian Dictionary of Biography, published in print in 1983, online in 2006, accessed 03/29/2023.)

Coursework, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Architectural School, London, England, c. 1875-1876.

Relocation

Hennessy was likely born in Ireland, but spent most of his childhood in England. His parents migrated from Ireland to Leeds, Yorkshire, England, by 1855. He spent his childhood in this north-central industrial city, where he received his early education.

After completing his architectural apprenticeship, he relocated to London where he attended architectural classes at the Royal Academy of Art and worked in at least three architectural offices. Following his coursework in London, Hennessy traveled for a half a year in Spain, and then migrated to the US, where he worked in architectural offices in New York, NY, and Boston, MA.

Hennessy seems to have worked and resided in the McDonald Block in 1879-1880. (See Howard L. Morris and Thomas Wright Los Angeles, California, City Directory, 1879-80, p. 125.) It is quite possible that Hennessy did not like Los Angeles in 1879, as it lacked most cultural amenities he would have come to know in London or New York and it had had a very high rates of violent crime and murder during the period of Mexican govenment between 1821 and 1847 and early US supervision of the city until about 1880. In fact, crime rates rose during the early American years. KCET.org, in its article, "Murder in Old Los Angeles," said of the city: "The Los Angeles that reinvented itself in the late 1880s as an amalgam of sunny romance and real estate speculation had little use for its more recent past as a rough cowtown at the margin of the Old West. From the end of the Mexican War (1848) to the arrival of the transcontinental railroad and respectability (1876), Los Angeles drank, whored, brawled, lynched, and murdered." One historian calculated 489 murders to have occurred in the city between 1830 and 1874, of which 19 occurred during the Anti-Chinese massacre of 10/24/1871, alone. (See D.J. Waldie, KCET.org, "Murder in Old Los Angeles," published 10/17/2017, accessed 03/29/2023.)

For whatever reason, the architect chose to move on to another continent, Australia, where he arrived in 10/1880.

Hennessy resided in the Burwood suburb of Sydney, dying at his residence there of heart disease on 11/01/1924. He was buried in the Catholic section of the Rookwood Cemetery, Rookwood, Sydney, NSW.

Parents

His father was Bryan Joseph Hennessy, an "outfitter's manager" from Cork. (See Rod Howard, "Hennessy, John Francis (Jack) (1853–1924)," in Australian Dictionary of Biography, published in print in 1983, online in 2006, accessed 03/29/2023.)

The architect's mother was Ellen Swiney.

Spouse

He wed Matilda Silk (d.1898) of Delegate, NSW, on 02/25/1884 in Sydney.

Children

He and Matilda had four chldren, three daughters and a son, John Francis "Jack: Hennessy, Jr., (born 01/08/1887 in Burwood, Sydney, Australia-d. 09/04/1955 in Sydney, Australia). Jack Hennessy also became an architect, working with him in Hennessy, Hennessy and Company in Sydney as well as a firm of his own name.