{"name":"Commemorated by","target":"Royal Australian Historical Society Green Plaque 25. School of Arts","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'><\/span>"},"date_start":null,"date_end":null}
{"name":"Teacher","target":"Paling, William Henry","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'><\/span>"},"date_start":null,"date_end":null}
{"name":"Committee member","target":"Riley, Alban Joseph","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'><\/span>"},"date_start":null,"date_end":null}
{"name":"Committee member","target":"Neitenstein, Frederick William","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'><\/span>"},"date_start":null,"date_end":null}
{"name":"Founder","target":"Cape, William Timothy","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'>1833<\/span>"},"date_start":"1833","date_end":"1833"}
{"name":"Committee member","target":"Douglass, Henry Grattan","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'>1851<\/span>"},"date_start":"1851","date_end":"1851"}
{"name":"President","target":"Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone","target_text":null,"date":{"#markup":"<span class='date'>1855<\/span>"},"date_start":"1855","date_end":"1855"}
Founded in 1833 on the model of Scottish Mechanics' Institutes, the SMSA sought to provide further education for working men through lectures, classes and a library. Many of Sydney's foremost intellectuals, inventors and innovators were associated with it, and it influenced the development of both the University of Sydney and technical education in New South Wales. It still provides a library and lectures to Sydneysiders in 2009.
Built as the library, hall and rooms for the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, and long a centre of cultural life in Sydney, the Arthouse Hotel was converted into a pub in the 1990s.
