Paul Ritter

Paul Ritter (6 April 1925 – 14 June 2010) was a Western Australian architect, town planner, sociologist, artist and author. In his roles as the first city planner of the City of Perth and subsequent two decades spent serving as Councillor for East Perth, Ritter is remembered as a brilliant, eccentric and often controversial public figure who consistently fought to preserve and enhance the character and vitality of the central city district. Today he is primarily remembered for his involvement in preserving many of Perth's heritage buildings at a time of rapid redevelopment and preventing the construction of an eight-lane freeway on the Swan River foreshore. Ritter's later career was blighted by a 3-year prison sentence for making misleading statements in applying for export marketing grants. Early years Ritter was born in Prague on 6 April 1925 to Jewish parents Carl Ritter and Elsa (née Schnabel). In 1939, at the age of 13, Ritter was evacuated from Czechoslovakia to England via the Kindertransport. He graduated as a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Civic Design from the University of Liverpool. In 1946 he married fellow-graduate Jean Patricia Finch with whom he eventually had five daughters and two sons. From 1954 to 1964, Paul and Jean Ritter ran the Ritter Press in Nottingham, where Paul taught at the School of Architecture from 1952 to 1964, when the School moved to the University, and a new professor was appointed. Throughout their life, the couple would combine their talents, shared interests and idealism in an enduring professional partnership which they named 'The Planned Environment and Educreation Research (PEER) Institute'. Together they wrote and published their first book in 1959 entitled The Free Family, describing how they applied their beliefs about child-rearing to their own children.