Sydneytecture

corner of oxford and pelican

2008-12-30T18:42:00.001+11:00

The original of this photo was in the national archives, so faded in detail that it seemed to be just an ornate Victorian pile. As I pass the spot every day, I'd wondered why such a large building in a prominent location had been replaced by something much smaller and plainer.

Then the penny dropped. It hadn't been replaced, but demolished to widen the street. The simpler building is actually its neighbour.

But the horror set in once I'd cleaned up the image. It turned out not to be an overdone ornamental Victorian, but an extremely rare, brick and sandstone, Federation Beaux-Artes, and, due to similarity in style, perhaps by the same architect who designed Newtown Post Office (below).

In the top photo, it's 1968 and the highrise Koala Inn, which replaced the burned-down 1920s Buckingham's department store, is nearing completion. Pelican Street became the main access for the hotel, hence the widening. The Koala was converted into apartments a few years ago using the same structural skeleton, but which made the street semi-redundant.

Postscript: Only the facade of the two-storey neighbour remains, as the original buildings behind it (in the b&w pic) are Victorian terrace houses with pitched roofs, dormer windows and chimneys. They were most likely residential houses, but as Oxford Street burgeoned, were later converted to shops with the addition of the facade. Yet only that survives, with a heritage order and Hungry Jacks sign.

top of the cross

2008-03-26T19:36:00.010+11:00

The intersection of Victoria Street and Darlinghurst Road, early 60s.

In the centre is the old Kings Cross Theatre, demolished for the highrise Carlton Crest Hotel a few years after this photo. A little to the left is the Kings Cross Hotel (the taller one), now a nightclub complex. The rows of buildings along the left made way for the King Cross tunnel, and those on the right went down at the same time, making way for the highrise Kingsgate Hotel.

The Philips sign (top right) is sitting atop the Mayfair Hotel, and the Coke sign later, famously, got on steroids - (all photos enlarge)

Below, a closer shot, early 50s, though the 'after' version is taken a couple of floors lower given that the building from which the original was taken (the white one in the first photo above) no longer exists.

The tram has swung out of Bayswater Road on the right and is making the dogleg into William Street (Look, no lane markers). This route was the main arterial for city access from the northern Eastern Suburbs, and one day traffic pressures would become too great ...

And so the Kings Cross Tunnel had to be built. Below is 1940s William Street, heading into the city at top. Bottom right is Bayswater Road, with Victoria Street and Darlinghurst Road cutting a giant X through the centre of the pic - which, incidentally, is where the Cross comes from in Kings Cross (though until 1905 it used to be called Queens Cross, but, in a seemly interval after Queen Victoria's death, was changed due to confusion with Queens Square in town. As you would.)

Same geographic location in Google Earth today. A great swathe of the area went down for the tunnel around 1971. It starts just under the pink arrow, which is where I took the 'after' shots above and which shows their direction. For non-Sydneysiders, the black blobs are shadows from modern 30-40 storey apartment blocks (1 Horizon [a vacant block in the old pic, later ABC Radio], 2 Kingsgate, 3 Elan). The railway on the right went through a few years after the tunnel, and so the burgeoning East became connected to the city, at the cost of just a few hundred terrace houses and flats.

1 oxford street

2008-01-18T22:36:00.000+11:00

One for the queens. Today we know it as the longest running renovation site since Cheops Pyramid, but before that stood Reuben Brasch. It was a department store that survived the demolitions of Oxford Street's widening, and went through two world wars, but, like most of downtown Sydney's ornate Victorian buildings, couldn't outlast the archiocide (see - genocide, for buildings) of the 60's and 70's.

Another vintage view here, with an original, pre-widened, cobbled Oxford St.

oxford at taylor square

2007-12-02T21:20:00.003+11:00

Oxford St at Taylor Square, 1928. The place is jumping with commerce and merchants. It even had three department stores, long since gone. To do this gorgeous picture justice you really, really have to click on it. There's a couple of strong lads unloading Schweppes soft drinks at left, and ladies in cloche hats waiting at the precarious tram stop in the middle of the road, as vintage cars, trucks and horse drawn carts trundle by.

All the buildings above are still there, bar the one on the furthest left, McIlwains, which burnt down in the fifties. Although both the cupolas, on the Oxford Hotel, left, and the far building in the centre of the picture, were replaced by billboard hoardings mid century. Maybe I should have waited till winter to take this pic, when the deciduous trees don't obscure how relatively intact is the scene architecturally. But it's like most modern views these days, devoid of its former unique character. Now it's just a thoroughfare through a nightclub district, surrounded by apartments mostly full of young professionals who go to work early and get home late. There's no longer much opportunity for the street life and colour, or diversity of merchants, it used to have.

taylor square, darlo

2007-11-23T20:20:00.000+11:00

From a seriously rutted Oxford Street at Taylor Square, we're looking up Forbes St past the gaol that was still functioning at the time (which later became East Sydney Tech, and now the National Art School). It's 1870 (!)

On the culvert is a gas lamp, what's possibly a policeman, but I can't figure out the purpose of that thing that looks like an urn on a post. Too small for mail (or is it?), no spout for water, too grand for a hitching post. Any ideas? (click for the huge original.)

The modern view of the same site is obscured by an abandoned substation built after Federation, and of course Sydney's ubiquitous trees. The conversion to a square was made earlier this century, after the Eastern Distributor tunnel was completed directly underneath. And if you thought this photo wasn't taken in exactly the same spot as the first because the opposite corner is further away, during WWI Sydney Council demolished the entire northern side of Oxford St to make it a few lanes wider.

Map of what you're looking at:

st johns, darlinghurst road

2007-11-18T18:22:00.000+11:00

This evocative pic comes via a National Archives newspaper series about a 1928 celebrity wedding; a hyphenated groom and his bride I'd never heard of, but who'd attracted quite a crowd of middle-aged ladies prepared to wait in the rain outside.

Anyhoo, St Johns CofE, on the border of Darlo and Kings Cross, in a time when the former was somewhat down at heel and the latter bohemian, in the classy sense.

This picture captures one of the quintessential differences for those of us who grew up in Sydney pre-1980, and its contemporary version. The views. Great sweeping vistas of them, all over the place.

Now ...
Precisely the same spot, eighty years after, [ albeit a foot or two higher due to my stature.]

Today, trees form a universal barrier to Sydney's cornucopia of sublime panoramas and glorious history. Planted without foresight or design, council by-laws prevent any attempt to restrict their impact. They've not simply been allowed to take over, but have been actively encouraged.

Nowadays, every street has the same closed in, claustrophobic sameness, almost every window faces onto an expanse of foliaged block out. Where once the scenery gave its sense of place, when journeys were engaging passages by history, styles, and lives, they're mostly covered up now by a uniform, and usually undistinguished, hoarding of leaves and branches.

I'll be the first to say it. Urban street trees are boring, worthless, and amok.

george at king

2007-10-31T21:57:00.000+11:00

This evocative pic positively jumped out of the archives, did an arabesque, up tempo cha cha, swivel and point, and pleaded, "Blog me!". Do click on it for the full size glass-plate original to capture the real atmosphere of what's going on here. This is 1890s George St, when it was a genuine main road connecting the working wharves of Circular Quay to the rest of the industrial port city.

While the dome of the Queen Victoria Building is now obscured by Sydney's ubiquitous 1960s internationalism, the old building on the corner is the sole survivor in view. It's Victorian Gothic facade had an Edwardian makeover it seems, the textured sandstone and decorative entry simplified perhaps not long after the first photo was taken. It's also had two floors added on top, and the window pediments strangely swapped; triangular for curved and vice versa. It must have made sense at the time.

Zoom into the original to get an extraordinary essence of Sydney's dynamism in those days. You can almost be walking behind madam in a satin bustle escorted by hubby, or passing an extremely comely figure in a fitted long dress, or being eyed off by some superb muttonchop whiskers from under a bowler, atop a horsedrawn, open top double decker.

There are drays of wool bales, steam trams, a bloke on an early bicycle, and to the right is Robertsons bookstore, before it became today's chain of Angus and Robertsons. Do click on the original, it's worth it.

t&g building

2007-09-09T16:53:00.000+10:00

The T&G Building was an early Sydney skyscraper, on the corner of Park St. Here it's going up in the 1930s.

at right are street decorations for the Queen's visit in 1954.

And below is the 50 storey T&G Tower that replaced it less than forty years later.

aren't we lucky

the rural bank

2007-09-09T16:41:00.000+10:00

"If the primary activity of the nation was erection, improvement and expansion of buildings and land then, with few exceptions, the perceived or actual worth of the land was the only criteria by which it could be judged, and if the buildings were in a vernacular that was of another place and time, and were worth more demolished than standing then down they came."

Garrett, P. ‘National Estate or Real Estate: Crunch Time for the Harbour City’, 1999 http://www.nsw.nationaltrust.org.au

The Rural Bank Building in Sydney's Martin Place was a granite and sandstone shrine to high art deco.

check out those friezes in the main banking chamber. The lift lobby was detailed in brass trim.

Even though it's architectural value was fully recognised and there'd been a campaign to save it, in 1985 it was pulled down to make way for this. I remember I went for a final sightsee, like many others, just weeks before.

All that I know of that's left of it are the rams' heads from the old exterior (it was the Rural Bank), which were saved and stored in the new building.

more pics here

pre-modern and modern

2007-09-09T16:36:00.000+10:00

These pics are from a NSW museum exhibition series. The one above is a Redfern family evicted in 1934. That's their "meagre possessions" on the footpath. He was a Gallipoli vet.

This was taken only twenty four years later, on a new Dundas estate, but it may have been another world in comparison. It gives a sense though behind the twentieth century enthusiasm to demolish the drear and drudge of the past and concrete it over with sparkling new modernity. Yet so much was successfully eradicated that what's left is coveted.

117a Enmore Road

2007-09-09T16:30:00.000+10:00

Mystery: The Archives say this is Enmore Rd. The sign above the door says 117a.

This is 117 and 119 Enmore Rd today, part of a late Victorian triple frontage. There is no 117a, and there's no side lane. Either the road's been re-numbered, which wouldn't be likely on a main thoroughfare after 1930, or there's a document error. So, it's 117a where?

emden gun

2007-07-13T21:28:00.004+10:00

Everyday, to and from work, I pass the Emden Gun in Hyde Park;

"The four inch gun from the German ship Emden is mounted in the South East corner of Hyde Park, Sydney. The Emden was destroyed by the HMAS Sydney off the Cocos Islands in 1914."

"The German cruiser Emden, having escaped from Kiao-Chau before the Japanese and British war vessels had completed their investment, conducted a raiding cruise and destroyed many British trading vessels, and actually bombarded Madras. As is shown in the message of the Secretary of the Admiralty, however, the Emden was hunted down on November 9, at Keeling Cocos Island, and destroyed.

The Secretary of the Admiralty made the following announcement on November 11, 1914:-
The captain of the Emden (Captain von Muller) and Prince Franz Joseph of Hohenzollern are both prisoners and unwounded. The losses of the Emden in killed are reported unofficially as 200, with 30 wounded; no further details have been received." link

This ghostly image of the gun, looking straight up Oxford St around 1920, took a bit of enhancing just to get it to this degree of sorta clarity.

Today, that same figtree just a little broader in girth from age (but aren't we all).

sydney town hall

2007-07-01T16:35:00.000+10:00

It looks like there may be a lightage of posting till Wednesday, but do let me leave you with this fab view of 1890s Town Hall, taken with one of those magical old cameras that could get in a massive panorama where a modern one needs a series of shots to achieve.

This image enlarges to the 1200 pixel wide original, with glass plate clarity and depth of detail.

At the bottom right, a carter with a load of long planks has stopped to water his horse at a trough, at roughly the spot where the huge statue of Queen Victoria will be parked a century later.

In the late (19)80s, developers restoring the derelict Queen Victoria Building tried to source a statue for its small plaza opposite Town Hall. They could only find three world wide; Sydney already had one, at Queens Square; another was somewhere in India, but its townsfolk were reluctant to part with it; so ultimately one was had from Ireland, which, if memory serves, was oddly on the Eire side (do correct me if you know better.) Its bulk is visible in the contemporary shot at the bottom of this post.

Many modern Sydneysiders, grown up in the slick, service economy, don't realise the city used to be very industrial, with a layer of grime and polluted waterways. In the background here, a factory chimney not uncommonly spews dark smoke, - at Darling Harbour.

And a hansom cab stopped in the future bus lane, looks like he's about to get a fare. Maybe he's sussing out if the passenger's carrying plonk, I hear it's an age-old problem.

Then, (taken from a George St rooftop) ...

.. and now. From practically the same spot, now the centre windows of Kinokuniya. The notable difference is the famed Town Hall steps, popular meeting spot for ... ever, which used to be a port-cochere. It made way for the subway entrance in the 1920s.

disappeared arcades

2007-05-20T21:31:00.000+10:00

In a long-gone era, ordering a milkshake at a milk bar was the same as grabbing a coke buddy from the drinks fridge today, only ceremonial; steel container, in went milk, ladle of syrup, ice cream scoop, inserted under the beater, poured into cardboard cup, straw, twenty five cents please. Though that price was in the burbs. In the mid seventies, I was once mortified by the fifty cents charged for one at the Angel Arcade. But you had to expect to pay a premium downtown.

Like most of Sydney's old shopping arcades, - the Imperial, Royal, Piccadilly, Victoria, Crystal Palace, Her Majesty's, - the Angel was eventually levelled, in its case winding up as Sydney's Recital Hall.

I was moved to post this after coming across a ghostly image of the original Imperial Arcade in the national archives. It went down in 1962, and all my life I'd never before seen a picture of what it was like. I've had to photoshop this copy to maximise a dearth of detail.

Going by its style and size it's late Victorian, no doubt contemporaneous with Sydney's solitary arcade survivor, the Strand; the latter, funnily enough, listed and restored as a heritage building in the same decade that all the others were demolished.Even though further searching turned up few results, I did get one of the original Imperial's interior. Again, I've enhanced as much as possible a very faded and detail-poor image.

A magnificent Victorian Romanesque colonnade, timber (typically cedar) and plate glass shopfronts, mosaic tiled floors, iron and glass vaulted roof its full length. Thank goodness modernism came along to replace it, otherwise we could have been left with something like this...

... the aforementioned Strand Arcade, which sits opposite and just a few doors down.

Today's Imperial is that concrete soviet horror below right, doing such a happy job of blending with the streetscape.

As a reference point for what could have been, this is the Strand's exterior today,
Handily, I have a pretty rare 1950 street directory that shows some of the downtown arcades, tramlines, and laneways which no longer exist. The chic coffee shops of Rowe St made way for Sydney's highest office block, Her Majesty's Arcade went for Centrepoint and its even higher needle, and the Royal Arcade ...

... ah, the Royal. Check out this 1890 bounty of classical Victorian. It's as stunning as the QVB.

It even dog-legs. I was bowled over when I first saw this, as I'd only ever heard it referred to in passing as 'the old Royal', like it was no biggie.

The new Royal was a split level maze thrown up, not so figuratively, under the 1972 Hilton erection. Like so,

Seriously, the new Royal's two-level dual aisles, accessed between them only by escalator, is behind those ramps. 70s modernity spat at horror. However, The Hilton underwent major renovation recently, so now we can say, in all truthy gravity, that the Victorian dog-leg beauty you saw above is now no more than - a hotel driveway. Just a driveway.

Those last three photos of the same, central location over a century make an interesting sequence of styles; traditional, modern, and post-modern. They also well reflect social changes in Australia too, from parochial close-knit community, to forward-looking internationalist, to been-there-done-that multi-culti consumerist.

Today, the Strand Arcade is downtown Sydney's only remnant of pre-BTDT consumerism.

darlinghurst courthouse

2007-04-07T22:38:00.000+10:00

This then and now turned out a bit of fun as Google Earth ended up being deployed to locate the artist's vantage point. It's 1845, not long after 'transportation' had ended, the Gold rush is still years away, and we're on a dirt track that leads past the new gaol to the recently built army barracks at Paddington.

One day it will be called Oxford St.
The courthouse was expanded in time for the 1888 centenary, but the original building is still in there.

This is the full painting, and its accuracy is proven by modern technology. As the view is now built out, Google Earth in 3D showed the alignment matches.

taylor square

2007-04-07T16:50:00.000+10:00

When I found this ancient archive pic of Taylor Square I couldn't resist doing a then and now; - hey. it's my neighborhood. This is horse and buggy, highly colonial 1870. That lovely old Victorian bank in the middle would probably have gone in the major road realignments around World War 1. In case it's not obvious, we're standing outside the courthouse looking up Bourke St.

A little photoshoppery follows. [all pics enlarge]

bride of frankenstein

2007-02-10T20:51:00.000+11:00

Serendipitously, I came across this picture by chance during an archive search on another topic. It reached out from its now completely alien era, with that glass plate clarity of an anonymous bustling street, and candid faces caught in a stylised moment. It was too evocative to resist.

The National Archives original of this picture (which is linked to the big one above if you'd like glorious diorama full-size) was simply titled 'Bride of Frankenstein, 12/7/35'. Fortunately, I recognised that ancient, now very extinct, streetscape in the background. So naturally, I delved..

I think I was most moved by the kindness and innocence on these peoples' faces. It's pre-war and a time that's still pretty much pre-mass production, so really not that much removed from the Victorians' civility and propriety. The reduction of human dignity and march to barbarism is decades away. Here, society is still bonded by trust, dignity, and respect.

This was my grandparents' era, so the social connection with how these people thought and lived is perfectly familiar from my own growing up. In those decades to come, the younger ones here will be sporting crazy-pattern polyester pant suits or powder blue safari shorts with long socks, while mentoring spotty, greasy haired teens with sustaining morality like, "you can always bend down and pick up nothing", or "if you want to interest a boy, walk away. But look back."

Anyway, returning to the pic, why was this footpath so busy on July 12, 1935? Is it typical of downtown Sydney in those days? From stories I was told, probably. But what's going on here is a bit special, and without any more info than the date and title to go on, it took some deduction to figure out.

It's winter of course, and Dateandtime.com says it was a Sunday. The shadows are an overcast afternoon, the streetscape puts us in George Street's cinema strip, and we're all in our literally Sunday best. There's a poster on the rear wall advertising Bride of Frankenstein, and according to IMDB, 1935's the year it was released. So the trail's hotting up.

Weeks after I first found this pic, again by chance I came across its mate, or perhaps just one of a long lost series, as it was obviously taken very shortly after the first. In the new one, a car has drawn up to the kerb, and most of the crowd are looking at it. On closer inspection, it seems perhaps what we have is some very early PR hype.

The grand limo is beribboned in wedding car style, it's just arrived at a cinema screening the newly released 'Bride of Frankenstein', and there's a crowd gathered on the pavement outside. Clouseau, what do you think's going on?

Clicking on the image of the "Monster's Mate" above will give you a look at how that 1935 scene outside appears in 2007. It may disappoint.

I'm uncertain of this cinema's original name, as it's had many incarnations over the years. It's now just a shell for a complex of snack shops, bars, and a language school, but in the early 80s I used to know it as Maxys, when the auditorium had been converted to a roller rink. I'd go with friends after work on Thursdays for the gay roller disco night. IMMENSE clean fun! [Hm, - 1980s, gay, disco, and roller, in one para. Do I rock?] It still had the original opulent decoration then, of which there's just a sad remnant left in the foyer of the present McDonalds franchise.

Not so evocative anymore. Just a relic of something that was wonderful for a long time to a lot of people, now just very gone.

pitt st mall

2007-01-16T22:39:00.000+11:00

Pitt St, Sydney, December 1935. Townsfolk watch a fallen tram line being repaired in Sydney's main shopping street.

Same place, Jan 2007. Marketing opportunities respond to corporate strategies.

(pics enlarge beautifully)

william street - 'top of'

2006-12-21T22:42:00.000+11:00

I bet no Sydney readers would have guessed this is how William St looked before the tunnel was put through. This is circa 1966.

And this is a perfect match, taken in exactly the same spot today.

To get the match right, I found the position of the original median strip from where to take the photo, and aligned the view with the only buildings that remain; there's only three of them which I've blocked in white on the left in the image below.

I reduced the old pic to half transparency and laid it over the modern one, then scaled and cropped it until they were perfect twins, only forty years apart.

[By the way, most pictures on Sydneytecture enlarge.]

the mayfair hotel

2006-12-06T21:17:00.000+11:00

This striking piece of high Art Deco / Bauhaus was a complete mystery when I came across it by chance in the National Archives. For such a knockout it didn't even register a bell among decades of my familiar background buildingscapes, but some googling later showed it to be the Mayfair Hotel in Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, right next door to the old Hampton Court.

These pics were taken when it opened in 1937, which probably accounts for the photo-friendly uniformity of the window dressing in this shot, and as far as I can tell these are the full range of images that remain of it.

The size of its elaborate brick crest is unique to Sydney buildings of this style.

Especially given there's three stories of it on top of a building with only seven floors.

In a city where street awnings were usually practical affairs that deserved no more budget than the purpose they served, here it was detailed as decoration to the sleek simplicity above. Shiny chrome, stepping up, down, and wrapping around the curve of the pavement.

This shot is taken from a council archive of 1960s roadworks, and looks down the street to the Mayfair at ground level. The sign Tooths Ales in the previous pic has become Public Bar in the one above.

The lobby and lifts are an opera of thirties style; polished rolled timber panelling, heavy carpet, sweeping lines.

The public bar. Tiled throughout, from the counter to the ceiling, as were all Aussie pubs until the seventies. Something to do with regulations introduced after a riot by soldiers marching off to WW1, history has it. But that's another post.

The saloon bar, in timeles timber and chrome. Later copied by sixties modernism and noughties minimalism.

I grew up in a time when interiors like that were common but had become passe. I remember wondering how anyone could have ever liked such laboured old-fashionedness. Now ...

Some researching leads me to deduce the restaurant was located on the first floor along the length of its east side. In the pic above, a vase sits on a pedestal in the rounded corner,

- as it does here, behind the actress Gladys Montcrieff snapped at lunch, though in this instance it looks more like an exotic headdress.

Next is the lounge, which I think must have been at the far end of the restaurant. More beautiful lines and polished timber, classy but modern.

So, from 1937 when it was the latest thing on the block

the Mayfair lasted only thirty five years, when it was removed

to make way for the brutalist Kingsgate Hotel, great slabs of grey concrete

which itself only lasted thirty five years before recently being refurbished as flats.

This shot shows the Kingsgate going up at the head of William St in 1972.

The entire block was levelled for it, but a Coke sign on one of the old buildings was replaced by the landmark that's still there today. Although that, too, will wait for another post.

restorations

2006-12-03T18:00:00.000+11:00

The Trocadero in Newtown was the first electrified public building in Oz. An abandoned Victorian ice rink, left derelict for decades by its owners the Anglican Church.

The church must have finally seen its commercial value, as it opened last summer.

Also last year, I posted that one of the 1920s lamps at the Anzac Memorial's Pool of Remembrance in Hyde Park had been attacked by vandals. Eventually the city council did a risk assessment and some impact reports before taking it away, and even more eventually it was redeemed. Aged patina intact and all.

And the neighbour's lovely old terrace that burnt down rather tragically.

was given a bit of lick and spittle

and scrubbed up all right.

All ends well.

union club

2006-12-02T22:15:00.000+11:00

From previous post

On an opposite corner stood the grand Union Club, with a lush, railed garden

Fortunately, red bricks were invented in the fifties, so down it came so the Wentworth Hotel could go up in its place

Yes, that's exactly the same scene. But all was not lost. The new Union Club was built just behind.

Here it is..

metropole hotel

2006-12-02T22:02:00.000+11:00

From previous post.

Down the incline of Bent St, on the next corner stood the Metropole Hotel, the grandest in its day.

It too was pulled down in the 'sixties so the CAGA skyscraper could go up, which in turn came down for the Governer Macquarie tower. Today, it houses the NSW state government offices, after they were dislodged from the demolished State Office Block in the previous post.

australia club

2006-12-02T21:44:00.000+11:00

From previous post

Directly across the road was the Australia Club

which was deservedly demolished in the early 'seventies so that this imposing architectural masterpiece could arise..

Here's an archive link that shows the ols club in historical context.

bridge street

2006-12-02T21:15:00.000+11:00

What a mess, an explosion. Guess where?

You'd swear it's in southern Wales or somewhere, but as none of the buildings in this pic remain I'll reveal it's ..
Bridge St, Sydney, taken from the corner of George St. The enlarged archive version of this photo is an amazing time capsule. The detail of the people and buildings is crystal clear. Comparing 'then and now' with the modern shot below (taken at street level), the ruin above is where the larger sandstone building stands at centre. The large building beyond in Pitt St above is where the high rise office block now stands, and the vacant block further up the street above, is now the historic 1880s Lands Dept. If you click on the pic above to enlarge it you'll see that the trees on the hill are actually in the garden of the long-lost original Government House. Also, I noticed that the hansom cabs wait in the middle of the street. Not sure what that's all about.

The same view today

darlinghurst deco

2006-12-02T21:04:00.000+11:00

Some of my favourite art deco buildings around the local area

The Mont Clair, my vote as the best apartment building in Darlo. I want to live here, specifically the unit at top right with the north west aspect and hill top panorama over the city. Please keep it under your hat, I wouldn't want to talk up the price or competition.
The Unicorn used to be a neighbourhood pub, went gay for a while, and is now the nice and ritzy Fringe Bar, with chandeliers and velvet draping.

What used to be the Albury, an iconic home of drag. Now it's a sports clothing shop, the interior just standard plasterboard and fluorescent uplighting.

Growing up, my cousins had the only 24 hour snack bar in Sydney, which was located in the service station next door to the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle. This was one of the shadiest pubs in Sydney, with a highly criminal clientele. Today it's just like any other renovated trendy pub.

The Portree, in Darley St. understated elegance.

It used to be a cinema and is now offices. Cleveland St.

anzac memorial

2006-12-02T20:57:00.000+11:00

A couple of archive pics at the opening of the ANZAC memorial in Hyde Park.

The road going off to the right is Oxford St. The buildings around the park here are now all high rises.

In our progressive multicultural paradise it's become necessary for the Memorial to place signs advising people not to sit on the stairs, and that it's an offense under some act. It's up to the state to give us our cues, apparently, why should these things be commonly understood? Still, I think I'd rather have people sitting than the signs.

As further indication of our progressive multicultural paradise, the Memorial now has security barriers and cameras around it after hours to ward off the tribes of little vandals that kept desecrating it.

city library

2006-12-02T19:36:00.000+11:00

This was the original city library on the corner of Macquarie and Bent Streets.

It had a large central glass atrium for natural light, which was copied for the 1910 Mitchell building, part of the later State Library which is now opposite. It was demolished in the late 60's to build an office tower that housed the NSW state government, the corner above became its forecourt plaza with a circular fountain. This in turn was demolished a few years ago to make way for the Lorenzo Piano tower below.

hunter & pitt

2006-12-01T10:22:00.000+11:00

On the corner of Pitt and Hunter stood a pretty classy bank; apologies for the photo quality.

And this is what they built instead. Go, modernists.

Ah, progess.

macquarie lighthouse

2006-11-19T21:29:00.000+11:00

Like all Sydneysiders I'd always thought Macquarie Lighthouse near the entrance to Sydney Harbour was built by Governor Macquarie around 1820 something. Turns out the original was poorly built during the early convict days and had to be demolished. So in the 1870s they built the present replica three feet to the west as a replacement. Who knew?

macquarie street

2006-11-07T20:45:00.000+11:00

From a Max Dupain photo taken around 1946 on the steps of the NSW Treasury Building in Macquarie St, opposite the Botanical Gardens.

Sixty years later from the steps of what's now the Intercontinental Hotel. That lamp's got its glass cover back, like most downtown streets now the parking spaces have been removed and the pavement widened - the original kerb's visible -, those date palms are still there just taller, and colour has been invented. Though without that foreground shadow and silhouette the composition's not so picturesque.

margaret street

2006-11-07T20:23:00.000+11:00

Anyway that kind of stuff in the post above just gets you exasperated, because there's nothing to be done but watch incompetents badly manage everything once beautiful down the proverbial gurgler. So here's some of that once beautiful history.

Sydney's Margaret Street at Wynyard, taken in 1870 something. It enlarges almost full screen.

It would have been one dark town here after sunset. No power, no lamps. In fact life would have had to have been pretty hard all round then, like dirt streets, no sewering, or refrigeration, and everything shut on Sundays. Though I expect it was a step up from what many had left behind.

In even earlier days than this, the park on the right was the parade ground of the original army barracks, when Sydney was a penal colony and the military guarded the convicts.

Same spot, just a few feet to the right and a century or so later. 1961 and an FJ taxi sweeps up the hill. That old Victorian building on the left is the same hotel with the same name as in the previous pic.

And the same scene today, literally. A perfect match with the first pic, even down to someone standing in the middle of the road. Though the only original thing left is the sandstone pediment of the park fencing.

Maybe in another century this will seem to have 'character' too.

GHOSTS 1

2006-11-04T17:19:00.000+11:00

Every city has its dwindling shreds of the past, largely unnoticed, ghosts of what was. These scenes stuck out against a uniform backdrop of contemporary steel, concrete and glass. They reminded me of the old Sydney that was still common in my childhood; where everything had been either put down or up by hand, pre prefab, rudimentary mechanisation had meant time had to be taken; and before gentrification had renovated it beyond resemblance.

Above, at Camperdown the silhouette of what looks like a typical sandstone terrace. Below, all that's left of an art deco building is its steps.

These cobblestones, herringbone bricks, and sandstone kerbing in Alexandria will soon be cemented over, as the factory they used to front is now apartments under construction.

BOND ST

2006-11-03T15:29:00.000+11:00

I'd looked at this photo many times and had just thought it another of Max Dupain's view shots, perhaps of a lunch rush in town. The only info I could find said it was taken from his studio around 1946 showing the corner of Bond and Pitt Streets, and I left it at that. By chance recently I took a closer look and realised there's more to it.

Something's happened with the car on an angle on the centre. Two police, in old-style white pith helmets, are talking to the driver through his window, and there are groups of onlookers on both corners. An accident? An 'incident'? Perhaps forever a mystery.

If you click on the top pic it'll take you to how the street looks today. It ain't pretty. The area would become the financial district and not one of those ornate, human scale, sandstone buildings remains.

academy twin

2006-11-02T21:09:00.000+11:00

We know it as the Academy Twin in Oxford St, one of the first art-house cinemas in Sydney. Gutted in 1970 to make two smaller theatrettes and a Greek community hall,

it used to look like this when it was West's

martin place

2006-11-02T20:28:00.000+11:00

Martin Place, circa 1905

The same place, 2005

zinks

2006-11-01T21:26:00.000+11:00

Zink's tailors in Oxford St is a generations-old institution.

The building is Federation-Art Nouveau, but they must have done a renovation at some point as the street-level facade is classic art deco. Beautifully classic.

The facade panels are a type of black gloss acrylic, though not bakelite, with chrome detailing and signage. It's a magic bit of style to visit.

ST STEPHENS, NEWTOWN

2006-11-01T15:25:00.000+11:00

St Stephens Church, Newtown, built in 1845.

This photo must have been taken after 1870, as that's the first date on the grave at right, below. The one at left is 1850.

and spooky today.

not moscow

2006-10-07T21:19:00.000+10:00

not Moscow. Enmore

lost

2006-10-07T21:18:00.000+10:00

town hall station

2006-10-07T21:12:00.000+10:00

Town Hall station has some pictures of George St during the subway construction. I took photos of them for a 'then and now', overlaying, scaling and cropping to make three consistent matches.

In 1929, the buildings going up here are; on the middle left, Gowings; middle, Murdochs; right, Woolworths.

By 1931 the buildings are complete, and the subway works have shifted.

This is the same view today, taken from the same window of what used to be an elegant Victorian bank, which was gutted in the eighties and converted to a fast food franchise.

The common point for the photos was the second floor corner windows of the Woolworths building - the only feature that remained constant.

enmore theatre

2006-10-07T21:01:00.000+10:00

Like most locals, I'd always thought the Enmore Theatre, venue for boutique and specialised acts, was a classic art deco landmark. I chanced across these pics below at the National Archive which show it's actually a renovation of an earlier Federation style.

darlinghurst 1

2006-10-07T20:57:00.000+10:00

Taran-tara. Welcome to Homoworld™, an inclusive division of Themed Lifestyles Inc

the city council feels that rainbow banners should be hung around Darlo to define it as "diverse"; rather like a dog marking its territory. The fact that 95% of the people you see on the street are straight is glossed over.
a vision in pink. Taylor Square from a different perspective

After a year of roadworks, if Oxford St's "beautification' is as much a success as the one at the Cross, prepare for tumbleweeds down the main drag. NEVER let bureaucrats decide how to 'improve' a bohemian district that's taken decades to cultivate. You might as well let developers take over. - Oh wait...

That row of terraces next to the pub in Liverpool St used to be quite an institution to those who knew about them. They were bordellos for ladies of the night who'd gotten long in the tooth, having been on the game for years. Slappers and boilers, think Magda Subanzki's character "I said love I said pet I said love", fag permanently in the corner of the mouth, home perm, Osti frock and beergut. They lived there, the front doors always open, at night the living rooms illuminated by red lamps and TV. Apparently they did good trade when the ships docked at Garden Island down the road.

Now the only original parts of the houses that's left are the dividing walls. They've been converted into salons and studios, nothing more than an annexe to the monstrous new apartment block behind (on right). That's progress, we're told.

carrington street

2006-10-07T20:55:00.000+10:00

Taken in early WWII at the bus stops in Carrington St atop Wynyard Station. Note the camouflaged Narrabeen double-decker. City workers from the Northern Beaches often used to board in town in those days, in boarding-houses that is, not buses, and go home on the weekends.

And the same scene today.

mitchell library

2006-10-07T20:54:00.000+10:00

Iconic Oz photograper Max Dupain took this shot of the NSW State Library in the winter of 1941 (you can tell the season by the long morning shadows)

Quite by chance, in the winter of 2006 this lady strode into shot

newtown square

2006-10-07T20:52:00.000+10:00

I came across this photo on the Picman database, the National Library photographic archive. It's from a small series taken at Newtown intersection opposite the station, which was titled 'compensation claim'. It seems someone had been run over on the pedestrian crossing in the early to mid 1960s and these were part of the insurance investigator's case.

I went past the spot today and took a shot. Thanks to the magic of photoshop, and my renowned graphics talent, if you click the pic you'll see how the scene looks today. I transposed both images and cropped and scaled until they were exact matches.

If you're wondering what that neon sign on the roof of the bulding says, it's 'Mercantile Mutual Insurance', the MMI that collapsed in the FAI fraud a few years ago.

big bruce

2006-10-07T20:42:00.000+10:00

Sydney's St Marys Cathedral, a tyke one, has at its northern end the largest domed light tower in the Southern Hemisphere.

Known as Big Bruce, in earlier days it was lit to alert the colony when ships arrived through Sydney Heads bringing immigrants and supplies from Mother England. Now its role is purely decorative.

Update: Oh hang on, it might just be a park lamp in the foreground.

penfolds building

2006-10-02T21:13:00.000+10:00

-----

What used to be the Penfolds building in George St is now the R.M. Williams building, with alterations and additions.

newtown scenes 2

2006-10-02T18:13:00.000+10:00

Here's another post of Newtown images.

part of Newtown Square, the main intersection.

Egan St at King St
King St at Queen St

the Victorian-era courthouse, next to the Brutalist-style cop shop, next to the Federation Beaux-Artes fire station

the old seminary, now used for Anglican programmes

Camperdown Park, with the spire of St Stephen's, my local Anglican. The park used to be the church's cemetery, but most of it was resumed in the 1940's.

the spire

the vestry

its vicarage, with spire behind

part of what's left of the old cemetery. The public's welcome to explore and even picnic there.

the communal grave for the 121 victims of the Dunbar shipwreck in 1857.

newtown scenes - after a storm

2006-10-02T18:01:00.000+10:00

A quick cloud front blew in briefly last night at dusk.
[you can click for big]

and just as quickly left.

newtown scenes 1

2006-10-02T17:54:00.000+10:00

This morning on my run I took some pics of the neighbourhood to share with those who may not know Newtown.

at the park

Georgina St

old workers' terraces

fig tree

lovely stonework

Wilson St terraces

Copeland Ave

winter wattle

abandoned, but not for long

on King St

looking toward the synagogue

I only noticed after posting these how harsh is the Aussie light, even early on a winter morning.

ghosts 2

2006-10-01T21:06:00.000+10:00

when refrigeration was blocks of ice. Stanley St.

sandwiched between two modern brick walls, the remnants of an ancient sandstone wall in Paddo

another era at Central

Until 1961, Sydney had the largest tram network in the world, when it was then ripped up and replaced by buses. Occasionally you can come across remnants of that era.

In Crown St, Darlinghurst, old rails are sometimes exposed by erosion, forty five years after the last tram ran on them.