Sydneytecture

not Moscow. Enmore

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.

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.

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 charac...

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.

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

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. 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.

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.

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

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.

A quick cloud front blew in briefly last night at dusk. [you can click for big] and just as quickly left.

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.