pitt st mall

-
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)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

disappeared arcades

-
Image
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 an image of the original Imperial Arcade in the national archives. It went down in 1965, and all my life I'd never before seen a picture of what it was like. I've had to photoshop these copies to maximise a dearth of detail.   Going by i...
Read more

t&g building

-
Image
The T&G Building was an early Sydney skyscraper, on the corner of Elizabeth and Park Streets. Here it's going up in the early 1930s. And here completed, though not for very long. Below 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. ...Further photos below I've since found. Do click on each image to enlarge it (then click on it again for its full size.) The details are great.
Read more

top of the cross

-
Image
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 nort...
Read more