Museum Station 1933

This picture should enlarge for clearer detail. I always open the image link in a seperate tab, and if necessary then right-click for View Image, to get the full original. Google always seems to condense images otherwise (boo).

With Mark Foys across the road (now the Downing Centre Courts), and Snows and Horderns department stores just down Liverpool Street, and Buckinghams and McIlwraiths up on Oxford, this was a very busy shopping area in its day.

The 1870s church in the centre-right burnt down a few years after this photo was taken, the land sold and retail premises built in its place. Everything along the right then came down in the late sixties, except the Paris Theatre (designed by Burley-Griffin in 1914) - the short white building at the far-end of the block - which lasted until the early eighties. Across the road from it, the Burdekin pub (with the Tooths KB sign), itself a Federation-style replacement for the original Victorian one that was demolished when Oxford street was widened in 1916, would soon be replaced with the current art-deco version.

The elevated control booths, one on the near left and another up further next to the Paris Theatre, were tram controllers for the track intersections. Here's an original diagram from one at Taylor Square showing what they did.

And more recently -