Sydneytecture

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 dyna...

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.

"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...

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.

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?

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 ...

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...