What happened to Sydney?
The excitement of launching three books at the same time is over and done with. Now it's time to get on with book number two in the "Jack & Bea mystery" series - On Jacaranda Street.
I've been researching Sydney circa 1922/1923 for at least six months now. I kind of wish I lived in Sydney during the 1920s because it's a vanished city. So many wonderful examples of colonial, Victorian and art deco architecture demolished.
Because I was born and grew up in Sydney, there are a few buildings I remember before they came down (the Rural Bank of NSW being one). What I didn't know was that my city had a fabulous garden palace, built for the Sydney International Exhibition which opened on 17 September 1879. It burnt to the ground in 1882, but wow, what a magnificent sight it must have been. Only the gates to the palace remain (leading into the Botanical Gardens on Macquarie Street).
Garden Palace, Sydney International Exhibition building
But the building I've fallen in love with and SO wish I could have seen in person is the Henry Bull & Co Edwardian-style, six storey beauty that was on the corner of Market and York Streets in the early 1900s. For the Sydneysiders, yes that's the QVB building on the left (or the Queen Victoria Markets as it was known then). The dome of the Henry Bull & Co building was a water turret.
Old town Sydney was being demolished until the 1970s when Heritage Laws kicked in. It's unthinkable to me that there was discussion (beginning in the late 1950s) about demolishing the QVB and replacing it with a car park (I remember some woohah in the press about this years ago - might also have been plans for a civic square or a modern building, too). Shocker.
You can see more Lost Sydney buildings in this article from The Guardian.
Henry Bull & Co building