page_title: Macquarie Street, Sydney
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Macquarie Street, Sydney / History
caption_attribution_description: Format: Albumen photoprint Notes: Fort Macquarie was built on the end of Bennelong Point, where the Sydney Opera House now stands. Completed by convict labour in 1821 using stone from the Domain, the fort had 15 guns and housed a small garrison. The powder magazine beneath the tower was capable of storing 350 barrels of gunpowder. The fort was demolished in 1901 to make way for the tramway sheds that occupied the site until the construction of the Utzon masterpiece. Find more photographs of early Sydney on Discover Collections - Sydney Exposed: &lt;a href="http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/society_art/photography/exposed/index.html"&gt;www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/society_art/photog...&lt;/a&gt; From the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales &lt;a href="http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au"&gt;www.sl.nsw.gov.au&lt;/a&gt; Information about photographic collections of the State Library of New South Wales: &lt;a href="http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/SimpleSearch.aspx"&gt;acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/SimpleSearch.aspx&lt;/a&gt; Persistent url: &lt;a href="http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=403205"&gt;acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=403205&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: Macquarie Street is a street in the central business district of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. Macquarie Street extends from Hyde Park at its southern end to the Sydney Opera House at its northern end. Apart from connecting these two major landmarks, the key government institutions of the state of New South Wales are all located on this street.
context_section_description: Macquarie Street is named after Lachlan Macquarie, an early Governor of New South Wales (in office 1810–1821). In the years since its founding in 1788, Sydney had developed organically, and by the early 1800s was lacking in major public buildings, and had a complex network of narrow streets. The supply of drinking water and waste management was also becoming an issue. Governor Macquarie initiated the construction of Sydney's first public buildings of any real permanence and set the boundaries of Sydney's grid of streets. With Circular Quay as the focus of this new civic scheme, Macquarie Street marked its eastern boundary and was designed as a ceremonial thoroughfare. The public buildings distributed either side of the street would both delineate and connect the civil and commercial town centre to its west with the green spaces (now the Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens) to the east.
  Among the public buildings commissioned by Macquarie, Hyde Park Barracks and St James' Church are two examples largely preserved from that era. The two buildings face each other across Queen's Square, at the southern end of Macquarie Street.
  Upon laying out the street in 1810, Governor Macquarie also carved out land from the Domain for the building of Sydney Hospital, with its frontage on Macquarie Street. Due to the reluctance of the British government to provide funding, the building contract for the hospital provided for the government to provide convict labour, and for part of the project costs to be paid in the form of rum import monopolies, leading to the name the "Rum Hospital". The hospital buildings were completed in 1816. Although called "elegant and commodious" by some commentators, architect Francis Greenway criticised both the design and construction. As the only major hospital in the colony at the time, the hospital took up almost the entire eastern frontage of the southern half of Macquarie Street. However, the hospital's capacity exceeded the needs of Sydney at the time, and almost from the start space in its two wing buildings began to be occupied by various government institutions. The northern wing building was occupied by the Legislative Council and Executive Council, and was eventually expanded to become the Parliament House for New South Wales. The southern wing building became the Sydney Mint, among other functions.
  After Macquarie, subsequent governors and (after the establishment of responsible government in the colony) governments continued to regard Macquarie Street as the axis of an informal governmental and public precinct. The State Library of New South Wales, the Colonial Secretary's Building and the old Treasury Building, (now part of the InterContinental Hotel) are examples of such institutions. At the same time, as an elegant tree-lined boulevarde adjacent both to the commercial city centre and the green spaces of the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, the street became Sydney's most pre-eminent residential address. In particular, the close proximity to Sydney Hospital and court buildings attracted leading barristers and doctors to set up chambers and surgeries along the street. In 1977, the New South Wales government built a new Law Courts Building at Queen's Square at the southern end of the street, to house the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the Sydney registries of the Federal Court of Australia and the High Court of Australia.
  Burdekin House, built in 1842 and described as the finest private residence in Sydney, was located on Macquarie Street. Its demolition became an early rallying point for the conservation movement in Sydney. St Stephen's Presbyterian Church was built in 1934 on the site of Burdekin House, after an earlier St Stephen's in Phillip Street was demolished for the creation of Martin Place.
  The Garden Palace, a grand building constructed for the 1879 International Exhibition of Sydney, was located on Macquarie Street, but was destroyed by fire only a few years later.
  The northern section of Macquarie Street was initially a path through the Governor's Domain leading to Bennelong Po
caption: Fort Macquarie in 1870.
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