page_title: Architecture of Sydney
section_title: 1850s – Victorian architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Sydney / 1850s – Victorian architecture
caption_attribution_description: Sydney Town Hall 2
context_page_description: The architecture of Sydney, Australia’s oldest city, is not characterised by any one architectural style, but by an extensive juxtaposition of old and new architecture over the city's 200-year history, from its modest beginnings with local materials and lack of international funding to its present-day modernity with an expansive skyline of high rises and skyscrapers.
  Under the tenure of early nineteenth-century Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the works of Francis Greenway were the first substantial buildings for the fledgling colony. Later prominent styles were the Victorian buildings of the city centre created out of local Sydney sandstone, and the turn of the century Federation style in the new garden suburbs of the time.
  With the lifting of height restrictions in the post-World War II years, much of central Sydney's older stock of architecture was demolished to make way for Modern high rise buildings – according to Singh d'Arcy, in The Apartment House, "From the 1950s onwards, many of Sydney's handsome sandstone and masonry buildings were wiped away by architects and developers who built brown concrete monstrosities in their place.
context_section_description: Victorian aspirations for respectability, formality, and materialism were compounded in Sydney by colonial yearning for respect, which in architecture resulted in the copying of imported styles, mostly from Great Britain. New wealth and rapid increase in population came with the 1850s gold rush. A new middle class emerged who wanted homes, cities and public buildings that matched their new wealth and social status and construction of high quality buildings such as churches, commercial and public buildings, and ostentatious houses of the wealthy boomed. On the other hand, housing for the working and lower middle class remained substandard and the prevalence of unhygienic and slum conditions grew.
  In the 1860s, architecture in Sydney focussed more on style than consideration of the building's function in relation to its setting and climate. An increase in Italian immigrants influenced residential construction which manifest itself in a growing popularity of surface ornamentation, plasterwork, squared massing,  arcades and loggias, and square towers. The simplicity of early colonial architecture was replaced by decorative facades using ornate cast iron with higher ceilings featuring elaborate mouldings.
  Major new civic buildings included Edmund Blacket's Main Quadrangle Building at the University of Sydney completed in 1859. James Barnet was Colonial Architect from 1862 and was Sydney's most prolific Victorian architect. His buildings included The Australian Museum (1864), Customs House (1884), the General Post Office (1890), the Lands Department Building (1881 & 1893) and the Chief Secretary’s Building (1878). He also was responsible for many suburban post offices, court houses and other civic buildings. Most of Sydney's public buildings from this time, including Barnet's, were built from 
  local stone and were a variety of styles including Italianate, Gothic, and neo-Classical with heavily worked façades. The early 1860s saw a renewed interest in the use of brick. Mass production of bricks commenced in the 1870s, although hand production continued until the end of the 19th century.
  By 1880, two thirds of the population had been born in Australia and a growing nationalism viewed the country as paradise compared to the Old World. With a booming economy, Australians sought to prove they could compete with the Old World–during this time many Australian department stores, coffee houses and grand hotels were constructed. Most of them were built in the larger cities of Sydney and Melbourne, and some still stand in Sydney today. Anthony Hordern & Sons and the Australia Hotel did not survive, however the Grace Building (The Grace Hotel), completed in 1930, is leftover as an example from the flourishing period in Australia that ran from the 1880s until the late 1920s. Built in the then relatively new art deco style, The Grace was "designed to use the first two storeys in the manner of a department store. The remaining storeys were intended to provide rental office accommodation for importers and other firms engaged in the softgoods trade".
caption: Sydney Town Hall, in Second Empire style
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