page_title: Scots Church, Sydney
section_title: New church (1929–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Scots Church, Sydney / History / New church (1929–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: Scots Church, Sydney, in the en:Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia. Compare historic photograph here: www.powerhousemuseum.com/imageservices/?p=630 This is as close as I could get to the original photographer's position.
context_page_description: The Scots Church is a historic Presbyterian church located at 42-44 Margaret Street on the corner of York Street, in the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Rosenthal, Rutledge & Beattie and built by Beat Bros in 1929. Since 2005, the 1929 building has supported a high rise apartment building on top of it, designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer.
  The 1929 building replaced an earlier 1824 church on an adjacent site - the first Presbyterian church in Sydney, founded by John Dunmore Lang - which was resumed and demolished for construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Wynyard railway station.
context_section_description: A complex series of real estate transactions, land swaps and compensation agreements enabled the Presbyterian Church to reconstruct their church and offices on the original but enlarged site, facing both Lang Park and Wynyard Park, with frontages to Jamieson, York, and Margaret Streets. An architectural competition was held in 1927 for designs for a new Presbyterian Assembly Hall and associated offices. The brief called for a building which would be a monument appropriate to the universal character and inherent nobility of Presbyterianism; a material consummation of the church's pioneer efforts in this new world of Australia, and an appreciation of the substance and vitality which actuate the church towards problems of the future. Twenty-seven designs were submitted in the first stage of the competition and were judged by Norman Weekes. The winning design was selected in May 1928 but it was not until April 1929 that tenders were called and work commenced on the site in July 1929. On completion the Church and Assembly Hall became a popular venue for both ecclesiastic and secular activities. The new church could accommodate 1,350 people, and tablets and monuments from the old church were incorporated in the new building. However, the decision to co-locate the church administration in the same building as the new church would cause numerous issues in the decades to come.
  By the 1930s, the church had suffered a period of declining congregations, during which it had, according to the church's interim moderator, "almost passed out of existence". In response, it instituted a policy of not having a permanent minister, but instead engaging ministers from Scotland for six-month terms. This was reported to have been successful in driving interest in the church, which in 1935 was described as having "the largest [collection], possibly, of any Presbyterian church in Australia". In 1956, Malcolm Mackay became the first Australian-born minister at the church.
  Throughout the decades following the construction of the new church, the church struggled with tensions relating to the fact that it did not control its own building. The original congregation trustees of the church had transferred control of the new building to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church on the provision that suitable arrangements would be made for carrying on the operations of the congregation. However, the result of the agreement was that the church had a limited right of occupancy over the building, and could only use it on specific days. This caused a long-running dispute across several decades, finally resulting in legal action and the church vacating the building c. 1970s. The congregation initially moved to the St Patrick's church, moving thereafter to several other buildings in Sydney.
  By the 1990s, there were questions over the building's future, and its owner, the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, initiated a series of redevelopment proposals. By 1998, when the last tenants were evicted, it was home to an 80-person congregation, which was forced to move to a church in Devonshire Street, artists and community groups, who were confined to the first two floors, with the upper storeys having been closed for some years. By the time of its eventual redevelopment, it had undergone several years of disuse and had been deconsecrated. In 1992, the church proposed to immediately demolish the building and build an 18-storey office complex, which met with strong council opposition and a trade union "green ban" and eventually did not proceed. In 1995, it was proposed to develop 13-storey office complex behind the existing facade, which collapsed when the intended tenant, the private training institute Australian Academy, withdrew from the proposal. Proposals continued throughout the remainder of the 1990s. In 2001, building owners the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales sold the then-disused church site to a subsidiary of developer Westpoint Corporation, retaining a strata title over the existing church building, which was to be retained in any redevelop
caption: The current church, pictured in 2008.
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