Corridor of Power1
The Prestige and Promise of Insurance and Banking Architecture in Sydney
Michael Bogle
Front row left: State Bank, APA, Prudential Assurance and MLC buildings in Martin Place. 1939.
The Sun Bureau. State Library of NSW, PXD 930, box 8, no.22.
The topography of the state’s wealth can be mapped through the architecture of
Sydney’s Martin Place. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the financial
industry was lured by the architectural promise of a new George Street civic
square defined by the 1874 colonnade of the General Post Office (GPO) and its
stately neighbors across the New York.2 These august institutions formed the
precinct’s first cluster of prestigious architecture. In the coming decades,
distinctive groupings of financial industry buildings followed, each illustrating the
1
An illustrated version of this essay appears in Sydney’s Martin Place, A Cultural and Design
History, J. O’Callaghan, P. Hogben and R. Freestone, eds. Alllen and Unwin, 2016, pp.68-85.
2
An 1891 report on the development of the GPO site describes ‘a sort of plaza’ […]
‘ornamentally paved’, with the thoroughfare described as ‘Martin Place’. A statue of Sir James
Martin was also proposed. ‘Our New Post Office Street.’ Freeman’s Journal 14 February 1891,
p.10. ‘Post Office Place’ is used in ‘Street Muddling in Sydney.’ Australasian Builder and
Contractors News, 29 August 1891, pps.172, p.177.
1
ideals of power, prestige and architectural planning of their era. This essay
identifies and explores three architectural clusters selected for aesthetic
commonalities; the contributions and social detractions each made to the
emerging civic decorum of Martin Place; their impact on urban street life and the
role of their architecture in projecting the image and ideals of their commissioning
institutions.
The Banking and Insurance Industries
As Martin Place became the financial centre of Sydney in the 20th century, the
presence of the monetary system (compared to a barter or commodity exchange
society) became a defining element of modernism. There is ‘… a deeply
entrenched notion about the transformative potential of money […] [suggesting]
its presence is an index of a ‘modern’ society […].’3 As the city’s geographic
nexus of wealth and power through much of the twentieth century, Martin Place’s
banks and insurance companies presented an evolving architecture of Sydney’s
urban achievements.
The coalescence of banking and financial interests in and around Martin Place
accelerated when the Commonwealth assumed responsibility for the nation’s
postal service. Following Federation in 1901, the GPO was Sydney’s
communications hub for post, telegraphy service, the early telephone system and,
after 1905, ‘wireless telegraphy’ (soon to be called ‘radio’).4 Communications
provided access to the levers of power for the financial industry, allowing banks
and insurance companies to react quickly to global and national events.5 The
city’s businesses were first to install telephone links with the GPO’s telegraph
3
Money and the Morality of Exchange. J. Parry and M. Bloch, editors. Cambridge University
Press, 1989, pp.6-7.
4
‘An Act relating to Wireless Telegraphy.’ No.8, 1905, Commonwealth of Australia. ‘The
Postmaster-General shall have the exclusive privilege of privileges of establishing, erecting,
maintaining, and using stations and for the purpose of transmitting, receiving messages and
granting licenses for wireless telegraphy.’
5
The term ‘Assurance’ was favoured in the United Kingdom while North America preferred
‘insurance’. The latter term has become common usage.
2
office and by 1899, the Call Room for the Sydney Stock Exchange was across
Martin Place in the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York building at
no.14.6
Cables, telephony and evolving forms of electronic communication, however,
unknowingly accelerated the loss of institutional identity. In an open market
economy, Parry and Bloch observe ‘the impersonality and anonymity of money
[…] lends itself to the impersonal and inconsequential relationships characteristic
of the marketplace and even to a complete anonymity in exchange’.7 Architecture
was tasked to play a major role in creating brand identities for financial
institutions such as banks and insurance firms.
As a sister industry to banking, Australian insurance companies have held sums
easily exceeding the financial reserves of major banks. Australian insurance firms
from 1920 to 1940, for example, held considerably more cash reserves than all
the nation’s banks combined.8 Unlike banks, financial speculation with these
reserves in insurance businesses is rarely possible. ‘Insurers have a unique
responsibility to remain solvent in order to make good on what they have sold,
[that is], their promise to pay.’ 9 The insurance industry’s social, financial and
cultural obligations led to conservatism in developing and marketing their
corporate image and architecture commissions from insurance clients were
shaped by this prudence.
6
The visit of Alexander Graham Bell to Sydney also promoted local telephony. ‘Personal.’ Sydney
Morning Herald, 22 July 1910, p.6. See also R.M.M. Anderson. ‘How the Sydney Telephone
Exchange Started.’ (Letter to the editor). Sydney Morning Herald, 11 September 1915, p.9.
7
Money and the Morality of Exchange. (1989) J. Parry and M. Bloch, editors. Cambridge
University Press, pp.6-7.
8
1920-1940 figures drawn from N.G. Butlin. (1962) Australian Domestic Product, Investment and
Foreign Borrowing. Cambridge University Press, p.197. ‘Table 105. Dividends Paid, additions to
reserves and cash bonuses.’
9
F.V. Erickson, et al. (2003) Insurance as Governance. University of Toronto, p.102.
3
NATIVE MATERIALS AND NATIONAL PRIDE
The architectural terrain of lower Martin Place was largely formed by the banking
and insurance industries. Following the completion of the northern face of the
GPO, flower-sellers, Hansom cabs, footpath promenading and heavily
ornamented buildings such as the pedestrian-scale Bank of Australasia, Challis
House and the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York headquarters
surrounded the western precinct of this new boulevard. Their traditional stone
architecture drew from a centuries-old vocabulary of Mediterranean and
European buildings.
As the final stone of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York building
(today’s Colonial Mutual Life Building) was set at the corner of Martin Place and
Pitt Street, the northeast boundary of the immediate GPO precinct was
established.10 A decade later, the Bank of Australasia at 2 Martin Place defined
the northwest George Street corner. These two buildings formed the northern
boundaries of Martin Place from George to Pitt Street.
The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York building was the subject of a
design competition won by John Kirkpatrick of T. and H. Kirkpatrick. Work began
in 1893 and the final stone was set in late 1894.11 12 The first three levels of the
building were constructed in quarry-faced trachyte from a recently developed
quarry near Bowral with the upper stories in NSW sandstone (‘native stone’ in the
press). The original building described as ‘German Renaissance’ stood seven
levels above the street.13 Much was made of Premier Sir George Dibbs’
10
‘The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July 1894, p.3.
Report on final stone setting. Kirkpatrick’s firm later designed the Commonwealth Bank building,
Martin Place.
11
‘The New Building. Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.’ The Queenslander, 16
December 1893, p.1186-1187.
12
Robert Irving, et al. (2014) Sydney’s Hard Rock Story. Heritage Publishing, p.52-55.
13
‘The New Building. Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.’ The Queenslander, 16
December 1893, p.1186. Kirkpatrick and Raht were content to describe their work as
‘Renaissance’.
4
placement of the keystone by using a ceremonial trowel designed by the Hardy
Brothers jewellers engraved with a NSW waratah and fitted with a myall wood
handle.14 Sir George Dibbs spoke with pride of the Australian qualities of the
architecture.
‘I will simply point out to you that the erection of this fine building has been
carried out on rather unique lines. Of course we know the site on which
the building has been erected is Australian soil, but I may also tell you that
the whole of the material of which it is composed is also of Australian
production; the building has been put together by Australian labour; it has
been designed by an Australian architect and today, the keystone has
been put together by an Australian-born premier (Cheers).’15
Speeches and testimonials regarding Australia’s new links with the United States
followed with the Premier asserting his hope that ‘…the intertwining of the Stars
and Stripes with the Union Jack […] would long remain to show that England and
America were united in harmony and power…’.16
In 1926, the building was acquired by Colonial Mutual Life Assurance (CML) who
later extended the height in sympathy with the original design with four additional
stories designed by Hennessy and Hennessy.17 Further renovations were
undertaken in 1930 when the street level frontages were converted into retail
shops. In Martin Place’s first landmark building conservation project in 1976, a
19-level office building was inserted behind the façade of the original Mutual Life
Insurance Company frontage to the design of architects Joseland & Gilling.18 This
building survives with its 1926 alterations intact.
14
‘Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.’ [keystone set] Australian Town and Country
Journal, 31 March 1894, p.31.
15
‘Setting the Keystone of the Arch.’ Mutual Life Insurance of New York, 1894, p.17. (pamphlet)
16
‘Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.’ Evening News, 15 March 1894, p.5.
17
J.W. East. Australia’s first international architect. (Jack F. Hennessy Junior) 2013, p.26.
<http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:305314/UQ305314_Fulltext.pdf> 3 January 2015.
18
Gavin Souter. ‘Achieving Progress and Preservation.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1973,
p.6.
5
The New York invasion of Martin Place continued when the architect Edward
Raht was commissioned by the Bank of Australasia to design their principal
offices at the northwest corner of Martin Place and George Street. Despite its
name, the Bank of Australasia was founded in London in 1834; the bank survived
until 1951 when it merged with the ANZ Bank who then occupied the building. 19
Raht is described in press reports as the Chief Architect for the Equitable Life
Assurance Society of the United States. Born in Dillenburg (150 kms east of
Cologne, Germany), he migrated to the US in 1967 and began a New York
practice.20 He initially came to Australia in the early 1890s to design and
construct the Equitable’s Sydney office (opened 1895) and Melbourne
headquarters (opened 1896).21
Raht’s four-storey Bank of Australasia was constructed entirely in the muchpraised NSW trachyte, a hard, fine-grained igneous stone. The architect, boldly
dismissive of Sydney sandstone in the local press, favoured igneous stone, using
Victorian granite for his Melbourne Equitable commission and trachyte for his two
Sydney buildings. There was considerable pride in this NSW material.22 The
Sydney Morning Herald reported,
‘
Near enough to Sydney, at Bowral, there is an abundance of trachyte […].
It was left for a stranger to show us that trachyte […] can be fashioned into
a grand and imposing structure […]. ‘When I first came here’, said Mr.
Raht, ‘and had samples of this trachyte shown me, I recognized at once
19
‘Prospectus of the Bank of Australasia.’ Colonial Times, Hobart, 12 August 1834, p.2.
Paul Hogben. ‘Raht, Edward.’ Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture, Cambridge University
Press, 2012, pp.580-581.
.NSW AIA Architects’ biographical files. Raht was employed in the office of Richard Morris Hunt
and was his supervising architect for the 1873-1875 Tribune Building, Manhattan.
21
Edward E. Raht. NSW AIA Architects’ biographical files. p.4.
22
The history of the use of Bowral trachyte is surveyed in Robert Irving, et al. (2014) Sydney’s
Hard Rock Story.
20
6
that it was identical with the stones out of which the earlier portions of the
Cologne Cathedral were built…’.23
As a New York architect with experience in the construction of tall buildings, Raht
was also questioned on the new American phenomenon of the ‘sky-scraper’.24
The architect noted that a 33-storey building had recently been completed in
Manhattan but said, ‘ […] fortunately for the Australian states there is no
necessity to erect sky-scrapers here because there is land enough but in places
like the city of New York, […] the narrow boundaries of the city [Manhattan
Island] have been extended in the only direction possible…’.25
With the completion of the bank in 1904, the critical corners of Martin Place
facing the GPO were now secured with two street-level monochrome quarryfaced trachyte buildings.26 Although Raht had introduced colour through two sets
of paired Albury red granite columns flanking the principal and secondary
entrances, the stonework of the Bank of Australasia and the adjacent Mutual Life
Insurance Company of New York building provided a somber grey streetscape.
Architecturally, both buildings politely responded to the GPO’s colonnade with
their rhythmic Roman-arched bays and windows along their Martin Place
elevations but offered little opportunity for engagement with the passer-by. While
the buildings were carefully calibrated to the scale and character of the precinct,
they demonstrated the sobriety of financial power rather than public amenity. As
23
‘Some new buildings. An architect’s view.’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 1893, p.7. Raht,
whose original home was near this Rhineland city, is correct in his identification of trachyte for
an early section of the cathedral.
24
Raht had been Richard Morris Hunt’s supervising architect for the New York Tribune Building
(1873-1875), a ‘skyscraper’ topped out at 81 metres (267 feet). ‘Tribune Building. Historic
American Buildings Survey. HABS NY-5468.’ 1968.
<http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0435/data/ny0435data.pdf> 6
January 2015.
25
‘Interview with Mr E.E. Raht.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1901, p.8. Raht’s (or the
journalist’s) memory is faulty as the ‘Flatiron Building’ topped out in 1902 at 22 storeys. At that
time, it was Manhattan’s tallest building.
26
The Bank was occupied in 1904. ‘New Building Completed,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 9
February 1904, p.4.
7
Raht explained in a press interview in 1901 ‘… The two front elevations [of the
bank],’ he said, ‘will be architecturally designed in the severe Renaissance style
[…] suitable for that character of business […].’27
There was a collective sigh of relief when in 1906 Sydney University purchased
the remaining vacant lots between Raht’s Bank of Australasia and the Mutual Life
Insurance Company of New York structure and announced its intention to build.28
The Martin Place frontage was 48 metres wide (134 feet).29 ‘For years,’ wrote the
Evening News, ‘the citizens of Sydney have […] put up with unsightly hoardings
and nerve-racking posters […] opposite the General Post Office. […] All that has
been altered at last’.30
The University’s intent was an income-generating building designed by the NSW
Government Architect’s Branch under Walter Liberty Vernon with the work
overseen by Robertson and Marks.31 The building was completed in late 1907
and rentals proceeded rapidly with the NSW Government taking most of the
lower levels. Architects also took rooms here but most were at the affordable
upper reaches.32 Compared to the ‘grandeur’ of its neighbours, Challis House
offered considerable footpath activation with arcaded enclosures providing
opportunities for physical engagement with pedestrians and enticing window
27
‘Interview with Mr E.E. Raht.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 1901, p.8. Raht’s Australian
work was compared to the Romanesque Revival designs of H.H. Richardson by D.L. Johnson.
(2002) Australian Architecture 1901-1951, University of Sydney Press, (reprint), pps.13-14.
Johnson notes that this comparison was also made by Walter Liberty Vernon. Raht publicly
describes his Australian work as ‘Renaissance’.
28
In 1890, the City of Sydney resumed land around the post office to create the 30.5 metre (100
feet) wide street (known as Post Office Street), three lots across Post Office Street were sold to
Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York in 1892, four lots were sold to the Bank of
Australasia (1900) and the remaining four lots were sold to Sydney University (1906). Sue Rosen
and David Sheedy. (1990) Challis House, Martin Place. Conservation Plan, p.11.
29
‘Martin Place Site.’ Evening News, 16 January 1906, p.3.
30
‘Challis House.’ Evening News, 26 December 1907, p.2.
31
‘Challis House.’ Art and Architecture. 5:1, January-February 1908, pp.23-25.
32
This included the architects S.H. Buchanan, John Stone, Thomas Thiswell and J.T. McCarthy.
Sand’s Sydney, Suburban and Country Commercial Directory for 1910. John Sands, 1910, p.103.
8
dressing by the street-level offices.33 The tenants also included the NSW
Government Immigration and Tourist Bureau and their footpath windows featured
agricultural displays and tourist promotions while the entrance vestibule was clad
with New South Wales marbles. Tourists frequently departed from the Martin
Place bureau for regional motor tours.
The building observed the established civic decorum of Martin Place by
continuing the use of rusticated finishes of Bowral trachyte at street level while
the deep colonnade acknowledged the GPO’s architectural rhythms. Challis
House’s elevation was elaborate with central bay windows over four levels,
prominent gables and inventive capitals for the arcading. Art and Architecture’s
stylistic assessment noted, ‘The façade to Martin Place which is designed in
Jacobean style, is entirely of sandstone obtained from the Waverly quarries,
excepting the base and ground floor columns which are of Bowral trachyte,
polished.’34
By 1936, reinforced concrete elements of the building began to fail and Hennessy
and Hennessy were commissioned to rework the building.35 Designed under new
planning regulations, the height was increased to 46 metres (12 floors) in the
second edition of Challis House and the result was an entirely new elevation
completely at odds with the immediate GPO precinct in Martin Place. The earlier
pedestrian amenity of the Roman-arched colonnade was abandoned in favour of
the inward-looking Moderne architecture of the 1930s. The building underwent
extensive interior works after 1974 with a later conversion in an attempt to revive
street level retailing.
33
Street level photographs of the building’s trachyte and arcading featured in R.T. Baker’s
landmark publication Building and Ornamental Stones of Australia. W.A. Gullick, Govt. Printer,
1915, p.56.
34
‘Challis House.’ Art and Architecture. 5:1, January-February 1908, p.23.
35
Sue Rosen and David Sheedy. (1990) ‘Challis House, Martin Place. Conservation Plan’, p.3.
9
THE MODERNE ERA
As the Corridor of Power advanced eastward, a second grouping of new 1930s
Moderne buildings effortlessly melded with what the former NSW Government
Architect (1995-2005) Chris Johnson describes as ‘civic decorum’.36 These
Moderne buildings formed a distinctive early modernist precinct through their
Martin Place elevations, materials, new building heights and design practices.
The Prudential (Insurance) Building (demolished 1969), the Australian Provincial
Assurance (APA) Building, and the Rural Bank (demolished 1983) addressed a
“Manhattanised” streetscape dominated by towering buildings and the motorcar
while retaining the Martin Place granite cladding tradition at ground level.
While the Martin Place banking and insurance buildings of the precinct’s earliest
decades drew from a vocabulary of architectural revival styles with facades in
traditional masonry, the 1930s cluster of Martin Place financial industry buildings
embraced the modern with contemporary ornamental schemes, exotic materials
such as synthetic stone, coloured ceramic tile cladding, stainless steel and new
construction techniques. Sydney trade journal Decoration and Glass observed
that this new precinct would soon feature ‘a street entirely of tall buildings’. 37 The
surge of modern design included the 1936 Rural Bank, 52 Martin Place, the new
1937 Challis House, the 1937 Australian Provincial Assurance Building (‘The
APA’) Building at 53-63 Martin Place, and the 1939 Prudential Assurance
Company (‘The Prudential’) Building, 39 Martin Place and the 1939 MLC Building
at 38-46 Martin Place and to the west, Emil Sodersteen’s 1936 Martin Place wing
of the Hotel Australia (see Paul Hogben’s ‘The Lost Corner’, chapter XX)
36
Chris Johnson. Shaping Sydney. Public Architecture and Civic Decorum. Hale and Iremonger,
1999, pp.1-2.
37
‘A.P.A. Building.’ Decoration and Glass, September 1937, p.11.
10
Local architect Sydney Ancher, recently returned from several years study in
Europe, urged the exploration of modernism for new buildings in his 1936
response to the Sydney Technical College exhibition of student architecture
designs.
We no long build with blocks although we like to pretend we do. We like to
associate the known strength and massiveness of blocks with our work and
the people for whom we build think they like it too, because we do not
encourage them to think otherwise. […] With the development of a rational
outlook, we would, in future exhibitions of students’ work, see no more
‘small public libraries’ designed in some medieval style, and no more ‘small
art galleries’ masquerading as something built at the time of the
renaissance […]. The backward look has ever been [a] handicap; with a
forward glance, there is some chance of a straight-ahead development
resulting… .38
The architects for this precinct explored an architectural design approach
currently described as Moderne. Julie Willis describes this genre of interwar
modernism as employing elevations with strong vertical emphasis (ribbing,
pilasters, fins), an exploration of new surface treatments, the use of colour
combined with reductive abstract ornamentation.39 To this definition one could
add the use of synthetic claddings such as terra-cotta, high-fired ceramics and
composite stone products.
In addition to new materials, the 1930s Martin Place commissions allowed the
architects to work with new height regulations permitting buildings to 45 metres
38
Sydney Ancher. ‘Whither Architecture.’ Architecture, 1 June 1936, pp.148-149. Ancher was a
graduate of Sydney Technical College. The exhibition was held at the Blaxland Gallery. Also
reproduced in Ann Stephen, et al. (2006) Modernism and Australia. Miegunyah Press &
Powerhouse Museum, pp.312-324.
39
Julie Willis. (2012) ‘Moderne.’ Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture, Cambridge University
Press, 2012, pp.462-464.
11
(150 feet).40 The precinct’s avid pursuit of height, the introduction of roof gardens
and the stepped pyramid forms for the upper levels of the Prudential, the
Australian Provincial Assurance headquarters and the Rural Bank have their
parallels with selected Manhattan Moderne architects of the era, notably
Raymond Hood whose skyscraper compositions and use of cladding in coloured
bricks and tiles was reported in the Australian press as early as 1924.41 But while
Moderne architecture had international approval, there was uneasiness about the
new Martin Place work. Rural Bank building architect F.W. Turner defended his
steel and synthetic stone-clad design in the Sydney Morning Herald.42
Modern architecture in Sydney as elsewhere, as applied to steel structural
buildings, had not the freedom of other days, but does its best to grace
geometric exteriors with what beauty it can. Though of necessity, straight
lines predominate, there is developing a kind of prim stateliness which Is
not unpleasing to the eye, and will […] produce a form of treatment which
will overcome the harshness of angular contours, and take its rank In
architectural art in the steel-framed reinforced concrete structures now in
vogue. The walls add little, or nothing, to the strength of the building, the
problem of employing them as a means of exterior beautification becomes
[…] all the more insistent.43
This ‘beautification’ allowed by synthetic claddings and precast ornament also
gave architects an opportunity to explore colour and decoration without the
expense of stone-masons. This strategy also provoked anxiety amongst
40
‘Act no.58, 1912, Height of Buildings Act.’ Gazetted 10 December 1912 in E.M. Farrelly.
(1997) ‘The Sydney Height of Buildings Story. p.22-23.
41
‘Black and Gold.’ (American Radiator Company building, Manhattan). Evening News, 5 May
1924, p.8. Ely Jacques Kahn’s 2 Park Avenue, Manhattan, ‘skyscraper’ building of 1927 was also
reported locally.
42
Turner’s defence draws on arguments advanced by Raymond Hood in a seminal interview by
S.J. Woolf. ‘An architect hails the rule of reason.’ New York Times Magazine, 1 November 1931,
p.155. Reprinted in W.W. Kilham. (1973) Raymond Hood, Architect. Architectural Book
Publishing, p.155-157.
43
‘City Architecture.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1936, p.6.
12
Sydney’s traditional masons and led to a heated deputation to the Lord Mayor.
Mr. W. Grant, of John Grant and Sons, said that Martin Place, between
Castlereagh and George streets, had been ruined. Uniformity of material
should be insisted upon in the new section. […] Unless the council did
something, there would be tremendous clashing in the building effects in
Martin Place. ‘Beautiful stone still remains to be quarried,’ he added, ‘and
nothing can be better than stone. Unfortunately, there are a number of
young architects, with so-called modern views, who are opposed to stone.’
[…] Mr. B. Worran (Secretary of the Stonemasons' Society) said that
Sydney was developing a ‘Jazz type of building, of Jazz materials and Jazz
colours’.44
F.W. Turner’s Rural Bank building was amongst the Martin Place’s first Moderne
buildings, opening in 1936 with considerable fanfare.45 The development of this
bank was the result of the 1933 consolidation of some of the Government
Savings Bank of NSW’s activities at 48 Martin Place with the Commonwealth
Bank, establishing the Rural Bank with a role of a ‘Farmer’s Bank’.46 This
progressive bank had an enviable reputation in regional NSW and offered a
range of unique services including a free film lending library and the ‘Elizabeth
Martin’ banking advisory service for female clients.
Confidently described as ‘…probably the best example of street architecture the
[NSW] capital possesses’, secondary entrances were sited on Elizabeth and
Phillip Streets with the Martin Place elevations of the Rural Bank divided into two
stepped sections with splayed corners rising to twelve levels.47 A generous lightwell separated the two Martin Place projections providing natural light from three
44
‘Martin Place. Frontages of Buildings.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 19 January 1935, p.15.
Emil Sodersteen’s extension to the Hotel Australia opened in March 1936. “The Hotel Australia,
Sydney: The New Martin Place Block,” Building, January 1936, p. 32.
46
G. C. Harvey. (1980) The Origins, Evolution and Establishment of the Rural Bank of NSW 18991979, Rural Bank, p.27.
47
‘Prudential Building.’ Decoration and Glass, June 1939, pps.12-17, 41.
45
13
sides. Ornamentation was abstract and geometric, with the exception of three
moulded figurative panels above the Martin Place entrance. The lower levels of
the building were clad in the traditional Martin Place red granite with a band of
contrasting black granite. The higher elevations used a ‘Jazz’ ‘mottled red’
composite stone cladding manufactured by Composite Stones Ltd (Melocco
Bros.) in tones shifting to light pink as the building ascended.48
The late John Haskell, former head of the Graduate School of the Faulty of the
Built Environment at the University of New South Wales noted the Rural Bank
‘splendidly complemented in style and mass the APA Insurance building
[opposite],’ arguing ‘the two together formed a unique group and had a particular
value in the streetscape of Martin Place.’49 Public esteem for the Rural Bank and
its client-friendly profile insured there would be controversy when the demolition
of the Rural Bank for the newly formed State Bank of NSW was later proposed.
Despite a 1981-1982 campaign led by the NSW RAIA opposing the demolition,
the State Bank of NSW under the direction of Nicholas Whitlam triumphed; the
building was demolished and replaced with the current building at 52 Martin
Place by Dino Burattini in association with Peddle Thorp and Walker. Within eight
years, the State Bank was ‘corporatised’ and sold in 1990.
Despite the stone industry’s emotional appeals, the headquarters of the
Australian Provincial Assurance firm (APA) also used the controversial ‘Jazz
colours’ for its Moderne office building structure.50 The Martin Place building
between Elizabeth and Phillips Streets was designed by architect David W. King
on a podium of red granite with white-speckled cream-hued Wunderlich
architectural terra-cotta used for upper-level cladding with the façade’s cornices
48
‘The Rural Bank.’ Decoration and Glass, January 1937, pp.9-15. The description of the colour of
the composite stone differs in several accounts. The account in ‘Rural Bank, Sydney’, Building, 12
December 1936, pps.36c-36d, describes ‘mottled red’ while Decoration and Glass says ‘buff’.
49
John Haskell. (1983) Haskell’s Sydney. Hale and Iremonger, p.72.
50
The APA was founded in Sydney in 1912. The architect’s father, Captain Alexander King was
one of the Directors of the APA. David King also designed offices for the APA in New Zealand and
Newcastle.
14
defined in contrasting blue tiles.51 Completed in 1937, the APA building is the
sole survivor of a unique interwar grouping of Moderne office buildings.52
The APA’s Chairman E.S. Paul presciently acquired the APA site in 1935. ‘At that
time the city had begun a new phase in its growth with new bank and insurance
company buildings in the course of erection,’ Mr Paul said. ‘The greatest
development was in Martin Place, the hub of the business world, as it still
remains [in 1962].’ 53 Half of the ground-level offices were devoted to APA
insurance company inquiries while a law firm occupied the remaining street level
tenancy. The APA’s level one offices later became the site for the Lindt
Chocolate Café tragedy where the 16 December 2014 hostage-taking incident
unfolded.
The trade press approved the APA Building’s design but the critical reaction was
restrained: ‘chaste’, ‘façade is quite plain’, ‘simple and straightforward’ and other
damning praise.54 Tasmanian red granite was used for the podium with
Wunderlich splatter-finish cream-coloured terra-cotta cladding used for the
remainder of the elevations. Shallow V-shaped decorative piers rise from the
lower levels terminating with dark green tiles and a roof garden introduced to the
west. The lower ground floor entrance on Elizabeth Street was designed as a
restaurant site.
Embracing an actively motorised streetscape by the 1930s, Martin Place now
entered an era where pedestrian amenities were modest, street crossings
dangerously wide and little remained to engage the footpath stroller. The
Moderne building entrances were constrained with stairs leading to ground floor
counter service and modestly scaled lift lobbies. To the west, however, street life
51
‘New Head Office Premises.’ Sunday Times, 8 December 1935, p.15. Raymond Hood had used
Dutch blue terra-cotta tiles for his McGraw-Hill Building completed in 1931. W.W. Kilham. (1973)
Raymond Hood, Architect. Architectural Book Publishing, p.174.
52
This includes the original 1939 sandstone and granite MLC building in Martin Place.
53
H.J. Sanders, H. Butler, eds. (1962) Fifty Years. APA Life Assurance. APA, p.19.
54
‘A.P.A. Building, Martin Place, Sydney.’ Decoration and Glass, September 1937, p.11.
15
flourished. The Hotel Australia and the Commercial Travellers Association corner
at Martin Place and Castlereagh Street provided expansive venues for dinner
dances, drinking and smart restaurants with entrances directly from Martin Place.
In the APA Building, the lower ground floor on Elizabeth Street was leased to
Cahill’s, one of Sydney’s best known restaurants advertising ‘Cuisine Francaise
et Americaine’.55 An active theatre district featuring the Prince Edward theatre,
the St James theatre and the Theatre Royal were minutes away. A lively
nightclub scene also thrived in the vicinity with two legendary Castlereagh Street
nightclubs, J.C, Bendrodt’s ‘Prince’s Cabaret Restaurant’ (in the MLC building)
and ‘Romano’s’ celebrated restaurant and nightclub (in the Prudential building)
opening in 1938-1939.56
Until the appearance of the podium-base office towers in the third quarter of the
twentieth century, Martin Place retained fragments of an earlier fine-grain
streetscape offering possibilities for surprise where casual strollers could make
the chance discoveries that enliven a city.57 A sampling of tenancies in midcentury show some of the nation’s largest financial institutions stood alongside
the busy Commercial Travellers Association and Hotel Australia corner with the
nearby Thomas Cook and Sons travel agency, a well-patronised ‘sly-grog’ café,
numerous small-scale retailers and the popular Black and White Milk Bar. Martin
Place’s “Black and White” was amongst Sydney’s first milk bars, later expanding
their distinctive brand to Adelaide and other capital cities. Variety and novelty
survived amongst the shops, cafes and clubs encouraging what Frederic Gros
calls ‘urban foraging’.58
55
‘Cahill’s Restaurant.’ (APA. Building). Le Courrier Australien, 15 August 1941, p.7.
(advertisement).
56
Interior architecture by Bates Smart and McCutcheon. ‘Princes.’ Constructional Review.
January 1939, pp.32-35. The club featured morning teas, luncheon, afternoon teas, dancing to
2.00 am. See also ‘Prince’s.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1938, p.5.
57
Frédéric Gros. (2014) A Philosophy of Walking. Verso, 2014, p.180.
58
Frédéric Gros. (2014) A Philosophy of Walking. p.180. Active street life issues were
popularised by Jane Jacobs in The Life and Death of Great American Cities (1961).
16
Bull’s Chambers, 28 Martin Place, between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets, a multistorey masonry building from the previous century, was a typical Martin Place
survival.59 Bull’s occupants included Austral Gold Buyers, Alan Kippax Sports
Store and the Modern Radio shop, the latter a favoured footpath location for
Melbourne Cup broadcasts. Bull’s low rents attracted a diverse mix of occupants
including ‘Jack O’London’s Literary Circle’, the Music Lovers Club and an Italian
cultural organization. The nearby Dungowan Café at 34 Martin Place offered an
opportunity for an unlawful glass of wine or beer.60
‘A signpost of our march to nationhood and of our prosperity,’ trumpeted the
Commonwealth Attorney General, William (Billy) Morris Hughes before 400
guests at the mid-1939 opening of the Prudential building at 39 Martin Place.
‘The fact that this building is here is an eloquent tribute to the strength of
Australia’s financial fabric.’61 A firm founded in England in 1848, the Prudential
Assurance Company was considered the Commonwealth’s largest insurance
company of the era.62
The Prudential commission brought the architects Hennessy, Hennessy and Co.
high praise for their revived use of Hawkesbury sandstone cladding of the
building’s 13 upper floors that presented elevations to Martin Place, Castlereagh
59
Bull Chambers (later 28 Martin Place) was owned by Henry Bull, d.1925. Death notice, Sydney
Morning Herald, 14 April 1925, p.11.
60
The Dungowan Café was selling illegal liquor as early as 1926. ‘Dungowan Raid. Three Persons
in Court.’ Sydney Morning Herald. 28 October 1927, p.7. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing
into the 1940s, the Dungowan Café, Ocean Building, 34 Martin Place, was often cited for selling
beer, wine and spirits in violation of the liquor laws.
61
‘Prudential Building Opened.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 1939, p.13.
62
Prudential Assurance Company. (1939) ‘To commemorate the opening of the Prudential
Building, Martin Place, Sydney as the head office for Australia and New Zealand on the 29th of
May, 1939 by The Honourable B.S.B. Stevens, M.L.A., Premier of New South Wales.’ Prudential
Assurance Company. (Pamphlet)
17
and Elizabeth Streets. Maintaining the red-hued stone traditions of the precinct,
the designers clad the footpath level in NSW Rob Roy red granite.63
Hennessey, Hennessey & Co. used Moderne ornament sparingly, allowing the
upper level terracing and fenestration of the building to enhance the building’s
massing. The Prudential building used metal casement windows to emphasise
the glazing patterns rather than the traditional timber sashes of its neighbours. At
the upper levels of the building, the terraces afforded by the stepped composition
formed roof gardens and shrubbery beds.64 Adopting the stepped pyramid skyline
of the neighbouring buildings, the Prudential was much admired in the
professional press. ‘Architecturally,’ Building magazine wrote, ‘[the Prudential
Building] marks the completion of yet another outstanding modern structure […]
in perhaps the premier street of the Commonwealth, Martin Place.’65
With financial industry investment in architecture of this stature, observers were
re-assured Martin Place would continue its eastward way to Macquarie Street.
‘The Martin Place extension was a long awaited and much discussed project,’
editorialised Decoration and Glass. ‘It was no small undertaking, especially from
the point of view of finance. […] The city’s most important thoroughfare, right in
the city’s heart, is now assuming the dignity and importance which such a
thoroughfare should.’66
But despite praise from the profession, the Prudential brought no public
engagement with Martin Place and kerbside parking continued to dominate the
streetscape. But around the corner in Castlereagh Street, the Prudential building
included a Hennessy, Hennessy and Co. design and fit-out for the soon-to-be
63
W.J. Perry. (1961) ‘Building Stone Investigations, Visit to Sydney, Gosford, Mudgee and
Wombeyan. Bureau of National Resources, p.5. The origin of Rob Roy red granite is identified as
a quarry at Sodwalls NSW. This stone is also used in the ANZAC Memorial, Hyde Park South.
64
The original perspective of the building showed generous plantings on the upper levels. ‘New
Prudential Assurance Building.’ Building, 24 November, 1937, p.14. (illustration).
65
‘The New Prudential Building, Sydney.’ Building, 24 June 1939, pp.16-19, 100a.
66
‘Prudential Building.’ Decoration and Glass, June 1939, p.13
18
famous Romano’s Restaurant in the lower ground level.. Romano’s, managed by
the Sydney identity A.O. Romano, became Sydney’s most stylish nightclub of the
1940s and 1950s. A constant fixture in the society pages, ‘Romano’s Orchestra’
provided dance music and the restaurant’s bill of fare offered over 300 entries.67
By the later decades of the 20th century, Martin Place provided new spectacles:
a constantly changing architectural résumé of engineering feats; a skyline of
construction cranes; a generous pedestrian zone freed of automobiles and some
of the city’s tallest skyscrapers.
NEW ANIMALS
A journalist had described Martin Place in the booming 1930s as a place ‘Where
Wealth Accumulates. […] If one counts the banks that form the western end of
Martin Place, Sydney,’ he observed, ‘and look down upon the Cenotaph […]
there are now seven great banks in the city's central thoroughfare to be passed in
a short walk of about half a mile. It is probable that no such aggregation of wealth
is to be found in so small an area in any part of Australia. 68 Had the writer
returned in 1970, three new bank buildings were completed or under construction,
the Reserve Bank of Australia; the Bank of NSW (today Westpac); and the ANZ
building.
In 1964, a new building form appeared at the top of Martin Place with the
completion of the Commonwealth’s 22-storey Reserve Bank, an office tower
sitting above a street-level podium. This signaled the precinct’s third phase of
development. Amendments to the 1912 Height of Buildings Act restricting
67
John Ritchie, (2014) 'Romano, Azzalin Orlando (1894–1972)', Australian Dictionary of
Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/romano-azzalinorlando-8263/text14473. 25 August 2014. The Sydney Morning Herald reported ‘after a careful
study of the leading European and American clubs and restaurants [the architects] decided, in
conjunction with Mr. Romano upon a scheme of decoration […] new to Sydney.’ ‘Romano’s
Restaurant.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 1938, p.6
68
‘Where Wealth Accumulates.’ Daily Advertiser. 25 September 1936, p.3.
19
buildings to 45.7 metres (150 feet) had been swept away by new legislation in
1957 abandoning 45 years of fixed height restrictions.69 Atop a street level
podium, the Commonwealth-designed building rose to just above 80 metres. The
1971 Westpac building was the next addition to the precinct, followed by the ANZ
bank in 1974. The Australian banking industry was now competing for prestige,
position and financial power in Martin Place and by the later decades of the 20th
century, big buildings were designed to express big business. 70
The NSW Government architect, Chris Johnson, described these new buildings
as ‘new animals’.71 They were hybrids from urban Paris, he observed, with low,
wide buildings addressing footpath traffic combined with Manhattan’s office
towers. They were designed to re-engage with pedestrian traffic by reviving street
variety, providing new retailing tenancies and integrating commuter rail services
while illuminated office towers reached for the sky. The architecture of Martin
Place’s banking industry was now competing for presence, contemporaneity,
street-level amenity and financial power.72
In 1964 the first wave of new building was initiated with the completion of the
Commonwealth’s 22-storey Reserve Bank at 65 Martin Place and Macquarie
Street, an 80-metre (262 feet) masonry and steel office tower atop an expansive
street-level podium with a civic-scale sculpture by Margel Hinder.73 Freed by
amendments to the 1912 Height of Buildings Act, new legislation in 1957
established new systems of approval by an architect-dominated Height of
69
These acts established new plot/height ratio systems of approval. E.M. Farrelly. (1997)
‘The Sydney Height of Buildings Story; An examination of the intellectual, cultural and
political background to development control in Sydney City Centre 1900-1960.’ PhD thesis,
University of Sydney, p.420.
70
Jennifer Tayor, et al. Tall Buildings 1945-1970. Fine Art Publishing, 2001, p.126.
71
Anne Susskind. ‘Interview with Chris Johnson.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June 1997, p.17.
72
Jennifer Tayor, et al. (2001)Tall Buildings 1945-1970. Fine Art Publishing, p.126.
73
Anne Susskind. ‘Interview with Chris Johnson.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 June 1997, p.17. ‘The
NSW Government architect, Chris Johnson, said these towers will become a ‘new animal’, a
hybrid of European and American architecture: a combination of Paris, which builds low, wide
buildings to the pavement, and New York, with its towers.’
20
Buildings Advisory Committee.74 The 1971 Westpac (the re-badged Bank of
NSW) building at 60 Martin Place and Macquarie Street, 121 metres (396 feet)
was the next addition to the skyscraper precinct, followed by the ANZ bank, 86
metres (282 feet) at 20 Martin Place in 1974.
The Bank of NSW (Westpac after 1982) began its building programme in 1967
with a commanding position on the heights of Martin Place. Following the lead of
the Reserve Bank, Peddle Thorp and Walker’s 1971 Bank of NSW design sought
to re-engage with the footpath traffic. A retail podium allowing direct pedestrian
access from Macquarie Street and Martin Place was designed and the building’s
footprint was extended to the west to create the public ‘Westpac Terrace’. An
urban scale Stephen Walker bronze fountain, ‘Tidal Pools’ was commissioned for
this small sculpture plaza..75
Now licensed by the Height of Buildings Advisory Committee, the Bank of NSW’s
glass and steel tower surpassed the Reserve Bank’s height by more than 40
metres. The commanding height and the bank’s opulent materials dominated the
public discussion and press claims were made that it contained ‘more marble
than any other building in Australia’.76 Twenty white Wombeyan marble external
piers rising from the terrace and terminating at the summit surrounded the
building on all sides. At the pedestrian level, these piers formed a generously
proportioned white marble colonnade along the southern elevation of the building.
In keeping with the Martin Place coloured masonry traditions, the building’s
precast spandrels were reconstructed red granite while regional stone was used
for detailing. It was an office tower where, as Peddle Thorpe and Walker boasted,
‘no compromises have been made’.77
74
E.M. Farrelly. (1997) ‘The Sydney Height of Buildings Story.’ p.420, 425.
This work was relocated to Hobart in 1999-2000 when ‘Westpac Terrace’ was redesigned.
76
‘Marble and Granite facades for big city bank’. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1971, p.3.
77
‘Marble and Granite facades for big city bank’. p.3.
75
21
This original ground level composition was soon found wanting when Martin
Place was closed to vehicle traffic in 1977. The Bank of NSW was rebranded as
Westpac in 1981 and later alterations and additions in the 1980s and 1990s
abandoned the original podium design.78 The building remains occupied by the
Westpac banking staff although sale of the site has been reported and demolition
proposed in 2015.
The ANZ bank building at 20 Martin Place was developed on the site of the
London Bank of Australia, a position at the northeast corner of Pitt Street and
Martin Place that saw three banks in succession. In 1917 construction began on
a multi-storey sandstone and trachyte building in a commercial Classical Revival
style for the London Bank of Australia. ‘The architects are Messrs. Robertson and
Marks, and the plans provide for an imposing structure in keeping with the
buildings on the other three corners of what is really one of the most important
centres of the city.’79 When this heavily ornamented building opened in 1919, it
was occupied by the bank for ground-level banking chambers and offices. The
English, Scottish and Australian Bank (E S & A) acquired the London Bank of
Australia in 1921 and occupied their Martin Place building soon afterward.
While they inherited an stylistically retrograde building in Martin Place, the E S &
A Bank proved one of the nation’s most architecturally adventuresome banks
commissioning suburban banks from modernist firms such as Victoria’s
Chancellor & Patrick (Melbourne, 1960), Peter McIntyre (Dandenong, 1967)
NSW’s Peter Swan (Ashfield, 1959) and Stuart McIntosh in Queensland.80 Unlike
the other major banks, the E S & A did not establish 20th century ‘house style’
78
The Bank of NSW continued to expand and in 1981 it purchased the Commercial Bank of
Australia and the bank was rebranded as Westpac. R.J. Wood. (1990) The Commercial Bank of
Australia. History of an Australian Institution 1866-1981. Hargreen Publ. Co., pp.364-367.
79
‘London Bank of Australia.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 29 August 1917, p.7
80
A 1956 E S & A Bank promotional recruitment film, ‘The Career Man’, emphasizes their ‘Up to
date modern architecture,’ their pride in new architecture, ‘colour and gaiety in interiors’ and
‘contemporary’ image. ‘The Career Man.’ (1956) E S & A Bank, 17 minutes.
22
architecture and each suburban modernist bank appears unique.81
The London Bank of Australia and the E S & A were known in the financial world
as ‘imperial banks’ with a lineage in London but as Australia’s prosperity (and
financial deposits) grew, regional banks such as the Bank of NSW began to
assert local power by the mid-20th century.82 This development initiated a series
of mergers amongst the imperial banks and the Australia and New Zealand bank
(ANZ) was formed in 1951.83 It finally became an autonomous Australian bank in
1976 after decades of ‘remote control’ from England.84
The E S & A prospered in Martin Place and in 1967, they announced plans to
demolish their 1919 building, amalgamate neighboring allotments and replace
them with a curtain wall 21-storey office tower designed by Peddle Thorp and
Walker. As the building was under construction, however, the ANZ bank and the
E S & A announced a merger in 1969 and the building opened as the ANZ
bank.85
From the mid-1960s, the Board of the ANZ Bank displayed anxiety about its
architectural image and their historian recorded, ‘The Board and management felt
that [their] increasingly shabby and old-fashioned buildings damaged the Bank’s
81
They also designed and built what has been described as the first ‘drive-in’ bank in Burwood,
NSW, in 1957. ‘Drive-in Bank Design Marks New Step.’ Constructional Review, March 1957, p.22.
The 1956 E S & A documentary film, ‘The Career Man’ states the first drive-in bank was in
Camberwell, Victoria.
82
D.T. Merrett. (1985) ANZ Bank. A history of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.
Allen and Unwin, p.36.
83
‘ANZ Bank will open today.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 1951, p.2 The ANZ was formed
by a merger of the Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia (1951).
84
‘Remote control to end as ANZ Bank moves to Australia.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April
1976, p.26.
85
At the time of the merger, the ANZ Bank occupied the former Bank of Australasia building at 2
Martin Place.
23
prestige in the eyes of its customers and peers.’86 The merger with the E S & A
allowed the ANZ Bank to painlessly enhance its architectural profile in Martin
Place.
Although Peddle Thorp and Walker sought to replicate the activated pedestrian
edge (and colonnade) they developed for the Martin Place Bank of NSW in 1971,
their International Style ANZ Bank tower and its podium drew strong criticism
from Haskell as a ‘pseudo-Seagram [Building] bronze’ office tower. Haskell
criticised the bronzed colonnade, glazing and curtain wall detailing of the ANZ
Building noting it violated the well-established colour palette of the precinct.87
When the ANZ building opened in 1974, however, Eva Buhrich’s review praised
the building’s engagement with the street through a sliding bronze screen facing
onto Martin Place and an outdoor seating staff canteen on the fourth level of the
podium.88 The Martin Place podium provided a covered way clad with glass,
travertine marble and New Zealand volcanic stone with the ANZ’s extravagant
banking chamber visible at night through the metal screen. 89
By 1981, the ANZ bank shifted its architectural focus to Melbourne with a new
building designed in part by I.M. Pei. The Martin Place building later underwent
major alterations and additions by Denton Corker Marshall. The earlier
pedestrianized integration with Martin Place was enhanced and the Peddle Thorp
and Walker colonnade was re-clad with cream-coloured Portuguese limestone.
Marble was a dominant element in the new ground level interior architecture
while a glass-enclosed civic sculpture ‘Accretion’ (1999) by Janet Lawrence was
86
D.T. Merrett. ANZ Bank. A history of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. pp.168169.
87
John Haskell. ‘Rural Bank was a hard act to follow but they made it.’ Sydney Morning Herald,
30 September 1985, p.12. Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building was completed in 1958.
88
Eva Buhrich. ‘Bank with an interest in modern design.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January
1974, p.10.
89
The ANZ Bank was also one of the first to install a ‘Night and Day’ ATM facility in Martin Place
in 1977 although the maximum withdrawal was $25. A video of one of the first ATM’s was
recorded by the ABC in 1977. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiii6LpczZo> 29 January 2015.
24
introduced on the Pitt Street footpath. 90 The ANZ Bank sold the site in 2011,
partial demolition followed with a new building on the site to open in 2016.
CONCLUSION
As the boulevard closed to motor traffic in 1977, the precinct seemed to have
reached its architectural potential and Martin Place’s landmark bank and
insurance buildings enjoyed structural presence in a streetscape of plantings,
public sculpture, fountains, colourful street furniture and decorative paving. The
title, ‘the nation’s Financial Centre’, was secure in the latter decades of the 20th
century. As one of the city’s social centres, however, the podium-based retailing
and café leases of the office towers struggled to re-capture the vitality of the
boulevard’s earlier street life. As Helen Rosenau observes, ‘Once tall blocks
become typical rather than exceptional, an emphasis on lower buildings gains in
importance […].91
While the edges of the immediate GPO precinct of the early 20th century were
activated with flower-sellers, seating, window displays and sheltering colonnades,
the motorised streetscape of the Moderne era fostered architectural design that
looked inward to control sound, provide security and offer visual screening of
busy motorways. Civic decorum was preserved but at a cost to the social fabric.
As the interior architecture of Martin Place’s mid-century commercial buildings
offered only constricted settings for engagement, the street life of the precinct
shifted to the clubs, shops, hotels, cafes and theatres of nearby Castlereagh, Pitt
and Elizabeth Streets. The centralization of the city’s financial services and its
significant office population enriched the neighbouring areas of the precinct.
The boulevard retains elements of a promenade, providing an opportunity to see
and be seen in the increasing destination-rich areas of Martin Place where bars,
90
91
Anon. S.Z. Jian, ed. (2001) Monumental Australian Architecture, BT Latitude, p.220.
Helen Rosenau (1983) The Ideal City. Methuen and Co. 3rd edition, p.172
25
restaurants and outdoor seating abound. While the Westpac and the ANZ banks
have established an 21st century architectural presence elsewhere, the stablising
presence of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the more recent Macquarie Bank
developments ensure the geography of the state’s wealth, past and present, can
still be mapped through the architecture of Sydney’s Martin Place.
Illustrations included in Sydney’s Martin Place, A Cultural and Design History.
1. Bank of Australasia, ca. 1904-1910. Star Photo Company, State Library of
NSW, PXE 711/215, no.a116215.
2. Challis House, 1907 and Cenotaph. Hall & Co. State Library of NSW, Home
and Away, hall_34826.
3. Challis House and arcading. 1915. Photographer unknown. R.T. Baker,
Building and Ornamental Stones of Australia, Department of Public Instruction,
1915, p.56. (Item in State Library of NSW collection.)
4. “Sir George Dibbs setting the keystone.” 1894. Photographer Unknown. In
Setting the keystone arch over the principal entrance of the building of the Mutual
Life Insurance Company of NY. Mutual Life Insurance Company of NY, 1894.
Centrepiece, n.p. (Item in State Library of NSW collection).
5. Front row left: State Bank, APA, Prudential Assurance and MLC buildings in
Martin Place. 1939. The Sun Bureau. State Library of NSW, PXD 930, box 8,
no.22.
6. Bull’s Chambers, 28 Martin Place, Melbourne Cup Day. 1934. State Library of
NSW, Sam Hood. hood_01081h.
7. The Rural Bank. ca.1936. Hall & Co. State Library of NSW, hall-35246h.
8. Australian Provincial Assurance building (APA). ca.1948. Photographer
unknown. State Records NSW, no.12932_a012
9. Prudential Insurance building, 1939. Sam Hood. Building Publishing Co. State
Library of NSW, Hood Collection, hood_09900h
10. English, Scottish and Australian Bank (later ANZ Bank). 1969. Peddle, Thorp
and Walker, podium alterations and additions by Denton Corker Marshall,
ca.2000. Richard Braddish photograph 2012.
26
11. Bank of NSW (later Westpac), Westpac Terrace and Stephen Walker fountain
‘Tidal Pools’ at left. 1971. Richard Braddish photograph, 1992.
An illustrated version of this essay appears in Sydney’s Martin Place, A Cultural
and Design History, J. O’Callaghan, P. Hogben and R. Freestone, eds., Alllen
and Unwin, 2016, pp.68-85.
27