Dawes Point Reserve is a grassy headland that sits directly beneath the massive southern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. You can identify this site by the sight of the bridge’s steel latticework looming immediately overhead and the…
History of Sydney
Track Sydney's transition from a hardscrabble penal colony to a bustling Victorian metropolis along this walk through its oldest sandstone buildings and civic plazas.
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1. Dawes Point Reserve
2. Cadman's Cottage
Cadman’s Cottage is a small, solitary stone building in The Rocks that holds a strange secret about the geography of early Sydney. When it was built in eighteen sixteen, the house sat right on the edge of the harbor, with high tides coming…
3. Susannah Place
Susannah Place is a cluster of four narrow terrace houses and a corner shop built directly into the sandstone bedrock of Gloucester Street. Constructed in eighteen forty-four by Irish immigrant Edward Riley, these buildings feature…
4. Sydney Observatory
The Sydney Observatory sits atop the highest point of Observatory Hill, a landmark defined by its distinctive copper-clad telescope domes and a four-story time-ball tower. Designed in the Italianate style by colonial architect Alexander…
5. General Post Office Building (GPO) old
The General Post Office in Sydney stands as a massive, Victorian Italian Renaissance block of Pyrmont sandstone, defined by an arcade of arches that spans the length of Martin Place. Before the Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Opera House rose…
6. St James' Church, Sydney
St James' Church is the oldest church building in Sydney, standing on King Street with a tall, distinct spire and a facade of face brick articulated by piers. Consecrated on February eleventh, eighteen twenty-four, it was designed in the…
7. The Mint
The Mint is a sandstone structure on Macquarie Street that began as the southern wing of a hospital built between eighteen eleven and eighteen sixteen. Its builders were famously paid with a three-year monopoly on importing rum, earning…
8. Hyde Park Barracks
The Hyde Park Barracks sits at the end of Macquarie Street as a three-story brick building defined by a massive shingled roof and a striking, restrained Georgian facade. Designed by the convict architect Francis Greenway and constructed…
9. Sydney Town Hall
Sydney Town Hall is distinguished by its lavishly ornamented sandstone facade, featuring a prominent clock tower and steep mansard roofs characteristic of the French Second Empire style. Completed in stages between eighteen sixty-eight and…