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 between eighteen seventeen and eighteen nineteen, the site was commissioned by Governor Lachlan Macquarie to house male convicts. Before these walls rose, convicts were left to find their own lodging, but the barracks allowed the government to impose strict surveillance and regimented labor routines.