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Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney
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General Post Office building 2001

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

General Post Office building 2001

By

Gary Deirmendjian

Contributed By

City of Sydney Archives

[021\021022]

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Built environment

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Postal services Public building Victorian architecture

Buildings

General Post Office

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Barnet, James

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Martin Place

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Deirmendjian, Gary

City of Sydney Archives

The City of Sydney Archives holds items from as early as 1842 when the Municipal Council of Sydney was established, and manage, preserve and provide access to more than 1 million items, including documents, photographs, maps, plans and data. The collection consists of City of Sydney corporate archives, items collected from the community relating to the City of Sydney local area and published reference material. Use the links to go directly to the City of Sydney's website.

Built environment

Built over tracks, campsites, rock art and middens used for thousands of years before the dispossession of the Aboriginal people, Sydney's early haphazard development was given form by public buildings. As public transport developed, suburbs spread, and throughout the twentieth century, town planners struggled with developers to direct the form and extent of the city. After World War II, city buildings got taller, outer suburbs sprang up ever further away, and issues of heritage and architecture were contested. In the twenty-first century, concerns about environment, urban density, public transport and renewed infrastructure are driving change.

Public building

Victorian architecture

Postal services

General Post Office

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Renaissance Palazzo style building in Pyrmont sandstone on the corner of George Street and Martin Place. The building was constructed on the site of the earlier George Street General Post Office in two stages from 1866 to 1892 as the headquarters of the Government's growing postal services. In the mid 1990s part of the building was sold and converted for use as a hotel, with the remainder of the building being sold to the hotel's operators Far East/Sino Land in 2017.

Barnet, James

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Colonial architect who designed many of Sydney's public buildings.

Martin Place

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Wide street running through Sydney's centre, from the General Post Office at the George Street end, and completed when Sydney City Council resumed property to extend the street all the way to Macquarie Street in the 1930s. Lined with elegant buildings of grand design and lavish materials it has been entirely pedestrian since 1979.