City of Sydney Fire Station: No. 1 Station, Castlereagh Street, 1888

Walk down Castlereagh Street from Park Street towards Bathurst Street and, just past the shops, there's a red brick building with three big arched doors and a fire engine usually parked behind one of them. Most people hurry past it on the way to work. It's worth slowing down, though, because this is the City of Sydney Fire Station, No. 1 Station, at 211 to 217 Castlereagh Street. It opened in 1888 and it has been turning out to fires ever since. Fire and Rescue NSW and the Sydney Open program both describe it as the oldest fire station in New South Wales that is still operating.

The 1888 front of the City of Sydney Fire Station at 217 Castlereagh Street. Photo: Sardaka, 2017, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Before there was a fire brigade

For the first fifty years or so of the colony, fighting fires in Sydney was a patchy business. Fire and Rescue NSW's own history says that in the 1820s the only real fire brigade in New South Wales was a military one, soldiers trained to use the fire appliances. Then the insurance companies stepped in. Fire and Rescue NSW dates the first insurance brigade, set up by the Australian Insurance Company, to 1836; the Museum of Fire puts the start of insurance brigades in Sydney at 1837. Either way, these early crews were mostly local working men using buckets, ladders and axes supplied by the companies.

The Museum of Fire makes a point that surprised me. In England, insurance brigades had a reputation for letting a building burn if its owner hadn't paid them, and each insured building carried a "fire mark", a metal plaque with the company's badge on it. Sydney had fire marks too, for the Phoenix, the Sun, the Alliance and others, but the Museum says local brigades put out fires whether a building was insured or not. The Buildings Act of 1837 paid 30 shillings to the first brigade to get water on a fire, 20 shillings to the second and 10 to the third. You can imagine the races that caused through the streets.

In 1841 a group of businessmen formed the Mutual Fire Insurance Association, and Fire and Rescue NSW says they brought out two engines and two firemen from England, Thomas Bown and Edward Harris. In 1851 the insurance companies joined forces as the Insurance Companies Fire Brigade, also called the Sydney Fire Establishment, with a Bown as superintendent. The brigade's station stood in Bathurst Street, on the corner of George Street, opposite St Andrew's Cathedral.

The volunteers came next. In 1854 Andrew Torning formed the No. 1 Volunteer Company, also known as the Victoria Theatre Brigade, and helped start a string of others. The Museum of Fire notes that "volunteer" isn't quite the right word, because these men were paid for their work. It also says the story that volunteer companies sprang up because insurers refused to fight fires is a myth; the truth was that insurers wouldn't cover certain risky businesses at all, theatres, printing presses and breweries among them.

The old Insurance Companies Fire Brigade station in Bathurst Street, the brigade's first home in 1884, photographed in 1901. The bell tower is empty because its bell had gone to Bathurst by then. Photographer unidentified, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The insurance men and the volunteers did not get along. In 1880, after years of squabbling, two rival bodies were set up, the Metropolitan Associated Fire Brigades and the United Volunteer Fire Brigade Association. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first of these tried to bring the commercial and volunteer brigades together, but it was distrusted in many quarters and plenty of volunteer companies stayed independent.

The Garden Palace, 1882

I've written about the Garden Palace elsewhere on this blog, so I'll keep this short. The great exhibition building in the Domain burned to the ground in 1882, and the Illustrated Sydney News put the fire on a supplement dated 25 October 1882. It happened before the Metropolitan Fire Brigade existed and before a brick of the Castlereagh Street station was laid, so it was the insurance and volunteer brigades who were there that night. It's often told as one of the fires that showed Sydney needed a single, properly run fire service, but I couldn't find a source I'd trust that draws that link directly, so take it as the general feeling of the time rather than a recorded fact.

"Burning of the Garden Palace, Sydney", a supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News, 25 October 1882. Gibbs, Shallard and Co., State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

One brigade for Sydney: 1884

The answer to all that rivalry was the Fire Brigades Act of 1884. The Dictionary of Sydney and Fire and Rescue NSW both date the formation of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade to 14 February 1884. Gary Boyce's detailed history of the station, written in 2010 from the brigade's own archives and State Records, says the new Fire Brigades Board was gazetted on 24 June 1884. It had six members: a chairman appointed by the government, and representatives of the Sydney Municipal Council, the suburban councils, the volunteer firemen and the insurance companies who were paying for a large share of it. Every brigade in Sydney now had to register with the Board and meet its standards to stay in business. The Museum of Fire says many of the fully volunteer brigades couldn't meet the rules and were soon replaced by brigades the Board approved.

The man put in charge of the firefighting itself was William Douglas Bear. The Museum of Fire's account of him says he was born in Woolwich in April 1849, joined the Royal Navy at fourteen, and at twenty-three went into the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, where he rose to Third Officer and Engineer. Eyre Massey Shaw, chief of the London brigade, recommended him for the Sydney job, and he arrived in June 1884. His first and hardest task, the Museum says, was getting the insurance men and the volunteers to work as one brigade.

The first permanent crew of twenty men started on 1 July 1884. According to the Museum of Fire, all but four of them came straight across from the Insurance Brigade. Three came from the No. 1 Volunteer Company and one, Henry Salter, came from the London Fire Brigade; he was made Superintendent of the Adelaide Fire Brigade only nine months later. Bear himself reported, Boyce writes, that his permanent staff was thirty men "including Superintendent, Secretary, and Coachman", and he was proud that the brigade had "three horses, instead of two" as the old insurance brigade had.

The trouble was where to put them. The brigade was squeezed into the old insurance brigade station in Bathurst Street, which Bear called "totally inadequate to the requirements of the Metropolitan Brigade", while the Board worked from temporary offices on the corner of Bridge and Phillip streets. The plan was for three main stations: a central headquarters, a northern one and a southern one.

Building the head station

The government bought the Castlereagh Street land in two lots. Fire and Rescue NSW says the site on the western side of Castlereagh Street was bought in July 1884 for £10,000. Boyce, working from State Records, gives a little more detail and a slightly different total: one lot held the office of the Protestant Standard newspaper, bought from W.H. Paling and A.H. McCulloch for £5,000, and the other held the Royal Standard Hotel, bought from C.J. Royle for £5,500. He places the purchase in the Board's report for 1885.

Getting it built was a saga. Boyce says the first successful tenderers, White and Coghill, realised they'd quoted too low and pulled out. The Board, which thought the original design too expensive anyway, used the chance to strip back the ornament. The next builders, Millet Bros, won the job at £13,150, started knocking down the old buildings and then went broke. A change of ministry and a dissolved parliament added more delay, and the Board's chairman Charles Bown had to remind the government that the brigade was only in Bathurst Street "on suffrance". Finally John Baldwin's tender of £12,999 was accepted and work began late in 1886. Meanwhile the brigade didn't wait: the Museum of Fire says its first suburban station, at Marrickville, was open by April 1886, and Fire and Rescue NSW notes that this, not Castlereagh Street, was the first station actually built for the brigade, even though Castlereagh Street got the number 1.

Boyce writes that the building was finished by 17 February 1888 and the brigade moved in on 1 March. Most sources give 1888 as the opening year, though Fire and Rescue NSW's own history of the station calls it "the 1887 building", presumably after the year most of the building work was done.

Metropolitan Fire Station No. 1 in Castlereagh Street, with horse-drawn appliances out the front. The photo is undated. Government Printing Office, State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

James Barnet's plain fire station

The design came out of the Colonial Architect's office under James Barnet, the man behind the General Post Office, the Lands Department building and, as it happens, the Garden Palace. Boyce points out that Castlereagh Street was Barnet's only fire station and much less elaborate than his other work. That was deliberate. Barnet's first plans of February 1885 were in the Victorian Italianate style, with a big asymmetrical tower and rounded arches, and the Board told him it was too dear. Its secretary, Andrew Bone, wrote that the station "should be of plain a style as possible". So the tower became a lighter one set back from the front to keep things symmetrical, the bracketed eaves went, the rounded arches over the engine doors became flatter segmental arches, and the balustrade and skyline decoration were dropped. What was left is what the heritage people call Victorian Free Classical. Boyce, quoting a 1988 National Trust survey, says it's one of only two Sydney fire stations in that style. The State Library still holds Barnet's photo-lithographed plans, dated 23 February 1888.

Even pared back, it has some lovely touches. Over the middle engine door the keystone carries a bust of Queen Victoria, and the keystones over the two outer doors are carved with a fireman's helmet, axes, torches and other gear. Inside, the tiles in the engine bay carry fire brigade motifs too.

Queen Victoria keeps watch from the keystone over the middle engine bay door. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

One of the outer keystones, carved with a fireman's helmet, axes and torches. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Fire and Rescue NSW says the design borrowed ideas from the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which makes sense with Bear supervising. Charles Bown called it "one of the finest and modern of its kind" and "a model of completeness".

How the station worked

This is the part I find fascinating. The ground floor had three engine bays opening straight onto Castlereagh Street, with the stables behind them across a courtyard, so the horses only had a few steps to go. Fire and Rescue NSW describes the harness and swing bars hanging over each horse on weights running in tubes; when the collar was snapped shut the gear tripped itself and the horse went straight into the engine bay.

The nerve centre was the watchroom on the northern side of the ground floor, where the telephone exchange board, fire alarms and electrical gear were worked. Pull the electrical contact there, Fire and Rescue NSW says, and it rang the bells through the whole building, turned up the gas lamps in the engine bay, released the stable doors so they flew open on springs, and dropped a weight in the single men's quarters on the first floor that opened two flaps over the brass pole so the men could slide down. Speaking tubes ran from the watchroom to the Superintendent's office. The original switchboard has been restored and sits in a replica watchroom at the Museum of Fire in Penrith.

Up top was the watchtower. Fire and Rescue NSW says junior firefighters did three-hour shifts from dusk till dawn on a tower about twenty metres high, known as the "pigeon box", watching for a glow over the rooftops.

The Castlereagh Street station around 1900, with a horse-drawn engine in the street. Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Living over the shop

Firemen in those days didn't go home at the end of a shift, because there wasn't really an end to a shift. Boyce, drawing on Debra Jopson's history of the firefighters' union, says the men were on duty twenty-four hours a day for seven days straight and then had twenty-four hours off. So they lived at the station, or in rented places close by if there was no room. They couldn't leave without an officer's permission, and a lot of the work was menial, including cleaning the officers' quarters and gear. No wonder, as Boyce notes, so many early firemen were ex-sailors; he compares the station to an "onshore ship".

The building showed the pecking order. The Superintendent had nine rooms on the northern part of the first floor with his own bathroom and kitchen. The Foreman, his second in command, had a smaller flat on the floor above. The firemen had interconnecting bedrooms with shared kitchens, bathrooms and laundry. When it opened, Boyce says, citing the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 March 1888, it housed the Superintendent, the Foreman, five married men and eight single men, with four more married men in cottages nearby. There was a billiard room on the ground floor and a boardroom on the first, and the washing was hung out to dry on the roof.

Families grew up in places like this. Boyce quotes a retired fireman, Lew Phillips, who was born above a watchroom and was one of twenty-two children living in a fire station. Marie McCarthy, daughter of fireman John McCarthy, lived at Headquarters from 1910 to 1916 and wasn't sentimental about it: of the seven fire stations her family had lived in, she said, only two were reasonable and "the other five were unacceptable".

The Museum of Fire has a lovely story about Bear from an old Sunday Times piece of 1920. In a public place one night he boasted that the Sydney brigade was the equal of any in the world, New York included. Some Americans laughed at him, so he marched them to the nearest street fire alarm and told one of them to pull it. Within moments, the story goes, steamers, salvage wagons and ladder carriages arrived with hoses out. The Americans assumed the station must be just around the corner, so Bear called a cab and had it drive them there, to show them how far it really was. The Museum is careful to call this part of the "mythology" around Bear, and so will I.

Metropolitan Fire Station No. 3 at Circular Quay, one of the three main stations planned in 1884. State Records dates the photo to about 1890; the Museum of Fire says the station opened in 1893. Government Printing Office, State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Alfred Webb and Nicholas Sparks

Bear resigned in September 1898. His successor was Alfred Webb, who the Museum of Fire says was Superintendent of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade from 1898 to 1909 and then the first Chief Officer of the NSW Fire Brigades from 1910 until 1913. A 1958 note quoted by the Firefighter Championships, written when Webb's family gave a trophy in his name, says he was chief officer "from 1888 to 1913", but the Museum's own dates are backed up by Bear's resignation in 1898, so I'd go with those. The Alfred Webb Cup is still awarded to the top team at the state firefighting championships.

Webb's right-hand man was Nicholas George Sparks. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he was born in Portsea in 1857, served in the navy and joined the London brigade in 1881. He arrived in Sydney in June 1897 with his wife and two daughters and, as third officer, moved into the Castlereagh Street headquarters. He became deputy in November 1898. The ADB says that between 1898 and 1914 Webb and Sparks turned the Sydney brigades into a disciplined, professional force with the latest motorised appliances. When Webb died in 1913, Sparks took over as chief officer. (His name turns up as both Sparks and Sparkes; the ADB uses Sparks.)

Metropolitan Fire Brigade firemen in 1905, two of them in smoke helmets. State Records NSW (NRS 15454), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Hordern's, July 1901

The worst fire of Webb's early years was the Anthony Hordern's fire in the Haymarket on Wednesday 10 July 1901. Hordern's was then a complex of five big buildings around Gipps Street (now Barlow Street), Parker Street, George Street and Pitt Street. A retelling in Sydney's Daily Mirror of 20 August 1985 says the fire started at about 8.20 in the morning when an electric wire fused in the basement toy department of the Palace building and set celluloid toys alight. Within four minutes, it says, the first horse-drawn steamer came galloping round the corner from fire brigade headquarters with Superintendent Webb on board.

A strong westerly carried the flames across the narrow streets between the buildings. Deputy Superintendent Sparks followed a storeman, William Farrell, into the burning furniture building to warn men working a hose on the fifth floor, and both were badly burned getting out. Five Hordern's employees died, among them the upholsterer Harry Clegg, who was trapped on the parapet and jumped in front of the crowd. When people panicked that the gasometers next door would explode, Webb had already ordered the gas company to pump the gas back to its Mortlake works. At the inquest, the Mirror says, Webb told the coroner that even fifty engines, rather than the ten he had, couldn't have saved the store. The paper says the fire led to tougher safety rules for city buildings and a stronger fire brigade.

Firefighters at work on the Anthony Hordern's fire in the Haymarket, July 1901 (a stereo pair). State Library of NSW (ON5/31), via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Another stereo view of the Hordern's fire, July 1901. State Library of NSW (ON5/30), via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Growing out of the building

By the early 1900s the 1888 station was bursting. In 1902 Charles Bown complained that "procrastination is accentuating the evil" and that what had been enough fifteen years earlier was now "utterly inadequate". Boyce puts the government's foot-dragging down partly to the 1890s depression. Fire and Rescue NSW says the station's workshops had already been enlarged in 1893.

The first big addition was next door at 211 Castlereagh Street, a three-storey brick building that became known as the "Boot Factory". Fire and Rescue NSW says it was leased in 1902; Boyce says the Board rented it year to year from 1902 and took a twenty-one-year lease in 1904. The brigade made boots, uniforms, hoses, rope lines and canvas there, and for a while unmarried firemen slept there. The Board bought it in 1923.

The trams came up Castlereagh Street in 1902 and, Boyce says, their rumble played havoc with the alarms in the watchroom, so in 1909 the watchroom moved into the old billiard room and the billiard table went to a gym in the Boot Factory.

Here the sources part ways on the big northern extension. Fire and Rescue NSW and the Sydney Open listing date it to 1907. Boyce, working from council planning records and the Board's annual reports, says the land at 213 to 215 Castlereagh Street was bought from the Countess of Carnarvon in 1909 for £4,675, that the building application was lodged on 14 June 1912, and that the new "Administration Building" by the architects Spain, Cosh and Minnett was built by Wall and Sons for £9,668 and occupied in August 1913. I can't settle that one from here, so you have both.

From horses to motors

In 1910 the Fire Brigades Act took effect across the whole state. The Fire Brigades Board became the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade became the NSW Fire Brigades, and the Superintendent became the Chief Officer. Castlereagh Street went from being the head station of a Sydney brigade to the headquarters of a statewide one.

Boyce says the horses finished at Headquarters in 1915. The 1888 stables lost their upper storey and were opened up to make two more engine bays. Then on 28 June 1927 Sydney and Newcastle firemen won an eighty-four-hour week, and a two-platoon system followed, so the men no longer had to live at the station. That freed up space. Boyce says the front of the Administration Building was changed in 1927 to take two vehicle entrances, under William McNiven, a probationary fireman of 1900 who became the brigade's first in-house architect; Fire and Rescue NSW dates the conversion to engine bays to 1928, for "an enlarged fleet of motorised appliances". Either way, the motor age had arrived on Castlereagh Street.

New gas masks being shown off at the Castlereagh Street headquarters in 1927. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Museum of Fire has one more nice detail from these years. Thomas Nance joined the brigade in 1895 and spent his early years in the carpentry shop at Headquarters. In 1929 he became the first Australian-born Chief Officer, and he turned the southern basement of Headquarters into a workshop where he made toys for children.

Testing air raid sirens at Fire Headquarters, 22 February 1940. Photo: Ted Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

A fire engine and its crew at Fire Brigade Headquarters, Sydney, 17 March 1941. Photo: R. Donaldson, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The NSW Fire Brigade rescuing trapped office workers somewhere in the city, some time between about 1925 and 1939. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The station today

The need for a bigger station was raised as early as 1934, Fire and Rescue NSW says, but nothing happened for decades. Boyce notes that training moved out to a new college at Paddington in 1956 and the residential quarters were eventually removed altogether. In July 1999 an application went to the City of Sydney Council to refurbish the old buildings and add a new one. Boyce says the council preferred keeping a fire station on the site to seeing a tower go up, and a conservation plan limited new building to four storeys.

The Boot Factory was knocked down and a new station with modern engine bays was finished in February 2003. Fire and Rescue NSW says the foundation stone was laid by the Emergency Services Minister, Bob Debus, and Commissioner Ian MacDougall. Restoration of the 1888 building began in March 2003. Missing parts of the rear iron balconies were rebuilt, a 1920s infill over the old stables was taken off, and the First World War honour board, original tiles and doors were kept. Part of the ground floor became a small museum. The front, engine bays, front rooms and main staircase of the later northern building were kept too. Sydney Open credits Clare Design for the 2004 work.

As for heritage protection, Boyce records that the station is on the NSW Fire Brigades' section 170 heritage register, the list government agencies keep of their own heritage assets. The Australian Heritage Database, in its entry for Pyrmont Fire Station, says the Metropolitan Fire Brigade built the city's protection around five city stations, one central headquarters and one at each point of the compass, and names Castlereagh Street as one of only three comparable big early stations, though "redeveloped".

On 1 January 2011 the NSW Fire Brigades changed its name to Fire and Rescue NSW, and in 2017 its head office moved out to Greenacre. No. 1 Station kept doing what it has done since March 1888. The building opens its doors now and then for Sydney Open, and it's well worth the visit.

The station today: the 1888 building, the later northern addition and the 2003 building in one run along Castlereagh Street. Photo: Adam.J.W.C., 2009, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5).

Next time you're waiting for the lights at Bathurst Street, have a look up at Queen Victoria over the middle door, and spare a thought for the young firemen up in the pigeon box, staring out over a city of gas lamps, waiting for a glow in the dark.

The Sydney Masonic Centre, 279 Castlereagh Street, and the Freemasons of New South Wales

If you've ever walked up Castlereagh Street from Central towards Museum station, you'll know the one. On the north-west corner of Goulburn Street there's a great grey wedge of concrete that seems to lean out over the footpath, with a slim office tower balanced on top. It's the Sydney Masonic Centre, home of the Freemasons of New South Wales and the ACT. A lot of Sydneysiders have been inside for a conference, an exam or a gig without ever knowing what goes on upstairs. (For anyone looking it up, it's Castlereagh Street, not Castle Street. The Freemasons give the address as 279 Castlereagh Street, the City of Sydney's heritage records list it as 279–283 Castlereagh Street, and the events venue sends visitors to the front door at 66 Goulburn Street. They're all the same building.)

The Sydney Masonic Centre from the corner of Castlereagh and Goulburn Streets, with Civic Tower on top. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A corner with Masonic roots

The Freemasons were on this corner long before the concrete. The City of Sydney's heritage inventory says the northern part of the site has belonged to Freemasonry since January 1884, when the New Masonic Hall at 279–281 Castlereagh Street, designed by the architects Backhouse & Lough, was consecrated. The land story behind it is a very Sydney tangle. In the early 1880s the title to that northern block went to four men: licensed victualler James Hunt, cordial maker John Starkey, builder Unni William Carpenter and druggist Nicholas Weekes, later Mayor of Manly. All four were officers of the Grand Lodge. Starkey was its Grand Treasurer and Weekes its Grand Secretary. The block passed to the Grand Lodge of New South Wales Masonic Hall Company in 1886, and finally to trustees of the United Grand Lodge in October 1913.

The southern part, right on the corner, had a livelier past. From the 1860s it held the Pompey's Pillar Hotel and a pair of houses on Goulburn Street. The retailer Samuel Hordern bought them in 1901, and by 1903 he owned the whole Goulburn Street frontage. Later there was a 1919 building on the old hotel site called Millar House, plus the Bapaume Building next door on Castlereagh Street. In 1935 the United Grand Lodge decided its 1884 hall had too many shortcomings and resolved to buy property "suitable for the erection of a Temple worthy of this jurisdiction". It picked up pieces of the Hordern estate when the trustees began selling at the end of 1937, and it made its last purchase, Millar House and the Bapaume Building, in May 1945.

The Freemasons' own timeline for the centre lists the buying of the neighbouring properties as running from 1935 to 1945.

A temple for the war dead that took thirty years

Buying the land was the easy part. The heritage inventory tells how the Grand Master, Lord Gowrie, revived a big 1936 scheme in September 1943, suggesting it could become a Peace Memorial Temple for Freemasons who had served and died in the two world wars. In December 1954 Grand Lodge voted to set up a building fund for a Memorial Masonic Temple. Not everyone was keen, and the first appeal, launched in 1957, foundered. It was relaunched in 1959. That's why the inventory still lists "Memorial Masonic Centre" as a former name.

A building committee was finally formed in June 1967. It included the Grand Lodge's own Grand Architect, T. W. Hodgson, and Ronald Gilling, a partner in Joseland & Gilling. That firm went back to 1919, when Richard George Howard Joseland teamed up with Frederick Glynn Gilling. Between the wars they were known for substantial houses. After Gilling's son Ronald Andrew became a partner in 1948, the practice moved into big commercial work. In the 1960s and 70s it designed the ANZ Bank and South British United Insurance buildings in Hunter Street, the Qantas Centre near Lang Park and the Colonial Mutual building in Pitt Street.

A model and sketches were shown to the Freemasons in March 1972. In 1973 a revised development application went in for a lodge, shops and an office block, and the building application followed in July 1974. Tenders were called on 14 April 1975 and the foundation stone was laid on 15 May 1976. People started moving in during December 1978, and the building was officially opened and dedicated on 10 March 1979, with an International Masonic Festival to mark it.

The Castlereagh Street side. The overhanging, windowless top floor sits on big splayed concrete braces. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Brutalism, Sydney style

The heritage inventory sums it up as "an outstanding and powerful example of the Brutalist architectural style", with strong, expressive shapes in reinforced concrete, bold curves, textured materials and big unbroken walls. Its very high standard of off-form concrete, poured against timber formwork and left as it came out, is singled out too.

The shape wasn't just for show. According to the inventory, the outside was worked out from what had to fit inside. The whole plan turns on a diagonal line through the street corner. The great lodge room sits on that line, and you can read its form from the footpath. Two pairs of vertical concrete stair shafts stand either side, one pair framing the entrance to the Masonic Centre and the other the way into the office tower. The building gets wider as it goes up, from a narrow base to a heavy overhanging top floor with no windows, which holds offices and meeting rooms. That top storey is carried on big splayed braces, which is what gives the place its "how is that staying up?" look.

The trade magazine Constructional Review, quoted in the inventory, said the podium was meant to be "to the Grand Lodge of New South Wales as a cathedral is to the Church". In 1989 Apperly, Irving and Reynolds chose it for their reference book Identifying Australian Architecture as one of their illustrated examples of Australian brutalism. The architecture writer Joe Rollo went further in his 2004 book Concrete Poetry. He wrote that it "expresses all the plasticity and brute force of concrete as a material in architecture perhaps better than any other building in Australia", and called it "bare-boned, direct and strong".

Looking across from Pitt and Goulburn Streets. The tower is carried on its central lift core above the 1970s podium. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Goulburn Street entrance at No. 66, with the glass lobby added in the early 2000s. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Inside: the foyer, the halls and the lodge rooms

Walk in and the first thing you notice is the foyer. The inventory counts it among Sydney's most dramatic interiors. It rises through three storeys, and the levels are linked by a pair of free-standing round lift shafts in the middle with a winding stair around them. Inside, as outside, it's mostly bare off-form concrete, with frameless glass, travertine floors and some vertical timber panelling. Hanging above a reception desk near the stair is a woven sculpture by the textile artist Mona Hessing, made for the building and considered one of her finest works.

When it opened, the podium held parking and supper rooms in the basement and at street level. The Grand Temple, the Banquet Hall, the lodge and committee rooms and offices were upstairs. Altogether there are five or six storeys above two levels of basement parking. The big central lodge room is backed up by several smaller lodge rooms. The venue's own list of rooms gives you a feel for the Masonic side. Lodge rooms named Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite, after the classical orders of columns, sit alongside the Banquet Hall, the Grand Lodge, the Marble Foyer and rooms called Northcott, Remington and Rawson, names that turn up in the list of past Grand Masters.

The Sydney Open program for the building says Level 3 holds the Grand Lodge Room, several lodge rooms, the Grand Library, the Museum of Freemasonry and the Carrington Room. The Carrington Room is named for Lord Carrington, the first Grand Master in 1888. The Museum of Freemasonry describes its collection as artefacts, regalia, jewellery, glass, ceramics, paintings, books and records gathered over centuries, and it includes things that belonged to famous Freemasons. The museum gives its entrance as Level 3, 66 Goulburn Street. On its own site it lists weekday opening hours, but check before you go, because its pages and the listings that quote them don't all give the same hours.

One of the Centre's big halls, packed for a conference in November 2010, with timber-lined walls and a gallery. Photo: Catherine from Australia, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Looking up at the lattice of lights in the same hall's ceiling. Photo: Catherine from Australia, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

These days the Freemasons still own the building, but the Sydney Masonic Centre also runs as a commercial events venue with a dozen function spaces. The venue is careful to say that events held there have nothing to do with the Freemasons and that everyone is welcome. It has refitted the Level 4 function rooms with off-form concrete finishes, curved timber-battened walls and oak, to echo the original building.

The tower that waited 25 years

From the start, Joseland & Gilling's scheme had a 24-storey office tower rising above the Masonic podium. It just didn't get built for about a quarter of a century. The Sydney Open notes say that, decades on, the air space above was sold to a developer. When they saw the original designs, they brought in PTW Architects to build them. In 2001 approval was given to add three levels and make some minor changes, but the inventory says the overall look and the splayed base stayed as first drawn. Peddle Thorp & Walker also enclosed the street-level forecourts on Goulburn and Castlereagh Streets in glass for a lobby and cafe. The tower is now called Civic Tower.

The engineering is the clever bit. The heritage inventory says the tower is unusual because it's held up by its central lift core. Sydney Open goes further, calling it Australia's first tower to be fully supported on a central lift core, with no structural columns touching the ground, so it looks as if it's balancing on the podium. The sources don't agree on when it was finished. The City of Sydney inventory and the venue's own timeline say 2005, but the Sydney Open program says 2004.

Not every change has been kind to the original. The inventory notes coatings brushed over some of the bare concrete, aluminium panels on the Goulburn Street stair shafts, and the loss of the old radial-pattern paving out the front. It recommends looking into removing the coatings if that can be done without damaging the concrete.

Heritage listing

The building was picked up in the City of Sydney's study of Modern Movement architecture in central Sydney, one of nine post-war places the City put forward for local heritage listing. The City says the Central Sydney Planning Committee approved those listings in June 2020. The listing covers the podium inside and out, along with the Mona Hessing artwork. The part of Civic Tower above the podium isn't included. The inventory rates the building's significance as State level for its aesthetic and technical qualities, but it was endorsed for local listing, and it isn't on the State Heritage Register. It also calls it a rare example, in the City of Sydney, of a Masonic building from the second half of the 20th century.

Freemasons' Hall, York Street, and the Masonic Club

Before Castlereagh Street, the Masons moved around a fair bit. According to the heritage inventory, members of the various Masonic groups bought the York Hotel in York Street in September 1839 for their meetings, and it became known as the Freemasons' Hall. Before that, as Wor. Bro. H. H. Mackay told the Sydney Lodge of Research in 1937, "all meetings were held at various taverns or inns, in the absence of proper meeting places".

The Masons' other big Castlereagh Street landmark is a few blocks north. It's the NSW Masonic Club at 169–171 Castlereagh Street. The club's own history says it began on 15 September 1893 as the NSW Masonic Musical and Literary Society, started by a dozen Masonic musicians at Stoddart's Royal Hotel in Paddington. It moved to Paddington Town Hall and then to Pitt Street. In 1925 it bought land from the Commercial Travellers' Association for £43,000 and sold off the Pitt Street frontage for £50,000. On the Castlereagh Street side it built a 12-storey building designed by Claude William Chambers, which opened on 12 September 1927. The club calls it the tallest building in Sydney when it was finished. The State Heritage Inventory, quoted in a 2018 heritage submission, describes it as a fine example of the Inter-war Commercial Palazzo style with a sandstone front, while the club's own history calls it Art Deco. In 1984 the members' accommodation floors became the hotel now called the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel.

The NSW Masonic Club at 169–171 Castlereagh Street, opened in 1927 and now shared with the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

How Freemasonry came to the colony

Freemasonry came out with the redcoats. The British Army regiments sent to garrison New South Wales carried "travelling warrants" that let their lodges meet wherever the regiment was posted. Not every governor liked it. The Freemasons of NSW & ACT tell how in 1803 a Masonic meeting was held at Sergeant Whittle's house in Sydney, although Governor King had already refused permission. A party carrying the Governor's warrant broke it up to arrest everyone there. A century later, at a special Grand Lodge meeting in the Sydney Town Hall in 1903, Grand Master J. C. Remington claimed that night at Whittle's as the "Dawn of Freemasonry in Australia". The same article mentions old Lands Department records of a "Lodge St John No. 1" on Norfolk Island in 1800, probably an irregular lodge, since the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland and Scotland have no record of it.

The first lodge to work properly in Sydney belonged to the 46th Regiment. It was the Lodge of Social and Military Virtues, No. 227 on the Irish register, whose travelling warrant Mackay dates to 4 March 1752. The 46th left Sydney for Madras on 23 September 1817, and historians have argued for a century about how much it did to start local Masonry. In a 1996 paper, Masonic historian Robert Linford set out the different views. The lodge historian William Henley wrote in 1920 that the Australian Social Lodge was formed in 1816 with the 46th's help, and Eric Dibbs followed a similar line in 1950. The Grand Lodge historians Cramp and Mackaness disagreed, saying Lodge 227 took no part in setting up regular Freemasonry in Australia. Linford pointed out that the 46th and 48th Regiments were only in Sydney together for 138 days in 1817. Mackay, writing in 1937, still gave the 46th and 48th credit as sponsors.

Today's Grand Lodge credits Lodge No. 218 of the 48th Regiment with the hands-on work. Eight civilian Master Masons from that lodge sent a petition to Ireland, and on 6 January 1820 the Grand Lodge of Ireland issued Warrant No. 260 for "The Australian Social Lodge". The warrant reached Port Jackson on 5 August 1820. Mackay says it came out with Surgeon Price on the ship Hadlow. He says the lodge was consecrated and its first Master installed on the King's Birthday, 12 August 1820, at the Golden Lion Tavern next to the King's Wharf. The Grand Lodge's own article gives 30 August 1820 as the first regular meeting. The first Master was Matthew Bacon, an ex-soldier of the 48th who kept a store at No. 2 York Street. The lodge became Australian Social Mother in 1878 and Antiquity in 1920. As Lodge Antiquity No. 1, it still meets in the Sydney Masonic Centre.

Others followed. Leinster Marine Lodge, No. 266 on the Irish register, was consecrated on 12 February 1824 and is now No. 2. The first English lodge, the Lodge of Australia No. 820, had its charter dated 21 June 1828 and held its first regular meeting on 6 April 1829. Today it's No. 3. Mackay records Parramatta's St John Lodge being consecrated in June 1839, after a row over whether it should hold an English or an Irish charter. Scotland arrived on 4 August 1851, when Lodge Sydney St Andrew No. 358 was formed. It's now No. 7.

The Goose and Gridiron in St Paul's Churchyard, London, where the first Grand Lodge was founded in 1717. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Three Grand Lodges become one, 1877–1888

With lodges under the English, Irish and Scottish Grand Lodges all working side by side, and every decision having to wait for a reply from the other side of the world, frustration built up. Mackay says there was talk of one Grand Lodge for everyone as early as 1847, but it went nowhere. The sources differ on what came next. The heritage inventory says "the first Grand Lodge opened in Sydney in 1845". Other accounts date the first English Provincial Grand Lodge to 10 May 1849 with John Williams as Provincial Grand Master, but a speaker in the discussion after Mackay's 1937 lecture names G. R. Nichols of the Lodge of Australia as the first Provincial Grand Master. Mackay's own text has Nichols appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master by England in May 1839.

In 1877 the local men broke away. Mackay says that "practically the whole" of the Irish lodges and some of the Scottish ones formed the Grand Lodge of New South Wales, with James Farnell as its first Grand Master. Farnell was also a prominent politician who served as Minister for Lands. The heritage inventory puts the number of founding lodges at 13 in December 1877, and other accounts say it was three Irish and five Scottish lodges on 3 December 1877. Either way, it caused a lot of bad blood. Mackay says England refused to recognise this "Unconstitutional Body", banned its own lodges from admitting members of it, and struck off Lodge Truth at Braidwood for joining. Scotland suspended lodges too. He calls the decade that followed "a period in our Masonic history we would like to forget".

It was sorted out in 1888. Mackay says the four groups, English, Irish, Scottish and the local Grand Lodge, met in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney on 16 August 1888 and agreed to form the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales. The sources don't agree on how many lodges took part. Mackay says 176, with 74 English, 53 Scottish and 49 from the local Grand Lodge, and about 5,600 members. The heritage inventory says the Masters and Wardens of 183 lodges assembled, and the Masonic Club's history says there were 186 lodges in NSW by 1888. The Governor, Lord Carrington, who held senior rank in English Freemasonry, was installed as the first Grand Master on 12 September 1888, according to Mackay. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that as a Mason in Sydney he "succeeded in uniting the four separated Grand Lodges".

Lord Carrington, Governor of New South Wales and the first Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge in 1888. Image: State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Some well-known Sydney Freemasons

For a long time the Grand Master's chair went to the Governor of the day. Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, Governor of New South Wales, was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge from 1905 to 1909. The ADB says he visited a lot of lodges on his tours around the state, despite constant pain from an arthritic hip. Lord Gowrie, the Governor-General, was the Grand Master who revived the memorial temple idea in 1943.

Plenty of Grand Masters were locals. Dr Frederick Maguire trained as a teacher at Sydney Grammar School before becoming a surgeon, professor of anatomy at the University of Sydney and Director-General of Army Medical Services in 1941–42. The City of Sydney's aldermen history says he was initiated into the Lodge of Australia No. 3 in 1920 and was Grand Master from 1933 to 1935. He also sat on the board of the NSW Masonic Hospital. Going back further, Leinster Marine Lodge initiated the explorer Hamilton Hume on 12 September 1825, not long after he got back from his trek from Lake George to Geelong, according to Mackay. Mackay also mentions W. B. Dalley, initiated in July 1858, whom he describes as later becoming Premier of the colony. And the Masonic schools at Baulkham Hills took their name from William Thompson, Grand Master in the years around the First World War.

Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, Governor of NSW and Grand Master from 1905 to 1909, in a signed photograph by Tolma & Co of George Street. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

William Thompson, Grand Master around 1913–14, whose name went on the Masonic schools at Baulkham Hills. Photo: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

So what do Freemasons actually do?

Take away the mystery and Freemasonry is a club for men, run through local lodges, built around ceremonies, dinners and charity. The United Grand Lodge of England, where organised Freemasonry started at the Goose and Gridiron pub in London in 1717, describes it as "one of the world's oldest and largest non-religious, non-political, fraternal and charitable organisations". Its four values today are Integrity, Friendship, Respect and Service.

Members learn its moral lessons through what the English Grand Lodge calls "a series of ritual dramas", short allegorical plays learnt by heart and performed in the lodge, which use stonemasons' customs and tools as their props. To join you have to be a man of 18 or over of good character, and you must be able to say you believe in a "Supreme Being". The English Grand Lodge says this is worded broadly on purpose, and you don't have to belong to any particular religion. The English Grand Lodge also says Freemasonry as a body will never take a view on politics or state policy. The Grand Lodge also says that giving fellow members preference in business or anything else is "certainly not" allowed, and that new members declare they expect no material gain from joining.

What about the secrecy? The English Grand Lodge's answer is that new members promise to keep private the ways Masons recognise each other when visiting another lodge, and it says Freemasonry places "a strong emphasis on privacy rather than secrecy". It also admits Freemasons have long been viewed with suspicion, especially by authoritarian governments and some religious institutions, and that films and books have added plenty of conspiracy theories. Sydney had a taste of that official suspicion right at the start, when Governor King sent his men to break up the meeting at Sergeant Whittle's.

Charity is the part most people never see. Mackay tells how, in 1854, the Lodge of Australia started a fund to educate the children of dead or struggling members, with every member chipping in a shilling a week. It became the Freemasons' Orphan Society, the forerunner of the William Thompson Masonic Schools at Baulkham Hills. Maguire's biography mentions the NSW Masonic Hospital as well.

Freemasons' Hall in London, home of the United Grand Lodge of England. Photo: Bjørn Erik Pedersen, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Freemasons laying a foundation stone, June 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The symbols, plainly explained

The square and compasses. This is the badge you see on Masonic halls all over the state. The Museum of Freemasonry in London explains that a stonemason uses a square to get perfect right angles, so for a Freemason the square means treating people fairly and equally. That's where "on the square" comes from. The compasses draw circles, and for Masons they stand for the boundary you don't step over into bad or excessive behaviour. Put together, the museum says, they sum up the aim of living "a moderate and upright life".

The letter G. In many countries, though not in England, a G sits inside the square and compasses. The same museum says it stands for Geometry, the basis of the stonemason's craft. It's often said to mean God, but the museum points out the letter isn't changed in other languages, so France doesn't use D for Dieu. It adds that the Irish and Scottish Grand Lodges, which brought Masonry to early Sydney, still use the G.

The temple and the working tools. In the ceremonies members act out stonemasons building King Solomon's Temple, the museum says, and the tools of the trade become moral lessons. It's hard not to see the same builders' theme in the Masonic Centre's lodge rooms, named after the five classical orders of columns.

The apron. According to the Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons wear aprons in memory of the stonemasons who built the castles and cathedrals of the past. Those men wore big, heavy leather aprons to protect themselves from flying chips of stone. A new member, called an "Entered Apprentice", starts with a plain white lambskin apron. Light blue and silver are added as he goes through the three "degree" ceremonies, and senior members wear dark blue and gold. Everyone starts with the plain one, with no exceptions. In the early days aprons were often hand-painted, printed or stitched with the craft's symbols, like the eighteenth-century one below, before the designs were standardised.

The square and compasses with the letter G, the best-known Masonic emblem. Photo: Gary J. Wood of Toronto, 2006, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

A painted Master Mason's apron from the 18th century. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Masonic Sydney beyond the CBD

The Masonic Centre is the headquarters, but for most of the 20th century Freemasonry was part of ordinary suburban life, with lodge halls, balls, picnics and foundation stones. The photographer Sam Hood captured plenty of it in the 1930s, and his pictures are now in the State Library of New South Wales. Many suburban halls survive, some with wonderful interiors, like the Egyptian-themed lodge room at the Freemasons' hall in Petersham.

Masonic brethren at a foundation stone ceremony, about 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

A Masonic ball, about 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Egyptian room at the Freemasons' hall in Petersham, in Sydney's inner west. Photo: Chelm261, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Going to have a look

The easiest way in is just to go. The Museum of Freemasonry is on Level 3, the building takes part in Sydney Open, and on open days volunteers stand in the Grand Library, the museum and the lodge rooms to answer questions. Next time you're stuck at the lights on the corner of Goulburn and Castlereagh, have a proper look up. That leaning concrete box has been carrying a 24-storey tower on its back for twenty years, and its site has belonged to the Freemasons since 1884.

The Great Synagogue, Elizabeth Street: Sydney's Mother Congregation

Walk up Elizabeth Street on the Hyde Park side of town and, squeezed in between the office towers, there's a sandstone front with two domed towers, a great round wheel window and a pair of heavy iron gates. Most Sydneysiders have walked past it a hundred times. That's the Great Synagogue, at 187a Elizabeth Street, and it runs right through the block to Castlereagh Street. It was consecrated in March 1878, and the NSW State Heritage Register calls it the earliest surviving synagogue in NSW still in use. Its own congregation, and the heritage listing, call it the Mother Congregation of Australian Jewry. The story behind it goes all the way back to the First Fleet.

The Elizabeth Street front of the Great Synagogue, facing Hyde Park, in July 2008. Photo: BobMeade, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Jews on the First Fleet

There were Jews in the colony from the very first day, although nobody agrees exactly how many. Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple, who was senior rabbi at the Great Synagogue for over thirty years, wrote that among the 751 convicts on the First Fleet there were "at least 16 Jews". The synagogue's current website says "around sixteen". Laila Ellmoos, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, puts it at "at least eight Jewish convicts aboard the First Fleet, and several hundred others on subsequent transports." The difference probably comes down to who you count as Jewish, but I'll leave both figures there.

According to Rabbi Apple, one of those convicts, Joseph Levy, died on 15 April 1788 and was the first Jew buried on Australian soil, though without any Jewish rites. Ellmoos points out that Jews, like Catholics, couldn't really practise their faith until the early 1820s, because everyone was made to attend Church of England services. Apple says it was about thirty years before Joseph Marcus, a German-born convict with a good Hebrew education, managed to gather 30 or so Jews together to pray on a regular basis.

Above a shop in George Street

Things picked up when free settlers started coming out in the late 1820s. Apple writes that one of them, 25-year-old Philip Joseph Cohen, arrived with recommendations from the Chief Rabbi in London and started holding services in his home in George Street. A rival group soon set up its own services. The two carried on separately until 1830, when Rabbi Aaron Levy of London, who'd come all the way out to arrange a religious divorce, made peace between them. A petition to Governor Darling for a proper house of worship had already been knocked back, but by now there were 25 free Jewish settlers, including Joseph Barrow Montefiore.

The congregation was formally set up on 2 November 1831. On 26 September 1832 the Sydney Monitor reported that "the Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews' Synagogue held over Mr Rowell's shop in George Street", which it called "elegantly fitted out". The Dictionary of Sydney identifies Mr Rowell as John Rowell, a chemist and druggist. The rules were strict. Apple quotes the old regulations: any committee member not dressed in a "decent and respectable manner" was fined a guinea, there was to be no talking during services, and the young gentlemen of the families were to "take special care they behave themselves in a manner becoming a place of Divine Worship". The first minister, Rev Michael Rose, arrived on 20 May 1835.

Bridge Street and then York Street

By 1837 there were over 300 adults in the congregation, and Apple says they leased bigger rooms at No 4 Bridge Street for £160 a year. A visitor's description from 1838 talks about a hundred seats, a reading desk, a ladies' gallery with about thirty seats, and an Ark holding a handwritten scroll of the Books of Moses on vellum. The fit-out was done by Barnett Aaron Phillips, a stage carpenter who'd worked at Drury Lane. That scroll, bought from Rabbi Aaron Levy, was the first sacred scroll in Australia. Apple believes the little Ark from Bridge Street, dating from the 1830s, is the one now kept with the synagogue's museum, and if so, he says, it would be one of the earliest pieces of ecclesiastical furniture in Australia.

The congregation wanted a purpose-built synagogue. Apple writes that Governor Bourke offered a grant of land but it was in the wrong spot, and a later site in Kent Street North granted by Governor Gipps would have cost too much to dig out. Bridge Street was given up in 1840 and services moved around rooms over members' shops. In the end the congregation bought land in York Street, near where the Town Hall stands today. James Hume designed the building and the foundation stone went down in 1842, with both Jews and Christians chipping in. It was consecrated on 2 April 1844, and the music was arranged by Isaac Nathan, who's often called the father of Australian music. The State Library of NSW and the synagogue's website both call York Street Australia's first purpose-built synagogue. It sat about 500 people, and its exterior was described as being in the Egyptian style.

An early Sydney synagogue, catalogued on Commons as the York Street Synagogue (consecrated 1844), painted by Frederick Garling. Painting: Frederick Garling jnr (1806–1873), via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The York Street Synagogue in November 1870, a few years before the congregation moved to Elizabeth Street. Photo: John Sharkey, Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

The split and the Macquarie Street synagogue

In the late 1850s the congregation split right down the middle. Apple describes it carefully: the minister refused to carry out a particular religious ritual because it wasn't permitted in the circumstances. The State Library of NSW is more specific, saying that in 1859 the argument was over the circumcision of the son of a non-Jewish mother. A number of the wealthier, established members walked out and started the Sydney New Synagogue in a former Baptist chapel in Macquarie Street. Ellmoos describes it as being opposite Parliament House.

A 1975 article in the Australian Jewish Times, digitised on Trove, says the Rev M. R. Cohen was "the main protagonist in the Macquarie Street secession". According to Apple, York Street stayed well attended while Macquarie Street struggled with money troubles and arguments of its own. The State Library says both sides eventually saw there was no point in carrying on separately.

Rev A. B. Davis brings them back together

The man who did the most to heal the split was Alexander Barnard Davis. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he was born in London on 15 August 1828, orphaned at 12, and had served congregations at Portsmouth and at Kingston, Jamaica, before taking up the ministry at York Street. He arrived in Sydney on 17 August 1862. Apple says the congregation had been after "an Englishman of Education and character", and Davis also had "a very beautiful voice", which mattered when the minister chanted most of the service. He set up a permanent choir of six men and thirteen women. The ADB says he's credited with the first mixed choir in any synagogue in the British Empire, and he was the first to admit girls to religious classes. Interestingly, the ADB notes that Davis never claimed the title "Rabbi", although people gave it to him freely.

By the early 1870s a reunion was on the cards, but there was nowhere to put everyone. Apple says Macquarie Street was too small and York Street couldn't be extended because the neighbour wouldn't sell. The heritage register says the first moves towards a bigger site were made in 1864. In 1871 a builder named John Solomon bought land in Elizabeth Street at auction for £2,000 and held it until the congregation could pay. The State Library adds that the Jewish Synagogue and Schools Act of 1872 let the congregation sell land it had been granted, including a school site on Church Hill. The register says the money came from selling the Kent Street land and later the York and Macquarie Street properties. Bequests from congregation members Simon Lear and M. L. Jonas helped too.

The new synagogue on Elizabeth Street around 1880, from an album that belonged to Edward Hungerford. Australian National Maritime Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Thomas Rowe's design

The architect was Thomas Rowe. The ADB says he was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1829, came out with his family in 1848, tried his luck on the goldfields at Sofala, where his partner ran off with their gold, and went on to run one of the biggest practices in NSW. It was said in 1890 that you could walk down Pitt Street and always be opposite one of his buildings. Sydney Hospital in Macquarie Street is his too.

Thomas Rowe (1829–1899), the Cornish-born architect who designed the Great Synagogue. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

According to the heritage register, Rowe won a limited competition in 1872 against G. A. Mansfield and Benjamin Backhouse, and he also managed the construction. The Australian Jewish Historical Society, in a piece about the gates, says Rowe won the competition in 1874, so the sources don't quite agree on the year. When the congregation launched its building appeal, it sent out a photograph of a new London synagogue as the model for the Sydney building. The register calls it the "New London Synagogue" and says it was later destroyed by bombing in 1941. The register also says the design is "reputed" to draw on the Princes Road Synagogue in Liverpool and the New West End Synagogue in London, and that the architect W. L. Vernon, then in private practice, is "reputed" to have partly supervised Rowe on the design.

Apple says Rowe called his original plan "Transition French Gothic", and that it had to be scaled back for money reasons, so as ornate as the place is, Rowe had hoped for something even grander. Ellmoos agrees his plans weren't completely carried through.

The foundation stone, 26 January 1875

The State Library of NSW gives the date as 26 January 1875. The foundation stone for the central arches was laid by the Hon. Saul Samuel, then Postmaster-General, who buried a time capsule with it. The heritage register calls Samuel "later to be the first Jewish minister of the Crown in the British Empire". In his speech, reported in The Empire the next day, Samuel told the crowd the building should be "an ornament to the city in which we live". He also told them the money wasn't all there yet: "The cost, it is estimated, will be nearly £20,000 — a sum, I believe, that will be admitted to be very large to be raised by a community not numbering more than 3000 in the whole of New South Wales, and not one-third of that number resident in the city of Sydney." He finished by hoping the new building would unite them "as one family, burying in oblivion any differences of the past."

Saul Samuel, who laid the foundation stone on 26 January 1875, photographed in London in 1883. Photo: John Jabez Edwin Mayall, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The same Empire report described the plans in detail: a block 64 feet wide and 140 feet deep, running from street to street; an Elizabeth Street front "Byzantine, freely treated with the introduction of Gothic forms"; two square towers with octagonal turrets and domed tops; a porch under two arches; and "a large wheel window of beautiful design". Inside there was to be a nave with aisles six bays long, columns 27 feet 3 inches high, a clerestory of 36 arched windows and a gallery set apart for the women. The Castlereagh Street end was to hold a school and the beadle's residence, with a playground under the synagogue. The paper said "the synagogue will seat 1000 adults."

The ladies' bazaar

The money still had to be found. In December 1875 the women of the congregation held a huge "fancy fair", which the State Library calls one of the greatest contributions to the building fund. Apple says it ran for six days and nights in what's now Martin Place, with support from outside the community too, including the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson. It raised £5,000, which he says was nearly a fifth of the total cost.

Consecration, 4 March 1878

The synagogue was consecrated on 4 March 1878. The ADB says Davis consecrated it and became its first minister, and Apple adds that a choir and orchestra under Sydney Moss "contributed most impressively". A 1975 Australian Jewish Times piece notes that the long-serving reader, Rev Aaron Alexander Levi, also took part in the ceremony. The heritage register says the decoration wasn't finished until 1883.

The final cost depends on who you read. Samuel's estimate in 1875 was "nearly £20,000". Apple's figure for the bazaar, £5,000 being "nearly one fifth" of the total, would put the final cost somewhere around £25,000 or a bit more, though he doesn't give an exact total. I couldn't find a firm final figure in a source I could check.

The Illustrated Sydney News of 1878, quoted by Apple, didn't hold back. It called it "a place of worship which, for lavish adornment and superb finish, has no equal in the city of Sydney", built of "freestone from the Pyrmont quarries", with a wheel window "which strikes every eye". Inside, it said, was "a sense of ornate embellishment approaching the profuse."

The Great Synagogue, Elizabeth Street, around 1900. Glass plate negative from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection. Powerhouse Museum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

What to look for inside

The heritage register describes the style as Victorian Free Gothic, though at the consecration it was called Byzantine with Gothic touches. Today the synagogue's own site describes Rowe's design as a blend of Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic and Moorish influences. The Elizabeth Street front and towers are Pyrmont stone, and the rest is brick with cast-iron columns, timber floors and a slate roof. Inside, the register says, the moulded plaster, carved timber and stained glass are "embellished with abstract patterns to avoid representation of living forms", which is in keeping with Jewish tradition.

The arched entrance porch on Elizabeth Street. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

One of the carved capitals on the porch columns. Photo: PhiliponeLdrew, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The register lists the firms who worked on it, and it's a who's who of the period. Aaron Loveridge, founder of what became Loveridge & Hudson, did the stonework. William Coleman did the carpentry and joinery, Fletcher Brothers the decorative cast iron, Lewis and Steel the plaster, Cornelius and Co of Philadelphia the gas fittings, and Minton Hollins & Co the tiles. P. N. Russell & Co made the cast-iron columns, and Lyon & Cottier did the stained and etched glass. George Proudman, a former master mason with the NSW Public Works Department, is quoted in the register as saying the synagogue has some of the finest stone carving in all of Sydney.

Carved sandstone detail on the front. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Apple's guide points out the little things. The gold-leaf stars on the midnight-blue ceiling weren't there at first. The register says they've been repainted to the original design several times since. The old gas taps can still be seen on the light fittings and on the four seven-branched candelabra beside the Ark steps. If you look up at the lamps in front of the ladies' gallery from underneath, you'll see a Star of David pattern. There have never been windows in the long side walls, and Apple suggests the twelve recessed arches on the ground floor and in the gallery may be a nod to the twelve tribes of Israel.

The main sanctuary, looking towards the Ark, with the ladies' gallery on either side. Photo: Wmpearl, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

On the glass, Apple is honest. He calls the stained-glass windows at the two ends "chaste but nondescript", and says one window with Jewish symbols near the choir gallery may have been the first of a series that was never finished. The wheel window is the showpiece. He says concrete spokes were added in the 1940s to strengthen it, and the register says this was done internally with reinforced concrete. The modern stained-glass windows on the Castlereagh Street side were designed by Louis Kahan of Melbourne.

The great wheel window over the Elizabeth Street entrance. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Changes over the years

Originally the seats faced north and south, with an empty space down the middle and the reading platform towards the back, which was the traditional layout. Apple writes that Davis had no pulpit as such and preached from the top of the Ark steps. A brass pulpit went in towards the end of the 1890s, and then the reading platform was moved forward and combined with the pulpit on the Ark steps, which made room for seats in the centre. Here the sources give different dates. Apple says this happened in 1906, but the heritage register puts it in 1911, along with moving the choir gallery and squaring off the western apse, and it names the architects as Kent & Budden.

The bimah, or reading platform, which since the early 1900s has stood on the Ark steps. Photo: Wmpearl, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The register lists the other changes as well. The gas lights were converted to electric in the 1910s. In 1957 the basement was deepened and rebuilt as the War Memorial Hall, designed by architect Orwell Phillips. In 1981 the Castlereagh Street end was rebuilt behind the old facade as an Education Centre, designed by Orwell Phillips and David Nathan. Apple says that during this work the old floral stencils were found under the paint on the columns, and the patterns were then used to redecorate the synagogue and the new centre. The Education Centre has five floors and a rooftop sukkah, the harvest booth used at the festival of Sukkot, with a sliding roof.

The Castlereagh Street side, where the old beadle's residence facade fronts the 1980s Education Centre. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The gates and the restorations

The big iron gates on Elizabeth Street weren't in Rowe's original plans. The Australian Jewish Historical Society says the board commissioned them a year or so later, that Rowe may have designed the decoration himself, and that Fletcher Bros made them. They were put in soon after the consecration at a cost of over £400. By 2020 they'd rusted badly and damaged the supporting columns. With a Federal Government grant, they were restored in 2021–22 by Scobie McIntosh of Caringbah, with architect George Bensen and heritage consultant Zoltan Kovacs preparing the heritage application.

The front with Fletcher Bros' iron gates, restored in 2021–22. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

That's not the first restoration. The register says the stonework was conserved in 1987, when the interiors were also stencilled and sprinklers put in. In 1988 the Bicentennial Council of NSW recommended a significant grant for work on the Elizabeth Street facade. In June 2006 the Federal Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, announced more than $310,000 for work on the interior. The heritage register says that money covered restoring the interior, bringing back natural ventilation, and conserving the gasoliers.

The rabbis

Davis ministered at the Great Synagogue until he retired in 1903. The ADB says he died on 16 December 1913 and was buried at Rookwood. His successor, Rabbi Francis Lyon Cohen, is described by the Dictionary of Sydney as a "musician and army chaplain who was chief minister of Sydney's Great Synagogue for nearly thirty years". He died at Potts Point on 26 April 1934. Apple says that from 1909, when Rev Marcus Einfeld came on, the synagogue has had a professional cantor.

The next stretch was rocky. The ADB entry on Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk, who came from Latvia and was inducted as second reader in September 1922, describes the term of Rabbi E. M. Levy (1935–38) as ending in controversy, with Falk acting as chief minister until a new man arrived. Falk was a passionate Zionist, a bookbinder, a cabinetmaker, a silversmith and an army chaplain, and he was known for his Anzac Day addresses. The heritage register mentions a menorah in the synagogue's collection that Falk made himself.

That new man was Rabbi Dr Israel Porush, born in Jerusalem in 1907, who'd done a doctorate in algebra in Germany before leaving because of the Nazis. The ADB says he was inducted on 6 June 1940 and served for nearly thirty-three years, becoming known as the "uncrowned chief rabbi of Australia". He founded the NSW Council of Christians and Jews in 1943 and oversaw the opening of the War Memorial Centre in 1956. The heritage register dates the basement rebuild to 1957, so the dates don't quite line up. Apple's OzTorah site notes that Wep Pidgeon's portrait of him won the 1961 Archibald Prize. Porush also wrote the synagogue's centenary history, The House of Israel, published in 1977, which the ADB lists among its sources.

Rabbi Raymond Apple himself was senior rabbi from 1972 to 2005, according to the OzTorah site that keeps his writings, and he died in January 2024, aged 88. He wrote that for many years the Great was "the antipodean bastion of Anglo-Jewry". No appointment was made without the Chief Rabbi in London signing off on it, though the formal link later lapsed. J-Wire reported in July 2015 that Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton had been unanimously appointed Senior Rabbi, starting on 14 July 2015.

Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple, senior rabbi of the Great Synagogue from 1972 to 2005. Photo: Welcire4, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Falk Library, the museum and the historical society

The ADB says Falk built up "a fine library of Anglo-Judaica, Australiana Judaica and Jewish folklore" on limited means, and the Great Synagogue bought it in 1959, naming it the Rabbi L. A. Falk Memorial Library. The synagogue's own library page gives 1957 as the year it opened, so there's another small disagreement. It's a reference library and nothing can be borrowed. It holds old and rare books, some from the early 1500s, including early printed Bibles, 1667 editions of works by John Calvin, a very rare Kabbalah treatise from 1517, and Renaissance-era editions of Josephus.

The heritage register says the library sits in the basement with the A. M. Rosenblum Jewish Museum, which holds the old Arks from Bridge and York Streets. The synagogue also keeps registers of births, marriages and deaths going back to a first entry on 1 November 1826, and family historians still use them. The Australian Jewish Historical Society, founded on 21 August 1938, was started by Falk, Sydney Glass, Hirsch Munz and Percy Marks, and the society says it flourished under Rabbi Porush's stewardship. Its archives are now kept at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst, not at the synagogue.

Harder days

Not every chapter is a happy one. Trove holds a run of reports of threats against the building. On 30 August 1947 the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial reported that police were guarding the synagogue day and night after an anonymous caller said a bomb would go off during a special service for the 4,500 Jewish refugees sent back to Germany after being refused entry to Palestine. Guests at a wedding held there afterwards were searched at the door. There were more phone threats in January 1960 and October 1961. In 1963, swastika stickers reading "Hitler was Right" were found at the entrance. In February 1977, as the synagogue was preparing for its centenary, someone doused the door of the ladies' gallery entrance in petrol and set it alight. The Australian Jewish Times believed it was the first arson attempt on a NSW synagogue. Each time, the services carried on.

Heritage listing

The building was on the Register of the National Estate from 21 March 1978, the year of its centenary. That listing called it the "Mother congregation of Australian Jewry" and praised its "Richness and originality of decoration". It also says the interior seats 1,600 across the ground floor and gallery. That's a lot more than the 1,000 that The Empire and the Dictionary of Sydney give, so take your pick. It went onto the NSW State Heritage Register on 10 September 2004, listing number 01710. The register calls it "the only high Victorian style Synagogue in Australia", one of the most elaborately decorated Victorian buildings in Sydney, and a building that "provides a rich townscape aspect to Hyde Park".

Another early view of the synagogue, around 1900, from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection. Powerhouse Museum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Ellmoos says its 1,000 seats were enough for about a third of Sydney's Jewish population in 1880, and that it was Sydney's only synagogue until 1913. Since then the community has spread out across the suburbs and built plenty of its own synagogues. But the Great is still there across from Hyde Park, with its towers, the wheel window and Fletcher Bros' gates. If you get the chance to go on a tour, have a look up at the gold stars on the ceiling.