Commissariat Stores - Circular Quay

Commissariat Stores, Circular Quay West — historic photograph; State Library of NSW.

If you stand outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and squint at the quay, you’re on top of a ghost. The Commissariat Stores — big sandstone government warehouses on the western shore of Sydney Cove — were the logistical heart of the convict colony. Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Foveaux commissioned building in 1809; Governor Lachlan Macquarie finished the 1810 store and ordered another in 1812. They sat in front of what later became the Maritime Services Board headquarters, tied into the naval dockyard and early quay works.

For more than a century those ranges were among Sydney’s oldest surviving public buildings. Then the 1938 Butters Plan for Circular Quay renewal marked them for demolition to clear space for a new MSB office and a modern quay. There was a proper row about it — an early heritage flashpoint — and the stores still came down in 1939. Post-war building produced the MSB block (occupied in the early 1950s); since 1991 that building has housed the MCA.

Under and around the MCA / First Fleet Park area, the Sydney Cove West Archaeological Precinct (State Heritage listed) holds what’s left: archaeological evidence of the Commissariat, the government dockyard and related early quay fabric. A foundation stone from Macquarie’s 1812 building was kept at the request of the Royal Australian Historical Society and later marked nearby. This post is about a lost Circular Quay landmark — not a building you can still walk into.