From the Royal Botanic Garden lawns the house looks like a toy castle that got out of hand — turrets, battlements, harbour light on Pyrmont sandstone. This is Government House, Sydney, in the Domain at Conservatorium Road, still the official residence of the Governor of New South Wales. Edward Blore drew it in London; Mortimer Lewis and Colonel George Barney got it up in local stone. Governor Sir George Gipps moved in in 1845. Finishing works dribble through the mid-1840s depending on which file you read — occupied 1845 is the date that matters.
It replaced First Government House on Bridge Street (now the Museum of Sydney site) — a different building, a different post. Admiralty House at Kirribilli is another house again. Francis Greenway’s Government House stables, now the Conservatorium, already sat on the axis; Blore’s castle continued the Gothic joke. James Barnet later added the porte-cochère and eastern colonnade; Walter Liberty Vernon recased the façades in Pyrmont sandstone around the turn of the century.
“The People’s Domain” is a nice walking title for photographs taken from the Garden, but the Domain was laid out as vice-regal home paddock. You are looking through a public botanic garden at a working residence.
No comments:
Post a Comment