Stand in Queen's Square today and look across from St James' Church to the corner of King and Macquarie Streets. You'll see the tall Law Courts Building, home of the Supreme Court of NSW since 1977. Plenty of older Sydneysiders remember something else there: a big, many-storeyed pile of chambers, with a women's club upstairs and a restaurant in the basement. If you try to put a name to it, you'll find it had several. It was St James' Chambers, it was The Towers, and to most people it was simply the Queen's Club. Here's the story of that corner, from a convict's cottage to the courts.
The Law Courts Building on the corner of Macquarie Street and Queen's Square, 2023. Image: -wuppertaler, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
The Surveyor General's House
The first building we know of on the corner was a two-storey stone house. According to the Dictionary of Sydney it was built around 1819 on land owned by Thomas Clarkson, a former convict, and Clarkson may have built it himself. The land then passed to D'Arcy Wentworth. In 1820 the government leased and later bought the house as a home for the Surveyor General, John Oxley, the explorer of the inland rivers. King George IV's monogram, "G.R.", was carved in the stone over the door.
In 1838 the land went to St James' Church across the road, and the house became the St James' parsonage. For a while in the early 1840s the Australian Museum, which didn't yet have a building of its own, kept its collection in one of its rooms.
John Rae's 1842 view of Hyde Park, the St James' parsonage, the Dispensary (later the Mint) and the convict barracks. Image: John Rae, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
St James' Chambers, 1889–90
By the late 1880s the old parsonage was falling apart, and St James' needed money. Wikipedia's history of the church, drawing on the parish histories, says the trustees leased out the parsonage land and used the money in 1894 to restore the church, including Varney Parkes's new copper spire. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1889 as the year the parsonage was demolished. The Illustrated Sydney News of 24 June 1893 said it had been "pulled down three years ago and the huge pile known as St. James's Chambers erected upon the site", which would put it around 1890. The two dates are close enough that the house probably came down in 1889, with the chambers going up over the next year.
That's the building many older Sydneysiders remember. Its tenants were mostly barristers, handy for the courts across King Street, and it went by several names. The Queen's Club calls its first home "The Towers". Other accounts call it Queen's Chambers or Barristers' Chambers. A City of Sydney Archives photo from about 1955–1965 describes it as the building "informally known as the Queens Club", which "also housed the Barristers Chambers & Crown Law Offices". I haven't found a source that gives its architect or its exact number of floors. If you have a photo or a memory of it, I'd love to hear from you.
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King Street looking east towards Queen's Square in 1895. St James' spire is at the top, and the new chambers stood on the far corner of the square. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).
Queen's Square about 1888–1890, around the time the parsonage gave way to St James' Chambers. Photo by Charles Bayliss. Image: Charles Bayliss, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
The Queen's Club
In December 1910, seventeen women met at the Double Bay home of Mrs Isabella Salusbury to talk about starting a private social club for women. Back then the Australian Club and the Union Club were for men only. The Queen's Club's own history says they bought the lease of The Towers from St James' Church in 1911 for £850, plus £412 a year in rent. The club opened on 1 February 1912, with Lady (Jane) Barton, wife of the first Prime Minister, as its first president. It took its name from Queen's Square outside its windows.
Within two years the club had more than 350 members and had spread into two houses next door on Macquarie Street. It stayed there for over forty years. In the basement Jim Poulos ran Raynaud's restaurant. According to Pittwater Online News's history of Sydney's seafood cafés, it lasted until the building came down. A 1947 City Council building survey card for 239–241 Macquarie Street and 180 King Street lists it as the "Queen's Club. Ladies Residential club" with Raynaud's restaurant.
A march into Queen's Square, about 1931, photographed by Sam and Ted Hood. Image: Hood, Sam & Hood, Ted, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
A King's Counsel outside the Supreme Court across the square, about 1934, by Sam Hood. Barristers like him filled the chambers on the corner. Image: Sam Hood, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
It's no wonder some of us remember it as something like "Queen's Counsel" or "King's Counsel" chambers. The building was full of barristers, and the senior ones were Queen's or King's Counsel. With the Queen's Club upstairs, it's easy to see how the names ran together.
A Supreme Court Under One Roof
By the 1950s the Supreme Court was spread across a string of old buildings around the square, which the Court itself calls "ill-fitted to the work and the dignity of the Court". The State Government decided to put it all under one roof. It chose the King and Macquarie corner, then home to the Crown Law Offices and the Queen's Club building.
The Queen's Club was told the building would be taken. In June 1959 it bought the St James Hotel on Elizabeth Street for a record £325,000, and it's still there today. Sources disagree on the date of the takeover. The Probus summary of Sydney club history says the land was "resumed in 1961", while the club's own history puts the warning in the 1950s and the move in 1959. Both could be right: a warning in the late 1950s and the formal resumption a couple of years later.
According to the Supreme Court Gallery, a joint State and Commonwealth company called Law Courts Limited was formed, and in 1967 McConnel, Smith and Johnson were appointed architects, with Peter Johnson as designer. The contract even included knocking down Greenway's original King Street courts. The Chief Justice, Sir John Kerr, and the conservationists fought that. In 1974 Cabinet cancelled the demolition, and the old courts survive today.
The old chambers on the corner weren't so lucky and came down. The eastern end of King Street was closed and paved to make the plaza now called Queen's Square, and a pedestrian tunnel went in under St James Road. Premier Neville Wran opened the Law Courts Building on 1 February 1977, with Chief Justice Sir Laurence Street present. That was 65 years to the day after the Queen's Club opened on the same corner. Its first big refurbishment was finished in April 2013.
The Law Courts Building today. Image: Chris Olszewski, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The old royal coat of arms on show at the Law Courts Building. Image: Kgbo, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The Law Courts Building and Sydney Tower from the Domain. Image: Ymblanter, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
What Was There Before?
So, to answer the question: before the Supreme Court's Law Courts Building, the corner held St James' Chambers, built about 1889–90. It was known as The Towers, Queen's Chambers or Barristers' Chambers, and best of all as the home of the Queen's Club. Barristers and the Crown Law Offices worked inside it. Before that, for seventy years, the site was the old Surveyor General's house and St James' parsonage.
For the rest of the corner, including the statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, see my post on Queen's Square. There's also my earlier Queens Square – Macquarie Street post.
References
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Old St James parsonage".
- "A Historic Church", Illustrated Sydney News, 24 June 1893, via Trove.
- The Queen's Club, "History & Heritage".
- Supreme Court of NSW, "Law Courts Building", and Supreme Court Gallery, "Architecture".
- City of Sydney Archives: photograph A-01214458, Queens Club, Queens Square, c.1955–1965; Building Survey Card A-00509273 (1947), 239–241 Macquarie Street.
- Pittwater Online News, George Repin, "Seafood in Sydney".
- Sydney Probus Club, summary of Whitelaw talk on Sydney clubs (2023).
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