If you're old enough to have caught a tram up George Street to Brickfield Hill, you'll remember Horderns. For most of the twentieth century the Palace Emporium filled the whole block between George, Pitt, Liverpool and Goulburn Streets, and Sydney liked to tell anyone who'd listen that it was the biggest department store in the world. Today that block is World Square, and about the only things left to remind you of the Horderns are a few names on buildings. This is the story of the family, the shop, the fire, the mansions and the long, slow goodbye.
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From King Street to Brickfield Hill – The Family Beginnings
The Horderns came out from Staffordshire, where the family had been well known in Wolverhampton banking circles. Anthony Hordern senior (1788–1869), his wife Ann and their four children arrived in Sydney on the Phoenix on 6 August 1823. It wasn't Anthony who started the shop, though. It was Ann. "Mrs. Hordern's" drapery opened at 12 King Street, between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets, and an advertisement for her shop in the Sydney Morning Herald of 3 April 1834 is said to have been the first display advertisement in any Australian newspaper. Anthony himself may have started out as a coachbuilder.
In 1839 the family packed up for Melbourne. Anthony senior stayed there for the rest of his life, living in Russell Street, but his son Anthony junior (1819–1876), who had found work as a cabinetmaker, soon came back to Sydney. In 1842 he bought land near the corner of George Street and Charlotte Place, and in 1844 he and his brother Lebbeus opened L. & A. Hordern at 689 George Street, Brickfield Hill. Anthony, his wife and children lived above the shop, and that's where his son Samuel was born in 1849.
Brickfield Hill was well named. It was where the early colony dug its clay and baked its bricks, and it stayed a brickmaking area until the 1840s, when land values went up and shops, warehouses and houses took over. Even then it was a fairly poor part of town. The very first grant on the block, George Street between Liverpool and Goulburn Streets, went to Samuel Hockley in 1810, who ran a butchery there until he died in 1859.
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The Haymarket Years
The brothers split in 1855, and Lebbeus set up on his own at 489 George Street. Anthony had already bought a second site further south at Haymarket, and in 1856 he opened a new three-storey store there. He took his elder son, Anthony III, into partnership as Anthony Hordern and Son, and when young Samuel joined in 1869 the name became the one Sydney would know for the next hundred years: Anthony Hordern and Sons.
Anthony III and Samuel pushed the business hard. "The Warehouse" and the "Palace Emporium" at Haymarket went up in remarkable time. Anthony III, known as "Tertius", then went off to Western Australia and made his name as a railway man behind the Great Southern Railway. He died aboard the steamer RMS Carthage in 1886 on his way home from London, and Samuel became sole owner. The way Anthony's share was paid out ended up in a long legal fight that went all the way to the Privy Council, which sided with Samuel.
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It wasn't only one branch of the family in the drapery game. Lebbeus traded on his own, then with his brothers John and Edward at 676 George Street South from about 1870. John's sons later founded Hordern Brothers, "Horderns in Pitt Street", so for years Sydney had several Hordern shops competing with each other.
Wednesday 10 July 1901 – The Great Hordern Fire
On Wednesday 10 July 1901 the Haymarket store caught fire. It became one of the most famous fires in Sydney's history. The Museum of Fire at Penrith puts it simply: "No other fire in Sydney's history has evoked more publicity than the Anthony Hordern & Sons fire of Wednesday 10 July 1901".
Five big buildings went up, and about 1,200 people worked in them. Five people died. Four were trapped inside and burnt to death. The fifth jumped about 37 metres (120 feet) into Gipps Street once it was obvious the brigade's biggest ladders couldn't reach him. Four sets of ladders were used that night, including the Curricle Ladders from Newtown station. They and the No. 18 Shand Mason steamer that also fought the fire are both on display at the Museum of Fire in Penrith today.
The Horderns didn't sit around. Trading started again almost straight away in the Exhibition Building in Prince Alfred Park while they planned something much bigger.
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The New Palace Emporium, 1905
The new store went up on Brickfield Hill, back where the family business had started in 1844. Building it meant knocking down several houses, Samuel Hordern's own birthplace among them. The New Palace Emporium, also called the "Senior Store", opened in 1905. It was six storeys high, the main entrance was fitted out in imported Italian marble, and a further storey went on a few years later.
Wikipedia gives the store 52 acres (21 hectares) of retail space and calls it once the largest department store in the world. Whether or not that was strictly true, it was the claim Sydney grew up with. The store's slogan was that it sold "anything from a needle to an anchor".
"While I Live I'll Grow"
The store's crest was a budding tree with the motto "While I live I'll grow". It sat above every window fitting and on all the stationery. The idea came from a Port Jackson fig on the Hordern estate at Camden, though the tree on the crest actually looks like an oak. The fig was poisoned in 1966, and the story got about that it died soon after, just as the business did. It didn't. It was saved, and it's still growing on Razorback Mountain behind a protective fence.
Inside the Emporium
The Emporium was built to keep you there all day. It had a branch of the Commonwealth Bank, tea rooms, a post and parcels office, rest rooms, public phone booths and a Thomas Cook & Son travel agency. The company also ran its own factories around Sydney, turning out everything from clothes and baked goods to pressed metal ceilings. By 1909, when Sir Samuel Hordern took over, the business employed more than 4,000 people in the store and the mail-order side.
The staff had their own clubs too. The Hordernian Dramatic Society, "The Hordernians", had some stage successes in the 1920s and 1930s. So did the Hordernian Musical Society, and there were cricket, women's hockey and rifle shooting teams.
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The Red Catalogues and the Mail-Order Trade
If you lived in the bush you could still shop at Horderns. From 1894 to 1935 the firm put out general catalogues aimed at country people and the mail-order trade, and they were known for their red cloth bindings. Hordern's ran one of the biggest mail-order businesses in Australia, and the horse-drawn delivery wagons were a familiar sight on Sydney streets.
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Sir Samuel and the Big Sale of 1926
When Samuel died in August 1909, his son Samuel junior, born at Retford Hall in Darling Point in 1876, took over as governing director. He made the business a limited company in 1912 and was knighted in 1919. In April 1926 the mostly family-owned business was sold to a public company for £2.9 million, the biggest price ever paid for an Australian business up to then. Sir Mark Sheldon became chairman and Justly Rawlings managing director.
Sir Samuel kept busy well beyond the shop. He was president of the Royal Agricultural Society from 1915 to 1941 and built up the Royal Easter Show, chaired the AMP Society, owned the 1919 Melbourne Cup winner Artilleryman, and in 1917 bought Cranbrook in Bellevue Hill for what became Cranbrook School. The Hordern Pavilion at the old Showground was built in 1924 to honour the family firm and his time running the Royal Agricultural Society.
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Decline, Takeover and Closure
Horderns tried branching out after the war, with stores in Canberra, West Ryde, Goulburn and Wollongong. The Wollongong store in Keira Street opened on 6 December 1960 with automatic doors, an escalator and rooftop parking for 160 cars. But by the early 1960s the company was making losses every year, and the Brickfield Hill flagship was one of the worst. The upper floors were closed off. From July 1966 the old store was left to handle homewares only, as Hordern's HomeWorld, while the main business moved into the Mid City store in Pitt Street.
In 1969 Waltons made a bid for the retail business, and Stocks and Holdings went after the Brickfield Hill site. Waltons had control by 6 January 1970. The building was sold for $8.5 million, with Stocks and Holdings acting for the State Superannuation Trust, and the deal was done by Christmas Eve 1969. That ended 64 years of Hordern ownership of the building. Suburban shopping centres, tougher competition in the city and a careless attitude to old buildings are usually blamed for the store's end.
Demolition and the Hole in the Ground
After the shop closed, the building had a second life as a classroom. The NSW Institute of Technology, now UTS, used it for its business and later law faculties from 1967 to 1984. Changes to the fire rules meant it couldn't be used after that. In the early 1980s the new owner, Singapore's Ipoh Garden Development, looked at saving it, but after independent advice from the CSIRO on the state of the concrete it decided the cost was too high. Ipoh Garden did restore the Queen Victoria Building, though. The Emporium came down in the mid-1980s, and planning fights left the block a hole in the ground for most of the 1990s.
World Square Today
World Square finally filled the block. It has the Rydges hotel on the Pitt and Liverpool Street corner, finished in 1999, and the 48-floor Hordern Towers on Pitt Street, also finished in 1999. The 73-floor World Tower on Liverpool Street and the Latitude office tower at 680 George Street were finished in 2004, and Latitude East followed in 2007. The shopping centre is on the ground and lower ground floors, and Liverpool Lane is full of cafes. Hordern Towers is about the only place the name lives on, on the very ground where the Emporium stood.
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The Hordern Mansions
All that drapery money built some fine houses, and a lot of them used the names Retford, after the family's links to Retford in Nottinghamshire, or Stramshall, the birthplace of Anthony Hordern.
- Retford Hall, Darling Point: built by Anthony Hordern II in 1865 to an Edmund Blacket design. Sir Samuel was born there. It was demolished around 1967.
- Stramshall (Jenner House), Potts Point: built by Lebbeus Hordern in 1871 to a Blacket design.
- Shubra Hall, Croydon: the home of Anthony Hordern III, and now the oldest building at Presbyterian Ladies' College.
- Retford Park, Bowral: built in 1887 and owned by three generations of Samuel Horderns until 1960. James Fairfax bought it in 1964 and gave it to the National Trust in 2016.
- The Highlands, Wahroonga: built in the 1890s for Alfred James Hordern to a design by John Horbury Hunt.
- Tuxedo, Strathfield: Sir Samuel's home from 1900 to 1914.
- Babworth House, Darling Point: built for Sir Samuel by Morrow & De Putron on the old Mount Adelaide site. It was his home from 1915 until he died there in 1956, and it was turned into five apartments in 2004.
- Hopewood House, Darling Point: built around 1924 for Lebbeus "Billie" Hordern beside Retford Hall and demolished around 1966.
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There's another reminder down at Pyrmont: the Hordern Fountain, put up in memory of Samuel Hordern.
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Timeline
- 1810 – Samuel Hockley gets the first grant on the Brickfield Hill block.
- 6 Aug 1823 – Anthony and Ann Hordern arrive on the Phoenix. Mrs Hordern's drapery opens in King Street.
- 1834 – Ann's ad in the Herald, said to be Australia's first display advertisement.
- 1839 – The family moves to Melbourne. Anthony junior soon comes back to Sydney.
- 1844 – L. & A. Hordern opens at 689 George Street, Brickfield Hill.
- 1855 – Anthony and Lebbeus end their partnership.
- 1856 – The new Haymarket store opens. The firm becomes Anthony Hordern and Son.
- 1869 – Samuel joins, and the firm becomes Anthony Hordern and Sons.
- 1886 – Anthony III dies at sea. Samuel becomes sole owner.
- 1894 – The mail-order general catalogues begin, running until 1935.
- 10 Jul 1901 – The Haymarket fire kills five people. Trading moves to the Exhibition Building.
- 1905 – The New Palace Emporium opens on Brickfield Hill.
- 1909 – Samuel dies, and Samuel junior takes over.
- 1912 – The business becomes a limited company.
- 1924 – The Hordern Pavilion is built at the Showground.
- 1926 – The business is sold to a public company for £2.9 million.
- 1960 – The Wollongong store opens.
- 1966 – Brickfield Hill becomes Hordern's HomeWorld, and the fig tree at Camden is poisoned.
- 1967–1984 – The NSW Institute of Technology (UTS) uses the building.
- 1969–70 – Waltons takes over the business, and the site is sold for $8.5 million.
- 1985–87 – The Emporium is demolished. The sources give different dates.
- 1999–2007 – The World Square towers are finished one after another.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When they arrived: Wikipedia's Anthony Hordern & Sons article says the Phoenix landed on 6 August 1823, but adds that one reference gives 16 June 1824.
- When it closed: the same article says the takeover and sale ended Hordern ownership by Christmas Eve 1969, with Waltons in control by 6 January 1970. Its infobox gives February 1973 as the end of the business. The World Square article says HomeWorld ran until 1973, while the main article has HomeWorld running from 1966 to 1970.
- When it was demolished: the World Square article says 1986, the Anthony Hordern & Sons article says 1987, and the Brickfield Hill article says 1985–1986. A Canberra Times story headed "The End of the Hordern Building" appeared on 12 May 1985 (cited on Wikipedia's Brickfield Hill page).
- Where the Emporium was built: the Anthony Hordern & Sons article puts it on the site of the original Brickfield Hill store, while the Brickfield Hill article only says several houses were cleared, including Samuel Hordern's birthplace. Both agree the store that burnt in 1901 was at Haymarket, not Brickfield Hill.
- Largest in the world: Wikipedia gives it 52 acres of retail space and calls it "once" the largest department store in the world. That was the store's own boast, and I couldn't find an independent measurement to back it up.
- The fig tree: the old story says the Camden fig died soon after it was poisoned in 1966, but the Anthony Hordern & Sons article says it survived and is still growing on Razorback Mountain.
My Earlier Posts
- Mark Foys – Liverpool and Elizabeth Streets
- Demolished Buildings of Sydney
- Demolished Sydney Buildings Part 2
- George Street and Charlotte Place – Sydney – 1848 – Joseph Fowles
- Retford Park – Bowral
- Cranbrook House (Cranbrook School) – Bellevue Hill
- Hopewood House – Darling Point
- Chatsworth – Potts Point
- St Jude's Cemetery – Randwick
- Historic Sydney Mansions: The Hordern Family Home – 14 Ginahgulla Road – Bellevue Hill
- Historic Sydney Mansions: Retford Hall – Darling Point
- Historic Sydney Mansions: Jenner House – 2 Macleay Street – Potts Point
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Anthony Hordern & Sons": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Hordern_%26_Sons
- Wikipedia, "Hordern family": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hordern_family
- Wikipedia, "Samuel Hordern": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hordern
- Wikipedia, "Brickfield Hill": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickfield_Hill
- Wikipedia, "World Square": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Square
- Wikipedia, "Penrith Museum of Fire" (the 1901 fire and the quote from the museum): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrith_Museum_of_Fire
- Wikipedia, "Timeline of Sydney" (1901): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Sydney
- Wikimedia Commons file pages for each picture, with their State Library of NSW, Powerhouse Museum and Royal Australian Historical Society catalogue notes: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
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