Hay Street – Haymarket – Chinatown – Sydney – New South Wales

Hay Street - Haymarket - Sydney - New South Wales 

Hay Street runs through Haymarket, the valley south of Brickfield Hill that Governor Darling’s administration set aside in 1829 for cattle and corn markets — a pause-point for farmers’ carts before the haul into town. The place-name Haymarket stuck; City of Sydney later controlled the market lands. Belmore Markets (fruit and vegetables, from 1869 on the old cattle-market ground) and adjoining Paddy’s markets drew produce traders, pubs and Saturday-night crowds; market buildings on the wider site later cycled through circus, hippodrome and Capitol Theatre uses.

Chinese merchants and gardeners clustered here from the 1870s, forming what historians call Sydney’s second Chinatown after The Rocks. When municipal markets shifted toward Darling Harbour in the early twentieth century, Chinese commerce reconcentrated around Dixon Street; from the 1970s–80s that precinct was promoted as Chinatown, while Hay, Campbell and neighbouring streets kept market memory, fine-grain shops and civic buildings (including the Corporation Building / former markets administration fabric nearby). Hay Street today is still a Chinatown–Haymarket spine of heritage shopfronts, light rail and night-time economy.

Photographs here document Hay Street façades and the Haymarket setting.

 

181–187 Hay Street – Haymarket

Haymarket’s little terracotta-and-brick corner tower is easy to walk past on the way to Paddy’s or the Capitol — which is a shame, because it is one of the most highly decorated small municipal buildings Sydney ever put up. 181–187 Hay Street, better known as the Corporation Building (also the Municipal Building), was designed in 1892 by City Architect George McRae for Sydney Municipal Council and built in 1893–95 as a service building for the new Belmore Markets. It gave the market clerk and produce agents offices, refreshment rooms and toilets.

The Federation Anglo-Dutch façade is rich in face brick, sandstone and glazed terracotta, with that distinctive corner tower. Together with neighbours such as the Capitol Theatre, Haymarket Chambers and the Palace Hotel, it forms a late-Victorian / Edwardian streetscape tied to markets, the railway terminus and nearby retail. The building is on the NSW State Heritage Register (SHR 00693). City of Sydney conservation works completed in 2022 restored degraded façade detailing and rebuilt the Hay/Parker Street entrance in original character.

Photographs here document the Hay Street elevations and ornamental detail of McRae’s Corporation Building.

 

George McRae – Corporation Building (Municipal Building) – Haymarket

Spell the name right first: George McRae, not McCrae. Edinburgh-trained, City Architect then NSW Government Architect, he is the hand behind some of late-Victorian Sydney’s best civic theatre — and the live post’s “Sydney Municipality Building” is his Corporation Building on Hay Street, Haymarket, the flamboyant little Anglo-Dutch pile built for the Belmore market precinct in the mid-1890s (design and contract from 1893; finished c.1893–95).

The same McRae gave Council four costume sketches for the new city markets that became the Queen Victoria Building: Gothic, Queen Anne, Renaissance and Romanesque. They picked Romanesque; the QVB rose 1893–98 and still owns the block between the Town Hall and the old markets spine. The Haymarket Corporation Building is the smaller sibling from the same desk — offices, refreshment rooms and early public toilets for the produce trade, not a mini-QVB.

Keep the existing photograph. On paste, fix every McCrae → McRae, park the building in Haymarket (not a generic “municipality” nowhere), and don’t invent a 1896 opening day if the fabric evidence only supports the mid-1890s build window.

Sydney Municipality Building

This Building Waa Designed By The colonial architect George McRae And Was Built c.1893–95. He Had Been Appointed As The Head Colonial Architect For The City Of Sydney During The Golden Era Of the Victorian Era. 

George McRae Was Also The Architect behind The Design Of The queen Victoria Building. & Would You believe  He Wet as Far As Designing Four Different Styles For The "Queen Victoria Markets" Which We Now Call The Queen Victoria Building 
George McRae Did A Gothic Revival, Queen Anne Style,  Renaissance & Romanesque. I wonder where His Other versions  Of The Queen Victoria Building Are Ok If They've Ever Seen the Light When The  Romanesque Style Was Decided Upon.