At the corner of Macquarie and Albert Streets, near Circular Quay, there's a dark brick building with sandstone trim and a stone colonnade along the front, with a wrought iron balustrade on top. Plenty of people stroll past it on the way to the Botanic Garden without realising it's a club. It's the Royal Automobile Club of Australia, the oldest motoring body in the country, and it has been here since 1928.
The Royal Automobile Club of Australia at 89–91 Macquarie Street. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Three men in a hotel bar
The club's beginnings were told well by the Governor of NSW, Margaret Beazley, at a RACA dinner in August 2025. Her speech is published on the Governor's website with full footnotes. She drew on the club's centenary history, Royal Automobile Club of Australia: 100 Years, edited by Jez Ford in 2003, and on the newspapers of the day.
In 1903 cars were still a rare and smelly sight in Sydney. The first imported four-wheeled car, Billy Elliott's 3.5 horsepower De Dion, had only arrived three years earlier. Harrie Skinner, a theatre manager, left his own De Dion parked in George Street one day and came back to find an officer telling him he was breaking the law, because an unattended car might start up on its own. Skinner showed him the spark plug he always kept in his pocket, but it still took a trip to the Traffic Department to sort it out. It convinced him that laws were coming "to hamper us".
Skinner and his friend W. E. Fisher, a typewriter salesman, sent out a circular calling car owners to a meeting at the Hotel Australia in Castlereagh Street. It rained, and only one other man, H. A. Jones, turned up, so the meeting was put off. On 20 March 1903 they tried again with a bigger crowd, and the Automobile Club of Australia was formed "to protect the interests of motorists". The Australian Star reported it on 26 March 1903. The Wikipedia summary of the heritage listing also gives 20 March 1903 and calls it the first motoring association in Australia, with state clubs following later in 1903 in South Australia and Victoria.
At the first general meeting, on 28 October 1903, Jones was elected president. By December the club had a constitution and its colours, red, blue and gold.
Fighting for motorists
The club started out on the defensive. The Governor's footnotes, drawn from the centenary history, say it fought a 6-mile-an-hour speed limit in Parramatta and a proposed Inflammable Liquids Act in 1904. It also had a say in the Motor Traffic Act of 1909, which brought in driver's licences. Skinner and another member became the state's first two driving examiners. The same Act finally made it legal to leave your car unattended. That was the very thing that had started the club off, though it came a week too late for one Augustus Gordon, who was fined for leaving his car in Castlereagh Street for "upwards of 25 minutes".
It wasn't all lobbying. The heritage listing notes that the club quickly moved on to road races and reliability trials. It held charity parades and social runs as well.
Roads, signs and the NRMA
The club also pushed for better roads. Wikipedia's NRMA article says RACA started a Good Roads Association in 1912. When the National Roads Association was formed on 4 February 1920, RACA backed it, and RACA's president W. J. McKinney and D. M. Cooper of its Roads and Tours committee were on the provisional committee. The NRMA's own centenary timeline gives the 4 February 1920 date and says the body became the NRMA in December 1923. Wikipedia's NRMA article says the reorganisation came at the start of 1924. It also says that at a 1925 meeting called by RACA, the motoring groups complained about the "plethora of danger signs" on the streets and the "frequently incomprehensible" hand signals of police at intersections, though Wikipedia doesn't give a source for that.
The NRMA soon became a rival as much as a partner, with its own road service patrols. After the Second World War RACA stopped its road service altogether. Its members got full NRMA services under an agreement between the two. That's why it's the NRMA, not RACA, that most NSW drivers think of today when it comes to road signs and breakdowns. The NRMA's timeline credits itself with improving road signs throughout NSW by the end of the 1920s.
Those years were full of new road rules. The Dictionary of Sydney blog points out that the round steel "silent cops" were trialled at intersections in September 1921, painted pedestrian crossings appeared in 1925, and the first centre line went down at King and Market Streets in 1926. Sydney's first traffic lights went up at Kent and Market Streets in October 1933. I couldn't find a source that credits any of these to RACA directly, so I've left the club out of that part of the story.
A Royal Automobile Club of Australia car badge. Photo: Kgbo, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Royal, and on the move
The club spent its early years moving around. The heritage listing says it met first in a city hotel, then from 1906 to 1908 in a room over a garage at 109 Elizabeth Street, and from 1908 to 1914 in the basement of Challis House in Martin Place. In 1914 it bought its own three-storey building at 132 Phillip Street. Motoring nearly stopped during the First World War. In 1919 the club became the Royal Automobile Club, and the Governor's speech says King George V approved the title that year. It also took over 134 Phillip Street as somewhere for country members to sleep.
The Macquarie Street clubhouse
In 1922–23 the club bought the site at 89–91 Macquarie Street. Sydney Open says the club asked its architect members to submit designs. The job went to Ruskin Rowe of H. E. Ross and Rowe, who designed the building and supervised its construction as a goodwill gift. The builders were William Hughes and Co. The Governor-General, Lord Stonehaven, laid the foundation stone on 17 May 1927, as the Daily Telegraph reported the next day. The Governor of NSW, Sir Dudley de Chair, opened the clubhouse on 23 March 1928.
At the opening, de Chair said membership had grown more than a hundredfold to 2,300 since the first meeting of around 20 people. The club's president, Sir Samuel Hordern, gave him a gold pen, and he used it to sign the first page of the visitors' book. The Daily Telegraph headlined its report "All Motorists are Law-Breakers!".
The colonnade and terrace on the Macquarie Street front. Photo: Rangasyd, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The State Heritage Inventory calls the building "a fine and characteristic example of the Interwar Commercial Palazzo style", a style that was popular for big commercial buildings, especially in the United States. It has five storeys and three basement levels. The facades are divided into a three-part classical arrangement in dark face brick with lighter sandstone dressings. French doors open from the first floor onto the colonnade terrace.
Being a motoring club, it had garaging built in. Sydney Open says the new building had garaging and a service station for members, along with bedrooms, dining and lounge rooms, a billiard room, racquet courts, a gymnasium and baths. The heritage listing says the two lowest floors were garages. There was separate accommodation for women, though Sydney Open notes they couldn't join as members until 1946.
Inside
The interiors are part of the heritage listing. Sydney Open lists marble floors and columns, crystal chandeliers, elaborate glasswork and a terrazzo staircase. The dining room has a coffered ceiling and a leadlight dome. According to the heritage listing, the terrazzo staircase was made by Melocco Bros, the wall tiles beside it by the Australian Tesselated Tile Co., and the first lifts by Major, Stevens and Coates Ltd. Those lifts were replaced in 1947.
Inside the RACA building. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Inside the RACA building. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Later changes
The Depression and the war years were lean. After the war came a run of alterations. The heritage listing records work on floors 3, 5 and 6 in 1961 by Crane, Scott and Ferris, and more from 1963 to 1973 by Rudder, Littlemore and Rudder. The second-storey windows on Albert Street were bricked up in 1961. The building was designed to take four more storeys, and plans for two extra floors were published in 1953, but they were never built. The heritage inventory says the building is largely intact outside but has been altered and redecorated a lot inside, especially the bedrooms, function rooms and the old basement car park.
The Royal Automobile Club was listed on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 as item 00700. The inventory says it had been a heritage item since 1989. The listing calls it "an important and relatively rare surviving example of a purpose built gentleman's club from the early 20th century" that still provides many of its original services, including rooms for country members.
The RACA building from Macquarie Street in 2026. Photo: Xyxyzyz, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).
Detail of the RACA building, 2026. Photo: Xyxyzyz, 2026, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).
The club today
Sydney Open says the club today has a members' bar, a restaurant, a rooftop terrace, function rooms, a gym and a sauna, and that cars are still at the heart of it. In her 2025 speech the Governor said the club was making a "hairpin turn" to build up membership and find new uses for the building. The building opens to the public now and then through Sydney Open.
Next time you're on your way down Macquarie Street to the Quay, have a look at that colonnade. The whole thing started because a policeman didn't believe a car couldn't start itself.
The corner of Macquarie and Albert Streets. Photo: Chris.sherlock2, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Where this came from
- Governor of NSW, Margaret Beazley: speech at the RACA Foundation Charity Gala Dinner, 9 August 2025 (governor.nsw.gov.au), citing Jez Ford (ed.), Royal Automobile Club of Australia: 100 Years (2003), The Australian Star 26 March 1903, Evening News 29 October 1903, Daily Telegraph 18 May 1927 and 24 March 1928, and Sunday Times 25 March 1928.
- NSW State Heritage Inventory: "Royal Automobile Club" including interiors (archived 2018), and SHR 00700 listing.
- Sydney Open (Museums of History NSW): Royal Automobile Club of Australia.
- NRMA: Our history – 100 years of the NRMA timeline; No progress without roads.
- Dictionary of Sydney blog: "It's a sign".
- Wikipedia: NRMA (RACA section), used only for the 1912 Good Roads Association and 1925 meeting, which are flagged as unconfirmed.