Opposite Parliament on Macquarie Street, St Stephen’s Uniting Church looks older than it is — Inter-War Gothic sandstone, tracery and a calm that belongs to a much earlier century. The architects were Finlay Munro junior and John Reid; Kell & Rigby built it in the mid-1930s after the foundation stone went down on 23 March 1934 and the new church was dedicated a year later to the day. It is State Heritage listed, one of only a handful of Inter-War Gothic churches left in the city.
The congregation is older than the walls. Sydney’s Presbyterians had already worn out several addresses — including the iron church and the Phillip Street St Stephen’s cleared when Martin Place punched east — before they landed here. They built on the footprint of Burdekin House (1842), once praised as among the finest private residences in Sydney; its demolition for the church became an early rallying point for the conservation lobby. In 1977 the parish entered the Uniting Church. The Hill, Norman & Beard organ (1934) still fills the place with pipe-work measured in the thousands.
This is not the Newtown St Stephen’s with the cemetery you may already know from this blog, and it is not a Barnet or Blacket job. Macquarie Street’s St Stephen’s is the 1930s Gothic that replaced a colonial mansion so the Presbyterians — later Uniting — could keep a city foothold when Martin Place erased their last church.
St Stephen's Uniting Church - 197 Macquarie St - Sydney
St Stephens Is Built on The site of Burdekin house. The Congregation goes much further back than the building itself, which was built in the 1935 - 1937. It is designed in the Inter War Gothic Style.
The Organ was built in 1934 by Hill, Norman And Beard. it Contains over 2,500 Pipes and 61 Stops.