The Sydney Masonic Centre, 279 Castlereagh Street, and the Freemasons of New South Wales

If you've ever walked up Castlereagh Street from Central towards Museum station, you'll know the one. On the north-west corner of Goulburn Street there's a great grey wedge of concrete that seems to lean out over the footpath, with a slim office tower balanced on top. It's the Sydney Masonic Centre, home of the Freemasons of New South Wales and the ACT. A lot of Sydneysiders have been inside for a conference, an exam or a gig without ever knowing what goes on upstairs. (For anyone looking it up, it's Castlereagh Street, not Castle Street. The Freemasons give the address as 279 Castlereagh Street, the City of Sydney's heritage records list it as 279–283 Castlereagh Street, and the events venue sends visitors to the front door at 66 Goulburn Street. They're all the same building.)

The Sydney Masonic Centre from the corner of Castlereagh and Goulburn Streets, with Civic Tower on top. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A corner with Masonic roots

The Freemasons were on this corner long before the concrete. The City of Sydney's heritage inventory says the northern part of the site has belonged to Freemasonry since January 1884, when the New Masonic Hall at 279–281 Castlereagh Street, designed by the architects Backhouse & Lough, was consecrated. The land story behind it is a very Sydney tangle. In the early 1880s the title to that northern block went to four men: licensed victualler James Hunt, cordial maker John Starkey, builder Unni William Carpenter and druggist Nicholas Weekes, later Mayor of Manly. All four were officers of the Grand Lodge. Starkey was its Grand Treasurer and Weekes its Grand Secretary. The block passed to the Grand Lodge of New South Wales Masonic Hall Company in 1886, and finally to trustees of the United Grand Lodge in October 1913.

The southern part, right on the corner, had a livelier past. From the 1860s it held the Pompey's Pillar Hotel and a pair of houses on Goulburn Street. The retailer Samuel Hordern bought them in 1901, and by 1903 he owned the whole Goulburn Street frontage. Later there was a 1919 building on the old hotel site called Millar House, plus the Bapaume Building next door on Castlereagh Street. In 1935 the United Grand Lodge decided its 1884 hall had too many shortcomings and resolved to buy property "suitable for the erection of a Temple worthy of this jurisdiction". It picked up pieces of the Hordern estate when the trustees began selling at the end of 1937, and it made its last purchase, Millar House and the Bapaume Building, in May 1945.

The Freemasons' own timeline for the centre lists the buying of the neighbouring properties as running from 1935 to 1945.

A temple for the war dead that took thirty years

Buying the land was the easy part. The heritage inventory tells how the Grand Master, Lord Gowrie, revived a big 1936 scheme in September 1943, suggesting it could become a Peace Memorial Temple for Freemasons who had served and died in the two world wars. In December 1954 Grand Lodge voted to set up a building fund for a Memorial Masonic Temple. Not everyone was keen, and the first appeal, launched in 1957, foundered. It was relaunched in 1959. That's why the inventory still lists "Memorial Masonic Centre" as a former name.

A building committee was finally formed in June 1967. It included the Grand Lodge's own Grand Architect, T. W. Hodgson, and Ronald Gilling, a partner in Joseland & Gilling. That firm went back to 1919, when Richard George Howard Joseland teamed up with Frederick Glynn Gilling. Between the wars they were known for substantial houses. After Gilling's son Ronald Andrew became a partner in 1948, the practice moved into big commercial work. In the 1960s and 70s it designed the ANZ Bank and South British United Insurance buildings in Hunter Street, the Qantas Centre near Lang Park and the Colonial Mutual building in Pitt Street.

A model and sketches were shown to the Freemasons in March 1972. In 1973 a revised development application went in for a lodge, shops and an office block, and the building application followed in July 1974. Tenders were called on 14 April 1975 and the foundation stone was laid on 15 May 1976. People started moving in during December 1978, and the building was officially opened and dedicated on 10 March 1979, with an International Masonic Festival to mark it.

The Castlereagh Street side. The overhanging, windowless top floor sits on big splayed concrete braces. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Brutalism, Sydney style

The heritage inventory sums it up as "an outstanding and powerful example of the Brutalist architectural style", with strong, expressive shapes in reinforced concrete, bold curves, textured materials and big unbroken walls. Its very high standard of off-form concrete, poured against timber formwork and left as it came out, is singled out too.

The shape wasn't just for show. According to the inventory, the outside was worked out from what had to fit inside. The whole plan turns on a diagonal line through the street corner. The great lodge room sits on that line, and you can read its form from the footpath. Two pairs of vertical concrete stair shafts stand either side, one pair framing the entrance to the Masonic Centre and the other the way into the office tower. The building gets wider as it goes up, from a narrow base to a heavy overhanging top floor with no windows, which holds offices and meeting rooms. That top storey is carried on big splayed braces, which is what gives the place its "how is that staying up?" look.

The trade magazine Constructional Review, quoted in the inventory, said the podium was meant to be "to the Grand Lodge of New South Wales as a cathedral is to the Church". In 1989 Apperly, Irving and Reynolds chose it for their reference book Identifying Australian Architecture as one of their illustrated examples of Australian brutalism. The architecture writer Joe Rollo went further in his 2004 book Concrete Poetry. He wrote that it "expresses all the plasticity and brute force of concrete as a material in architecture perhaps better than any other building in Australia", and called it "bare-boned, direct and strong".

Looking across from Pitt and Goulburn Streets. The tower is carried on its central lift core above the 1970s podium. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Goulburn Street entrance at No. 66, with the glass lobby added in the early 2000s. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Inside: the foyer, the halls and the lodge rooms

Walk in and the first thing you notice is the foyer. The inventory counts it among Sydney's most dramatic interiors. It rises through three storeys, and the levels are linked by a pair of free-standing round lift shafts in the middle with a winding stair around them. Inside, as outside, it's mostly bare off-form concrete, with frameless glass, travertine floors and some vertical timber panelling. Hanging above a reception desk near the stair is a woven sculpture by the textile artist Mona Hessing, made for the building and considered one of her finest works.

When it opened, the podium held parking and supper rooms in the basement and at street level. The Grand Temple, the Banquet Hall, the lodge and committee rooms and offices were upstairs. Altogether there are five or six storeys above two levels of basement parking. The big central lodge room is backed up by several smaller lodge rooms. The venue's own list of rooms gives you a feel for the Masonic side. Lodge rooms named Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite, after the classical orders of columns, sit alongside the Banquet Hall, the Grand Lodge, the Marble Foyer and rooms called Northcott, Remington and Rawson, names that turn up in the list of past Grand Masters.

The Sydney Open program for the building says Level 3 holds the Grand Lodge Room, several lodge rooms, the Grand Library, the Museum of Freemasonry and the Carrington Room. The Carrington Room is named for Lord Carrington, the first Grand Master in 1888. The Museum of Freemasonry describes its collection as artefacts, regalia, jewellery, glass, ceramics, paintings, books and records gathered over centuries, and it includes things that belonged to famous Freemasons. The museum gives its entrance as Level 3, 66 Goulburn Street. On its own site it lists weekday opening hours, but check before you go, because its pages and the listings that quote them don't all give the same hours.

One of the Centre's big halls, packed for a conference in November 2010, with timber-lined walls and a gallery. Photo: Catherine from Australia, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Looking up at the lattice of lights in the same hall's ceiling. Photo: Catherine from Australia, 2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

These days the Freemasons still own the building, but the Sydney Masonic Centre also runs as a commercial events venue with a dozen function spaces. The venue is careful to say that events held there have nothing to do with the Freemasons and that everyone is welcome. It has refitted the Level 4 function rooms with off-form concrete finishes, curved timber-battened walls and oak, to echo the original building.

The tower that waited 25 years

From the start, Joseland & Gilling's scheme had a 24-storey office tower rising above the Masonic podium. It just didn't get built for about a quarter of a century. The Sydney Open notes say that, decades on, the air space above was sold to a developer. When they saw the original designs, they brought in PTW Architects to build them. In 2001 approval was given to add three levels and make some minor changes, but the inventory says the overall look and the splayed base stayed as first drawn. Peddle Thorp & Walker also enclosed the street-level forecourts on Goulburn and Castlereagh Streets in glass for a lobby and cafe. The tower is now called Civic Tower.

The engineering is the clever bit. The heritage inventory says the tower is unusual because it's held up by its central lift core. Sydney Open goes further, calling it Australia's first tower to be fully supported on a central lift core, with no structural columns touching the ground, so it looks as if it's balancing on the podium. The sources don't agree on when it was finished. The City of Sydney inventory and the venue's own timeline say 2005, but the Sydney Open program says 2004.

Not every change has been kind to the original. The inventory notes coatings brushed over some of the bare concrete, aluminium panels on the Goulburn Street stair shafts, and the loss of the old radial-pattern paving out the front. It recommends looking into removing the coatings if that can be done without damaging the concrete.

Heritage listing

The building was picked up in the City of Sydney's study of Modern Movement architecture in central Sydney, one of nine post-war places the City put forward for local heritage listing. The City says the Central Sydney Planning Committee approved those listings in June 2020. The listing covers the podium inside and out, along with the Mona Hessing artwork. The part of Civic Tower above the podium isn't included. The inventory rates the building's significance as State level for its aesthetic and technical qualities, but it was endorsed for local listing, and it isn't on the State Heritage Register. It also calls it a rare example, in the City of Sydney, of a Masonic building from the second half of the 20th century.

Freemasons' Hall, York Street, and the Masonic Club

Before Castlereagh Street, the Masons moved around a fair bit. According to the heritage inventory, members of the various Masonic groups bought the York Hotel in York Street in September 1839 for their meetings, and it became known as the Freemasons' Hall. Before that, as Wor. Bro. H. H. Mackay told the Sydney Lodge of Research in 1937, "all meetings were held at various taverns or inns, in the absence of proper meeting places".

The Masons' other big Castlereagh Street landmark is a few blocks north. It's the NSW Masonic Club at 169–171 Castlereagh Street. The club's own history says it began on 15 September 1893 as the NSW Masonic Musical and Literary Society, started by a dozen Masonic musicians at Stoddart's Royal Hotel in Paddington. It moved to Paddington Town Hall and then to Pitt Street. In 1925 it bought land from the Commercial Travellers' Association for £43,000 and sold off the Pitt Street frontage for £50,000. On the Castlereagh Street side it built a 12-storey building designed by Claude William Chambers, which opened on 12 September 1927. The club calls it the tallest building in Sydney when it was finished. The State Heritage Inventory, quoted in a 2018 heritage submission, describes it as a fine example of the Inter-war Commercial Palazzo style with a sandstone front, while the club's own history calls it Art Deco. In 1984 the members' accommodation floors became the hotel now called the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel.

The NSW Masonic Club at 169–171 Castlereagh Street, opened in 1927 and now shared with the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

How Freemasonry came to the colony

Freemasonry came out with the redcoats. The British Army regiments sent to garrison New South Wales carried "travelling warrants" that let their lodges meet wherever the regiment was posted. Not every governor liked it. The Freemasons of NSW & ACT tell how in 1803 a Masonic meeting was held at Sergeant Whittle's house in Sydney, although Governor King had already refused permission. A party carrying the Governor's warrant broke it up to arrest everyone there. A century later, at a special Grand Lodge meeting in the Sydney Town Hall in 1903, Grand Master J. C. Remington claimed that night at Whittle's as the "Dawn of Freemasonry in Australia". The same article mentions old Lands Department records of a "Lodge St John No. 1" on Norfolk Island in 1800, probably an irregular lodge, since the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland and Scotland have no record of it.

The first lodge to work properly in Sydney belonged to the 46th Regiment. It was the Lodge of Social and Military Virtues, No. 227 on the Irish register, whose travelling warrant Mackay dates to 4 March 1752. The 46th left Sydney for Madras on 23 September 1817, and historians have argued for a century about how much it did to start local Masonry. In a 1996 paper, Masonic historian Robert Linford set out the different views. The lodge historian William Henley wrote in 1920 that the Australian Social Lodge was formed in 1816 with the 46th's help, and Eric Dibbs followed a similar line in 1950. The Grand Lodge historians Cramp and Mackaness disagreed, saying Lodge 227 took no part in setting up regular Freemasonry in Australia. Linford pointed out that the 46th and 48th Regiments were only in Sydney together for 138 days in 1817. Mackay, writing in 1937, still gave the 46th and 48th credit as sponsors.

Today's Grand Lodge credits Lodge No. 218 of the 48th Regiment with the hands-on work. Eight civilian Master Masons from that lodge sent a petition to Ireland, and on 6 January 1820 the Grand Lodge of Ireland issued Warrant No. 260 for "The Australian Social Lodge". The warrant reached Port Jackson on 5 August 1820. Mackay says it came out with Surgeon Price on the ship Hadlow. He says the lodge was consecrated and its first Master installed on the King's Birthday, 12 August 1820, at the Golden Lion Tavern next to the King's Wharf. The Grand Lodge's own article gives 30 August 1820 as the first regular meeting. The first Master was Matthew Bacon, an ex-soldier of the 48th who kept a store at No. 2 York Street. The lodge became Australian Social Mother in 1878 and Antiquity in 1920. As Lodge Antiquity No. 1, it still meets in the Sydney Masonic Centre.

Others followed. Leinster Marine Lodge, No. 266 on the Irish register, was consecrated on 12 February 1824 and is now No. 2. The first English lodge, the Lodge of Australia No. 820, had its charter dated 21 June 1828 and held its first regular meeting on 6 April 1829. Today it's No. 3. Mackay records Parramatta's St John Lodge being consecrated in June 1839, after a row over whether it should hold an English or an Irish charter. Scotland arrived on 4 August 1851, when Lodge Sydney St Andrew No. 358 was formed. It's now No. 7.

The Goose and Gridiron in St Paul's Churchyard, London, where the first Grand Lodge was founded in 1717. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Three Grand Lodges become one, 1877–1888

With lodges under the English, Irish and Scottish Grand Lodges all working side by side, and every decision having to wait for a reply from the other side of the world, frustration built up. Mackay says there was talk of one Grand Lodge for everyone as early as 1847, but it went nowhere. The sources differ on what came next. The heritage inventory says "the first Grand Lodge opened in Sydney in 1845". Other accounts date the first English Provincial Grand Lodge to 10 May 1849 with John Williams as Provincial Grand Master, but a speaker in the discussion after Mackay's 1937 lecture names G. R. Nichols of the Lodge of Australia as the first Provincial Grand Master. Mackay's own text has Nichols appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master by England in May 1839.

In 1877 the local men broke away. Mackay says that "practically the whole" of the Irish lodges and some of the Scottish ones formed the Grand Lodge of New South Wales, with James Farnell as its first Grand Master. Farnell was also a prominent politician who served as Minister for Lands. The heritage inventory puts the number of founding lodges at 13 in December 1877, and other accounts say it was three Irish and five Scottish lodges on 3 December 1877. Either way, it caused a lot of bad blood. Mackay says England refused to recognise this "Unconstitutional Body", banned its own lodges from admitting members of it, and struck off Lodge Truth at Braidwood for joining. Scotland suspended lodges too. He calls the decade that followed "a period in our Masonic history we would like to forget".

It was sorted out in 1888. Mackay says the four groups, English, Irish, Scottish and the local Grand Lodge, met in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney on 16 August 1888 and agreed to form the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales. The sources don't agree on how many lodges took part. Mackay says 176, with 74 English, 53 Scottish and 49 from the local Grand Lodge, and about 5,600 members. The heritage inventory says the Masters and Wardens of 183 lodges assembled, and the Masonic Club's history says there were 186 lodges in NSW by 1888. The Governor, Lord Carrington, who held senior rank in English Freemasonry, was installed as the first Grand Master on 12 September 1888, according to Mackay. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that as a Mason in Sydney he "succeeded in uniting the four separated Grand Lodges".

Lord Carrington, Governor of New South Wales and the first Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge in 1888. Image: State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Some well-known Sydney Freemasons

For a long time the Grand Master's chair went to the Governor of the day. Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, Governor of New South Wales, was Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge from 1905 to 1909. The ADB says he visited a lot of lodges on his tours around the state, despite constant pain from an arthritic hip. Lord Gowrie, the Governor-General, was the Grand Master who revived the memorial temple idea in 1943.

Plenty of Grand Masters were locals. Dr Frederick Maguire trained as a teacher at Sydney Grammar School before becoming a surgeon, professor of anatomy at the University of Sydney and Director-General of Army Medical Services in 1941–42. The City of Sydney's aldermen history says he was initiated into the Lodge of Australia No. 3 in 1920 and was Grand Master from 1933 to 1935. He also sat on the board of the NSW Masonic Hospital. Going back further, Leinster Marine Lodge initiated the explorer Hamilton Hume on 12 September 1825, not long after he got back from his trek from Lake George to Geelong, according to Mackay. Mackay also mentions W. B. Dalley, initiated in July 1858, whom he describes as later becoming Premier of the colony. And the Masonic schools at Baulkham Hills took their name from William Thompson, Grand Master in the years around the First World War.

Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, Governor of NSW and Grand Master from 1905 to 1909, in a signed photograph by Tolma & Co of George Street. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

William Thompson, Grand Master around 1913–14, whose name went on the Masonic schools at Baulkham Hills. Photo: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

So what do Freemasons actually do?

Take away the mystery and Freemasonry is a club for men, run through local lodges, built around ceremonies, dinners and charity. The United Grand Lodge of England, where organised Freemasonry started at the Goose and Gridiron pub in London in 1717, describes it as "one of the world's oldest and largest non-religious, non-political, fraternal and charitable organisations". Its four values today are Integrity, Friendship, Respect and Service.

Members learn its moral lessons through what the English Grand Lodge calls "a series of ritual dramas", short allegorical plays learnt by heart and performed in the lodge, which use stonemasons' customs and tools as their props. To join you have to be a man of 18 or over of good character, and you must be able to say you believe in a "Supreme Being". The English Grand Lodge says this is worded broadly on purpose, and you don't have to belong to any particular religion. The English Grand Lodge also says Freemasonry as a body will never take a view on politics or state policy. The Grand Lodge also says that giving fellow members preference in business or anything else is "certainly not" allowed, and that new members declare they expect no material gain from joining.

What about the secrecy? The English Grand Lodge's answer is that new members promise to keep private the ways Masons recognise each other when visiting another lodge, and it says Freemasonry places "a strong emphasis on privacy rather than secrecy". It also admits Freemasons have long been viewed with suspicion, especially by authoritarian governments and some religious institutions, and that films and books have added plenty of conspiracy theories. Sydney had a taste of that official suspicion right at the start, when Governor King sent his men to break up the meeting at Sergeant Whittle's.

Charity is the part most people never see. Mackay tells how, in 1854, the Lodge of Australia started a fund to educate the children of dead or struggling members, with every member chipping in a shilling a week. It became the Freemasons' Orphan Society, the forerunner of the William Thompson Masonic Schools at Baulkham Hills. Maguire's biography mentions the NSW Masonic Hospital as well.

Freemasons' Hall in London, home of the United Grand Lodge of England. Photo: Bjørn Erik Pedersen, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Freemasons laying a foundation stone, June 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The symbols, plainly explained

The square and compasses. This is the badge you see on Masonic halls all over the state. The Museum of Freemasonry in London explains that a stonemason uses a square to get perfect right angles, so for a Freemason the square means treating people fairly and equally. That's where "on the square" comes from. The compasses draw circles, and for Masons they stand for the boundary you don't step over into bad or excessive behaviour. Put together, the museum says, they sum up the aim of living "a moderate and upright life".

The letter G. In many countries, though not in England, a G sits inside the square and compasses. The same museum says it stands for Geometry, the basis of the stonemason's craft. It's often said to mean God, but the museum points out the letter isn't changed in other languages, so France doesn't use D for Dieu. It adds that the Irish and Scottish Grand Lodges, which brought Masonry to early Sydney, still use the G.

The temple and the working tools. In the ceremonies members act out stonemasons building King Solomon's Temple, the museum says, and the tools of the trade become moral lessons. It's hard not to see the same builders' theme in the Masonic Centre's lodge rooms, named after the five classical orders of columns.

The apron. According to the Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons wear aprons in memory of the stonemasons who built the castles and cathedrals of the past. Those men wore big, heavy leather aprons to protect themselves from flying chips of stone. A new member, called an "Entered Apprentice", starts with a plain white lambskin apron. Light blue and silver are added as he goes through the three "degree" ceremonies, and senior members wear dark blue and gold. Everyone starts with the plain one, with no exceptions. In the early days aprons were often hand-painted, printed or stitched with the craft's symbols, like the eighteenth-century one below, before the designs were standardised.

The square and compasses with the letter G, the best-known Masonic emblem. Photo: Gary J. Wood of Toronto, 2006, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

A painted Master Mason's apron from the 18th century. Image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Masonic Sydney beyond the CBD

The Masonic Centre is the headquarters, but for most of the 20th century Freemasonry was part of ordinary suburban life, with lodge halls, balls, picnics and foundation stones. The photographer Sam Hood captured plenty of it in the 1930s, and his pictures are now in the State Library of New South Wales. Many suburban halls survive, some with wonderful interiors, like the Egyptian-themed lodge room at the Freemasons' hall in Petersham.

Masonic brethren at a foundation stone ceremony, about 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

A Masonic ball, about 1934. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Egyptian room at the Freemasons' hall in Petersham, in Sydney's inner west. Photo: Chelm261, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Going to have a look

The easiest way in is just to go. The Museum of Freemasonry is on Level 3, the building takes part in Sydney Open, and on open days volunteers stand in the Grand Library, the museum and the lodge rooms to answer questions. Next time you're stuck at the lights on the corner of Goulburn and Castlereagh, have a proper look up. That leaning concrete box has been carrying a 24-storey tower on its back for twenty years, and its site has belonged to the Freemasons since 1884.