History of convict colonial settlement from the beginnings of the First Fleet in 1788, and other significant parts of Old Sydney Town's heritage.
Sydney Town Hall is a 19th-century civic building on George Street, constructed in stages from 1869 to 1889 in the Second Empire style. Its Centennial Hall houses the Grand Organ, one of the world’s largest pipe organs, installed in 1890.
Mount Street, North Sydney, just off the Pacific Highway bustle, drops you into a quieter Josephite precinct. The Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel at 7–11 Mount Street sits inside Mary MacKillop Place, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart campus. Mother Baptista Molloy had the Gothic Revival chapel built in 1913 as a memorial to Mary MacKillop — St Mary of the Cross, co-founder of the Josephites and later Australia’s first saint. Land was given in memory of the Daly family. Archbishop Michael Kelly dedicated the chapel on 18 January 1914.
Only days later, on 28 January 1914, Mary MacKillop’s remains were brought from Gore Hill Cemetery and reinterred in a vault before Our Lady’s altar (the vault associated with her friend Johanna Barr-Smith). On 20 December 1993 the remains were moved again into the former vestry so pilgrims could reach a more accessible shrine, ahead of beatification in 1995 and canonisation in 2010. The chapel remains a working place of prayer and the focus of Josephite memory on Mount Street.
Photographs here show the chapel’s stone exterior, pointed arches and tower profile, and aspects of the Mount Street setting.
That clock tower on the Pacific Highway at Mount Street is the civic punctuation mark of old St Leonards — the late-Victorian government precinct at 92–94 Pacific Highway. After a branch post and telegraph office opened in the district in the 1870s, the colonial government bought the triangular site in 1884 for a combined post office, courthouse and police station.
Colonial Architect James Barnet designed the group; James Reynolds was the principal builder. The courthouse portion was finished about 1886 and the post office was ready for occupation on 31 January 1889 (the office name shifting to “North Sydney” soon after). A clock tower went up over the entrance in 1895, in Walter Liberty Vernon’s time as Government Architect; the clock itself was installed in July 1900 after locals settled their share of the cost. Circular stairs and sandstone classical detail still give the corner its landmark weight.
The post office is on the NSW State Heritage Register. Postal counter functions have in recent years moved to other North Sydney premises, while heritage management of the vacant historic building and the separate state-owned courthouse/police components continues to evolve. Photographs here show the Pacific Highway frontage, the carved “COURT HOUSE” entrance, and the combined civic group.
