The Grace Building (Grace House) – 77–79 York Street, Corner of King and Clarence Streets, Sydney – Grace Bros' Gothic Tower, the American Wartime Headquarters and the Grace Hotel – 1930 to Today

Walk down York Street towards King Street and look up. On the corner, rising above the traffic, is a cream tower trimmed in green, with flying buttresses, pointed windows and pinnacles, like a Gothic cathedral turned into an office block. Most of us know it now as the Grace Hotel. Older Sydneysiders still call it the Grace Building, or Grace House. It was meant to be the pride of a department-store empire, but it ended up as wartime headquarters for the Americans and a government office block, and later it became a hotel. Here's its story.

The new Grace Building in 1930, photographed by a young Max Dupain. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Grace House, the Grace Building or the Grace Hotel?

All three names mean the same place, on the corner of York, King and Clarence Streets. The State Heritage Register calls it the Grace Building, 77–79 York Street. The old Register of the National Estate gives the full frontages as 124–140 Clarence, 55–67 King and 77–79 York Streets. I couldn't find any other "Grace House" in Sydney's history that fits as well, so this is the one.

The Grace Brothers

The Heritage Register tells how it all began. On 1 August 1885 two English brothers, Joseph Neale Grace and Albert Edward Grace, opened a small shop at 203 George Street West, the stretch we now call Broadway. In 1887 they moved to 5–7 The Broadway. In 1896 they hired the architects Morrow & Gordon to design a store on the corner of Bay and Grose Streets, and by 1911 there was a seven-storey building in Grose Street. By 1923 Grace Bros had 250 departments and nearly 3,000 staff. Those Broadway stores, with their twin clock towers, still stand.

The clock towers of the old Grace Bros stores on Broadway, 2014. Image: Jason Tong, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The perfumery department at Grace Bros, Broadway, October 1938, photographed by Sam Hood. Image: Sam Hood, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Like Anthony Hordern's down at Brickfield Hill (see my post on Anthony Hordern & Sons), Grace Bros wanted a big presence in the middle of the city.

A Bet on the Bridge

In 1926 Grace Bros bought the land bounded by York, King and Clarence Streets. The site already had a showbiz past. The Grace Hotel's own history calls it the site of "Sydney's first Opera House". A sketch on Wikimedia Commons labelled "Opera House, King & York Streets" says that theatre opened in 1880 and closed in 1900, and was later used as a warehouse by W. & A. McArthur. Whether it was really Sydney's first opera house depends on what you count. Several earlier theatres put on opera, so take the hotel's claim with a grain of salt.

The Opera House on the corner of King and York Streets, 1882. It stood on the site the Grace Building later took over. Image: unknown artist, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The Heritage Register explains why the brothers chose a spot halfway between Wynyard and Town Hall stations, off the busy George and Pitt Street strip. They "believed that the opening of the Harbour Bridge would change transport patterns in their favour". The hotel's history says the company letterhead even gave the address as "on the Harbour Bridge Highway". York and Clarence Streets were going to be the new main roads into the city from the north.

Chicago Comes to York Street

In 1928 Grace Bros commissioned Morrow & Gordon, the firm that had designed their Broadway store more than thirty years before, to design the new building. The State Library of NSW says the design dates from 1928. The hotel says the builders were Kell & Rigby, working "under close surveillance" by the architects.

The model was the Chicago Tribune Tower, finished in 1925 after a famous international competition. The hotel's history says the Grace Building "was based on the Chicago Tribune building". The Heritage Register calls it "a fine example of commercial Gothic, with a soaring vertical emphasis and prominent 'Gothic' corner tower, complete with flying buttresses, pointed windows and quatrefoils". The walls are faced in glazed cream terracotta with green trim. The National Estate listing says it "would have been Wunderlich's most extensive and well executed terracotta facing job in the 1930s".

The Chicago Tribune Tower of 1925, the model for the Grace Building's Gothic corner tower. Image: GualdimG, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Grace Building's tower, with its buttresses and pinnacles in glazed terracotta. Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The Lord Mayor, Alderman E. S. Marks, opened the building on 3 July 1930, ahead of schedule according to the hotel. The State Library and the hotel both give that date. Inside, the foyer had marble-lined walls and Gothic plaster ceilings. The offices had Queensland maple partitions and stippled green tiles. The National Estate listing says those fittings now survive only on the fifth floor.

The Grace Building when new, about 1930, photographed by Sam Hood. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

The Grace Building from the street corner, photographed by Arthur G. Foster. Image: Foster, A. G. (Arthur G.), via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The Grace Building lit up at night in the 1930s, photographed by Sam Hood. Image: Sam Hood, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Advertising for the Grace Bros "12 Days Sale", 1930. Image: Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The White Elephant

It didn't work out. The Depression arrived just as the doors opened. When the Bridge opened in 1932, the traffic didn't turn York and Clarence Streets into a shopping strip. The hotel's history quotes Grace Bros' own company histories calling the building "a dream turned sour", "the white elephant" and "a commercial gothic monster". The company put its money into the suburbs instead, and the building in town turned into a financial burden.

The Americans Move In

The war changed everything. In 1942, the Heritage Register says, the ground floor windows were boarded up with hardboard screens and an air-raid shelter was built in the basement. The building became home to a range of Commonwealth departments and to "the United States Armed forces' headquarters in Sydney". The hotel's history adds that the US Army Small Ships section was based there, supplying Australian and American forces.

This is where the stories start to disagree. The hotel and the State Library both say the building was the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander in the South-West Pacific. The hotel puts the requisition under 1939, which is too early for the Americans, who didn't arrive in force until 1942. The wartime histories of MacArthur's command, like the Queensland government's WWII Places site and the OzAtWar records, put his General Headquarters first in Melbourne. From 18 April 1942 it was at 401 Collins Street, and from 21 July 1942 it was in the AMP Building in Queen Street, Brisbane, now MacArthur Chambers. So the Grace Building was a major American headquarters in Sydney, and MacArthur may well have used it when he was in town. His actual General Headquarters, though, was in Melbourne and then Brisbane.

There's also the famous tunnel story. The Heritage Register mentions "anecdotal evidence" linking MacArthur's name with tunnels under York Street running to Circular Quay and Victoria Barracks. It says the tunnels were built before the war and that at least one probably held emergency telephone equipment. The hotel says only that "it was thought" the tunnels connected to the basement. Nobody seems to have proved it.

Taken by the Commonwealth

In November 1945 the Commonwealth compulsorily acquired the building. The City of Sydney Archives holds a council file on the acquisition dated from 23 November 1945 to July 1946. In May 1946 a conference decided who would get the floor space. The winners, the Heritage Register says, included the Postmaster-General's Department, the Repatriation Commission, the War Service Homes Commission, the Film Censorship Board and the Department of Labour and Industry. A telephone exchange opened there in December 1948. For the next fifty years, if you dealt with a federal department in Sydney there was a good chance it was in the Grace Building.

Grace Bros fought it. According to the hotel's history the company issued two writs in the High Court between 1946 and 1948, arguing the acquisition was invalid. In 1953 Grace Bros was awarded about £1.3 million in compensation, and the hotel says the money paid for its push into the suburbs. So the white elephant ended up paying for the suburban stores.

From Offices to Hotel

Decades of government fit-outs stripped out most of the original interiors. The building was listed on the Register of the National Estate on 21 October 1980 and on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. In 1995 it was bought by the Malaysian Low Yat Group, and conversion to the Grace Hotel and Grace Plaza began in 1996. Premier Bob Carr opened the hotel in August 1997. The hotel says the conversion kept the high ceilings, original lifts and stairwells, wide hallways, marble floors and decorative ironwork. Today it has 387 rooms around a central atrium, and a rooftop pool where Grace Bros once kept its offices.

The Grace Hotel entrance under the original awning. Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Christmas in the Grace Hotel lobby, among the original columns and marble, 2019. Image: Kgbo, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The cream and green terracotta of the York Street facade. Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The Grace Building's tower next to its Victorian neighbour on King Street. Image: Ales Proimos, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The Grace Building today, 2017. Image: Edward Howard, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The corner of York and King Streets, with the Grace name still over the door. Image: Jason7825, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Next Time You're on York Street

Stop on the opposite corner and look up at the tower. It's a 1920s bet on the Harbour Bridge that never paid off, and Sydney's own small copy of Chicago. It was also a wartime base for the Americans and, for half a century, where you went to sort out your war service home or your pension. Grace Bros has gone now, taken over by Myer in the 1980s, but the name is still above the door on York Street.

References

• Heritage NSW, State Heritage Register, "Grace Building", 77–79 York Street, Sydney.
• Australian Heritage Database, Register of the National Estate, "Grace Building, 77–79 York St, Sydney" (Place ID 2226).
• State Library of NSW, "Grace Building" (Temples of Commerce).
• The Grace Hotel, "The History of The Grace Hotel Sydney".
• City of Sydney Archives, "Acquisition of Grace Building by Commonwealth Government, York Street Sydney, 1945".
• Queensland Government, WWII Places, "MacArthur Chambers"; OzAtWar, "Trustees Executive & Agency Co. Ltd. Building, 401 Collins Street" and "GHQ SWPA in the AMP Building".

Norman St Clair Carter – Sydney's Stained-Glass Artist and Portrait Painter – From a Melbourne Glass Apprenticeship in the 1890s to the Windows of St Stephen's and St Andrew's Cathedral – 1875 to 1963

Next time you're in St Stephen's on Macquarie Street, or looking up at the high windows in St Andrew's Cathedral, have a look for the name Norman Carter. Most Sydneysiders have never heard of him. Yet from the end of the First World War to the 1950s, few artists put more colour into Sydney's churches, chapels and colleges. He was a Melbourne boy who learnt to cut and paint glass as a teenage apprentice in the 1890s. He was also a portrait painter who painted Barton, Billy Hughes and Henry Lawson and who kept trying for the Archibald Prize without ever winning it. His full name was Norman St Clair Carter, and this is his story.

St John's Uniting Church, Wahroonga. Most of its windows are Norman Carter's, 2019. Image: Collywolly, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Which "Norman St Clair"?

If you go looking for a Sydney stained-glass man called Norman St Clair, you'll find him under his surname, Carter. The Australian Dictionary of Biography lists him as Norman St Clair Carter (1875–1963), "portrait-painter and stained-glass artist". Design and Art Australia Online agrees. As far as I can find, there was no other Norman St Clair in the trade. One thing worth knowing up front is that his training belongs to the 1890s, but nearly all his Sydney windows date from 1916 to the 1950s. If you were picturing a Victorian-era glazier, Carter came along just after them, trained in their workshops.

A Melbourne Apprentice

Carter was born on 30 June 1875 at Kew in Melbourne, the third son of Harold Richard Carter, an English-born grain merchant, and his wife Janet, née Morrow. His older brothers Bryce and Frank both became musicians. Bryce was a well-known cellist and Frank a violinist. Norman was at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School from 1888 to 1890. Then the 1890s depression hit his father's business, and the ADB says he had to leave school and find work.

That's where the glass came in. The ADB says only that from 1890 to 1894 he "was apprenticed to a stained-glass maker". Karla Whitmore's detailed study of his glass, published on Stained Glass Australia, fills in the names from Carter's own unpublished autobiography notes in the State Library of NSW. He started cutting stencils at the Kalizoic, a fashionable Melbourne furnishing and decorating firm. A family friend there, Ernest Tucker, suggested he try an apprenticeship with the stained-glass firm Hughes, Rogers & Co. Its studio was off Lonsdale Street, between Elizabeth and Queen Streets. John Hughes had come out from England to work for Brooks, Robinson & Co. before starting his own partnership. He became Carter's teacher and friend, and Carter learnt by helping in the studio and watching Hughes draw cartoons and paint figures. Another man in that workshop mattered later on. Frederick Tarrant, the head journeyman painter, would one day make Carter's windows in Sydney.

The partnership broke up around 1894 and Hughes went back to England. Carter sold artists' supplies at Ferguson & Mitchell by day. At night he studied at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and L. Bernard Hall, and later under E. Phillips Fox. Design and Art Australia Online adds that in 1898 he and fellow students Hugh Ramsay and Harley Griffiths rented a shack at Eltham, which they called "The Pillbox", to paint outdoors.

Coming to Sydney

The sources tell his move north a little differently. The ADB and DAAO both say he moved to Sydney in 1903 with his close friend, the poet Hugh McCrae. Whitmore says the family had moved to Sydney in 1897, and that Norman went back to Melbourne to study full-time before settling here for good in 1903. Either way, by 1903 he was a Sydney artist. He set up a city studio, drew for the Bulletin and the Sydney Mail, and joined the Royal Art Society, where he taught until 1916. Whitmore says his first studio was on the corner of George and Market Streets, then in Hunter Street, and later at 76 Pitt Street. The ADB gives Hunter Street and then Vickery's Chambers. He lived at Wollstonecraft, on the lower North Shore.

On 3 November 1908 he married Ruby Eva Burnell at Toowoomba in Queensland. They had two sons and three daughters.

The Portrait Painter

For most of his life Sydney knew Carter as a portrait painter. He reckoned he painted about four hundred portraits. In a 1962 interview recorded by Hazel de Berg for the National Library, he said the trick was to "talk to him, draw him out and get to know him well". One of his first big commissions, Whitmore says, was a portrait of Governor William Bligh for Government House in 1907. His sitters included Sir Edmund Barton, Billy Hughes, Henry Lawson, Hans Heysen, David Scott Mitchell and the art patron Howard Hinton. The ADB's index also lists Sir William Holmes and the aviator P. G. Taylor. His big portrait of the artist Florence Rodway, "A Low Toned Harmony", won a bronze medal at the Paris Salon in 1913, even though Carter never went overseas himself.

He was a regular in the Archibald Prize and never won it. Whitmore quotes him in 1937 saying that after fifteen years of trying he was still hoping. His 1940 entry, the portrait of Captain P. G. Taylor in his flying coat with his Lockheed Altair on the dunes, is now in the Art Gallery of NSW. He didn't think much of modern art. The ADB says he came to see "contemporary art" as a "fungoid growth", and in 1937 he helped found the short-lived Australian Academy of Art.

He taught for decades, at Sydney Technical College from 1915 to 1940 and in the University of Sydney's architecture department from 1922 to 1947. He told people he "always liked teaching" and that it was "useful as a form of ballast to one's income". He also painted murals. Whitmore and DAAO both mention the two 1921 philosophy panels at the University of Sydney, the Rural Bank murals in Martin Place and a 1952 mural for the Maritime Services Board building at Circular Quay, now the Museum of Contemporary Art. They disagree on one detail. Whitmore says the philosophy panels commemorate Professor Francis Anderson. DAAO says Professor John Anderson asked for them in 1921, but John Anderson didn't arrive in Sydney until 1927, so Whitmore's version looks right.

Back to the Glass

Carter never gave up the craft he'd learnt as a boy. Whitmore explains that he both designed and made windows himself, and also designed windows that two Sydney studios made. The first was his old workmate Frederick Tarrant, whose studio was at 24 Taylor Street, Darlinghurst, until the firm went bankrupt in 1928. The second was P. O. (Percy) Barnard's Standard Glass Studio at 183 Parramatta Road, Strathfield, which ran for more than thirty years from around 1930. Carter's own description of the work, from his notes, was "a kind of work which is full of possibilities and varying problems". He said working in two mediums was like speaking "two different languages. One has to learn the idiom of each".

His earliest known windows are in the old Neutral Bay Presbyterian Church, now St John's Uniting. Two lancets beside the altar are signed "Designed by Norman St Carter" (the "Clair" got lost somewhere) and "Painted by F.J. Tarrant, Darlinghurst 1917". They remember Captain Robert Craig, a long-serving elder, and his wife, with a Viking ship riding rough seas and calm.

The Uniting Church in Yeo Street, Neutral Bay, home of Carter's earliest known windows (1917). Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Windows for the Fallen

The First World War made him busy. Grieving families and schools wanted memorial windows, and Carter's figures of saints, knights and soldiers suited the mood. At Shore chapel in North Sydney, his friend the architect B. J. Waterhouse got him the job of designing the whole scheme. That's nine two-light windows from about 1918. One shows Captain Brian Pockley, a young doctor, as St Luke. Whitmore's article says he was killed at Gallipoli in 1915. Most accounts of Pockley, though, have him dying at Bita Paka in German New Guinea in September 1914, one of the first Australian officers killed in the war.

At The King's School chapel in Parramatta there are windows from about 1916 to 1948. They run from his early triple lancet for Stewart Milson, with Old Boys marching beneath Christ, to the seven Second World War windows in the apse showing St Michael, St George and King Arthur. Whitmore says the use of legendary heroes instead of biblical figures caused a stir at the time. At Wesley College at the University of Sydney there are 1919 windows for George Guthrie, killed at Pozières, and Captain Edward Dawson, killed at Lone Pine.

In the city, a memorial window at the Congregational Church in Pitt Street, now Pitt Street Uniting, was unveiled in 1922. It shows Christ with a kneeling soldier in armour.

Pitt Street Uniting Church, formerly the Congregational Church, with Carter's 1922 war memorial window in the southern gallery. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Sydney's Churches, 1920s and 30s

From there the commissions came steadily. Whitmore lists the east window at Christ Church, Queanbeyan (1923), and two windows at St James', Pitt Town (1928), both made by Tarrant. There's a big three-light window at St Andrew's, Longueville (1928). In 1930 he did the half-round window over the entrance of St James' Church, King Street. It shows James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and their mother around Jesus. At the Garden Island naval chapel he did a 1936 memorial window with HMAS Sydney under a huge Britannia, and a 1935 window of Christ walking on the waves.

St James' Church, King Street. Carter's 1930 window is over the entrance. Image: Ymblanter, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

St James' Church, Pitt Town, with two Carter windows made by Tarrant in 1928. Image: Mfunnell, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Naval Chapel on Garden Island, where Carter's 1935 and 1936 windows are. Image: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Inside the Garden Island Naval Chapel. Image: Peter Ellis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The church with the most Carter glass is St John's at Wahroonga. The big three-light window over the altar was in place when the church opened in 1930. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that it was "designed by Norman Carter, and carried out under his supervision", and it's signed "painted by Tarrants". Over the next twenty years most of the other windows followed. They include memorials from both wars, with Gideon, Ezekiel and Isaiah, and the last one, to the donor, from about 1951.

Inside St John's, Wahroonga, looking to the altar window Carter designed for the church's opening in 1930. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The nave at St John's, Wahroonga, lined with Carter windows from the 1930s to the 1950s. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The earlier Presbyterian church at Wahroonga, before the present St John's was built, by William Henry Broadhurst. Image: Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

At the Presbyterian church in Drummoyne he did something different, a history window. Shown at the Society of Artists in 1931, it shows the signing of the Scottish Covenant, with a family in tartan in the side lights, and was made by Percy Barnard. The window opposite remembers Captain Harold Henley, killed at Pozières in 1916. It was unveiled in 1932 by his parents, Sir Thomas and Lady Henley.

Drummoyne Presbyterian Church, with Carter's Covenant window (1931) and Henley memorial (1932). Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Drummoyne Presbyterian Church in the early 1900s, by William Henry Broadhurst. Image: Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

His Biggest Window: St Stephen's

Carter's largest window is in St Stephen's Uniting Church on Macquarie Street, which opened in 1935. The seven-light altar window, known as the Armstrong window, dates from 1936. It was designed by Carter and made by Barnard's Standard Glass Studio. Christ stands between Faith and Hope, with Moses, David, St Stephen and St Paul among the figures on either side. There are angels, a rainbow, the burning bush and the Presbyterian shield above and below. Whitmore says the side windows, dated 1936 to 1954, and a staircase window showing Iona and the Flynn Memorial Church in Alice Springs, with Sturt's desert pea, also look like his work.

The front of St Stephen's Uniting Church, Macquarie Street. Inside is Carter's largest window, the 1936 Armstrong window. Image: Rangasyd, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Cathedrals

At All Saints' Cathedral in Bathurst, the Melbourne artist William Montgomery died in 1927 before he could finish the "Heroes" windows in the Warriors' Chapel, and Carter completed the set. They pair St Paul with Cranmer, Florence Nightingale with Edith Cavell, and Captain Cook with the explorers who crossed the Blue Mountains, complete with swag, axe, dog, Christmas bells and waratahs. Carter oversaw the installation in early 1930 and went to the dedication. At St Saviour's Cathedral in Goulburn he did "Suffer the children" in 1942 and two windows on the history of the English Bible in 1944.

Inside St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn, where Carter's windows of 1942 and 1944 are. Image: JohnArmagh, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

In Sydney the big job was the clerestory at St Andrew's Cathedral. Whitmore says eight three-light windows went in, starting with two in 1945 and finishing in 1956 with one that replaced an Ashwin & Falconer window. Their subjects include the first church service in the colony, with the Rev Richard Johnson preaching before Governor Phillip under a rainbow and waratahs. Others cover mission work in New Guinea, Norfolk Island and Tanganyika, and Bishop Broughton's centenary. Some guides date the clerestory to 1953–54, but Whitmore, working from Carter's papers and newspaper reports, gives 1945 to 1956.

Stained glass at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, where Carter designed eight clerestory windows between 1945 and 1956. Image: -wuppertaler, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Light through the windows of St Andrew's Cathedral. Image: Radosław Botev, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 pl).

His final war memorial window, Whitmore says, went into St Luke's, Dapto, in 1954. He also did two big windows for St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Canberra (1948 and 1950), and windows at Berry, Guyra, Narromine, Bathurst Presbyterian, Armidale's Teachers' College and the chapel at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

The Last Years

Carter kept working into the 1950s. He died at Gordon on 18 September 1963, aged 88, and was buried in the Anglican section of the Northern Suburbs cemetery. Ruby had died before him. The ADB says his estate was sworn for probate at £2337, not much for a man who'd painted prime ministers. A self-portrait is in the Art Gallery of NSW.

His view of art was simple. "Good art", he said in 1939, "must be such that ordinary people can take an intelligent pleasure in it." His portraits mostly hang in boardrooms and galleries most of us never visit. His windows are in local churches, open on a Sunday, and that's where you'll find his best work.

References

• Australian Dictionary of Biography, "Carter, Norman St Clair (1875–1963)" and its life summary.
• Design and Art Australia Online, "Norman St Clair Carter" biography.
• Karla Whitmore, "Artist on Canvas and Glass: the Stained Glass Work of Norman Carter", Stained Glass Australia (2017). It draws on Carter's papers and autobiography notes in the State Library of NSW (MLMSS 471) and on reports in Trove newspapers.
• Art Gallery of NSW, Archibald Prize 1940, Norman Carter, "Captain PG Taylor, EGM, MC".
• State Library of NSW, Norman Carter self-portrait.

Castlereagh Street, Sydney, and Lord Castlereagh – The Minister Who Sent Us Macquarie, His Duel with Canning and His Death in 1822 – and the Street Named After Him

Ask most Sydneysiders who Castlereagh Street is named after and you'll get a shrug. Some say it sounds like a castle, and a few say "Castle-ray". It's one of the main streets of the CBD, running from the Domain end of the city down to Haymarket. It has David Jones and the luxury shops, the old Fire Station and the Masonic Centre. Yet the man it honours is almost forgotten here. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, never came to Australia. Still, for a few years he ran the colony from London, and he's the man who sent us Lachlan Macquarie. His own story ended badly, in a duel and then a suicide that shocked Britain. Here's the story of the man and the street.

Castlereagh Street today, looking along the CBD, 2023. Image: -wuppertaler, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Who Was Lord Castlereagh?

Robert Stewart was born in 1769 into an Ulster family of landowners and politicians. "Viscount Castlereagh" was a courtesy title he used for most of his career, taken from his father's peerage. Late in life, in 1821, he became the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, but history still remembers him as Castlereagh. He made his name in Ireland as Chief Secretary, pushing through the Act of Union of 1800, which joined Ireland to Great Britain. The Irish never forgave him for it.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, about 1817. Image: Thomas Lawrence, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The 1878 Compendium of Irish Biography, on Library Ireland, says his English career "practically commenced" in 1805, when he was made Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. He held that job twice, from 1805 to early 1806 and again from 1807 to 1809. In those days New South Wales was run from that office. Every despatch from Sydney, every complaint about rum and every request for convicts, cattle or a new governor ended up on his desk.

The Rum Rebellion Lands on His Desk

On 26 January 1808 the New South Wales Corps marched on Government House and arrested Governor William Bligh. It's the Rum Rebellion, and the news took months to reach London. The introduction to Macquarie's papers in the Historical Records of Australia says word of "the usurpation of the government in New South Wales and the arrest of Governor Bligh" arrived in September 1808. With the Peninsular War under way, "the report at first caused scanty comment". Within weeks, though, Castlereagh decided to replace Bligh and to send a regiment to relieve the Corps.

His first choice for governor wasn't Macquarie at all. In December 1808 he offered the job to Brigadier-General Miles Nightingall, and Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie's 73rd Regiment was chosen to go with him. Then Nightingall fell ill. By mid-April 1809 it was clear he couldn't go, and by the end of the month Castlereagh had given the job to Macquarie. Macquarie's commission and instructions were dated 8 and 9 May 1809, the day after his regiment had already embarked at Yarmouth. As the Historical Records put it, Macquarie's appointment was "entirely due to the accidents of life". So the governor who gave Sydney its streets, its Hyde Park and its Macquarie towns got the job because another man got sick. Castlereagh signed off on it.

Macquarie Names the Street, 1810

Macquarie arrived at the start of 1810 and wasted no time. On 6 October 1810 the Sydney Gazette printed his Government and General Order giving "regular and permanent NAMES to all the STREETS and WAYS leading through the Town". Posts and finger-boards with the names painted on them were to go up at the corners, and the streets were "henceforth to be known and called only by the new Names". George Street got its name in that order, and so did Charlotte Square, Macquarie Place and Hyde Park. The plan of new street names published with it gave Sydney most of the names we still use.

The City of Sydney's history of Sydney's streets says the central names "reflected Macquarie's loyalty to empire". George III's sons appear as York, Cumberland, Sussex, Clarence, Cambridge and Kent, alongside "the names of various British officials such as Bathurst, Liverpool, Castlereagh, Pitt". The City of Sydney Archives' own catalogue notes say "Castlereagh St was named by Governor Macquarie in 1810 for Viscount Castlereagh". Wikipedia adds that the street had earlier been called Chapel Row and Camden Street. It also says the name once took in what is now Loftus Street, called Castlereagh Street North until 1881, and what is now Chalmers Street, until 1905. I haven't found those older names in a primary source, so take them as Wikipedia's account. By the time the order was printed, Castlereagh was no longer in the job. He had resigned the year before, after a scandal.

The Duel on Putney Heath

In April 1809, while Castlereagh was sending Macquarie off to Sydney, the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, was quietly working to have him sacked. The UK National Archives' catalogue of the Portland papers sets it out. Canning told the Prime Minister, the Duke of Portland, that the war was being badly run and that Lord Wellesley should take over the War Department, or he would resign. The cabinet kept it from Castlereagh for months. Then the Walcheren expedition, Castlereagh's big landing in the Netherlands, failed disastrously. In September he found out what had been going on behind his back. He resigned and challenged Canning to a duel.

History Today tells the story well. Canning had never fired a pistol in his life. He wrote his will and a farewell letter to his wife. His second was so nervous loading the pistol that Castlereagh's second, Lord Yarmouth, did it for him. They met at 6 am on Putney Heath. The first shots missed. Canning's second shot hit a button on Castlereagh's coat, and Castlereagh's second shot hit Canning in the thigh. Castlereagh then helped him limp away. The sources differ on the date by a day. History Today says 21 September 1809, and the National Archives catalogue says 22 September. Both men left the government, and Portland's ministry fell apart.

A nineteenth-century print of the Castlereagh–Canning duel on Putney Heath, 1809. Image: unknown artist, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Most Hated Man in England

Castlereagh came back as Foreign Secretary in 1812 and held the job until 1822. He helped hold together the alliance that beat Napoleon and was one of the main players at the Congress of Vienna. Many historians now rate him one of Britain's great foreign secretaries. At home, though, he was the face of a government that put down reform. After the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, the poet Shelley wrote in The Mask of Anarchy: "I met Murder on the way – He had a mask like Castlereagh". He was the government's leader in the Commons, so he defended its harshest measures there, and the radicals loathed him.

The strain told. The Library Ireland biography says that after the hard 1822 session "he was observed to be suffering from great nervous excitement". He went to his country house at North Cray in Kent. On the morning of 12 August 1822 he cut his throat with a penknife and died almost at once. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Some in the crowd cheered as his coffin went in, and Byron wrote a savage mock epitaph. At the time, Macquarie had been back in Britain less than a year.

Castlereagh's statue in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried in 1822. Image: 14GTR, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Castlereagh All Over New South Wales

Macquarie clearly thought well of the man who'd given him the job, because the name turns up all over the colony. On 6 December 1810, after a dinner at the Hawkesbury, Macquarie named his five new "Macquarie towns". His journal, held by the State Library of NSW, records: "the Township for the Evan or Nepean District I have named Castlereagh in honor of Lord Viscount Castlereagh". The others were Windsor, Richmond, Pitt Town and Wilberforce, and he drank "a Bumper to the success of each". Castlereagh never grew into a real town, but the name survives in the suburb of Castlereagh near Penrith and in the Castlereagh Nature Reserve.

The big one is the Castlereagh River in the north-west. In July 1818 John Oxley's second expedition came across it. The memorial near Coonamble says it was "discovered" on 11 July 1818 by Surveyor George Evans, Oxley's second-in-command. Oxley's journal for 18 July records that Evans returned and that the river "was now honoured with the name of Lord Castlereagh". The river rises in the Warrumbungles and runs about 540 kilometres through Coonabarabran, Mendooran, Gilgandra, Gulargambone and Coonamble to the Macquarie River. Of course it had names long before 1818. The surveyor Thomas Mitchell recorded in 1846 that the local people called it the Barr, and it's also known as Wallambangle. The Castlereagh Highway, from Lithgow through Mudgee and Gilgandra to the Queensland border, carries the name too.

The Castlereagh River at Coonabarabran, near its source in the Warrumbungles. Image: Sardaka, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

The Castlereagh River at Coonamble, near where Oxley's party waited for the floodwaters to fall in 1818. Image: Mattinbgn, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

The Street Grows Up

For its first few decades Castlereagh Street was a back street, with cottages, stables, yards and small workshops behind the grander George and Pitt Streets. The Victorian boom changed it. By the 1880s and 90s it had theatres, hotels, chapels and offices, and it became one of the city's big entertainment streets.

Castlereagh Street from near King Street, 1892–93, photographed by Fred Hardie. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

The grandest building on the street was the Hotel Australia, which ran right through to Martin Place. For most of the 20th century it was the place to stay in Sydney. I've written it up in my post on the Australia Hotel.

The Hotel Australia in Castlereagh Street, about 1892, by Fred Hardie. Image: National Library of Australia, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Martin Place and Castlereagh Street around 1935, with the Hotel Australia on the left, by Hall & Co. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Further up was the Tivoli, home of vaudeville and variety for generations of Sydney theatregoers. The Central Methodist Mission had its Lyceum hall at No. 139.

The Tivoli Theatre in Castlereagh Street, early 1900s, by Hall & Co. Image: Hall & Co., via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The Central Methodist Mission at 139 Castlereagh Street, 1938, photographed by Sam Hood. Image: Sam Hood, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Not all of the street was grand. When bubonic plague broke out in 1900, the government sent in cleansing gangs, and the photographs they took show the yards and sheds behind the shopfronts. A public school stood on Castlereagh Street too, photographed in 1872.

The public school in Castlereagh Street, 1872. Image: Charles Percy Pickering, NSW Government Printer, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

A shed behind No. 310 Castlereagh Street, photographed during the plague cleansing operations of 1900. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Landmarks Along the Way

Walk the street today and there's history all the way along. Here are the ones I've written about before.

• At the King Street corner stands Culwulla Chambers at No. 67. It was one of Sydney's early tall office buildings, and its height helped bring in the city's height limit.
• The Great Synagogue faces Elizabeth Street but backs onto Castlereagh Street. See my post on the Great Synagogue.
• Down at No. 211–217 is the City of Sydney Fire Station, headquarters of the fire brigade since 1888. My earlier post on it is here.
• On the corner of Goulburn Street is the Sydney Masonic Centre, a Freemasons' site since 1884. For more on the Masons, see my post on Freemasons in Australia.
• Castlereagh Street also had its share of odd tenants, like Scientology House.

The Castlereagh Street side of the Great Synagogue, 2023. Image: Shkuru Afshar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The Fire Station in Castlereagh Street around 1900, from the Tyrrell collection. Image: Powerhouse Museum, Tyrrell Collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Firemen at a blaze in Castlereagh Street, 1934, photographed by Sam Hood. Image: Sam Hood, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The Castlereagh Street face of the Sydney Masonic Centre, 2022. Image: Shkuru Afshar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

War, Books and Shopping

The street saw plenty of marches too. In September 1940 the 2/19th Battalion of the 8th Division marched down Castlereagh Street past the Hunter Street corner, on the way to a war that would end for many of them in Malaya and the prison camps. After the war, readers crowded into Angus & Robertson's bookshop there.

The 2/19th Battalion marching down Castlereagh Street near Hunter Street, September 1940. Image: Australian War Memorial, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Inside Angus & Robertson's bookshop in Castlereagh Street, 1946. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

From the 1930s the old buildings started coming down. Harold Cazneaux photographed old buildings "giving way in Castlereagh St for the new". The Hotel Australia, the Tivoli and most of the Victorian street are gone now. In their place are towers, the MLC Centre and, at the northern end, a row of luxury boutiques that has made Castlereagh Street the city's high-fashion strip. David Jones's Market Street store fronts onto it as well.

"Sydney growing up": old buildings giving way in Castlereagh Street, photographed by Harold Cazneaux. Image: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

David Jones on Castlereagh Street, 2016. Image: Kgbo, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

So Next Time You're Walking Down Castlereagh Street…

Spare a thought for the man on the sign. He was an Irish aristocrat who never saw Sydney. He sent us Macquarie because the first choice got sick, fought a duel with a cabinet colleague the same year, helped settle Europe after Napoleon, and took his own life at 53. His name ended up on a street, a township and a river 17,000 kilometres from where he lived and died. Not a bad legacy for someone most of us can't pronounce. For the record, it's "CASS-ul-ray".

References

• Historical Records of Australia, Series I, introduction to the Macquarie volumes (via Project Gutenberg Australia and the Internet Archive).
• Lachlan Macquarie, Government and General Order, Sydney Gazette, 6 October 1810 (Macquarie University LEMA archive).
• Lachlan Macquarie, journal of his first tour of inspection, 1810, State Library of NSW.
• City of Sydney, "History of Sydney streets"; City of Sydney Archives item A-00036232 (1902).
• The National Archives (UK), Portland papers catalogue, "Quarrel between George Canning and Robert, Viscount Castlereagh".
• History Today, "The Castlereagh–Canning Duel".
• A Compendium of Irish Biography (1878), "Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh", via Library Ireland.
• John Oxley, Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales (1820), extract in Ernest Scott (ed.), Australian Discovery.
• Monument Australia, "European Discovery of Castlereagh River", Coonamble.