Sydney · Place by place

Places and Eras

Each collection gathers what the archive holds of a single Sydney place, at a single moment in its history.

14 works

Coogee Beach
Coogee is a short beach in a deep bay, which is why it draws a crowd and why it has never been kind to anything built...
5 works

Hyde Park, Sydney
Hyde Park is Sydney's oldest public park, and these photographs catch it a century apart. The earliest looks across it in 1842, when the eastern skyline...
4 works

Martin Place
Martin Place became Sydney's gathering place by accident of what was built on it. James Barnet's General Post Office went up along its southern side from...
11 works

Parramatta in the 1930s
One fortnight dominates. From 27 October to 5 November 1938 Parramatta held ten days of pageantry for the 150th anniversary of its founding — the second-oldest...
8 works

St Leonards Park, North Sydney
North Sydney came out of the war with something to build, and what it built was a bandstand. The Music Shell in St Leonards Park, designed...
5 works

Sydney CBD in the 1840s
Sydney's oldest surviving street views come from a set John Rae drew from life in 1842, the year before he was appointed the city's first full-time...
26 works

Sydney CBD in the 1870s
The 1870s were the decade Sydney decided what it wanted to look like. The colony had money from wool and gold, a Colonial Architect in James...
24 works

Sydney CBD in the 1950s
This is Sydney in its last low decade. The 150-foot height limit that had shaped the city since 1912 was lifted in 1957, and what you...
5 works

Sydney Town Hall
The Town Hall was built on the old George Street burial ground, which is why the earliest views of it are captioned as a proposed site...
8 works

The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney
Sydney's Botanic Garden was laid out on Farm Cove in 1816, on ground the colony had already tried and failed to grow wheat on, which makes...
7 works

The Royal Sydney Golf Club
Two men from radio station 2UW stand on a fairway at Rose Bay holding a walkie-talkie. Live outside-broadcast coverage of sport was new, the equipment made...
10 works

The Sydney Cricket Ground
The SCG took its name in 1894, but the shape these photographs record was already set: the Members' Stand of 1886 in the north-west corner, the...

Browse every work in the archive →

Country/region

Coogee Beach

Hyde Park, Sydney

Martin Place

Parramatta in the 1930s

St Leonards Park, North Sydney

Sydney CBD in the 1840s

Sydney CBD in the 1870s

Sydney CBD in the 1950s

Sydney Town Hall

The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney

The Royal Sydney Golf Club

The Sydney Cricket Ground

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