Sydney CBD

Government House, Sydney

Government House looks like a castle because it was drawn as one, sight unseen, by an English architect who never saw the site.

Edward Blore, architect to William IV and Queen Victoria, designed it in London; Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis adapted the plans for its sandstone site on the harbour and oversaw construction from 1836. Governor George Gipps moved in ahead of the finish, in 1845; the building itself — castellated walls, pointed-arch porte-cochère and all — was complete by 1847.

A four-horse coach loaded with passengers in formal dress waits at that porte-cochère in one photograph, dated only to "the 1870s" — the everyday traffic of a working vice-regal residence. Decades later a mounted trooper in a plumed helmet rides beside an open barouche carrying the Duke of Gloucester, in Sydney on his 1934 tour of Australia, the same tour that took him to Hyde Park that November to dedicate the Anzac Memorial before some 100,000 people.

Between the two is the view from an upper window: terraced gardens, a lawn tennis court, and the masts of a square-rigged ship at anchor below — the harbour Government House has looked out on, largely unchanged, since Gipps first saw it.

5 works
Government House and Macquarie Street, Sydney, 1842 — photograph, from Government House, circa 1842
photograph·1870·Sydney CBD

Government House and Macquarie Street, Sydney, 1842

Views of Old SydneyBayliss, Charles, 1850-1897; Freeman Brothers; John Rae (original drawings)
Harbour and gardens from Government House, Sydney — photograph, from Government House, circa 1870
photograph·1870·Sydney CBD

Harbour and gardens from Government House, Sydney

Views of Old SydneyBayliss, Charles, 1850-1897; Freeman Brothers; John Rae (original drawings)
Duke of Gloucester saluting from a barouche, Government House, Sydney — photograph, from Government House, circa 1934
photograph·1934·Sydney CBD

Duke of Gloucester saluting from a barouche, Government House, Sydney

The Duke of Gloucester in SydneySam Hood
Coaching party at Government House, Sydney, in the 1870s — photograph, from Government House, circa 1870
photograph·1870·Sydney CBD

Coaching party at Government House, Sydney, in the 1870s

Views of Old SydneyBayliss, Charles, 1850-1897; Freeman Brothers; John Rae (original drawings)
Mounted escort and carriage in the Duke of Gloucester's procession, Sydney, 1934 — photograph, from Government House, circa 1934
photograph·1934·Sydney CBD

Mounted escort and carriage in the Duke of Gloucester's procession, Sydney, 1934

The Duke of Gloucester in SydneySam Hood