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 rather than a building. Work began in 1868 and went on in stages for two decades. The clock tower the Bradridge brothers designed went up in the early 1870s and was for a time the tallest thing in Sydney — and it stood there faceless, because Gillett & Bland of London did not supply the clock until 1883–84. For a decade the city had a clock tower with no clock in it. Centennial Hall behind it, where most Sydneysiders have since sat through a concert or a citizenship ceremony, was not finished until 1889.

The view taken *from* the tower in 1873 is the one to find. Francis W. Robinson made it as one print of ten forming a 360-degree panorama of Sydney, described in the *Sydney Morning Herald* that December: a low city of slate and iron and chimney pots, market sheds and a dome in the foreground, harbour water on the skyline. The Town Hall stands in it as the tallest structure — which it would be again, briefly, after the Garden Palace burned in 1882 and before the General Post Office overtook it in 1891.

What the building became afterwards is a grandstand. Its steps and balcony face straight down George Street, so the city routed its processions past them and the camera went up on the opposite roofline. When the 2nd AIF marched for the Second World War a saluting base was built at the Town Hall — mounted riders leading, the Queen Victoria Building's domes across the road, spectators lining the roof. Uniformed men with rifles passed St Andrew's Cathedral during the 1938 Sesquicentenary. Trade floats came by on 29 January 1951 for the jubilee of federation, a butchers' association and Boy Scouts around a camp display lettered "Happy Healthy Citizens" — though that day's salute was taken at Parliament House, so George Street got the parade without the dignitaries.

Watch the roofline. The best seats were never on the street.