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 and under a succession of architects, for two decades; the clock tower designed by the Bradridge brothers went up in the early 1870s and was for a time the tallest thing in Sydney.

That is the moment these photographs record. Several show the tower complete and, if you look, faceless — the clock itself was not supplied by Gillett & Bland of London until 1883–84, so for a decade the city had a clock tower with no clock in it. Centennial Hall, the vast room behind it that most Sydneysiders have since sat in for a concert or a citizenship ceremony, was not finished until 1889.

The most valuable frame is the one taken *from* the tower in 1873, looking out over the rooftops. It is a low city of slate and iron and chimney pots, and the Town Hall is standing 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.