Sydney Art Deco Heritage

Formerly known as Flanagan's the Burdekin hotel is still a well known hotel at the beginning of Oxford Street. The site, at 2-4 Oxford Street Darlinghurst, has historical significance because it has been occupied almost continuously by a hotel since the 1840s. It is also significant because of its association with the prominent architectural firm of Rudder & Grout. They designed many Art Deco hotels around Sydney and the Burdekin is a good representative example of a Federation hotel with an interwar Art Deco style overlay. History The original Flanagan's Hotel was a diminutive single storey structure at the start of Oxford Street near Hyde Park. The hotel (picture opposite) was built in the Victorian era but was demolished around 1910 during the "remodelling" or widening of Oxford Street. Several significant buidlings were also demolished for this project including the Albury Hotel. There were several street widening projects occuring around this time in

The St George Tavern at 531 Princes Highway in Rockdale is a very nice example of a classic Australian Art Deco pub. It was originally called the Rockdale hotel and was one of the many designed by Sidney Warden who was the principal architect for Tooth & Co in the 1920's and 30's. It is very unfortunate that someone decided to "improve" the look of the building and had the original brickwork painted over! My personal feeling is that the brickwork should have been left unpainted. The building looked far better with raw brick as can be seen in the photo below and in the many other examples listed in this blog. This is how the Rockdale hotel looked before it had all its brickwork and Art Deco features painted over. It certainly looked grand in those days. The St George Tavern main corner facade today. There is now garish blur strip lighting on the facade to highlight the Art Deco features of the building. A modern *fad* which is unfortunate. The curr

The Albury Hotel situated at 2a Oxford Street, Paddington, was once the premier gay hotel on Oxford street. In the 1970's it was sold by Tooheys to Lee Ross Jennings on the 13th June 1980 which made it amongst the first independent establishments not to be run or controlled by Abe Saffron and Dawn O’Donnell. From 1980 it opened as a gay venue and was famous for its drag shows, colourful personalities and boasting a piano bar which was one of the best in Sydney. The Albury's patron numbers were capped at 160 around the mid-late 1990s but before then, they would regularly cram in 300 or more in at a time. So popular was the venue that the crowd overflowed from the bar onto the footpath and even turned the adjacent pub, The Beauchamp, into a gay establishment. The original Albury Hotel, which was also situated on the existing site, sat squarely on the boundary of two Councils. A story was reported in a Sydney Morning Herald article on Saturday 3rd 1930 which read: "

The Parker Pen Factory was located in the Art Deco style building at 159-163 Cleveland Street in Redfern. In the Darlington Conservation Area report (CA17) the façade of this old factory "... also makes a contribution to the streetscape of Cleveland street as a remnant Interwar element, and is considered worthy of retention". Hopefully it is retained if the Major Project Application which has been lodged with the Department of Planning for a mixed commercial & residential development goes ahead. Facade detail A redevelopment of the site was proposed in 2011. "The proposal was for a 5-storey, 461 bed student accommodation facility with ground floor communal recreation spaces organised around a large landscaped courtyard. The building is entered off the corner of Cleveland and Abercrombie Street with student lounge, meeting and communal laundry located along Cleveland Street and accessed directly of the courtyard". Part of the proposal was that the C

Also known as the Vita-Weat building this heritage landmark located at 476 Parramatta Road in Ashfield was the Peek Frean Biscuit factory from 1935 to 1975. Vita-Weat crispbreads were first produced by Peek Frean in the UK and were the foundation product when the biscuit company opened its Australian subsidiary at a factory in Camperdown in 1932. At that time, Australia was an important export market for Peek Frean and setting up a manufacturing operation here allowed them to avoid import tariffs. Vita-Weat was their best-known product at the time. The land where the factory now stands belonged to the Ashfield Children’s Home. They sold the northern portion of the land fronting Parramatta Road on the 6th of October 1935 to Peak Freans (Australia) Ltd Biscuit Manufacturers, who constructed a biscuit factory on the site. This land had never been developed. The company engaged well-known Sydney architects Ross & Rowe to design their factory which opened in 1936. The building w

The site at 106 Oxford Street Paddington on the corner of Hopewell street has had a hotel known as the Unicorn Hotel since the first half of the 1880s. Before this it was occupied by premises known as Croft’s Family Hotel. The Unicorn Hotel was purchased by Tooth and company in February 1936. It was rebuilt by Joy and Pollit architects and completed in August 1941. The Unicorn Hotel was another iconic gay hotel on Oxford street. It had a superb Art Deco dining room with recessed lighting in the ceiling similar to the Albury hotel however it has been destroyed by the new owners. The architectual style was known as P & O Ship style because of the similaity to ocean liner forms. Its current incarnation as The Fringe Bar has an interior which is theatrical kitch with lots of red velvet drapes, mirrors and way too many crystal chandeliers over the bar. Unicorn facade detail Sources: Sydney Heritage Listings

Built in 1939, the Light Brigade Hotel is an exceptional example of Inter War Functionalist style commercial architecture designed by Sidney Warden which dominates the intersection at Jersey Road and Oxford Street in Paddington. It is a prominent landmark in this part of the street. Sidney Warden designed numerous Art Deco hotels around Sydney. The Light Brigade is a hotel which has tried to maintain some of its Art Deco style when the owners renovated. The interior of the Light Brigade hotel is cosy with lots of period touches. There is a nice horse motif on the frosted glass door panels which has an interesting history outlined below. It is just one of the many fine details that are scattered around the hotel. If you are ever in Paddington on a weekend it is well worth dropping in for a refreshment to enjoy the ambience. View of the main bar Another view of the main bar Window motif - Cinq Cheveaux The horse motif on the door glass panel is a reproduction of a mo

Located at 27-33 Oxford St, Paddington, The Rose, Shamrock & Thistle Hotel was built in 1939 and is an architecturally significant Inter War Functionalist style hotel designed by the prominent specialist firm of Provost and Ancher. It replaced an earlier hotel of the same name that was located nearby. A nice feature of this hotel are the curved windows on the first and second storey verandahs. They mirror the curve of the corner of the hotel and gives the verandahs a much more open feeling than if they were square to the facade. Sources: City of Sydney Heritage Listings

Situated on the corner of Moncur and Queen St in Woollahra, the Woollahra Hotel is a nice, balanced example of an Art Deco style hotel that has a good counter lunch. A particularly nice feature on the hotel facade is the use of different coloured bricks. The three horizontal lines of bricks behind the lettering of the hotel name are accentuated by the dark red brick set back from the paler coloured bricks. The upstairs verandah is still open on the Moncur Street side which gives an idea how the hotel originally looked. Imaginative brick laying is a hallmark of many of the Art Deco pubs around Sydney. The Pymble Hotel comes to mind with its brick sunburst. The hotel was designed by Cyril Christian Ruwald (1895-1959). Ruwald was one of several architects who designed hotels for Tooth & Co during the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Redfern, Sydney, Ruwald attended Sydney Technical College and was indentured to the architects Waterhouse and Lake. In 1917 Ruwald enlisted in the Field

The Robin Hood Hotel at 203 Bronte Road in Waverley is an excellent example of a modern commercial building in an Ocean Liner/International style designed by Sidney Warden. Sidney Warden designed a vast number of Art Deco hotels and there are many excellent examples described in this blog. The hotel also features Art Deco motifs and detailing which are essentially intact and beautifully maintained. The Robin Hood hotel is one of three Art Deco hotels situated in the immediate vicinity. The Charing Cross hotel is directly across the road while the Tea Gardens hotel is a brisk ten minute walk towards Bondi Junction. View from Carrington Street Sources: Sydney Heritage Listings

Located at 480 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills, the building is currently the headquarters of Opera Australia. The company recently had the building repainted which highlights the features of this excellent Art Deco building. Before Opera Australia purchased the building in the late 1980's it was a Hudson's Hardware store for many years. The building design has an horizontal emphasis which is accentuated by rounded corners which soften the vertical aspect of the walls. Cement rendered horizontal bands further emphasis the streamline effect. Above the main entrance is a classic Art Deco stepped parapet which adds an air of majesty to the building. The Opera Australia building extends back the full depth of the block to the next street. Due to the slope of the site the second storey at the front section of the building becomes the ground floor at the rear. The workshop area on the front ground floor has been heavily excavated towards the rear of the building due to the slope of th