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...

No matter where you go in Sydney you will find beautiful Art Deco architecture. From multi-storey buildings in the CBD, old suburban bank branches, warehouses, points of interest and that icon of Australian culture - the suburban pub. Finding these gems and discovering their past is addictive. The Art Deco hotels in Sydney built by Tooth & Co are legendary and the Commonwealth Bank left an architectual legacy with their Interwar suburban branches. The posts are grouped into seven categories: Bank Building Hotel Industrial Landmark Miscellaneous theatre All Art Deco architecture located outside of Sydney is grouped under Miscellaneous. These categories can be accessed through the top left drop down menu under the Labels tab. Alternatively you can use the search function on the top right of the page. I hope you enjoy your visit .

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: "...