Tuesday 7 January 2025 from 11am to 1pm
Enjoy this 2 hour walk with Vincent, AAA's volunteer tour guide, starting at the Hyde Park Barracks, one of Sydney’s oldest pieces of architecture by convict architect Francis Greenway.
The journey looks at buildings that replaced brick with grander materials like sandstone, then granite, before moving into more modern materials like terracotta and finally of course concrete.
Terms like skyscraper gothic, beaux artes and art deco are explained in front of buildings like the Sun building on Philip Street, one of the few skyscraper gothic representations in Sydney. Learn the difference between it and the Commonwealth Bank Headquarters in Martin Place – which is Beaux Artes, designed in the 1920s by architects Herbert Ross and Ruskin Rowe.
You will visit the Queen Victoria Building and hear how it was saved from demolition in the 1970's – what an amazing building so worth saving.