Polish War Memorial Chapel
116-132 Quakers Road, Marayong
Michael Dysart. 1964 to 1966, consecrated 27 December 1966. Brutalism.
- Size
- Six gables rising to a tall copper-clad tower
- Material
- Rough-cast render and copper, with glazed gable ends
- Status
- The church of the Polish Catholic community, served by the Society of Christ
The chapel stands at the Polish centre on Quakers Road, which began with a home for Polish children. Sydney’s Polish community built it to serve Poles across New South Wales, and it is dedicated to Our Lady of Częstochowa, Queen of Poland. Cardinal Norman Gilroy consecrated it on 27 December 1966. The Australian War Memorial lists it among its memorials of the Second World War.
Michael Dysart designed it. Six gables rise one behind another to a tall tower clad in copper, with a cross on its face. Each gable end is filled with small panes of glass, and the long low walls are rendered white. The six peaks stand for the six million Polish lives lost in the war, the tower draws on the shrine of Jasna Góra and on the Sydney Opera House, and from above the building resembles an eagle in flight.
Like the Reader’s Digest offices in Surry Hills, it has an exuberant form and detailing, and it joins a strong treatment of materials with a romanticised sense of place-making in its white rough-cast walls, its copper gables and its tower. In the same years Dysart was project architect for Kuring-gai High School and Pennant Hills High School in the Government Architect’s office.
Read about Brutalism in Sydney
Sources
- The Brutalist Project Sydney, Glenn Harper, Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarships Journal Series, NSW Architects Registration Board (2016)
- Polish War Memorial (Multicultural Chaplaincy), Catholic Diocese of Parramatta
- Marayong – The Heart of Poland in Australia’s Multicultural Landscape, Exaudi (2024)
- Polish War Memorial Chapel, Churches Australia
- Our Lady of Czestochowa Queen of Poland Catholic Church, Australian War Memorial, Places of Pride