Daytime view of the whole building across the lawn: green dome at left, square time-ball tower with ball and vane, the pedimented residence at right. Overcast sky, natural colour.

Sydney Observatory

Observatory Hill, Millers Point

William Weaver and Alexander Dawson; west wing by James Barnet. 1857 to 1859. Victorian and Federation, Sydney Sandstone.

Size
Two storeys, with a four-storey tower
Material
Sandstone, copper-alloy domes, slate roofs
Status
State Heritage Register, 2000. A public observatory and museum

This hill had been a windmill, a fort and a flag-signalling station before it became an observatory. The idea began in 1850 as a modest time-ball room, and grew over eight years into an observatory and a house for the astronomer. Colonial Architects came and went during that time. Edmund Blacket drew a first plan, William Weaver resigned in 1855 after an inquiry into overpayments on another job, and Alexander Dawson took over.

The result combined two Italian ideas for the first time in a major Sydney building: a symmetrical palazzo for the house, and an asymmetrical villa for the working observatory. The tower gets more prominence than the telescope dome, because its job was to give the city the time. The ball first dropped on 5 June 1858. It was soon moved to one o’clock, and it still falls at 1 pm through the original mechanism, now helped by an electric motor.

In 1925 Cabinet decided to close the place, because of light and traffic vibration, and protests from scientific societies and the public reversed that decision. It finally passed to the Powerhouse as an astronomy museum in 1982.

The stone

A major stone repair project ran from 1999 to 2008.

Read about Sydney Sandstone

Sources

  1. Sydney Observatory, Wikipedia (incorporates NSW State Heritage Inventory text)
  2. Sydney Observatory building, Dictionary of Sydney
  3. Time ball at Sydney Observatory, 1858, Powerhouse Collection