Transport House (Railway House)
19-31 York Street, Sydney
H. E. Budden & Mackey. Completed 1936. Art Deco.
- Size
- Twelve storeys, about 46 m along York Street
- Material
- Steel frame, green terracotta tiles over trachyte, bronze-framed windows
- Status
- State Heritage Register, 1999. Offices above Wynyard station
Railway House was built over Wynyard station as the headquarters of the New South Wales railways, bringing together departments that had been based at Central. It included the Commissioner’s Suite and a room called the “Trouble Room”. The scheme was for a long block from Margaret Street to Erskine Street, with wings on each side of a central tower. Only the south wing and the tower were built, which gave the building a more modern look.
The tiles above the ground floor are green because that was the colour of the railways, and they matched the carriages of the time. The steel, bronze, louvres and ironwork were made at the department’s Chullora workshops. Building it with day labour during the Depression caused a controversy, but the design was described as “colourful without being vulgar, and modern without being extreme”. Escalators, then new to Sydney, led down from its two entrances to the station.
It is one of the earliest fully resolved Art Deco buildings in the city and one of the most intact, and its terracotta is the most impressive in Sydney. Timber joinery and decorative plaster ceilings survive in the offices. The largest change has been the demolition of the northern wall, to connect the building to its neighbour. It received the Sulman Medal, and in 1939 the Royal Institute of British Architects medal.
Sources
- Transport House, Sydney, Wikipedia, reproducing NSW State Heritage Register text
- Transport House building, Dictionary of Sydney