Camden Post Office is a heritage-listed post office at 135 Argyle Street, Camden, New South Wales, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 August 2012.
History
Camden is an historic centre dating from the earliest years of the nineteenth century, and has been associated with some of the earliest developments in the Australian wool, wheat and wine industries, particularly following the original land grant to pioneer John Macarthur in 1805. The first post office in Camden operated from about 1841, being preceded by a postal service of the 1830s, based at Cawdor where mails were exchanged with Sydney three times a week. Mrs Eliza Pearson reputedly operated the 1841 post office, and a record of 1846 showed that daily mail was received from Sydney. A telegraph office was opened in 1877 and in 1878 it was proposed to combine the two offices into a Government-built building. Tenders were called and a post office, on the present site, was completed in 1882. At that time it consisted of an office, four rooms, a servants room and a kitchen. Additional improvements, including a second storey to the residence and a balcony above the public area were approved in 1897.
The date of construction of the current Camden Post Office has been identified as both 1882 and 1898, with elements of the 1882 building remaining in the present building. However, the 1898 works by builder Richard Basden were substantial, and largely engulfed the earlier building. A telephone exchange was also added in 1910.
Description
Camden Post Office is at 135 Argyle Street, Camden, comprising the whole of Lot 15 DP751265.
The original Camden Post Office dates from 1882 in the era of Colonial Architect James Barnet, and this early core was buried beneath Edwardian additions (under the aegis of architect Walter Liberty Vernon), which have been dated at 1898 (the post hall, mail and service rooms, quarters), and 1910 (telephone exchange). However, the original building is still visible from some viewpoints, albeit concealed from Argyle Street by the later addition. The brickwork of the rear single-storey section is different in colour (darker) to the brickwork on the front two-storey section, and the roof of the rear section is corrugated galvanised steel sheeting.
The original location of the telephone exchange inside the building is not known, but there was a telegram room in the building up until recent decades at the south-west end of the postal hall, and has been incorporated into the latter in recent years. There is no visible evidence that this room had direct access from the exterior of the building. For practical purposes, the earlier fabric can be regarded as a composite of the Barnet and Vernon work. The Barnet fabric can be seen in a stone pier by the front entry, and in areas with freestone window sill treatments. However, Barnet's freestone pier detail has been compromised by the fitting of a disabled ramp and its handrail in recent years.
The post office occupies a prominent site in Argyle Street, the main shopping precinct. It has a broad alleyway to its immediate north-east, with its north-east entry apparently designed to develop a diagonal reading, common in Federation composition. The corner location also gives the entrance more prominence. At the same time the postal hall is composed as a broad frontal mass, symmetrical in the brick breakfront around three arched windows with orange brickwork around the arch openings, and asymmetrical in the total frontage with two flanking wings: one is a porch, the other has a plain-wall with a half-hipped roof similar to that of the porch, but not extending down as far. Both of these flanking wings have terracotta tile roofs. The latter wing has a former window to the front elevation which has been bricked up. The entry porch is anchored with a square sandstone pier, one of the Barnet vestiges, at its northeast corner, and has a slat work timber frieze over its front steps. A panel is fitted across the former opening to a post box porch that formerly was accessed from the entrance porch. A new post box porch has been built along the lane on the northeast side of the building. It has a steel frame and steel deck roofing. Period timber brackets and a frieze have been added to this in an attempt to render it more sympathetic to the style of the earlier buildings. A pair of automatic glazed sliding doors lead from the entrance porch to the postal hall.