354 George Street, Sydney is a heritage-listed retail and office building and former bank building located at 354 George Street, in the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed in various stages by Edward Raht, A. K. Henderson, Joseland & Gilling and Kevin Winterbottom and Assoc. and built in various stages from 1902 to 1937 by Loveridge & Hudson and Kell & Rigby. It is also known as ANZ Bank (former); ANZ Bank; United Permanent Building; 2 Martin Place; Paspaley Pearls; 354-360 George Street; and Bank of Australasia. The property is owned by Paspaley Pearls Properties P/L. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History
The subject land, on the east side of George Street opposite the original Barracks Square had been built upon from the early days of the colony. Originally the Bank of Australasia's site was on two distinct titles. The two titles were converted to a single title at the beginning of 1904. The new building for the Bank of Australasia was designed by Edward E Raht, an architect from New York who arrived in Australia in July 1891. The Equitable Life Assurance Society had sent out from America their distinguished New York architect, Raht (born in Austria). Raht was noted for his commissions to design prestige buildings for insurance companies and banks.
Raht designed both the adjacent Equitable Life Assurance Building, 348-352 George Street, and the Bank of Australasia building around a steel frame, faced with heavy, load-bearing trachyte in the Federation Romanesque style. The trachyte came from the Bowral quarries on Mount Gibraltar owned by the contractors Loveridge and Hudson. These buildings are exceptional for their use of trachyte for the entire exterior and not merely for lower stories, arches and columns. They are the first buildings to be constructed with external walls entirely of trachyte, which was more commonly used as a decorative stone in combination with sandstone and granite. Erected in 1904, the ANZ Bank was an early example in Australia of the influence of the American Romanesque style developed by Raht's countryman, Henry Hobson Richardson, from the 1870s onward. After studying in Paris, Richardson had evolved his own simplified distillation of the Romanesque style and attracted numerous American disciples. Raht also designed offices for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States of America in Melbourne in 1892, using the same steel frame and thick stone walls (in this case granite).
Apart from bringing contemporary American architectural trends to Australia, Raht was influential in that he initiated a trend that made great use of the building stone trachyte in commercial and public buildings over the next forty years.
The building was officially opened on 11 February 1904 and occupied by the Bank during the following March. Included amongst the distinctive features of the banking chamber were light fixtures attached to the lower portions of the columns in the centre of the pace, patterned interlocking rubber flooring and a narrow gallery at the eastern end of the building. A circular window pierced the upper part of the wall at this end of the chamber. Counters were placed along the southern side of the chamber, and marble partitioned offices ran along its northern side. The tall windows providing light from the street frontages were protected externally by finely wrought metal grilles. What appear to be the first alterations to the building were documented in 1936, to the design of the architectural firm A. K. Henderson of Melbourne. By 1940 the building was known as Australasia Chambers and contained bank offices and professional rooms. In 1947 minor alterations were carried out to the ground floor banking chamber and a couple of years later a partition was in the roof level lift lobby. In 1961 it was one of two chief Sydney Offices and the New South Wales Divisional Office of the Australian and New Zealand Bank.
Architects Joseland and Gilling were responsible for several of the later modifications to the building. The ownership of 2 Martin Place was transferred to Tenzon Pty. Ltd. On 26 August 1980 then several days later to the United Permanent Building Society, on 8 September 1980, who made application to the City of Sydney Council to have minor works carried out. The building was officially re-opened on 24 March 1982. In October 1984 ownership passed to the Government Insurance Office, which then leased the mezzanine, ground floor and basement levels to the United Permanent Building Society for a period of four years.