Town Hall House is an office block in the city of Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, Australia. It is located at 456 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000, at the back of Sydney Town Hall. It is also an official building of City of Sydney Council and the service centre of Town Hall.
Town Hall House is famous for its Brutalist architectural style. The building is an important example of Brutalism, which refers to the Modern Movement design. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Town Hall House is expected to be protected by the local council despite ongoing urban development.
History
Sydney Council approves the identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who are the traditional keepers of Australian land. Sydney is in the area which belonged to the Gadigal people, part of the Eora Nation. Their territory ranged from present-day Sydney Harbour to Petersham, including the land area of Town Hall House. The Gadigal people were dispossessed when Europeans arrived on Australian shores in 1788, and the area of New South Wales, particularly modern-day Sydney, and the rest of the continent became a colony of Britain.
The land on which Town Hall House was built originally belonged to Francis Lascelles Wallace, according to 1833 survey plans map of Sydney. It was still a private building at the back of Old Burial Grounds (the area of Sydney Town Hall today), as shown of the map of 1855 Sydney. On the 1880 planning map of Sydney, this area (454 - 456 Kent Street) had changed to Goulburn Hotel and the old burial grounds lay next to Sydney Town Hall. The location was chosen to be a power station to supply electricity by Major Cardew, a famous trade expert, on March 22, 1900. From 1949, the land was used for the Simmonds Building and Council offices. At that time, council staffs were distributed in various offices across the city, which led to inconvenience with the increasing demand of council services. The new building was built by Mainline Corporation at a cost of $18 million with construction completed in 1977 and allowed all council staff to work together. Town Hall House is a reconstructed building based on the original architecture, and replaced an old building housing Sydney County Council's Electricity Department and a sales showroom on Druitt Street (the side entrance of Town Hall House).
Architecture
Town Hall House was designed by Ken Woolley of the firm Ancher, Mortlock and Woolley, rebuilt and opened and on 28 June 1977 for City of Sydney Council. It is constructed using concrete with little decoration, which matches to its Brutalist style, and is an example of early 70s' Brutalism. The Heritage Council of New South Wales said that Town Hall House is an example of the most important architecture from the modernist architectural movement in the 20th century. The angular geometry of Town Hall House is an element of this style of architecture. In terms of structure, Town Hall House is connected to the Sydney Town Hall by a passage. The two buildings form a contrast between the architectural styles of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, the buildings were constructed using different materials—concrete for Town Hall House and sandstone for the town hall.) There are some people who feel that Brutalist-style buildings are ugly. Town Hall House is tall, with 25 levels. The building has developed into a combination of official area and leisure space. It provides a cafe and display area in the public space. There is a library express on the first level.
Cameron Logan, who is director of heritage conservation in the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Planning at the University of Sydney, feels although some people view modernist architecture as "an attack on the civic decorum of the city" or "just plain ugly", it has gained greater acceptance. "I think what is fundamentally important, and has often been missed, is that many buildings of this period had a strong civic intent and presence, and Town Hall House is an excellent example." He added: "We need to reimagine or redefine our past in terms of city-making, it can't be a dead letter, fixed idea." The main special characters of the original architecture were kept. An example is a curved stairway between the first two floors restored to its original Brutalist sculptural form, with the detailed brass and stone.