Saturday 8 January 2011

General Post Office, clock tower

The clock tower of the General Post Office (GPO) building, located at 1 Martin Place between George Street and Pitt Street. The GPO was constructed in stages from 1864 to 1891, designed by colonial architect James Barnet in the Victorian Free Classical style. The clock tower dominated the city skyline when it was built but these days it is dwarfed by many nearby skyscrapers. In 1999, the GPO was redeveloped as part of the the Westin Hotel and  Macquarie Bank office building behind it.
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18 comments:

  1. Despite the ugly glass boxes it looks so beautiful or maybe just because. In Brussels, they destroyed the old post office which was a beautiful old building and put a glass box instead in the 60th! Such a shame !

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  2. Beutiful building in the front!
    Wish that the bank had chosen a different building style... Guess that not everything that is new is beautiful;)

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  3. I am with Gattina. I know you cannot stop modern buildings being added to the skyline, nor would you want to. But the GPO was such an elegant, important building, it should have had a better backdrop.

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  4. A grand old tower holding its beauty proudly before the glass facade!

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  5. Great building and photo from a nice angle!
    Wish you a happy new year!:-)

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  6. Are they renovating all your post office like they do here? We have small post shops now.

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  7. great old buildings find it hard to survive in all their splendour next to some ugly modern glass and steel ones :(... nevertheless, this is one great photo!

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  8. It's nice to see that this fine old building was recycled rather than replaced by a "modern" building of the Stacked Ice Cube Tray School of Architecture!

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  9. Beautiful architecture, and love the angle at which you captured it.

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  10. Ann, sadly a lot of the old heritage post offices have been replaced by little post shops now. Luckily, a lot of the great buildings have found new uses as cafes or shops and some even have a smaller post office as part of the redevelopment, just like the GPO.

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  11. Maybe it's because of the angle of your photo, Jim, but it looks like the clock tower is the facade for the two buildings behind! Rather a cool mix of old and new.

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  12. Nice perspective! The history of the building is interesting. Glad to see they kept it.

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  13. Nice of Macquarie bank to throw up a blank canvas on which to show this masterpiece. I heard the bells will soon be working again.

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  14. It took me a while to examine the post office in detail, but I got there. Many thanks for the link
    Hels
    Sydney's magnificent General Post Office (1874)
    https://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2022/04/sydneys-magnificent-gpo-but-now-no.html

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