Sydney Architecture Images- Victorian Free Classical

	Sydney Architecture Images- Search by style Victorian Free Classical c. 1840—c. 1890

	02 Former Rocks Police Station	05 Lands Department Building off Macquarie Street	015 Former Bank of Australasia

	1 Martin Place 001 General Post Office	09 Tranby	12 Bidura
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	06 Balmain Post Office and Courthouse	01 Pyrmont Public School	23 North Sydney Post Office

	01 Glebe Town Hall	02 Glebe Post Office	03 Glebe Police Station

	14 Glebe Courthouse	46 Paddington Town Hall	45 Paddington Post Office

	016 Redfern Post Office

For the first half of the nineteenth century, the arbiters of architectural taste in Britain, Europe and the United States placed considerable emphasis on simplicity of form and chasteness of detail. The century started with Georgian and Regency styles holding sway in many English-speaking countries, and by the I820s and 1830s the noble serenity of ancient Greek architecture had become a pervasive influence. Inevitably, reactions against this kind of restrained tastefulness took place in the second half of the century as industrialisation accelerated and cities grew bigger and wealthier. Nations, communities and individuals all began to feel the need to display—even flaunt—their prosperity. In the Australian colonies on the eastern side of the continent, banks, insurance offices, shops, theatres, hotels, town halls, post offices and other civic buildings proliferated in the booming economy of the later Victorian period. The architects of these buildings often found the Victorian Academic ClassicalL style too sober and restrictive, so they cut loose and used classical elements and details with little regard for academic rules but sometimes with a certain flair. Other designers lacked the skill or training to use the classical style correctly, but they nevertheless pressed on in cheerful ignorance. Just as Victorian Free Gothic became the all-purpose style for buildings having even the remotest links with medievalism, so Victorian Free Classical was employed whenever a veneer of respectability and ‘class’ was deemed necessary. A designer working in the Free Classical style could draw on a large repertoire of motifs from different countries and periods. He might, for ex ample choose a pilastered oriel from Jacobean England, a Palladian window from Italy, and a mansard roof from seventeenth-century France— and conceivably combine them in one building. The designers and builders of Free Classical buildings often wanted to achieve lavish effects without slowing construction time by resorting to expensive, dressed stone walling laboriously worked by skilled masons and carvers. Stucco— with or without a painted finish—proved to be a marvellously versatile and flexible material which could be applied to speedily erected brick walls and moulded to almost any conceivable shape. Example North Sydney Post Office

	Quoted from: "A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Austrlian Architecture; Styles and Terms from 1788 to the Present" RICHARD APPERLY, ROBERT IRVING, PETER REYNOLDS. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SOLOMON MITCHELL. Angus & Robertson Sydney 1995 ISBN 0207 18562 X Copyright © 1989 by Richard Apperly, Robert Irving and Peter Reynolds.

	Railway station, Albury, New South Wales, built 1881

	Court house, Goulburn, New South Wales,built 1887

	Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, completed 1880

	National Hotel, Fremantle, Western Australia; built late 1800s

	Railway station. Ballarat, Victoria; completed 1888;

	Fremantle Town Hall. Fremantle, Western Australia;

	Fitzroy Town Hall, Fitzroy, Victoria completed 1890.

	Werribee Park Mansion. Werribee, Victoria; completed 1877;

	Customs House. Brisbane. Completed 1889. This copper domed building is one of Australia's finest Free Classical buildings.

	Sydney Trades Hall. Completed 1888.

	Victoria Hotel. Albert Park, Victoria. Completed 1888.
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