treasury

Before the 1898 Vernon additions (see previous photo) ... "In 1849, just before the gold rush, a new building for the Colonial Treasurer and Auditor was commissioned from the Colonial Architect, Mortimer Lewis. The building, in the former garden of First Government House, was finished in 1851, with two frontages, one to Bridge Street for the Audit Office, the other to Macquarie Street for the Treasury. Its design owed a great deal to the Travellers’ Club of 1829 in London’s Pall Mall. The two separate offices were demarcated by an interior dividing wall. Lewis’s successor, Edmund Blacket, added a coach-house and stables to the north by 1853. "The party wall was breached in 1873 when the Treasury took over the Audit Office’s area, as well as erecting temporary buildings between the main offices and the stables. The Government Architect, Walter Vernon, added a large fire-proof Strong Room for the safety of documents in 1896-1898 to the north of the stables and in 1898-1900 he provided a Link Building, connecting the Strong Room to the Lewis building along Macquarie Street. This demolished the eastern part of Blacket’s stables (and most of the western end went in 1967), leaving archaeological remains of significance. The present Macquarie Street portico dates to these Vernon works of 1898-1900. "The Bridge Street wing was altered and extended for the Premier’s Department in 1916-1919, to the design, as modified, of the then Government Architect George McRae. The Premier’s Department continued to be there until 1967, when the State Office Block was erected. "Thereafter from 1967 until 1982, the Police Department occupied the Bridge Street space created by Lewis and McRae, while the Ministry of Transport had the Macquarie Street sectior, where the Strong Room space had already been filled in during the 1940s. An auditorium for the Conservatorium of Music was constructed on the upper level of Lewis’s building in 1977. Under Police and Transport, the buildings deteriorated, with undesirable changes to the fabric, until they were vacated in 1981. To accommodate a 31-storey hotel on the western part of the site, largely beyond the area protected by the PCO in 1985, conservation works were undertaken between 1981 and 1985." From - www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDe...

GoogleMapsStreetView - goo.gl/maps/WFjJeUf5ASu

Are there no other photographs from this exhibition?

Henry Mobsby, Qld Govt photographer, artist and designer worked for the Intelligence and Tourist Bureau. He and Fred Wills took the first moving pictures in Queensland.

A great old postcard, Kaye.