Redevelopment of the former Department of Lands building on Sydney’s Bridge Street wins National Trust heritage award
It was once a grand old sandstone masterpiece, where returned soldiers would cram into marble corridors to anxiously await lottery draws that could change their lives.
Then the 20th century happened.
As the bureaucracy swelled, the interior Victorian grandeur of the Department of Lands building on Sydney’s Bridge Street became infested with a warren of claustrophobic cubicles. Office partitions sprang up like weeds, hiding grand Australian red cedar joinery behind particleboard. Ornate vaulted ceilings disappeared behind suspended acoustic tiles and humming fluorescent strips.
By the 1980s, the airy sandstone palace had become a cheerless maze of beige linoleum and grey metal filing cabinets. Under-maintained and technologically obsolete, the building had fully transitioned from one of the colony’s architectural prides to a draughty white elephant.
