The York Street Wall

THE YORK STREET WALL A conservation study of an early high rise streetscape in York Street Sydney. Final Submission Colin Brady B.Sc. t3.Arch. Subject ref. 39.llOG Graduate Project M:B:ENV. Nov 1987 ABSTRACT The high rise building emerged as a key element in the growth of western cities through the period 1870-1940. This report based upon surviving examples in York Street Sydney examines the emergence of the early high rise building type and its formation of a characteristically walled streetscape from which the report takes its title. With a view to establishing the cultural significance of this grouping (streetscape) this report traces the varying forces behind its development. The development of Sydney 1 s streetplan from 1788, the economic boom and recession of the late 19th Century and the continuous importation and adaption of technologies are reviewed in terms of their effects upon the growth of York Street. As essential as the physical and economic factors in terms of growth was public and professional acceptance of the high rise building. The debate as to the acceptability of this new building form and its correct aesthetic treatment in Sydney is discussed in parallel to the physical growth of York Street. A case is established for an internationally accepted image of the high rise city streetscape based upon North American precedents both real and conceptualised. The adaptation of this imagery to York Street is explained as the basis for the overall cohesiveness of the divergent architectural styles evident in the street. Examination of documentary evidence and the buildings remaining from the period points to a sharp termination of these generative forces at the outreak of World War 2. Post war urban development ran counter to this previously established order. A measure of the value of the pre-war philosophy can therefore be gained by comparing the effects of these divergent theories on York and other city streets. From this comparison and supporting evidence as to the historic and architectural significance of individual buildings in York Street a statement is made on the significance of the existing fabric as an overall streetscape. Mindful of the ongoing pressure for change inherent in the urban context of York Street the statement of significance is used as the basis for conservation guidelines aimed at successful retention of the existing fabric and effective integration of new construction. These guidelines are supplemented by a review of problems to be avoided in the successful implementation of this conservation strategy and finally an assessment of the likelihood for success of this proposal. THE YORK STREET WALL CONTENTS TOPIC PAGE NUMBER 0 SYNOPSIS 1 1.0 URBAN FORM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF STREETSCAPE 6 1.1 THE INITIAL IMPACT 7 1.2 A SEMBLANCE OF ORDER 13 1.3 THE TECHNOLOGIES OF BOOM 23 1.4 A QUESTION OF DIRECTION 36 1.5 CONCLUSIONS THE FIRST GENERATION 45 2.0 RECOVERY 47 2.1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A VERTICAL LANGUAGE 55 2.2 THE WALL IS DEFINED 64 2.3 AN IDEALIZED IMAGE 81 3.0 THE POST-WAR CITY 100 3.1 A CHANGE OF IDEOLOGY - THE BLOCKPLAN FALLS FROM FAVOUR 103 3.2 A CHANGE IN THE RULES AND THE CITY CHANGES DIRECTION 105 3.3 THE PLOT RATIO DEBACLE 107 3.4 TRADING FOR HISTORY 114 3.5 THE NEW URBANISM 119 3.6 THE RESIDENTIAL BOOM - LAYING THE GROUND RULES FOR ADAPTIVE RE-USE 120 3.7 A QUESTION OF DETAIL 124 3.8 FACADE RETENTION 127 TOPIC PAGE NUMBER 4.0 AIMS OF THE GUIDELINES 131 4.1 DEFINITION OF THE STREETSCAPE 132 4.2 DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF THE STREETSCAPE 132 4.3 CONSERVATION GUIDELINES 137 4.4 IMPLEMENTATION OF GUIDELINES 144 4.5 CURRENT CITY DEVELOPMENT CONTROLS 145 4.6 PROBLEMS TO BE AVOIDED 147 4.7 CONCLUSIONS - THE POTENTIAL FOR SUCCESSFUL CONSERVATION 155 5.0 REFERENCES 158 6.0 APPENDICES 165 York Street 1890's "The forms that societies have produced in past eras can be seen as records of distinctive value systems." 1 1. 0 SYNOPSIS The emergence of the primate city or metropolis in the years 1880 to 1940 "reflected the spread of industrialisation from its beginnings in Britain, Belgium, France and Germany 11 • 2 At the heart of metropolis and the ultimate demonstration of industrialisation's ability to concentrate and dominate a regional population stood the high rise building. The high rise form in turn produced a distinctive urban streetscape the image of which remained an intellectual and artistic pre occupation until the outbreak of the Second World War. "Since most Societies today are re-evaluating the basic values that underlie modern life, pre-modern orders can be an invaluable source of comparison and learning 11 .3 Urban Sydney in the 1980s retains few identifiable streetscapes from the time high rise buildings first emerged or from any other period. Macquarie Street, with its Georgean enclave, and Bridge Street with its broken line of sandstone buildings provide definable elements of uniformity in urban growth. Both have been recently recognised in urban redevelopment. Elsewhere former combinations of transport interchange and commercial response have left nodes of distinctive architecture or uniform sized buildings which arose in often brief flurries of economic activity. The Edwardian piles of Railway Square (1), the retail emporia of Brickfield Hill and the wool stores about Circular Quay emerged as results of this precinct forming combination. In contrast York Street with its distinctive 'walled' vistas represents a different form of townscape, a response over half a century to a consistently developing image of the urban ideal. 2. 1. Railway Square, Edwardian Sydney - commercial response to transport interchanges produced modes of distinctive arch:tecture. 3. High rise and multi storey seem misnomers when applied to the late 19th century buildings that lined York Street. By today's standards these 5 and 6 storeyed structures seem puny in the extreme. However, unlimited size was not the only concern of the Victorian age for whilst "The skyscrapers of the 1880s and 1890s were buildings that fit reasonably if not fully into the existing urban context; the newness of most of them lay in their technology rather than in their size or their style 11 .4 It was the implications of this technology that made these buildings seem larger than life to residents of Sydney during the closing years of the 19th century. In Sydney, as in other emerging cities of the time, the largest most obvious structures .. .. - . .. were not slender high rise offices but the great public institutions emerging as anchor points to the cities fabric. Government buildings, cathedrals, exhibition palaces, grand hotels and theatres were at the vanguard of city growth. To the new cities of America and the antipodes these Victorian piles represented the foundations of urbanism bringing an instant respectability to former frontier settlements. Where time and money did not permit the construction of every city planners dreams, scaled down replicas were produced or erzatz materials employed. Sydney received a third scale Gothic Cathedral and a timber and corrugated iron exhibition palace. Yet set in the isolation of the South Pacific comparison with the worldwide scale of things was difficult. Similarly when buildings rose to 5 and 6 floors along Sydney's narrow, crooked streets the age of high rise had begun. Further, as the street widths remained static "Variations in the ratio of height to width strongly determine the sense of enclosure that one experiences 11 .5 4. The beginnings of a new streetscape could be seen to emerge. The height of the new buildings was exaggerated by the high ratio of building vertical to overall street width and the limited lineal perspective created by the irregular streetlines or as in the case of York Street by the presence of major buildings or public places at street junctures. The outcome of this early high rise development was to be two fold for Sydney. On the one hand it consolidated the existing irregular street pattern for the foreseeable future. On the other it generated a social acceptance of an urban image. So strongly was this localised version of the international 'image of metropolis' held that it passed into legislation and so remained the subject of debate for some 50 years. The process whereby this imagery led to the development o.f an identifiable streetscape in Sydney and specifically to the emergence of a walled street facade in York Street are the subject of the first part of this report. 5. "The city has fallen prey to an attitude that can be called urban Darwinism - the survival of only the most lucrative use of any given plot of land 11 .6 The links between social expectations and streetscape have often run counter to technological capabilities and economic pressures. As the concept of urbanism changed from an over view of the city to a preoccupation with the free standing building in post World War II Sydney, the established streetscape was subjected to pressures that would dissipate any notion of established order within the city. The second part of this report looks at York Street in this atmosphere of urban renewal. The value of the remaining streetscape, the forces of change affecting the integrity of building features and possible guidelines for conservation are examined. Fundamental to this study is the recognition that maintenance of historic street scapes requires clear definition of the street's essential features and the establishment of guidelines which direct both conservation and new construction toward a definitive end result. 6. 1.0 URBAN FORM ANO THE DEVELOPMENT OF STREETSCAPE The effects of urban patterns on the perception of streetscape are widely disputed by contemporary urban theorists.

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