Charing Cross to Bronte Heritage Walk
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CHARING CROSS to BRONTE Research and Design by Urban Design + Heritage Team, Waverley Council, 2020 CHARING CROSS 5: Mary Immaculate Church to cross the road is the magnificent Mary Immaculate Catholic Church, built in 1912. It is a single-nave basilica in National Museum of Australia A BRONTE Romanesque Renaissance style with east-west transepts, designed by noted ecclesiastical the Stripped Classical style. Murdoch’s most architects Sheerin and Hennessy, who also elcome to Waverley’s heritage walk Federation significant building is Canberra’s “temporary” designed St Patrick’s College at Manly and through Charing Cross to beautiful The parklands below were also the birthplace Parliament House, which remained the centre completed St Mary’s Cathedral to William Bronte Beach. The journey - much W of modern Australia. On January 1, 1901, Lord of government until 1988. He helped to select Wardell’s design. The façade was remodelled of it through a heritage conservation area - is a Hopetoun stood under the Federation dome Walter and Marion Burley Griffin as winners in the Academic Classical Revival style in 1929, story of colourful characters; of fortunes made and read out a proclamation signed by Queen of the competition to design the nation’s new with pediment portico and four ionic columns. and lost; of a colony that became a country; Victoria that declared the Commonwealth of capital. He was also an adjudicator in design The square bell towers are landmarks that can and an artists’ colony that helped define it; Australia. The native-born Edmund Barton was competitions for Canberra’s war memorial and be viewed across the east and beyond. Watch and surf and swimming culture that became a sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Australia. the Stripped Classical building that is now the for glimpses of them as you walk. permanent part of Australia’s national identity. Barton died suddenly in 1920 and is now Australian War Memorial on the Western Front buried at Waverley’s South Head Cemetery. at Villers-Bretonneux in France. The church, which replaced an earlier one 1 - Start Point dating from 1854, was built on a 3-acre plot Corner of View St and Victoria St Also standing in Centennial Park, near the Early Charing Cross donated to the church on or near the site of Paddington Gates, is a statue of Sir Henry Vickery’s Tannery. The former post office site on Bronte Rd was Parkes - a towering figure in the push towards ou are standing on a high sandstone once known as Madden’s Corner, after early Federation and self-government for the The church walls are adorned by seven frescos ridgeline, one of many criss-crossing Waverley resident John Madden. The Charing Australian colonies. Parkes was Premier painted by the Italian artist Cesare Vagarini. Sydney’s east coast. In the distance Cross area was created from land purchases Y of NSW a number of times and at the last He came to Australia as a prisoner of war are vast views across parkland to the Blue made by William Manners Clarke (1837), Lewis election he contested, he stood for the seat of after he was captured in Palestine working on Mountains. It’s an extraordinary vista that takes Gordon, (1838) and Samuel Peak, (1839). Later Waverley. a fresco by Allied forces during World War in a wide sweep of this country’s history. For a subdivision of the land provided sites for a II. One of the murals was shortlisted for the small LGA, the Waverley municipality has a big small service village built along the road south Sir John Sulman Prize in 1947. Vagarini left story to tell. It is closely connected with many to Coogee Bay and Governor Macquarie’s Australia in 1948. of the landmark events in Australia’s evolution watchtower at La Perouse. Madden purchased as a nation. his land from Lewis Gordon, a government 2: Bank of NSW surveyor, and built three stone cottages on 6: Charing Cross And Robin 189 Bronte Rd Federation Pavilion, 1901, Centennial Park the post office intersection. Madden and his Hood Hotels son of the same name were signatories to n the corner of Victoria St and Waverley Council’s establishment in 1859. At alking back to the Charing Cross Bronte Rd is a fine example of a late- that inaugural meeting, held in a local hotel, crossroads, you will see two OVictorian commercial building pair. council renamed the area Charing Cross, after Wstreamlined Art Deco hotels, the They are an important streetscape element its London namesake. The last of Madden’s Charing Cross and the Robin Hood. Together, on the intersection and date from 1888. The 1840s stone cottages, which became a they make an outstanding architectural pair have special historic interest as the Bank Catholic presbytery and then a home of contribution to the busy intersection National Library of Australia of NSW’s first Waverley branch. “The Wales”, “Granny” Cosgrove (a granddaughter of John streetscape. Both were built in the 1930s, no longer in existence, was Australia’s first Madden and noted local), was demolished Aboriginal custodianship when hotel design was coming into its own. bank, established in 1817 during Governor c.1919. The Art Deco pubs of this era have been The oldest stories are those of the indigenous Macquarie’s rule. One of the first Bank of described as a “phenomenon of Australian inhabitants of Sydney’s coast. The parklands NSW’s directors was D’Arcy Wentworth - an 4: Grahame Memorial architecture”. The sleek modern look you see below are a key part of that history. unusual choice for a bank, given he arrived in Church conveyed a sense of optimism as Australia For over a thousand generations Aboriginal Sydney in 1790 fresh from being acquitted in emerged from the Great Depression. Australia Britain of three charges of highway robbery. was one of the few countries to adopt English people lived in the area now known as ontinuing uphill along Victoria St is One Bank of NSW Waverley branch clerk licencing laws, which required public bars Waverley. They walked the high ridgelines the sandstone Grahame Memorial in the early 1900s was the young artist J. J. to provide accommodation. Breweries used to travel, overlook and manage their lands. Uniting Church. The church was built The Bidjigal and Gadigal people of Sydney’s Hilder. He became a noted Australian painter C the opportunity to promote themselves with in 1897 in the Gothic style, complete with whose inspiration included Bondi Beach landmark architecture. east lived before and during the last Ice Age buttresses and feature stained glass window. (pictured), where he meet fellow artist and art (25,000 – 15,000 years ago) and witnessed It is an outstanding example of its type. The teacher Julian Rossi Ashton, around whose The Charing Cross Hotel was built in 1934. It the rapid rise in sea levels in that period. gable-parapet front façade and belltower are home at Tamarama an important artists’ replaced an old inn built by William Newland Waverley’s cliffs marked the safe high ground. embellished with carved stone decorative colony was forming. in 1857, the first in Charing Cross. The inn was Yet their legacy has endured and is now features. used by Waverley council for meetings in its globally recognised as the world’s oldest living early days. Joseph Vickery, on whose family’s culture. Another feature in the church is a plaque to land Mary Immaculate Church was built, was a Beach, J. J. Hilder/ 1904 the noted Waverley resident Peter Dodds member of a committee that agitated for the We acknowledge that we are on land McCormick. He composed the national establishment of the municipality, proclaimed traditionally occupied by the Bidjigal and anthem, Advance Australia Fair. McCormick, in June 1859 – the second municipality in Gadigal people. We also acknowledge their a Scotsman who arrived in the colony of NSW Sydney to be constituted. elders - past, present and emerging. in 1855, was also an elder at the church The anthem was sung by a 10,000-strong choir First Fleet The 1934 Charing Cross Hotel was designed at the inauguration of the Commonwealth by Sidney Warden, the most prolific architect of Australia at Centennial Park on January 1, Today, the First Fleet’s arrival at Sydney Cove Sotheby’s then working for Tooth and Co, the oldest 1901, and by massed bands at the federal is marked by the skyscrapers you see in the brewer in NSW. Warden completed 392 Art capital celebrations in Canberra. McCormick distance. The ridgeline viewing platform 3 - Post Office Deco hotels, buildings and extensions across lived in Waverley from 1889, first in a house you are on offers sweeping views. You are 234 Bronte Road NSW in the 1930s and ‘40s, including the along this walk at 5 Virgil St (now 20 Yanko able to see that far because of the flat-plain Light Brigade in Paddington. typography of the greater Sydney Basin. Avenue). In 1902 he moved to 103 Birrell St (now No 87). He died in 1916 aged 83. Surf culture used to sell beer n 1901, the new Australian nation needed Parklands a range of architecture to establish its Peter Dodds McCormick federal government. Across the road from The huge Centennial parklands below are I the bank, you will see the heritage-listed an extraordinary asset bequeathed on future former post office building wedged between generations by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Bronte and Carrington roads. The design of He quarantined the freshwater wetlands - the post office, built in 1923, was overseen by known in the early colony as Sydney Common the Scottish architect John Smith Murdoch, - so that the growing town would have a fresh who was the nation’s first Commonwealth water supply after the Tank Stream along Architect.