The Alexandria Town Hall is a

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and human-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In ma ...

town hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

located in

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. It stands at 73 Garden Street. It was built in 1880–81 in the

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

architectural style by Ferdinand Reuss Snr. Significant alterations which changed the facade to an Inter-War Free Classical style were completed in 1928 by architects D. T. Morrow and Gordon. The Town Hall was the seat of Alexandria Municipal Council from 1881 to 1948 and since 1948 has been a branch library, community centre and council depot for the

City of Sydney The City of Sydney is the Local government in Australia, local government area covering the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs of the Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Established by Act of Parliament ...

and the South Sydney councils.

History and description

The site of the Town Hall was acquired by the council in Garden Street in 1879 and Ferdinand Reuss Snr was commissioned as the architect. The Town Hall was completed and opened in June 1881 by the Mayor, Charles Brandling Henderson. By 1893 a two storey terrace, serving as a residence for the mayor, was constructed to the north of the Town Hall.

Later history

Following the amalgamation of the Alexandria municipality into the

in 1948, the town hall ceased being a council seat and discussion occurred over its future use. The hall was considered for use as a branch of the

City of Sydney Library A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

(nearby Waterloo Town Hall was also later chosen) and on 16 February 1951, Sydney Lord Mayor

Ernest Charles O'Dea Ernest Charles O'Dea (19 February 1889 – 21 November 1976) was an Australian trade union official, Labor Party politician, Lord Mayor of Sydney and Member of the New South Wales Parliament. Early life O'Dea was born in Armidale in 1889 and ...

opened the Alexandria Branch Library, with the hall venue, a limited number of council offices and the rear depot retained. From 1968–1982 and 1989–2004, the hall came under the control of the Northcott/South Sydney Municipal Council and the

City of South Sydney The South Sydney City Council was a local government area covering the inner-eastern and inner-Southern Sydney suburbs of Sydney. It was forcibly merged with the Sydney City Council by the Government of New South Wales in 2004. The council chamb ...

, and housed the offices of the Municipal Engineer's Department. The hall continued its use as a branch library until 1990 and in 1994–1997 the hall was also home to

The Women's Library The Women's Library is England's main library and museum resource on women and the women's movement, concentrating on Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has an institutional history as a coherent collection dating back to the mid-1920s, ...

Heritage listing and conservation

The Town Hall, along with the "mayor's house" next door, is listed under the 2012 Sydney Local Environment Plan as "a representative example of a Victorian Town Hall modified with an Inter-War Free Classical style façade. It is representative of the work of two relatively prominent architectural practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries although that of the DT Morrow and Gordon practice predominate. It has important historical associations with the local community and local government in the area and serves as a representative indicator of the small inner-city Council areas which were subsumed into larger municipalities after World War II." In March 2017, the Sydney City Council commissioned extensive restoration and conservation works to the hall, with Lord Mayor

Clover Moore Clover Margaret Moore (née Collins, born 22 October 1945) is an Australian politician. She has been the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney since 2004 and is currently the longest serving Lord Mayor of Sydney since the creation of the City of Sy ...

noting that "Alexandria Town Hall is an important civic building, we have a responsibility to make sure it meets the future needs of the community". The works, which included restoring the building's exterior and interior, were completed by the council in November 2017.

References

External links

Alexandria Town Hall
– City of Sydney {{Coord, -33.8980, 151.1975, format=dms, display=title, type:city_region:AU-NSW Government buildings completed in 1881 Government buildings completed in 1928 Former seats of local government Town halls in Sydney Victorian architecture in Sydney Federation style architecture 1881 establishments in Australia Alexandria, New South Wales

History and description

Later history

Heritage listing and conservation

See also

References

External links