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| Sydney Town Hall: northern aspect |
In streetscaping a tree-line is generally thought be an
absolute good, and the more trees the better. To a large extent trees do
complement streets and buildings, enhancing their aesthetic and environmental
amenity. They can also shade pedestrians from heat and the elements while
absorbing gaseous pollutants. City of Sydney Council’s Street Tree Master Plan 2011
sets out the benefits of street trees in more detail. But sometimes there are
competing interests. Trees that threaten the safety of people, structures or
vehicles should of course be scaled back or uprooted. And sometimes they detract
from the built environment. Appreciating fine architecture takes a sweeping glance
at a building’s whole symmetry, balance, geometry and sense of proportion, which
isn’t possible through a screen of dense foliage. There are numerous cases of
this in Sydney CBD.
Despite some regrettable demolitions over the decades,
Sydney still boasts some classic buildings of their era. Unlike the plain glass
boxes of today, historic styles of architecture feature elaborately ordered
patterns of vertical and horizontal lines, usually traced by fine ornamental
features. Since each element of the pattern forms part of a unified design,
visual obstructions tend to spoil the overall effect. The great architecture historian
Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that “what binds architectural, ornamental, sculptural,
and pictorial effects into indivisible unity is the decorative principle common
to all”. For Pevsner, “the good architect requires the sculptor’s and the
painter’s modes of vision in addition to his own spatial imagination”. No competent
art gallery curator would hang a painting in a position without clear lines of
vision from multiple perspectives. Yet streetscape planners seem indifferent to
inflicting that handicap on beautiful building facades.
This blind spot is evident throughout Sydney Council’s
Street Tree Master Plan. The section dealing with ‘Aesthetic/Design
Criteria’ explains that “trees play an important role in enriching the cultural
experience of a place and so the aesthetic characteristics of the trees
need to be an important selection criterion [emphasis added]”. Later the plan
says “the selection of
species may be made to reinforce historical, cultural or natural associations
from our past, particularly Victorian era landscape planting [emphasis
added]”. Ecological concerns around the choice of tree species and schemes
for laying them out take precedence while impacts on adjacent buildings − of
the Victorian era or otherwise – receive scant attention.
Arguably this has things back to front. Surely buildings are the primary
components of urban streets, particularly heritage landmarks. Streetscaping should
supplement and reinforce them, rather than constitute an end in itself.
The Master Plan seems to envisage some sort of
rigid and inflexible template which includes, amongst ‘Streetscape Design Principles’,
the notion of “consistency
and visual uniformity for each street”. This smacks of the generic ‘global
city’ streetscape that is visibly emerging from Council’s ‘green, global and
connected’ vision. There is little or nothing in the design principles about
adapting street trees to the unique historical and aesthetic qualities of
individual buildings.
Consequently,
some of the architectural jewels of our city languish half-concealed behind a wall
of leaves. Built in the time of Governor Lachlan Macquarie between 1820 and
1824, St James Church, known as St James’s King Street, is considered a masterwork
of the colony’s first architect Francis Greenway. Described as ‘an architectural
gem’ in the fine Georgian style, St
James’s exudes ‘virtues of simplicity and proportion’ in the classical
tradition. Image 1 (source: Sydney Then and Now Twitter feed) combines views from Macquarie Street in 1938 and 2020.
These days, sadly, from this perspective, the church’s elegant arched windows, major
and minor classical sandstone porticoes, and spire are blotted out by sprawling
trees
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| Image 1 |
From a point in St James Road facing north, Image 2
shows St James’s southern aspect. Again, the impressive minor portico, complete
with classical pediment and Doric columns, is barely visible behind a jumble of
trees.
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| Image 2 |
Image 3 is a view from Phillip
Street of St James’s major northern portico, badly obscured by two ill-placed
trees.
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| Image 3 |
Image 4 is a view of St James's from Queens Square.
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| Image 4 |
Perhaps
the most recognizable ensemble of Early (1830s to 1860s) to High (1880s to
1890s) Victorian architecture is found along the lower reaches of George Street,
western side, aligning St Andrew’s Cathedral, Town Hall and the Queen Victoria
Building. With the possible exception of Macquarie Street, this is Sydney CBD’s
nearest equivalent to a monumental boulevard. St Andrew’s Cathedral is one of
the city’s finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture, designed primarily
by famed church-architect Edmund Blackett and built between 1837 and 1868.
Academic and preservationist Jan Kerr described it as "a perfect example of the
colonial desire to reproduce England in Australia in the mid nineteenth century.”
St Andrew’s exhibits the repetition of forms, pronounced vertical lines and
harmonious proportions of the sub-style ‘Perpendicular Gothic’. The
stained-glass windows are a notable feature. Pevsner’s observation comes to
mind, that the Gothic style “is not an aggregate of features, but an integral
whole”. No such integrated whole is perceptible today, as the Cathedral is
almost entirely enveloped by trees. Images 5, 6 and 7 show views of St
Andrew’s Cathedral from points on George Street looking north, and Image 8 from a point looking south.
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| Image 5 |
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| Image 6 |
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| Image 7 |
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| Image 8 |
Sydney Town
Hall, which sits on the Cathedral’s northern flank, is also visible, or more
accurately, barely visible, in some of these images. The most civically
important of Sydney’s surviving High Victorian buildings, it was constructed
between 1869 and 1889 according to a design by John Wilson with involvement by
several others, “reflected in the building’s flamboyant appearance ranging from
Italian Renaissance, to ponderous Gothic”, writes historian Alan Sharpe. Town Hall was
actually inspired by the Hotel de Ville in Paris, making similar use of its
mansard roofs and Victorian Second Empire detail. Architect Richard
Apperley describes it as a "lavishly ornamented composition with focal tower and fanciful
roofs." But the surrounding vegetation
is so thick that, from some angles, even the elegant fifty-five metre clock tower struggles to emerge.
Image 9 shows Town Hall’s northern aspect looking south from George Street, Image 10 looking south from York Street.
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| Image 9 |
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| Image 10 |
Image 11 is a photograph of St Andrew's and Town Hall as they appeared in 1900, from George Street looking north.
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| Image 11 |
Further north, the GPO is easily the most impressive of the High Victorian structures around
the CBD’s mid-city precinct. One of colonial architect James Barnet’s masterpieces,
construction started under his guidance in 1866 and was completed in two
stages, 1866 to 1874 and 1874 to 1887. The GPO’s northern façade, dominating
the western end of Martin Place, has been called “the finest example the
Victorian Italian Renaissance Style in New South Wales.” Generally, the exterior
is adorned with an intricate pattern of columns, spandrels, sculptures,
mouldings, bas-relief and carvings, amongst which feature Queen Victoria,
the royal coat of arms, various allegorical figures, and twenty-four carved
heads representing either a continent, country or Australian colony. All topped
by French style mansard roofs. The GPO would be magnificent to behold − if it wasn’t
masked by a line of trees running down Martin Place. Images 12 and 13 are views looking west towards the GPO's northern facade from Pitt Street, while Image 14 is a view of the same looking northwards from George Street.
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| Image 12 |
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| Image 13 |
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| Image 14 |
Image 15 is a view of the GPO from the north in 1874.
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| Image 15 |
From the
other end of Martin Place, the eastern perspective should encompass Sydney
Hospital on the opposite side of Macquarie Street, with its fine arched, arcaded
verandahs and ornate balustrading in the Victorian Free Classical Style, dating
from the 1890s. Sadly, however, it encompasses little more than a chaotic mass
of foliage. Images 16 and 17 are views of Sydney Hospital looking east from Martin Place.
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| Image 16 |
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| Image 17 |
Image 18 shows Sydney Hospital as it appeared in 1910.
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| Image 18 |
Not only
buildings, but public monuments are also compromised by the poor management of
disorderly and obtrusive street trees. Although the Hyde Park Obelisk at the
intersection of Elizabeth and Bathurst Streets was erected in 1857 as a
ventilation shaft, it incorporates some stylistic features modelled on London’s
Cleopatra’s Needle. Its position at the terminus of a thoroughfare, the eastern
end of Bathurst Street, was probably chosen for aesthetic reasons, echoing the
placement of obelisks and other monuments in grand European capitals. The
problem, again, is that sight of the Obelisk from various points on Bathurst
Street is blocked by overhanging street trees. Image 19 is a view from Bathurst Street in the direction of the Hyde Park Obelisk.
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| Image 19 |
Image 20 shows the Obelisk at the end of Bathurst Street as it appeared in 1890.
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| Image 20 |
Inner Sydney has many more such cases of beautiful structures being shrouded by unruly trees.
Historic
buildings are signposts of a city’s heritage and identity. They define who we
are and remind us where we came from. Their status as cultural-historic
landmarks should not be obscured but given prominence. In contrast to the encroaching sameness of urban landscapes, they are unique in form and
context, promoting the local and particular against the abstract and general.
Judging by their street tree policy (and other planning dimensions), none
of this means much to the city’s leaders. Perhaps they actively reject the past
embodied in these buildings and prefer to supplant it with a new dispensation.
- John Muscat
email: jmmuscat@netspace.net.au
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