City Clutter

The Albert Street Uniting Church in Brisbane is a beautiful old church that was originally a Methodist church. It was built in the late 1800’s and opened on 8th November 1889. Although it once stood alone in its grandeur, it still stands out amongst the skyscrapers, a rose among the thorns.

The Victorian Gothic Revival building is built of red brick, trimmed with white Oamaru limestone and a slate roof. The church continues with services and is a popular wedding venue today. This is one of my favourite buildings in Brisbane.

Sydney

Sydney is one of my favourite cities. So much to see and some great architecture with the Sydney Opera House right up on the top of my list. I spent a couple of days there recently and here are some shots I took. The history is fascinating so you can read about it here if you are interested.

“[Jørn] Utzon made a building well ahead of its time, far ahead of available technology… a building that changed the image of an entire country.”

 

Early morning view

Early morning view

Early morning closeup

Sydney in the blue hour

By night

The Old Windmill

I recently revisited The Old Windmill and took these photos to add to my collection. Sadly as with most old buildings of the past, there is a dark history attached to it.

The Walter Taylor Bridge

The Walter Taylor Bridge (in the foreground) is unique among Brisbane bridges in that the two towers of the bridge house residential accommodation, which were occupied until mid 2010 when the last members of the original tollmaster’s family moved out.  The bridge was conceived, designed, built and funded by local visionary Walter Taylor, who lived nearby. It was opened in 1936 and operated as a toll bridge until the 1960s.  The bridge is a suspension bridge and the support cables were actually surplus support cables used to hold up the incomplete halves of the Sydney Harbour Bridge during its construction. When the bridge opened it had the longest span of any suspension bridge in Australia. The site has four bridges side by side – the Walter Taylor Bridge (vehicle), the Indooroopilly Rail Bridge (rail), the Albert Bridge (rail) and the Jack Pesch Bridge (pedestrian/cycle).

Pylons belonging to The Albert Bridge

St John’s Exterior

Following on from my last post, here are photos of the exterior of St John’s Anglican Cathedral.

 

St John’s Anglican Cathederal

Here are some shots I took inside the St John’s Anglican Cathedral. I was there at the right time as the sun shone through the stain glass windows giving beautiful jewelled reflections on the pillars. This is just the back of the church. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos of the front as there was a wedding rehearsal on at the time but I will go back again some time.

Interesting Facts:

St John’s Anglican Cathedral “was designed in the Gothic revival style by John Loughborough Pearson, one of England’s leading church architects of the late 19th century and bears similarities to Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, also designed by Pearson, although the architecture of St John’s is more decidedly French Gothic in inspiration. The external walls are of randomly arranged brown, pink and mauve porphyry stone.”

“The Brisbane cathedral movement began in earnest in 1887 as a celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee – St John’s was to be paid for by public subscription but the construction of the cathedral in one campaign was found to be financially impossible. As a result, the building has been executed in three stages over two centuries between 1906 and 2009.”

Pipe Organ

Following on from my previous post, our City Hall pipe organ, the Father Willis Organ, has been restored. The dismantling of the enormous instrument and its 4332 pipes started in 2010 and since last November, a specialist team have been painstakingly re-installing the organ after carrying out restoration works off site.

City Hall

Here are some shots I took of our beautiful City Hall. It has just recently been renovated after in 2008, it was discovered that the building that was built on swamp land was sinking. Brisbane has been notorious in the past for demolishing old buildings, our history, so to have had this building restored is quite a feat. Watch the process here.