By Garry Maddox
City landmark: the Queen Victoria Building. Credit: Nick Moir
One of Sydney’s colourful afternoon newspapers, The Daily Mirror, did not hold back about the future of the Queen Victoria Building in 1961. “Tear down this city horror,” it screamed on the front page.
Lord Mayor Harry Jensen was among the "leading architects and town planners" calling for the immediate demolition of the building for a car park and civic square, with Harry Seidler calling it “an architectural monstrosity”. Yes, the architect behind Blues Point Tower said that.
How close the city came to losing yet another architectural treasure.
The opponents of demolition included Barry Humphries who penned a poem that read: “How we hate all that sandstone as golden/As obsolete guineas/With nowhere to stable our Holden/Or tether our Minis”.
It took a decade of debate before another Lord Mayor, Sir Emmet McDermott, announced the building would be preserved. And after lengthy deliberations about what it would become - the options included a hotel, casino, museum and apartments - the council accepted a proposal from Malaysia’s Ipoh Garden Berhad to restore it for a shopping centre with a 99-year lease.
In 1986, the QVB finally emerged as the stylish retail cathedral that is now genuinely beloved in Sydney.
This weekend the QVB celebrates its 120th anniversary with an indelible place in the city’s history - a striking example of Romanesque revival architecture with a stately dome, vaulted glass roof and decorative stained-glassed windows.
Stained glass windows.Credit: Nick Moir
It is appreciated for its warm charm; the way it spruces up for Christmas; the old-fashioned tea room; the Royal Clock that features animated scenes from history including the (comical) beheading of King Charles I; the piano that shoppers can play; the train sets in the Hobbyco window; and, more cheesily, the statue of the royal dog Islay with John Laws’ voice.
“It’s hard to imagine demolition of such a grand building was ever even a possibility, to make way for a car park or open space in the city,” centre manager Natalie Douglas said as the Herald took a tour this week.
Thirty three million people pass reputedly through the building every year - averaging more than 90,000 a day - including commuters, shoppers, diners and tourists.
Sydney City Council historian Laila Ellmoos said the threatened demolition came with the rise of cars in the city.
“There was a demand for parking,” she said. “And there were different attitudes about buildings like this: it’s very ornate and decorative so there would have been a view that you needed something functional like car parking.”
Ms Ellmoos said city architect George McRae designed the QVB in the style of a grand shopping arcade.
“The Strand is another survivor but there were actually five or six other arcades through the city,” she said. “It was part of a fashion for a different type of retailing experience.”
On the Herald’s tour, Ms Douglas revealed the QVB's ground floor slopes towards George Street “partly because at the end of each day they would wash down the market floor and waste and debris would flow out onto the street".
Surprisingly, there are two domes above the centre of the building - a stained glass one visible from the shopping floors then a wooden-framed and copper dome above.
From above: The Queen Victoria Building. Credit: Peter Morris
The QVB's modern history includes quirky moments: a young woman surprised security guards when she drove a Red Mini Minor through the ground floor, exiting in Market Street, in 1987. Browsing with a curried egg sandwich, Nicole Kidman called into a jewellers and bought Tom Cruise’s wedding ring in 1990.
More seriously, the stained glass windows were damaged by the Hilton bombing that killed three men across the road in 1978.
The Sydney sandstone landmark has survived the rise of suburban Westfields and the boom in online shopping. It outlived the trams that stopped running down George Street and has been around long enough to see them come back.
Built when deliveries were by horse-drawn carts, it has seen off the monorail that ran down Market Street. And as it turns 120, it is hard to imagine anyone who considers the QVB an architectural monstrosity any more.