This photograph of the exterior of the Lansdowne Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and City Road, Chippendale, is from the archive of the architect Sidney Warden, who designed the building. The photograph was taken by the commercial photographer Milton Kent in 1926. The majority of photographs in the Warden archive were commissioned by Warden for publication in architectural and building industry journals of the time. In this case, the photograph appeared in a 1926 edition of Building. To the far left of the hotel is part of what was then the Grace Bros department store (now the Unilodge building), while to the right, in the background, is a smoking chimney of the Tooth and Co. Kent Brewery. The Lansdowne is still standing and is just one of many well-known (mostly Sydney) establishments which feature in the archive. Photographs from the Warden archive may be viewed through the Powerhouse Museum website, and will soon be available at The Commons.
For more information on this hotel our Curator Charles Pickett has done an interview on ABC Sydney.
Photography by Milton Kent, Sydney
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Jessica McLean, Project Archivist
If you stood on the front steps of the Lansdowne Hotel today this is the view you would see across the road:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeasdaddy/3165497430/in/pool-tyrrelltoday.
I’m going to have a look at the Warden archive right now.
For a visual comparison see today’s view of the Lansdowne Hotel on my blog here:
http://lifeasdaddy.typepad.com/lifeasdaddy/2009/04/sydney-then-and-now-lansdowne-hotel.html
In your original photograph above, the building at the far left of the photograph is the former Lansdowne Hotel of which you can see the edge of the ground, first and second floors.
Grace Bros wanted to build on that site at the corner of George Street West and Bay Street Ultimo, and so purchased the land from the owners. (Harry Ferrow was the liquor licensee)As part of the deal they built Ferrow a new hotel across the road in Chippendale of which Harry Ferrow became the new licensee – and that is the hotel you see here and why his name appears on the corner awning.
( ref. http://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/sydney/ultimo.html#former_lansdowne_hotel
You can also search the City of Sydney Photo Archives here: http://www2.photosau.com/cityofsydney/scripts/home.asp for “Lansdowne Hotel” to see pics of the former hotel.)