Anthony Hordern & Sons

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anthony Horderns was the largest department store in Sydney, Australia, which was originally established in 1825 as a drapery shop by a family descended from convicts from the First Fleet. A further large mensware store was in upper George Street, and Hordern's also operated one of the largest mail order businesses in Australia.^{[citation needed]}

A huge six storey building was opened in 1905, called the Palace Emporium, the main entrance being all in imported Italian marble. The massive store was located on the corner of George, Pitt, & Goulburn Streets in the southern end of the CBD. One of their advertising slogans was that they sold "anything from a needle to an anchor". The crest on their coat of arms was a budding tree, the motto: "while I live I grow". It appeared above all the store's window fittings and on all their stationary.

The development of American-style suburban shopping malls during the 1960s and 1970s sealed the fate of the store. It was closed in the 1970s (after being purchased by Waltons). Mysteriously, the tree on the Horden family's estate at Camden, New South Wales, upon which idea of the crest was based, died soon afterwards.

The Palace Emporium was thereafter used by the NSW Institute of Technology (now UTS) for many years. It (and surrounding buildings) was controversially demolished in the early 1980s for the infamous 'World Square' development, which remained a hole in the ground for nearly twenty years, before finally being completed in 2004.

There are still some legacies left in Sydney, such as the Hordern Pavilion, and the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney in Croydon of which its oldest building, 'Shubra Hall' was the home of Anthony Hordern III until 1889.