Broadway, Sydney

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Street West (Broadway) in c.1930 taken from the heights of the Grace Bros. building

Broadway is a road in inner city Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The road constitutes the border between the suburbs of Ultimo (to the north) and Chippendale (to the south). Broadway is also an urban locality.

When travelling westward along Broadway the name changes into Parramatta Road at Victoria Park just after the junction with City Road. Broadway and Parramatta Road are part of the Great Western Highway.

History

Former Grace Bros buildings, now a shopping centre (on the left) and student accommodation (on the right), and the Lansdowne Hotel in the foreground

Broadway is historically important because it is one of the first roads built in the colony of New South Wales, in 1794. It had been called "George Street South" and then "George Street West". After being widened in 1906 when the Central Railway Station was built, George Street west of Railway Square, it became known as "The Broadway".^[1] This name was subsequently shortened to just "Broadway".

In the early nineteenth century, travel to Parramatta on Parramatta Rd attracted a toll and this was charged from the area now known as Railway Square. The toll gate was subsequently moved to the approximate junction of the present Broadway and Parramatta Rd.

Broadway was once a major retailing centre, and for 90 years was home to the flagship complex of department store chain Grace Brothers. The complex consisted of two stores on either side of Bay Street. It was visited by Queen Elizabeth II during her 1954 visit to Australia. Retailing on Broadway declined and the store was eventually closed in 1995. Today this site contains the Broadway Shopping Centre on the western side and the Hotel UniLodge Sydney on the eastern side.

The southern side of the road was dominated by a brewery. The facility closed in the 2000s and the site was put up for sale. Frasers Property purchased the site from the Fosters Group on 29 June 2007.^[2] The site is being redeveloped into a mixed use precinct called Central Park. This will include a new public park located just off Broadway of approximately 6,500 square metres in size.^[2] As of 2012, construction is under way on the first stage of the redevelopment - a new tower called One Central Park designed by Jean Nouvel and featuring "vertical gardens" by Patrick Blanc.^[3] Located opposite the UTS Tower, One Central Park is an apartment complex with a shopping centre called Central located on the lower levels.^[4]

Transport

Broadway was a busy tram thoroughfare in the first half of the 20th century, until the line's closure in 1958.^[5] Since then it has been the primary entry point into the Central Business District for bus services from the Inner Western suburbs.

Education

The UTS Tower building, known as an "eyesore" among Sydneysiders.

Render of redesigned Tower podium and the Denton Corker Marshall building behind

A number of educational institutions are located on or around Broadway. These include the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), University of Notre Dame, University of Sydney and the TAFE NSW Sydney Institute.

UTS has a particularly strong presence. The UTS Tower is the tallest structure on Broadway and is a Sydney landmark. Designed in the brutalist style, it has been described as one of Sydney's ugliest buildings. A new building on Broadway designed by Denton Corker Marshall is under construction and is due to be completed in 2014.^[6] There are also plans to redesign the podium of the tower.^[7]

Other buildings

The Embassy Conference Centre is a historic building, built in the 1890s as the first branch of the Bank of New South Wales.
Bar Broadway
The Clare Hotel
Agincourt Hotel
Abercrombie Hotel
Former St Barnabas Anglican Church. Destroyed by fire and now rebuilt in a modern design.
St Benedicts church with the University of Notre Dame behind.
John Storey Memorial Dispensary
Central Park apartments

References

↑ Widening the streets - City of Sydney website
↑ 2.0 2.1 "Frasers Broadway (formerly CUB site)". City of Sydney. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
↑ "One Central Park Gardens". Frasers Property. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
↑ "Shop Central". Frasers Property. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
↑ D. Keenan: Tramways of Sydney. Transit Press 1979
↑ "Broadway Building (ITE Building)". University of Technology, Sydney. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
↑ "UTS Podium Design Competition". University of Technology, Sydney. Retrieved 9 January 2012.

External links

Route map: Google / Bing

KML file (edit)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Broadway, Sydney.

v t e Streets of Sydney, Australia

City of Sydney	Bathurst Street Bridge Street Bayswater Road Broadway Castlereagh Street Cleveland Street City Road College Street Crown Street Elizabeth Street Five Ways George Street Glebe Point Road Goulburn Street Grosvenor Street Harris Street Hunter Street King Street Lime Street Liverpool Street Macquarie Street Market Street Martin Place Oxford Street Park Street Phillip Street Pitt Street Rowe Street Stanley Street Sussex Street Victoria Street Whitlam Square William Street York Street

Suburban roads	Albion Street Anzac Parade Appian Way Bangor Bypass Blacktown Road Bondi Road Burnt Bridge Creek Deviation City West Link Coogee Bay Road Darling Street Epping Road General Holmes Drive Gore Hill Freeway Great North Road Great Western Highway Henry Lawson Drive Hume Highway James Ruse Drive Jeffrey Street King Georges Road King Street Lane Cove Road Marshall Street New South Head Road Norton Street Old South Head Old Windsor Road Parramatta Road Pennant Hills Road Pittwater Road Princes Highway Prospect Highway Richmond Road Ryde Road Southern Cross Drive Taren Point Road The Grand Parade Victoria Road Windsor Road

v t e Suburbs and localities within the City of Sydney

Suburbs	Alexandria Annandale Barangaroo Beaconsfield Camperdown Centennial Park Chippendale Darlinghurst Darlington Dawes Point Elizabeth Bay Erskineville Eveleigh Forest Lodge Glebe Haymarket Millers Point Moore Park Newtown Paddington Potts Point Pyrmont Redfern Rosebery Rushcutters Bay Surry Hills Sydney CBD The Rocks Ultimo Waterloo Woolloomooloo Zetland

Localities	Broadway Central Chinatown Circular Quay Darling Harbour The Domain East Sydney Goat Island Garden Island Green Square Kings Cross Macdonaldtown Railway Square Strawberry Hills Wynyard

List of Sydney suburbs

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.