Electricity Substation 5 - Mountain St (corner Smail St), UltimoBy Gabriel, 18 Sep 2018 , updated 19 Sep 2018
Sydney has more than 200 electricity substations built in the 1920s-1930s by Sydney Municipal Council. I randomly discovered a few of them over the few years I have been living here. In this post I'm sharing a few personal photos of what some of those substations look like the city today.
When you walk through Sydney you should find here and there a couple of those electric substations. According to the Office of Environment & Heritage of NSW they were build between the wars to “electrify” the growing city. Most of them are made with plain red brick in a simple but elegant architecture, somes are clones, but there is still a lot of different “models”. They integrate very well with the neighboring townhouse or buildings. Nearly 100 years later, a lot are still used for the purpose they were build for. Not bad when you think of some modern public buildings: There is a discussion going on at the moment to demolish and rebuild the Sydney Olympic Stadium, less than 20 years after its opening!
Having find a few of them randomly it now a game for me to discover more and “collection” them!
You can find below a very short series of those electric substations:
Electricity Substation 5 - Mountain St (corner Smail St), Ultimo
Electricity Substation 20(?) - Buckland ln (~corner Mitchell Rd), Alexandria
Electricity Substation 43 - Unwins Bridge rd (corner Hogab Av), Sydenham
Electricity Substation 67 - Waterloo st (corner Belmore Ln), Surry Hills
Electricity Substation 109 - Lachlan st (corner Gadigal Av), Waterloo
Electricity Substation 112 - Renwick st (~corner Redfern st), Redfern
Electricity Substation 152 - MacEvoy st (~corner Bowden st), Alexandria
Electricity Substation 175 - Devonshire st (~corner Holt st), Surry Hills
Electricity Substation 226 - Kensington st (~corner Outram st), Chippendale
Electricity Substation 228 - Pine st (corner Paints Ln), Chippendale
Electricity Substation 549 - Princess Hwy (~corner Barwon Park Rd), St Peters
Electricity Light Station - Renwick st (~corner Turner st), Redfern
Not a substation exactly but definitely part of the network at the time and a beautiful building!
Those buildings have sparkled curiosity of the artist Andrew Burns, alias Barocky Chocky: In a 500mm x 400mm print, he celebrates Sydney’s diverse and historic electrical substations.
Substations of Sydney illustrated print by Barocky Chocky
Find the print on Etsy.