Explore early photographs of Sydney

This exhibition highlights photographs commissioned by Sydney Municipal Council between 1900 and 1920 known as the ‘Demolition Books’.

City of Sydney Spatial

18 May 2022

From 1900, City Building Surveyor’s department of council began hiring professional photographers to document ‘old, insanitary and ruinous’ buildings when they were condemned, and usually before they were demolished.

This practice continued until 1931. These photographs were intended as a form of evidence in the event of any dispute and to record what was about to be lost. Viewed over 100 years later, these photographs show Sydney’s rapid urban change in the first 2 decades of the 20^th century.

Sydney’s built landscape rapidly urbanised in the first two decades of the 20th century, embracing modern buildings, improvements to sanitation, and new infrastructure.

Old buildings were being demolished with rapid pace, leading to a sense among some that the city’s history was being lost.

Small houses and old pubs, little warehouses and factories, crumbling stables and quaint shops – many dating from the 1840s and untouched for over 50 years – were swept away in piecemeal demolitions and neighbourhood resumptions.

Image of Liverpool and Castlereagh St circa 1901

From 1900, the City Building Surveyor’s department of Sydney Municipal Council used photography to document the city’s profound transformation.

The photographs inadvertently capture the largely working-class neighbourhoods and people being displaced by commercial and government redevelopment.

The City Building Surveyor’s ‘Condemnation and Demolition Books’ is a key photographic collection held in the City Archives comprising almost 5000 photographs and associated glass plate negatives.