NAKED CITY: TOWN HALL TRANSFORMATION

Next to the Opera House, the Sydney Town Hall is arguably the most iconic building in the City of Sydney and a fixture that means many things to many people. If you are a young person setting out for a night on the town it’s a great place to meet your buddies on the George Street steps. If you just want to step back in time, take a ride in the building’s classic old elevators and shake hands with the ghost that is said to inhabit them. And if you simply what to check on the time of day the old Town Hall clock has been Mr Reliable for well over a hundred years.

Last week the Council announced the commencement of a four year $33 million conservation project that will include major restoration to the sandstone facade and the removal of the original 1884 timepiece, as well as much needed earthquake proofing. Specialist tradesmen and stonemasons have been recruited from all over the world to spruce up the old dame.

It’s a lot of money to spend on an historic building and it’s obviously all part of a master plan that will see the much loved Woolies building come crashing down to make way for what the most vehement critics describe as a “post Stalinist civic square”. And you better buy yourself a watch as the clock will be mothballed while long overdue repairs are carried out.

Here at the Naked City we are happy to see the Town Hall getting a much needed makeover, although we would prefer to see some of the budget going towards making the building a far more user-friendly institution. Let’s evoke some of the nostalgia of a bygone era when the Lower Town Hall regularly hosted model train exhibitions and looked more like a subterranean basement than the current sterile exhibition centre. A permanent model railway would be a smash hit with kids and oldies alike and keep out both the corporate hirers and the trendy Sydney Film Festival.

In the past the Centennial Hall has hosted everybody from Lady Gaga to Hunter S. Thompson, not to mention prom concerts, union strike meetings and high school formals. We would love to see this eclectic use continue but why not throw open the doors during winter to provide a warm and inviting dorm for the many homeless people who currently bed down on  the mean streets of the CBD and Woolloomooloo.

When originally installed in 1890 the Grand Town Hall pipe organ was the largest of its kind in the world but apart from the occasional lunchtime recital it hardly gets a work out these days. In keeping with the Lord Mayor’s plan for a 24 hour city we would love to see a midnight to dawn jazz club with a cool hipster trio knocking out the hits of organ greats Jimmy Smith and Richard “Groove” Holmes.

Finally when the old clock is eventually restored might we suggest a major upgrade that would deliver us Sydney’s version of the world famous Strasbourg Astronomical Clock which features a daily procession of 18 inch figures of Christ and the Apostles. On the strike of midday a door would fly open and an incredible automata of mechanical Sydney identities would circle the lofty clock tower – Clover, Cate Blanchett, John Ibrahim, Vittorio from the Piccolo Bar, Baz Luhrmann, Larry Emdur, Quentin Dempster and Joe the Gadget Man – a vertiable cross section of the local milieu, immortalised for centuries to come, notwithstanding a possible catastrophic earthquake!