History
The site of the Queen Victoria Building was previously the location for municipal markets (designated by Governor Macquarie in 1810), and was selected for the construction of "a marvellous centre of trade". The building, designed by George McRae, was constructed between 1893 and 1898, and was named the Queen Victoria Building to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The completed building included coffee shops, showrooms and a concert hall. It provided a business environment for tradesmen such as tailors, mercers, hairdressers, and florists.
Between 1934 and 1938 the areas of the building occupied by the Sydney County Council were remodelled in an Art Deco style.
The building steadily deteriorated and in 1959 was threatened with demolition. It was restored between 1984 and 1986 by Ipoh Ltd at a cost of $86 million, under the terms of a 99-year lease from the City Council and now contains mostly upmarket boutiques and "brand-name" shops.
Ipoh performed a $48 million refurbishment between 2008 and 2009. The changes include new shopfronts, glass signage, glazed balustrades, new escalators connecting ground, first and second levels and new colour schemes.
Read more about this topic: Queen Victoria Building
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“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)