Heritage Issues
Forest Lodge home wins NSW Architecture Award
Posted on 9th August 2022
“A joyful Forest Lodge home” in Wood St has been awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Wilkinson Award for the best new home in 2021. Stable House is owned and designed by Qianyi Lim, a Director at Sibling Architecture and Associate Professor of Practice (Architecture) at the University of Sydney.
The raison d’être of the Glebe Society
Posted on 9th October 2022
Reflections written in 2010 (with some factual updates since) on the social and economic conditions in Glebe in the 1960s and the factors that saw the birth of the Glebe Society. In the intervening 50 years, the changing demographics of Glebe have also played a role, arguably both positive and negative. By long term Glebe Society member and former Planning Convenor, Neil Macindoe.
Caroline Jones and the Glebe Estate, ‘This Day Tonight’ 1972
Posted on 10th June 2022
In 1972 when she was a reporter on the ABC’s ‘This Day Tonight,’ Caroline Jones’s report on the Glebe Estate shocked viewers, many of whom were seeing for the first time what living in poverty looked like in Australia. The landlord, the Anglican Church thought that the best solution to its problem was to sell the Estate to developers, knocking down the historic cottages without concern for the community that had taken root there. Thanks to Tom Uren that did not occur and it was bought by the government. Unfortunately, today it’s not safe from further predations by developers, while the current NSW Government turns a blind eye to ‘demolition by neglect’.
Glebe Society submissions on development applications
Posted on 12th June 2022
Information about recent Glebe Society submissions on Development Applications in Glebe and Forest Lodge.
From the President – March 2022
Posted on 7th March 2022
The Glebe Society has been incredibly busy over summer. Catch up with what we’ve been doing by reading the President’s Report.
The Land and Housing Corporation gets the details wrong
Posted on 7th March 2022
One on of the brilliant things about the project by the Federal Government, and later the NSW Government, to restore the former church estates was that they went to a lot of trouble to get the details right. Sadly, the NSW Land and Housing Corporation which looks after the former church estates seems to have lost its memory and its skills.
Re-submitted DA for Bidura still unacceptable
Posted on 4th March 2022
The Society has lodged a follow-up submission in relation to the Bidura development application (DA) which proposes a large scale apartment complex behind the heritage-listed building, replacing the concrete Metropolitan Remand Centre/Childrens Court built in the early 1980s. This follows a period of consultation between the City of Sydney and the developers, Visionland, and amendments to their original proposal. The Society believes that aspects of the proposed development will be alien to the architectural character of Glebe and should not be approved.
Water tower heritage interpretation artwork
Posted on 6th November 2021
One of the requirements of the DA for the development of Harold Park was that the water tank associated with the Rozelle Tram Yards be reinstated. The tank has been reinstated as an artwork by Chris Fox called ‘Immerge’.
Our new video series ‘In Sydney, it’s Glebe’
Posted on 1st October 2021
‘In Sydney it’s Glebe’, six Glebe Society videos about our suburb, its history and heritage and the risks it faces from overdevelopment, have now been released.
Protecting our environment – sewage pumping stations serving Glebe
Posted on 14th September 2021
Four low level sewage pumping stations serve Glebe and surrounding areas, part of a network constructed at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries in response to the outbreaks of typhoid which plagued Sydney from the 1870s to 1890s. Built at a time when small-scale utilitarian buildings were given as much careful attention as public buildings.
Proposed development at 7 Franklyn St and 49-51 Greek St, Glebe
Posted on 5th August 2021
A DA under consideration for these sites, involves demolishing two former warehouses and replacing them with 84 self-contained boarding rooms. The proposed development is out of character with the neighbouring houses. Adaptive reuse of the warehouses would be a better solution.
Bidura: The Bitter Sweet DA
Posted on 3rd August 2021
The DAs for the demolition of the Metropolitan Remand Centre and construction of a new housing development behind the heritage-listed Bidura House are now on public exhibition. We explain the plans and why we are concerned about them.
Yelvertoft, 75 Hereford St, Sells
Posted on 3rd August 2021
The heritage-listed 1858 Victorian Regency sandstone villa, Yelvertoft, has been saved from the developers.
Society meets with State Government to discuss affordable and social housing
Posted on 11th July 2021
Ian Stephenson and Brian Fuller, the Society’s Planning and Heritage convenors, recently joined Deputy Lord Mayor Linda Scott at a meeting with the Hon. Melinda Pavey MP, Minister for Water, Property and Housing, to discuss the State Government’s intentions in relation to the provision of affordable and social housing in Glebe.
Damage to heritage-listed sandstone cobbled pavement
Posted on 11th July 2021
The City of Sydney is progressively upgrading the local green parks as part of the Greening Sydney 2030 Strategy. However, the upgrade the Cardigan St Reserve has come at the cost of the removal of some historic sandstone paving.
