Remembering a lost North Shore landmark
One hundred years ago the North Shore lost a landmark when the Sydney Ferry Company’s wharf and arcade was demolished in 1925 to make way for the northern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The structure was built in 1887 for the North Shore Steam Ferry Company which had consolidated regular ferry services across the harbour since emerging from the North Shore Ferry Company in 1878. That firm grew out of the Milsons Point Steam Ferry Company in 1869. It was to that consortium, in turn, that much credit for establishing a good Circular Quay to Milsons Point service can be given. In 1862, locals had been so fed up with irregularity of passage to and from the North Shore that they petitioned the government to run a ferry service. On that occasion, private enterprise stepped in to the apparent benefit of all.
Circular Quay was the undoubted centre of the ferry trade; all routes went to and from the crowded wharves at the end of Pitt, Castlereagh and Elizabeth Streets. But the ferry arcade at Milsons Point was uniquely grand with its domed clock tower, barrel roof, coloured glass and shops. It was an ideal location for fruiterers and confectioners offering juices and treats to commuters and day trippers. Real estate agents set up office there to tempt those from the south side with offers on the many subdivisions opening up on early colonial land grants.
All terrestrial routes converged on that arcade. The cable tram, established in 1886, actually entered the structure. From 1893, trains on the North Shore line terminated nearby. People walked to the arcade, hansom cabs waited for fares at its entrance. And when cars began sharing the roads, they dodged people, horses and trams on the way to and from the adjacent vehicular ferry.
The arcade was a favourite subject for artists and photographers. In 1888, Tom Roberts painted it in early light so that the tower was lit up like a Venetian palazzo by the rising sun. Ellis St John and Sydney Ure Smith created delicate etchings in the early 1900s. The prolific Charles Kerry set up his glass plate camera several times to capture the grandeur and the bustle.
In its final years William ‘Blind Billy’ Huntington set up an organ in the arcade to amuse with popular songs and win souls for his Baptist church with hymns; all played while he rocked back and forth.
When the arcade’s fate was sealed it was described as ‘historic,’ though the structure was barely 40-years-old. That may have been a reflection of its place in the memory of so many locals. But it may also have been evidence of a landscape in convulsion. ‘Old North Sydney’ was disappearing day by day. The arcade was just one of hundreds of properties being demolished to build the much-awaited Harbour Bridge. The opening of that monolith in 1932 spelled the end of a way of travel on the harbour in which, to quote the novelist DH Lawrence, Sydneysiders ‘seem to slip like fishes from one side … to the other.’
Historical Services, North Sydney Council