The fight to save the buildings of Sydney’s second city

Built in 1929, the same year as central Sydney’s opulent State Theatre, also scene of one of the great conservation battles/victories for 1970s Sydneysiders, this George Street glory was flagged to be on the Parramatta civic walk from the train station down to the Parramatta River.

A tourist attraction, like nearby Willow Grove, a short distance away on Phillip Street.

On Friday, February 12, at 5.45pm, Planning Minister Rob Stokes announced, without much fanfare, this Victorian Italianate two-storey villa, was now slated to be dismantled and relocated to make way for the “New Parramatta Powerhouse project.” Like the experts I refuse to call it a museum.

If you didn’t already know it from the NSW Parliamentary upper house inquiry, there’s a lot of love for Willow Grove in this community.

It was on display last Sunday, Valentine’s Day, when hearts with messages of hope and stern words for the NSW government were draped on the gates and the cyclone fence it swiftly constructed outside this local landmark.

In much the way some of the finest fabrics in Australia were fashioned into drapes here by the building’s original owner, Annie Gallagher, a haberdasher who prospered thanks to her passion for her craft.

This early female entrepreneur, and the building’s links with local women were honoured by another Parramatta woman, Suzette Meade and the North Parramatta residents’ action group she heads, last Sunday.

“The passion and resolve to save Willow Grove was palpable,” Meade said. Among the messages of support were reminders of generations of locals born here when the building was a maternity hospital set up by matron and midwife E. E. Davidson, and continued into the 1940s by Matron Frances Amy Thompson. The local Dharug people of the Burramatta clan, added to the cri-de-couer to stop the crazy concept.

The NSW government calls the $840 million planned Powerhouse project “the city’s largest ‘cultural investment’ since the building of the Opera House”. It may have been well intentioned, but it is ill-conceived. As residents say – it will cost $25 million to take down and rebuild Willow Grove at an as yet undisclosed location, but only $ 1 million, according to heritage architects, to retain the 140-year-old building in any redevelopment.

Even Robert Borsak, from the Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers Party, who chaired the committee of inquiry into the Parramatta Powerhouse, thinks demolishing Willow Grove is “completely stupid”.

It’s time Gladys Berejiklian’s government took a leaf out of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore’s book, in relation to another Parramatta hero, Sir James Martin. After much lobbying from both Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, and Planning Minister Rob Stokes, the lord mayor reversed her opposition to erect a statue in Martin Place last year, to honour the son of a Parramatta stablehand, who became three-times NSW premier.

It’s not too late to change your mind Premier Berejiklian.

The CFMEU and other related construction working unions – have placed a green ban on Willow Grove, after early consultation with Green bans hero Jack Mundey, who tragically died last year.

Loading

Given COVID-19 cancelled plans for Mundey’s state funeral, wouldn’t it be great if we could have a public service in both his honour – and all the women who played a part in Willow Grove’s past. At the site on Phillip Street, where this stately home took its name from the grove of willow trees once planted on the prone to flooding land.

The people of Parramatta – past and present – have spoken – loudly in both the case of the Roxy and Willow Grove. They want their heritage buildings respected, retained and revived. They will chain themselves to the buildings to stop the vandals if necessary, just as Jack did.

Now is the time to shout it from the old red-tiled rooftop of the white-stuccoed hacienda-style Roxy, just like the immortal refrain by anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network: “I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.”