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Haymarket
This collection contains a small selection of archives relating to Haymarket.
In 1829 the valley south of Bathurst Street and Brickfield Hill was designated as a site for cattle and corn markets. The Haymarket, as the place became known, was a convenient stopping place for farmers' bullock carts before the long haul up to the city's market buildings. Ownership of the land and the markets shifted to the control of the City of Sydney when it was established in 1842. Proximity to the markets proved attractive to small manufacturing, with housing and buildings used as temporary boarding houses for itinerant market traders.
The movement of the Chinese community into this area began in the 1870s, following the 1869 construction of new fruit and vegetable markets, known as the Belmore Markets. The subsequent construction of Paddy's Market encouraged the establishment of public houses. On Saturday nights, the Haymarket was a place to gather not only for cheap shopping, but for cheap entertainment provided by sideshows and street theatre.
Further development from 1892 included the construction of a new market building on the old Paddy's site. This building was subsequently demolished, reconstructed and leased to Wirth Brothers Circus between 1916 and 1927 for use as a Hippodrome. From the late 1920s until the end of the 1960s the Belmore Market-turned-Hippodrome functioned as the Capitol Picture Theatre.
By the 1920s, Sydney's Chinatown spread back into the Haymarket area, which became a commercial and community centre for the Chinese community. The tall residential towers, hotels and shops which finally emerged in 2007 on the site now known as World Square cluster (formerly occupied by Hordern's emporium) around an internal pattern of laneways that recalls the earlier haphazard streets layout in this locality.
See sub-collections below for more on Chinatown, Belmore Park, Central Railway Station, Brickfield Hill, Anthony Hordern & Sons and the Natatorium.
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CollectionVillages and SuburbsLetter - Complaint by John Robertson about fire risk to factory, 483-489 Pitt Street Haymarket, 1879