Sydney Mint
The Australian Sydney Mint ( Mint Sydney) is the oldest building in the city center of Sydney in the Australian state of New South Wales . The building was built between 1811 and 1816 as the south wing of the three-part historic Sydney Hospital , also known as the Rum Hospital . The other two wings of the building were structurally changed considerably over time.
The British colonies of that time did not mint their own currency; nevertheless, in 1854 the first mint of a British colony outside of Great Britain was installed in the southern part of the Sydney Hospital .
The building facade was largely retained in its original form from 1816; the building is now a listed building and houses the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales .
The construction is on Macquarie Street near other historic buildings such as Hyde Park Barracks , Queen Victoria Building and Parliament House of New South Wales.
history
When Governor Lachlan Macquarie saw the conditions in the then existing tent hospital in Sydney, he decided to build an inpatient hospital building, the first public building in Sydney. To finance the entire construction, he granted an import monopoly for 45,000 gallons of rum and later, according to various sources, 60,000 or 65,000 gallons .
The architect is unknown. The south wing was designed in the ancient Greek style on two floors with columns made of cedar wood according to the Doric column order . It is controversial in terms of its architectural significance and design. Sometimes it is considered to be the building of the governor's time of Macquarie, while Francis Greenway , the most important architect and British convict of the time, criticized the building in terms of design and technology. In his opinion, the proportions of the columns were not classic and therefore the building should not be considered modern or historical. He also found significant construction defects that had to be corrected in 1820 and 1826.
In 1842 a hospital pharmacy was opened in this building and the other rooms were used as a military hospital until 1854.
Governor William Denison , an engineer with a strong scientific background, officially opened The Mint as a mint on May 14, 1855, and shortly thereafter took the initiative to found the Philosophical Society of New South Wales , which would use the building as a center for scientific research, literature, Took advantage of art and philosophy in the 1850s and 1860s.
New South Wales colony coins were minted in the building from 1855 to 1926. In 1851 the first Australian gold rush took place, large amounts of gold circulated uncontrolled, threatened to undermine the official monetary transactions and had to be brought to England for minting, so the colonial government tried to bring the gold trade under its control.
In 1926 the Sydney Mint closed because the Melbourne and Perth mints were more effective.
The reverse of the coins, which were minted in the British colony of New South Wales, bore the word Australia as early as 1855 , although the state of Australia, the Commonwealth of Australia , was founded about half a century later in 1901. The first coins on the Australian continent were minted in this building.
Between 1926 and 1997, the building housed more than 20 government agencies and courts, which remained for a few years; only the Housing Commission stayed longer. The interiors were changed or reduced in size according to requirements and used, for example, as state offices for general insurance, pension insurance, licensing for the generation of electrical energy and state family foundation. After 1997 it was intended to use The Mint as a court. This led to an initiative to preserve historic buildings in Sydney and New South Wales. This was successful and the Prime Minister of New South Wales, Neville Wran , announced that The Mint would be used as a museum building by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences . In 1982 the Museum of Decorative Arts, Coins and Stamps was established there, which was rededicated in the years 1993–1995 into an exhibition on the role of gold and the gold rush in Australia, which was dismantled in 1997. The museum was closed in 1997 and transferred to the Historic Houses Trust in 1998, which continues to use it as an administrative building to this day.
Parts of the building are designed as a permanent exhibition on the history of the house that can be visited. The building is open to the public and houses a café.
Individual evidence
- ^ Online Australian Dictionary of Biography . Retrieved November 16, 2010
- ^ Rum Hospital 1811-1854. ( Memento of October 1, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved November 16, 2010
- ^ History of The Mint . Retrieved November 17, 2010
- ^ Royal Science and the Sydney Mint . Retrieved November 17, 2010
- ^ The Mint: Coins. Historic Houses Trust on hht.net.au . Retrieved November 16, 2010
- ↑ Information on museumvictoria.com.au ( Memento of the original from August 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved November 16, 2010
- ^ After the Royal Mint . Retrieved November 17, 2007
- ↑ Rum Hostal 1927-1990 on hht.net.au . Retrieved November 17, 2010
- ↑ The Mint redevelopment on hht.net.au . Retrieved November 17, 2010
Web links
Coordinates: 33 ° 52 ′ 8.2 ″ S , 151 ° 12 ′ 45.7 ″ E