Photos of old Sydney pop up on my FB feed from time to time. The metropolis of Sydney is not all that old, being founded in 1788, so age is less dramatic a condition than it is in say Rome or London. But these pictures are set in time, often before I was born or in a very junior state, so they evoke a sense of what was. All too often they also critique what has become. Comparisons like this can sometimes be misleading, for though a demolished structure may have had a charming exterior, it might have been a little box of horrors within. Poor lighting and ventilation, cramped offices and so forth are potentially hidden by a pretty facade, though my acquaintance with older buildings is often the opposite.

Wandering through the city yesterday, with time on my hands before meeting Ann, I reflected upon the changed streetscape of so much of the CBD. I don't want to launch into a criticism of modernist and post-modernist architecture. But it's clear that even the briefest acquaintance with the photos I mentioned earlier demonstrates that a stroll along George or Pitt Street in the 1950's would have been a visually more pleasant experience than it is now. Buildings were only a few stories in height and had facades that blended with each other and which invited a human presence.

Passing Martin Place yesterday, and despite the continuance of many fine buildings, it was clear that a number of ill-conceived skyscrapers ruined the effect, no matter what direction one might look. The crescent moon hung like a necklace between these ugly structures.

broken bauble
pasted on a concrete sky,
oh slip of moon!

Later on, I took a photo near the spot of another shot taken way back in 1954 of the concourse leading from Central Station adjacent Belmore Park. It is an area that I walk past regularly on my city jaunts. I didn't get the exact location, but near enough to show how 50 years has altered one precinct.