(Former) Mortuary Station, Regent St, Sydney

(Former) Mortuary Station, Regent St, Sydney

James Barnet, Byzantine, capital, cemetery, Chippendale, column, funeral, Gothic, Gothic Revival, lancet window, Moorish, Mortuary Station, moulding, New South Wales, NSW, pointed arch, railway, Regent Street Railway Station, Rookwood Cemetery, sculpture, spire, Sydney, Venetian Gothic.

The former Mortuary Station is located behind Sydney’s Central Station in the inner-city suburb of Chippendale on Regent Street, after which it was renamed. The station was designed by James Barnet and completed in 1869. It was part of the Rookwood Cemetery railway line, whereby special funeral trains transported bodies from the city centre to the cemetery for burial. The station is in the Gothic Revival style, in particular the 14th-century Venetian Gothic, and was deliberately designed to appear like a church (Indeed, one of the former stations on the line was dismantled and rebuilt in Canberra where it is now a church). The Venetian Gothic style combined elements from Gothic, Byzantine, and Moorish architecture. Mortuary Station features columns topped with decorated capitals, small lancet windows, pointed arches, a pointed-arch ticket window, decorated chimney, a spire, and bas-relief sculpture including a foliage motif and cherubs
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The Rookwood line was officially closed in 1948 but the renamed Regent Street Railway Station is still sometimes used for special events.

McLeod, Shane

December 17, 2012

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Digital Photograph

Digital Photograph; JPEG