Baulkham Hills Shire Council Chambers is pulled down and I'm sad.
It was a cluster of 3 of four brick buildings set in a bushland setting. It was a huge, and mostly made of bricks. Not concrete slabs like the modern constructions. It must have taken trillions of bricks.
The last couple of weeks I've been driving past it watching the first building under attack by the demolishers. This morning it was finally reduced to a heap of bricks, concrete and twisted reo.
John Barker, retired Shire Engineer in an interview 2006:
"It’s still a modern building, nineteen years old and I think it’s a better building than a lot of the buildings that have been built for other councils in the intervening period.
It’s a very functional building and architecturally it’s outstanding. The design of the building was carried out under the supervision of a man by the name of Phil Zadro who ran Zadro constructions and his architect was a fellow by the name of Tom Simmett.
Tom Simmett was also involved in the Hills Centre construction but in the case of the Council Chambers Phil Zadro ran the project and he kept it within budget, cost was about nine million dollars and the fact was that the Council paid for the building from the profits of land development it had carried out.
Council had in the early 70’s decided that it would buy land and develop land and sell it for housing and take the profits rather than allow the other developers like Parkes Developments and Stocks & Holdings to take the profits and that was a really sound financial decision, although there are still some people who say Council should not be in that sort of activity, but it paid for the cost of the Council Chambers when otherwise the ratepayers would have had to pay for that, so there were substantial benefits in Council carrying out that commercial, entrepreneurial activity."
It was only 30 years old but built to last for centuries.
It's being torn down to make way for the planned North-West Rail Line.
I wonder if the the bricks can be recycled.
