Taking you along Smollett and Dean Streets this tour showcases 21 sites over 13 locations. It is the perfect way to experience Albury’s beautiful CBD in the context of our rich, pioneering history.
Designed by Henry Deane and built over 1881 and 1882, the original Albury Station Master’s Residence featured a sitting room, dining room, scullery, pantry, kitchen, front verandah and five bedrooms upstairs.
The plans for the house showed that every room had its own fireplace and, although unusual for the times, water was piped directly into the home.
As the last stop on the Great Southern Railway line, Albury Railway Station was once one of Australia’s most important rail terminals. The building is listed on the Register of the National Estate.
Designed by NSW Railways Chief Engineer, John Whitton, it acted as the transfer point for the change in rail gauge between NSW and Victoria. A standard gauge between Sydney and Melbourne was only introduced in 1962.
Symmetrically designed in the grand Italianate manner, the Station was first used for public service on 26 February, 1882. At over 450m, the Station’s platform has been credited as one of Australia’s longest.
The former Watersteet’s Hotel is a classic example of the late colonial style, two-storey country hotel. The building was designed by local architects Gordon & Gordon and erected in 1884 for Mrs Jane Pool.
The hotel became known as the Commercial Hotel, but is better known for its ownership under the locally renowned Waterstreet family. The hotel also served as a quarantine centre during the outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1919.
Known to local schoolkids as ‘The Castle’, the two storey Albury Public School was built in 1891 by architect W.E. Kemp. The building’s Victorian style and Queen Anne influence are evident in the fine detailing of the brickwork and terracotta elements.
The Castle was, in fact, the third schoolhouse to be erected in Albury. The original National School was built on the corner of Dean and Kiewa Streets in 1850, then relocated circa 1861 to the schoolhouse on Olive Street, which is still in service today and has been placed on the Register of the National Estate.
Albury’s original Catholic Church was erected in 1858. On 21 August, 1870, the Reverend Dr Michael McAlroy laid the foundation stone for a new Saint Patrick’s Church, subsequently opened on 24 November, 1872.
The decorative window and door dressings, unchanged since the 1870s, were quarried at nearby Table Top, and the stained-glass windows were the work of Australia’s premier stained-glass artist, John Falconer.
Other buildings in the Catholic precinct include the former St Brigid’s Convent, St Patrick’s Presbytery and the former Christian Brothers’ Monastery.
This grand old building, on a site once occupied by the Exchange Hotel, was once Australia’s largest inland wool store.
Prior to being redesigned by Louis Harrison in 1933, it had a 104-metre frontage along Smollett Street. By 1962, its total floorspace was a whopping 2.75 hectares, and it could warehouse 12,000 bales of wool.
The Dalgety Farmers & Graziers Woolstore is a powerful and poignant reminder of the importance of the wool trade in the development of our nation.
Apart from several hotels, Kia Ora was Albury’s first major commercial building. Built at a total cost of £3,914, the building was described at the time as ‘…an ornament to the town and a standing monument to the value of Albury granite’.
It opened its doors as The Bank of New South Wales on 1 June, 1858. Kia Ora has since served as a residence, stock and station agency, music academy, and part of the NSW Health Service.
The Albury Botanic Gardens were opened by Mayor William Jones in 1877, and were originally laid out in the form of a Union Jack.
Inside the main gates, which commemorate another Albury Mayor, Robert Wilkinson, you’ll find an award-winning collection of over 1,000 plant species, sprawling over 10 acres (4 hectares). These species include a 46m Queensland Kauri, and a Lone Pine from Gallipoli, planted in the Gardens on Anzac Day, 1936.
The Victorian stuccoed facade and neo-classic style of the Beehive Buildings make a significant architectural contribution to Albury’s main street.
Details such as the balustered parapet with its decorative urns add considerable character to the streetscape. Built between the 1850’s and 1880’s, on the site formerly occupied by the Fanny Ceres Flour Mill, tenants have included a chemist, stock and station agent, saddler, tailor, sports store, and the offices of prominent local architect, Louis Harrison.
The Globe Hotel was built for John Roper, a member of Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1844 expedition from Brisbane to Port Essington, and Albury’s first Clerk of Petty Sessions from 1847.
In 1859, when the NSW government decided that Sydney Road would encompass Albury’s Kiewa and Dean Streets, the enterprising Roper recognised a business opportunity. He commissioned the design and construction of a two-storey, eighteen-room hotel with stables. The Globe opened to travellers and locals alike in October of 1860.
The origins of the Albury Post Office building date back to 1861, when its main function was as the Telegraph Office. In 1877, a revamped Post Office was designed in the Victorian Free Classical style by James Barnet and built by Alexander Frew.
The building included private accommodation for the postmaster, stables and a buggy house. The first floor comprised of six rooms and incorporated the clock tower, the bells of which first rang out in November of 1879.
In 2011, the Albury Post Office was placed on the Commonwealth Heritage List.
Standing on a landmark corner that was originally occupied by Albury’s first National School, the Mate’s Building is one of the City’s most iconic and much-loved edifices.
The site was purchased by T. H. Mate in 1860 for £700. The original Mate’s Building was destroyed by fire in 1915 and replaced by the current structure in 1916, with a full second storey behind the 1916 facade completed in 1931. For several decades, Mate’s was the focal point of Albury retail. The building underwent major redevelopment in 1987.
The Albury Court House was constructed in 1860, and is classified by the National Trust. Designed by colonial architect Alexander Dawson in the Classic Revival style, and built by Thomas Allen, local grey granite was used for the Palladian-style facade and portico.
Features of a bygone era include the two holding cells at the rear, an iron-railed dock, an original painted coat of arms, and a press gallery where, traditionally, journalists have carved their names.
The building, now part of Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), replaced Albury’s original Town Hall. Intended to show the ‘energy, enterprise and grit’ of a district recovering from harsh times, the architecture is a good example of the Federation Free Classical style, prevalent from 1890 to 1915.
The Town Hall was officially opened on 17 July, 1908, and served as a recruitment office and Red Cross depot during both World Wars. After a major re-design and extension, the building became home to MAMA in October 2015.
Built in 1940 to replace dilapidated commercial and retail shop fronts, the AMP building was designed by Albury architect, S. S. Oxenham, who also designed other prominent Albury buildings such as the Masonic Hall in Kiewa Street.
Its three storeys showcase a symmetrical facade, with subdued spandrels between the second and third storeys to emphasise a vertical appearance. The building is topped by fine statuettes, with a Latin inscription that reads ‘Amicus certus in re incerta’ or ‘A sure friend in uncertain times’.
The T&G Building evokes the glamour of 1930s New York. The four-storey, ‘skyscraper’ style tower was built in 1940 as an addition to the existing three-storey building of shops, offices and a billiard parlour.
The tower, with its stepped pyramidal summit, rises to a height of around 26m and is emphasised by the vertical treatment of the windows.
To this day, the T&G Building stands as one of Albury’s landmark buildings and remains in a virtually unaltered state.
Now known as the Murray Conservatorium, this imposing two-storey building, built in the Classic Revival style by Messrs Hardy and Downey of Wagga Wagga, has graced the eastern end of Albury’s civic block since 1886. Originally used as a Telegraph Station, the building also incorporated the telephone exchange from 1888 until 1904.
In the early 1900s, the building served as a trade school and a museum, before becoming home to the Riverina Music Centre in 1981. The NSW Heritage Council placed a permanent conservation order on the building in 1981.
More recently known to locals as the site of the ANZ Bank, and now Bank WAW, the original Union Bank building was constructed by Frew and Logan in 1907. It featured a small banking chamber and strong room in the centre, with a manager’s residence on the second floor.
Major internal alterations were carried out in 1975. Before its function as a place of commerce, the site was a popular campsite for travelling side shows. It was later purchased by Joe ‘Walnut’ Ormiston, who earned his nickname from the enormous walnut tree that once stood here.
Another of Albury’s prestigious commercial buildings, the CML Building was erected in 1925 and extended to its present size in 1938. Its five-story clock tower has, for almost a century, helped to define Albury’s main street.
The building was designed by prominent Melbourne architect, Nahum Barnet, who was regarded as Melbourne’s most innovative producer of commercial buildings during the Federation period.
Images first flickered onto the silver screen of the Regent Cinema in 1927. Built by Syrian born Betro Abicare (Abikhair), influences from the art deco style can be seen on the exterior Dean Street and David Street facades, while inside elaborate decorative plaster mouldings exude the grandeur and elegance of the roaring twenties.
The original theatre seated 1,286 movie-goers and, from the late 1940’s, dress-circle patrons were able to stroll out to a rooftop garden, where a waterfall disguised the cooling tower. The Regent Theatre is listed as part of the Heritage Trust of Australia.
This was originally the site of Thomas Delaney’s Bedding Factory, which operated for 20 years until Betro Abicare (Abikhair), patriarch of a prominent family of local retailers, built the present store in 1911. Then known as the Australian Building it soon became popularly known as ‘The Big Store’.
Designed in the Commercial Federation style, key features include the detailed parapet and the Australian coat of arms on the corner facade. Now over a century old, ‘The Big Store’ remains one of Albury’s important architectural characters.
The blue plaque on this building recognises one of the first successful nominees in the NSW Blue Plaques program, Betro Abicare, for his contributions to Albury, and the broader Lebanese community.
