Sunday 17 June 2007

Air grate


Nicely weathered (brass?) basement vent in granite. Central Sydney (Department of Lands)

12 comments:

  1. It's very artistic for an air vent, or is this standard fare?

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  2. What a beautiful color, almost like weathered copper!

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  3. Kate : it's in a 19th century building - not standard these days!

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  4. One of these nice details from the age where the time spent to work was not as important as the result...

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  5. How beautiful! Looks rather Art Nouveau. Just love the style and the colour.

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  6. And perhaps the availability of cheap labour a less wonderful aspect, Alice? But I I have to confess that I've always loved those old Bridge Street Buildings.

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  7. Sorry, Norman, I don't really understand what you mean...Hope I've not been indelicate without wanting it, Sally.

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  8. Air gate - is that the pocket spaces from the basemen?

    The patina on the iron work is amazing.

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  9. very decorative

    but in the event of flood it the grids should be stopped

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  10. alice: yes, real craftsmanship.
    norman not bridge St and the old Lands Dept Bldg - this is the current building (dformerly registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages, then Land Title office, now reamalgamated land Titles and Lands dept) at the top of Macquarie St.
    bergson It's higher up the wall than any flood i've known in Sydney, though who knows what the future may bring!

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  11. That's a relief for me, sally. Try as I might I couldn't remember that grille in Bridge Street, but assumed it must have been me losing my marbles. I have lost a few, of course, but feel better now I realise which building it was. The old B.D.M. Building is magnificent, and you've inspired me to have a look inside it again to see how it's changed.

    Apologies, Alice, you weren't at all 'indelicate'. It's just that old buildings like the B.D.M. couldn't be built nowadays, because, for example, the labour costs would be prohibitive. They don't build Norman Castles any more either, in part because modern technology while being far more efficient in many ways, isn't ideal for some older style structures; and in part because training and paying an appropriate work force would now be too costly.

    But I still prefer the older styles --- and they give me an added incentive to walk far more than might otherwise be the case.

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