Reserve Bank

About

Reserve Bank of Australia Building is a heritage-listed bank building at 65 Martin Place, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.

Martin Place was originally a small lane called Moore Street which ran between George Street and Pitt Street and was widened into a substantial thoroughfare as part of the setting for the General Post Office in 1891. In 1921, Moore Street was renamed Martin Place. In 1926, the Municipal Council of Sydney purchased a number of properties in Macquarie and Phillip Streets in anticipation of the extension of Martin Place to Macquarie Street, including those properties which would later be demolished for the Reserve Bank of Australia 's head office building. After Martin Place was formed the residential land on either side of the street was auctioned in 1936 however, the properties between Phillip and Macquarie Streets were passed in and did not sell until after World War II. The closure of Martin Place to traffic occurred between 1968 and 1978 and it became a pedestrianised civic plaza.

The Commonwealth Bank was established by legislation in 1911. The main functions of the bank were to undertake general banking and savings bank activities. In 1945 the bank's powers were formally widened to include exchange control and the administration of monetary and banking policy with the Commonwealth Bank Act and the Banking Act. The Reserve Bank Act 1959 preserved the original corporate body under the name of the Reserve Bank of Australia to carry on the central banking functions of the Commonwealth Bank, but separated commercial banking and savings banking activities into the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The Reserve Bank has since then been Australia's central bank with its own Board, Governor and staff.

The Reserve Bank has two broad responsibilities— monetary policy and the maintenance of financial stability, including the stability of the payments system. The Bank's powers are vested in the Reserve Bank Board and the Payments System Board. In carrying out its responsibilities, the Bank is an active participant in financial markets and the payments system. It is also responsible for the printing and issuing of Australian currency notes. As well as being a policy-making body, the Reserve Bank is a large financial institution which provides selected banking and registry services to Australian Government and state government customers and some overseas official institutions. Its assets include Australia's holdings of gold and foreign exchange. The Bank is wholly owned by the Australian Government.

A requirement of the Reserve Bank Act 1959 was that the head office of the bank must not be in the same building as the head office of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) or any other bank. In line with this requirement, separate buildings were constructed in Darwin and Canberra. The Bank currently consists of a Head Office, located in Sydney, branches in Adelaide and Canberra, regional offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth and representative offices in London and New York.

The land on which the Reserve Bank is built, was in the 19th century occupied on by the first Wesleyan Chapel built in 1821 and subsequently used as a Unitarian Chapel in 1850, a Wesleyan School House also built in 1821 and purchased in 1843 by the Roman Catholic Church to be used as a school (demolished c. 1876 ). There was also a freestanding Georgian house occupied by a solicitor and a Georgian cottage.

By the mid-1870s following the demolition of the church and school a row of three three-storey Italianate terrace houses known as "Lucretia Terrace" was erected ( c. 1876 ). The Georgian house was demolished and two four-storey late Victorian terrace houses were erected (1891). In c. 1875 the Georgian cottage was demolished and the cottage next door and two three-storey terraces were built; one of these was demolished in 1921 and a three-storey brick building known as "Whitehall" was erected on the site.

In 1957, the Director-General of Works (Dr Lodge) suggested to the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank that the site at the top of Martin Place, owned by the Sydney City Council would be suitable for the construction of the head office of the Reserve Bank, and it was subsequently purchased for this purpose. The Bank's administrators called for a design for the building which was contemporary and international, to exemplify a post-war cultural shift away from an architectural emphasis on strength and stability towards a design that would signify the bank's ability to adapt its policies and techniques to the changing needs of its clientele. Before plans were drawn up representatives of the Reserve Bank and the Commonwealth Department of Works made detailed studies overseas into Reserve Bank planning and organisation.

The Sydney Reserve Bank building was designed by the Commonwealth Department of Works, Bank and Special Project Division (Sydney) in 1959 under the direction of a Design Committee consisting of: C. Mc Growther, Superintendent of Reserve Bank Premises; H.I. Ashworth, Consulting Architect (Sydney University); C.D. Osborne, Director of Architecture Department of Works; R.M. Ure, Chief of Preliminary Planning, Department of Works; F.C. Crocker Architect in charge, Bank Section, Dept. of Works; and G.A. Rowe, Supervising Architect, Bank Section, Dept. of Works. The consulting engineer was D. Rudd and Partners and the builder was E.A. Watts Pty Limited. The site was cleared in 1961 and the building was completed by 1964 ready for occupation in January 1965. It was built to accommodate more than 1850 people at a cost of 10 million dollars.

In a press release on the completion of the Reserve Bank headquarters building in Sydney, the then governor, Herbert Coombs highlighted the contemporary design of the building:

"The massive walls and pillars used in the past to emphasise the strength and permanence in bank buildings are not seen in the new head office... Here, contemporary design and conceptions express our conviction that a central bank should develop with growing knowledge and a changing institutional structure and adapt its policies and techniques to the changing community within which it works".

The Reserve Bank design is characteristic of buildings of this era on less constrained sites, where the architect utilised the opportunity to define the base from the shaft using a podium. The building was constructed using a steel frame supporting reinforced concrete floor slabs (using lightweight concrete). This was a solution to the need to produce an economical structural system using a combination of steel and concrete.

The materials used in construction of the Reserve Bank were to be of Australian origin and manufacture. Externally, maintenance and durability determined the choice of marble, granite, aluminium and glass. The facade of the tower had the structural and functional columns expressed as vertical Imperial black granite shafts with Wombeyan marble spandrel panels. The white marble faced pre-cast concrete spandrel panels alternated with recessed windows between the granite columns. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd-floor perimeter beams were faced with Wombeyan marble with a recessed glazed screen wall to the office areas behind a balcony.

Internally decorative ceilings which emphasised the structural bays appeared in buildings of the 1960s and were used in the Reserve Bank. Impressive aluminium decorative ceiling panels emphasised the structural bays of the ground floor public space and lift lobby. The entry and forecourt were paved in Narranderra Grey marble, marble being the most popular stone throughout this period. The ground floor lift lobby walls and internal walls facing the forecourt were clad in Wombeyan marble. The east and west walls of the entry vestibule were clad in Imperial black granite.

Prestige areas for the conduct of important company business in buildings of this period generally had ceilings treated in the same manner as general office ceilings, the exception being the board rooms and executive areas, as is the case in the Reserve Bank where shallow, curved plaster vaults enriched the space. The floor of the board room was paved in Wombeyan white marble. Specially woven heavy-duty wool carpet manufactured in Australia was used in the general office and executive areas.

Walls of the period were often timber panelled, in the Reserve Bank special areas had demountable timber panelling in Queensland black bean and Tasmanian blackwood.

The ground floor, and sometimes mezzanine or first floor levels, of many buildings of this period, accommodated service-based commerce. Often this activity represented a public interface for the owner/occupants of the building. The Reserve Bank was constructed with a four-storey podium divided into two upper floors with projecting horizontal fins and two floors of full height recessed glazing to the mezzanine below. This contained the two-storey public area and the banking chamber in the mezzanine over. Also included in public areas of a number of office buildings of this period was an auditorium or theatrette, and one was included in the Sydney Reserve Bank.

Also included were two residential flats to accommodate senior executives travelling from interstate, a relatively uncommon feature for office buildings of this period.

The building was the central distribution point for notes and coin for New South Wales and Papua New Guinea and the basement included the vaults or strongrooms. They were innovative in their use of concrete and metal sheet to create an impenetrable surround for the strong rooms. The metal strongroom doors are also significant for their size and sophistication.

The Reserve Bank was a prestigious and desirable place to work. There was a strong staff hierarchy and senior positions had considerable community status. This status is demonstrated in physical terms by the design of executive and staff areas in the building. In the 1960s the building was known to provide more extensive staff facilities compared with other contemporary buildings. In this building they consisted of the cafeteria, executive and Board dining rooms, the staff lounge, the staff library, a medical suite, squash courts and associated amenities, an auditorium and an observation deck on the 20th level for the use of staff and ex-staff. A firing range was provided for the training of security guards. The provision of the squash courts and the medical centre would appear to be uncommon facilities provided in multi-storey buildings of this period.