Name: Pitt Street Uniting Church
Location: No. 264 Pitt Street, Sydney
Originally constructed in 1846 to designs by architect John Bibb, with large-scale alterations and additions made in 1866-67 to designs by architect George Allen Mansfield, the church is the third chapel constructed for the Congregational Church in Sydney to accommodate a rapidly growing congregation, and which became the Uniting Church in 1977. It is also the site of the first “Green Ban” to be placed over an historic building, by the Builder Labourers’ Foundation under-secretary Jack Mundey, and the church as a long history of social activism and community care throughout Sydney.
Although altered, the Pitt Street church retains a renowned classical façade that is ‘arguably the finest example of neo-classicism in Australia’ and enough remains of Bibb’s original façade and interior that it can still be read as his design, and it remains his best-known surviving work. The ‘meeting room’ with expansive nave encircled by seated galleries on three sides, centres on the highly decorative pulpit clearly demonstrating the evangelical foundations of the church.
The CMP sought to support the Church’s desire to encourage a diversity of uses for the church building, increase its visibility, and invite community involvement. Community engagement, social justice and equity are of paramount importance to the church and the CMP provided guidance as to how these aspects could be enhance and more fully expressed in the physical attributes of the building, its spatial arrangements and its contents.
Photograph: The Pitt Street Uniting Church in 1870. Source: State Library of NSW
