Steep view up the front from Macquarie Place: the great arch with a lattice fanlight, the name on the cornice, pointed buttresses and the mottled brick shaft with its rows of windows. A tree at the left.

Kyle House

27-31 Macquarie Place, Sydney

C. Bruce Dellit. 1931. Art Deco.

Size
About 13 m wide. A leasing page gives 11 levels; a count from photographs gives about 13. No height found; the drawing is estimated
Material
Face brick, precast concrete panels and decoration, rendered masonry
Status
State Heritage Register, 1999. Offices

The site faces the obelisk from which Governor Macquarie measured the colony’s roads. Simeon Lord built a three-storey sandstone mansion and warehouse here beside the Tank Stream, and his family owned it until 1920. The McArthur Shipping and Agency Company, its tenant since the 1890s, bought the property in 1929 and in 1931 commissioned Dellit to replace it. Lord’s building was entirely demolished, and Kyle House opened late that year, built by Stuart Bros.

It was the first commercial building Dellit designed after starting his own practice in 1929, and he was one of its tenants. It is one of only two surviving office buildings by him; the other is Delfin House, which has a similar giant arch. The listing describes an Inter-War Art Deco building that emphasises verticality and the detail of its cladding, reflects the influence of the American skyscraper, and was among the first offices in Sydney to break away from traditional styles.

The upper floors cantilever over a rear courtyard, and a sandstone party wall of 1866 survives on the courtyard’s northern side. The course of the Tank Stream ran along the western boundary, so remains may lie beneath. McArthur renovated the interior in 1983 and sold the building soon after to the Mercantile and General Life Assurance Company.

Read about Art Deco in Sydney

Sources

  1. Kyle House, Sydney, Wikipedia, reproducing NSW State Heritage Register text
  2. Kyle House, 27 Macquarie Place, Cadigal (leasing page, for the count of levels)