Broadway, Sydney

George Street West (Broadway), ca. 1930 taken from the heights of the Grace Bros. building

Broadway is historically important because it is one of the first roads built in the colony of New South Wales, in 1794. It had been called "George Street South" and then "George Street West". After being widened in 1906 when the Central railway station was built, George Street west of Railway Square, it became known as "The Broadway".[1] This name was subsequently shortened to just "Broadway".

In the early nineteenth century, travel to Parramatta on Parramatta Road attracted a toll and this was charged from the area now known as Railway Square. The toll gate was subsequently moved to the approximate junction of the present Broadway and Parramatta Road.

St Benedict's Church on Parramatta Road (now incorporated into the University of Notre Dame campus) is the oldest consecrated Catholic Church in Australia.[2] It was the parish church of Norman Gilroy, the first Australian to become a cardinal.

Broadway was once a major retailing centre, and for 90 years was home to the flagship complex of department store chain Grace Brothers. The complex consisted of two stores on either side of Bay Street. It was visited by Queen Elizabeth II during her 1954 visit to Australia. Retailing on Broadway declined and the store was eventually closed in 1995. Today this site contains the Broadway Shopping Centre on the western side and the UniLodge on Broadway on the eastern side.

The southern side of the road was dominated by the Carlton & United brewery. The brewery closed in December 2006 and the site was sold on 29 June 2007.[3] The site has been redeveloped into a mixed use precinct called Central Park, which includes a new public park located just off Broadway of approximately 6,500 square metres (70,000 sq ft) in size,[3] and a new tower called One Central Park designed by Jean Nouvel and featuring "vertical gardens" by Patrick Blanc.[4] Located opposite the University of Technology Sydney, One Central Park is an apartment complex with a shopping centre called Central located on the lower levels.[5]

Broadway was a busy tram thoroughfare in the first half of the 20th century, until the line's closure in 1958.[6] Since then it has been the primary entry point into the central business district for State Transit bus services from the Inner West suburbs until 1 July 2018 when the services were taken over by Transit Systems..

A number of educational institutions are located on or around Broadway. These include the International Grammar School (IGS), University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), University of Notre Dame, University of Sydney and the Sydney Institute of TAFE.

UTS has a particularly strong presence. The UTS Tower is the tallest structure on Broadway and is a Sydney landmark. Designed in the brutalist style, it has been described as one of Sydney's ugliest buildings. An adjacent building on Broadway designed by Denton Corker Marshall was completed in 2014.[7] There are also plans to redesign the podium of the tower.[8]

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  The Embassy Conference Centre is a historic building, built in the 1890s as the first branch of the Bank of New South Wales.
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  Bar Broadway
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  The Clare Hotel
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  Agincourt Hotel
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  Abercrombie Hotel
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  St Benedicts church with the University of Notre Dame behind.
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  Central Park apartments
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  Vision of redesigned Tower podium and the Denton Corker Marshall
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  UTS Tower building in the background
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  One Central Park apartments
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  Federation-era warehouse

 Australian Roads portal

• Shirley Fitzgerald (2009). "Broadway". Dictionary of Sydney. Retrieved 25 September 2015. [CC-By-SA]

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