What's Under Brisbane City Hall? - Skate Rinks, Tar Pits and Mysterious Phantom Building!

We published our speculation on a  what's under Brisbane City Hall in a pre-Easter rush, and in our haste omitted the citing of any source material but we have been busy clipping and snipping away. The clipping above is of the most comprehensive article we found in relation to the early construction work of City Hall. It gives a great overview of the construction of the Town Hall foundations, an account of activities of the Corporation Yards and the protracted battle of where the hall was to be built. You can view and read the full article at Trove Australia by following the citations at the end of the post.

"The site was used in recent recent years as a storage yard for the City Council drays, tar supplies and other municipal odds and ends. Incidentally it may be mentioned that the site question was for many years the subject of protracted City Council debates, while the final location of the new Town Hall was still undecided. The aldermen who favoured Albert square had many hard controversial battles to fight with those who in and out of season espoused the rival claims of the Valley, and it was only when the foundation stone of the new building had been laid twice that the way was at length clear for a beginning to be made with the Town Hall."

The Bradley and Holland car dealership on the Adelaide and Albert St. corner of the City Hall site was originally the Columbia Skating rink. The amazing thing about the ice rink is that it was opened in 1888. Yep, of the all the things that the early colonial settlers needed they managed to build  roller skating rink when Brisbane had been an independent colony for all of 30 years or so.

When the mysterious archaeological site  under City Hall was recently unearthed, there was mention of plenty of tar being present on the site. The above clipping reports a fire in  the the tar pit at the Corporation Yards in 1917. The tar pit was situated on the Anne and Roma St side of the site and the report makes note of the loss of one hundred gallons of tar and that shed housing the pit was destroyed by fire.

And finally, a mystery and some amusing local government argy bargy. A report titled , "A  Municipal "Dug Out"" published in 1919  claims that large sums of unauthorised money had been spent on the construction of a building within the grounds of the Corporation Yards. The allegation was that this was not a modest building and that it was used by the Alderman of the city. In a prior Under City Hall post we published a photo of the yard prior to its clearing that shows a number of ramshackle buildings and stone foundations on the site. Could it have been that some mysterious, phantom building existed on the site that was demolished prior to the final removal and clearing of the yards.
"Alderman Buchanan suggested that it was a miniature Town Hall, and another that it was a dug-out, but whether as a place of refuge for Aldermen from infuriated ratepayers was not made clear."

We'll refer to this as the the "What's Under City Hall Mystery...Mystery!"

Citations:

1921 'NEW TOWN HALL.', The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864-1933), 4 November, p. 6, viewed 1 May, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20517784

1888 'THE COLUMBIA SKATING RINK.', The Brisbane Courier(Qld. : 1864-1933), 28 June, p. 6, viewed 1 May, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3478980

1919 'A Municipal " Dug-out.".', The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864-1933), 29 January, p. 6, viewed 1 May, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20236519

1917 'FIRES.', The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864-1933), 20 October, p. 4, viewed 1 May, 2011, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article20193739

What's Under Brisbane City Hall...An Update!

For weeks I looked for a photo of the Corporation Yards without any luck until I scoured the Wikimedia files from the State Library of Queensland. Amongst 20,000 other images and tagged with with an inaccurate description I located the photograph below.

The large structure to the left, running parallel to Adelaide St., is the Bradley and Holland car dealership. On the Corporation Yard site there seems to be foundations of at least two buildings to the left and what looks like some well worn pathways that form a cross in the centre. There are at least seven individual buildings scattered along the back perimeter and the Anne St.side of the site and running along the rear is a large iron roofed building, this building may have been a military recruitment centre built in about 1912.


The photo below shows the foundations for Brisbane City Hall dated February 10, 1923. The buildings on the site, whilst ramshackle,  are not the original buildings from the corporation yards. The foundations on the Adelaide St. side show the deeper L shaped section that formed the building basement, the rest of the site has been filled and raised. These photos are taken from the same vantage point so it is easy to see the difference in height of the area that would lie directly under the Hall's auditorium today.





Is that the mystery of what's under Brisbane City Hall solved? The documentary evidence supported my theory and the photo adds further weight to the case. Are the old Corporation Yards buried under City Hall? There is no word from the heritage architects working on the find, let's wait and see. Happy Easter!

What Have They Found Under Brisbane City Hall?

In recent months the Brisbane City Council has announced the discovery of many relics amongst  the excavations of city hall. While there have been a number of finds, the most recent discovery was of a significant streetscape and the foundations of at least two structures. The recent finds were described in the media as, "A cobblestone street and horse stables from Brisbane's pioneering past have been discovered during excavation work at City Hall." and that "The buildings were made from porphyry [stone] then they added concrete and bitumen throughout the area. It was a shock discovery amongst the excavation of the halls auditorium and a team of archaeologists are busy trying to make sense of the find. Here at the McWhirters Project we couldn't help ourselves and decided to see what we could discover amongst the newspaper resources of Trove Australia.

The final selection of the site for the current Brisbane City Hall was a local government showdown. Two other sites were considered for City Hall, the corner block where the Aurora Tower stands today (Cnr. Creek and Queen  streets) was an early contender but subdivided into 17 individual blocks, the other controversial site was opposite Centenary Place (bordered by Wickham and Anne streets). It was later to be the site of Brisbane's proposed Roman Catholic Basilica, which was a pet project of the influential Archbishop Duhig. There were allegations of impropriety involving the church's selling of the site to the council and the church in turn bought it back a short time later and proposed the cathedral. Foundations were laid in the late 1920's and the site became part of Brisbane folk lore, known as the Crypt, and sat derelict and idle for eighty years until it was redeveloped as an apartment complex, Cathedral Place.

In the early twentieth century King George Square was known as Market Square and the site where City Hall stands today became known as Town Hall Reserve once the site was finally decided. The reserve actually housed what was known as the Corporation Yards, originally livestock yards until an outbreak of ticks in the late 1800's closed down the sales yards and  the site was utilised as a general stores and works yard for the local council. There was a tar pit, gravel pits and all manner of tool, plant and equipment used to build and maintain the city's infrastructure. The yard was also used for the sharpening and maintenance of local labourers tools (in particular stone masons) and stored the paving stones and curbing used in building and maintaining Brisbane's early streets. To make way for the foundations of City Hall, the Corporation Yards were relocated to Constance St., Fortitude Valley which  were still in operation up until only a few years ago.

The cobblestone street discovered may not have been an actual street but rather part of a network of pathways and drive ways that allowed the movement of plant and equipment. The stables may have housed the horses the council used in dray teams and would further support the theory of an internal road network on the yard site. The buildings found  made from the porphyry stone were likely structures from the original sale yards, the reference to the concrete and asphalt makes sense as there would have been plenty spare as there was a tar pit on the site and concrete would have been in plentiful supply.

Whilst researching our City Hall Project we found lot's of interesting material; newspaper articles, sketches, maps and diagrams of City Hall. Some may have not been seen since they were originally published in the newspapers decades ago so we will post these along with the source material supporting some our speculation on what's been found under Brisbane City Hall. A report on the find is due from the archaeological team in a few weeks and excitedly we wait to hear what the experts have to say.