Garden Palace Gates

The gates to the Royal Botanic Gardens from Macquarie St, known as The Palace Garden Gates, are the only remaining signs of a contentious building that was built to show the world that the colony had come a long way from it's humble beginnings.

The Garden Palace was a purpose built exhibition building in Sydney to house The Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. It was designed by colonial architect James Barnet and built in just 8 months. This was largely due to the importing of electric light from England allowing work to be done 24 hours a day.

After the exhibition was finished the building was used as office space for a number of government departments. It also held the records of the 1881 census, railways surveys and land titles. The building was made of wood and in 1882 fire destroyed the palace along with all it's contents.



Another interesting fact connected to the staging of this International Exhibition was that Aboriginal people were still living on the harbour near where the Museum of Contemporary Art is now and the government didn't think that this presented a good image of Sydney so they encouraged them to move out of the city with many moving to La Perouse where there was a large Aboriginal community.