Lands Department Building Sydney

The grand Victorian-era Lands Department Building on Bridge Street also has frontages to Loftus, Bent and Gresham streets and overlooks Circular Quay. It was built to house the Department of Lands and replaced the earlier Survey Office on this site. Architectural historians consider it is equivalent to the great public buildings of the British Empire and embodied the work of expanding and mapping the colony and state of New South Wales.

The first stage of the Lands Department Building, erected between 1876 and 1881, was designed by James Barnet, who was the NSW Colonial Architect from 1862 to 1890. Barnet also designed the second stage, which was begun in 1888 and completed in 1892, two years into Walter Liberty Vernon's tenure as Government Architect. The majority of the building, including the facades on Loftus, Bent and Gresham streets, was built during this second phase.

Source: Dictionary of Sydney