Queen Victoria Building

This guide to the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney follows the campaign to save it from demolition in the 1960s, when architect Harry Seidler called it an architectural monstrosity and the city's Lord Mayor wanted the block flattened for a car park. It traces the building's rougher earlier life too, opening in 1898 as a market that struggled to find tenants before decades as government offices. A group calling itself the Friends of the Queen Victoria Building took up its cause, joined by comedian Barry Humphries, who mocked the demolition plan in verse.