Queen's Album e-catalogue - Catalog - Page 53
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Newcastle Custom House
c. 1880
Black and white photograph
State Library of NSW
X981/3
(left)
Newcastle
c. 1880
Black and white photograph [detail]
State Library of NSW
X981/3
Newcastle, where the Hunter River meets the
Pacific Ocean, became an industrial powerhouse
during Queen Victoria’s reign. Natural resources
aplenty, the city’s economy was founded on
coal. Maritime ports and the completion of the
Great Northern Railway in the 1860s expanded
Newcastle’s export markets and grew the local
population. Banking houses, public buildings and
places of business—including the James Barnet
designed Italianate Renaissance Revival style
Custom House completed in 1877—expressed
the city’s economic and civic progress.
