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1 Railway station.
Still the grandest building in Albury after 127 years. The imposing 91m-long building in the Victorian Italianate style is symmetrical with the clock tower in the centre. The railway engineer John Whitton selected red and yellow bricks with a wealth of pilasters, arch lintels, pediments, architraves and string courses. It was built to make a statement to Victoria: NSW starts here!
2 Regent Cinemas:
Betro Abikhair built the Regent Theatre (it’s original name in 1927) for live theatre and silent movies, employing architect Louis Harrison to supervise the Art Deco building. If you think it looks good from the outside, go in Cinema 1 and inspect the Adam-style interior with its marble and Queensland maple foyer and auditorium with ivory cameos and plaques.
3 Post office:
Although similar post offices exist elsewhere, Albury’s is one of the largest of its kind, thanks to extensions along Kiewa Street built in the 1950s in the same style of the original Victorian Free Classical style used in 1878. Fortunately Australia Post failed to sell the building in the 1990s and gave it a sympathetic heritage restoration.
4 Murray Conservatorium:
Built as a telegraph office in 1886, this Classical style building was the hub of communications between Sydney and Melbourne for decades. The arcade at ground level and the balcony under other round arches make it one of the most pleasing old buildings in the city, though it is a bit of a rabbit warren inside.
5 Gardens Medical Centre:
Albury’s highest office building (25.75m) opened last year and dominates the western part of the city’s business district. The impressive 21st century six-storey building was designed by Stephen Camillo, of Leffler Simes architects, using glass walls and special metal that resembles white stone, while appearing to float above a car park.
6 Albury Art Gallery:
Architect Gordon McKinnon’s 1908 masterpiece is described by the NSW Heritage Council as “an exuberantly-designed town hall and chambers in Edwardian Baroque style...with a profusion of painted stucco relief work, dominant features being the Baroque pediment, gable and centre shingled tower with iron lace flagpole platform, tall chimneys, parapet cupolas and lantern roof ventilators.”
7 St Patrick’s Presbytery:
Melbourne architect Fenton Spencer designed this lovely presbytery faced with granite from an older presbytery. It is unusually large because there was talk at the time (1900-04) of a new cross-border Catholic diocese that would require a “bishop’s palace”.
8 Manor House Motel:
Several early motels in the city were bland and small, but Gabe Farrah’s motel, opened in 1987, took the industry to new levels. It was a catalyst for further development along the old Hume Highway in Young Street. The style is English Tudor and appropriately it has a Westminster Restaurant.
9 St Matthew’s Church:
One of the few Albury buildings that is 150 years old. The walls of the chancel built in the 1870s survived the 1991 fire. This allowed architect Ian O’Connor to design a spectacular recreation of an English Victorian parish church using modern technology and materials.
10 Lighting Bonanza:
The entrepreneurial drive of Lebanese migrant Betro Abikhair is reflected in The Big Store, built in 1912 when this part of Dean Street was barely developed. It took Albury’s retail trade to new heights. Abikhair added a Commonwealth of Australia coat