Newcastle’s Shame
Ξ May 14th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Demolition, development |
The violent and sudden demise of the Palais Royale was a sad shock to we who blithely imagine Newcastle’s heritage in safe and sympathetic hands. 
The Palais’ veins ran deep through our colourful history, rooted in the Roaring Twenties of a bustling coal and steel city.
Palais Royale’s rich and diverse affairs intertwined strongly with lives and times of all but earliest generations of Novocastrians. It’s happenings were talk of the town, touching indelibly our commercial and social history over the city’s second hundred years.
And now, for the ficklest of reasons, it’s gone.
With always a common touch, from beneath a stylishly simple façade, the front doors opened directly onto the street welcoming ordinary people to great times.
And in an unglamorous little coal and manufacturing town, a seaport to the world, the Palais stood proudly, with few peers.
The balanced iconic symmetry of its fascia projected a striking and evocative street presence. Coupled with so charming and glamorous a moniker the "Palais Royale" became, irresistibly, the city’s most famous building and the place to be.
Hunter Street will miss its spacious graceful counterpoise to those encroaching monotonous monoliths blighting the West End.
Within that crude yet allusive exterior, surviving decades of redesign and re-use, delicate frescos adorned stunning coved ceilings astride bold column work, crowning a great hall of expectant and timeless atmosphere.
A huge paned fanlight that might have dominated a grand foyer, instead framed musicians playing to a mezzanine Loft Nightclub, magnet to sixties sophisticates.
This living heart of civic excitement evolved by demand from market, to skating, to dance hall, to night club, to bandstand, to finally a beloved creative sanctuary for our kids during school holidays.
A venue for all seasons, for all citizens.
Come 2008, dilapidation was not the Palais’ fault and sad disuse not its desire.
Strange, after 8 decades of flash floods, how suddenly the Palais succumbed to damp feet from a June ‘07 deluge that also softened Council’s (apparent) resolve and freed the wrecker’s hammer.
Equally strange, too, that with all the empty lots and derelict street frontage in Hunter Street an incomparable heritage building need topple.
The Palais Royale was a unique gift to this city. A treasure sharing aura and mystique with luckier surviving namesakes around the world, representing more gracious times, anchoring the past against styleless modernity of generational change.
Still, I’m sure we’ll be delighted with the Palais Royale’s successor, anticipating with relish the cultural benefit and sense of identity its harsh jagged immensity will bequeath to our communal landscape.
After all, in a land as tiny as ours with such massive population vertical is the only way left to go.
Eyesore
What’s my problem with this old eyesore making way for the future?
Well, I could if pressed nominate many thousands of OTHER structures in Newcastle well ahead of the Palais Royale deserving of a good crushing and where investors might plonk their ugly masonry cubism. It’s not as if we are short of demolition fodder and downright ugly old buildings.
Calling a ruin an eyesore begs only one question: What made it so?
How many buildings in town have been vandalized, not by drunken malevolent hoons or unhappy street people, but by mercenaries on missions to devalue?
A partisan developer labelling ‘derelict’ an obstacle to his project raises only suspicion. But when passers-by agree, then, effectively, it is.
Yet what would either know?
If Civic Theatre, Newcastle Post Office, Fort Scratchley, or T&G building, become eyesores … shall we simply demolish them too, as obstacles to progress and change?
Shall we flatten the city to appease those with no eye for architectural variety and character, who cannot envision the forbidding ghetto this sunny little city will soon become when the Honeysuckle plague works its way down Hunter Street?
That restoring and preserving a shabby Palais presents only a cost to city bean counters and property development demonstrates crude negligence of what truly benefits Newcastle’s long-term viability.
The people reshaping this city are blinded and bewitched by an ethos whose day of discredit looms.
Forces of urban renewal have no architectural or cultural wisdom, any more than laissez faire economics lights the path of human development. They are both mindless vectors driving us to the precipice of survival via the morally and economically bereft "return on investment."
We allow them too much credit and leeway, observing, curious yet assenting, as they cut swathes through our lives "for progress in the common good."
What Passion?
Newcastle’s Palais Royale lapsed ultimately from public apathy, lack of a hero in city hall, or even a benefactor - not simply because times have changed.
But why no protest?
Newcastle is a contrary and perplexing social microcosm: broadminded citizens of a global village yet disconcertingly xenophobic, parochial, even naive, to foreign visitors.
Despite its enormous breadth and depth of imported communal culture, a membership international in scope, our region can be as banal as its suburban sprawl.
Something about "The Shire" lulls us to apathy, dissipates grandness, and attenuates fervour.
Perhaps community spirit - if ever there was - evaporated forever in allegiance to scattered shopping malls that segment and dilute cultural and commercial focus. Exurban big-box stores gnaw away at our local downtown dollars, tempting shoppers into hours-long convoys across town to buy what local Ma & Pa shops already have, just 5c dearer. In nearby Maitland, for example, megastores, once a brisk walk from High Street, now cluster kilometres away in Death Valley west of Rutherford. No car, no shoppee.
It’s the "shopping experience" we crave, not price. Even communal circuses like the once mighty Newcastle Show wilt in the shade of Westfield’s year-round carnivals.
We’re a populace sedated on shopping. The only recent memorable community passion vented 30 years ago when 4000 drunk patrons rioted at the closing of a mere pub. They still debate if it was mindless alcohol-fuelled fury or civil protest.
So we turn instead to local government - such as Wollongong City Council, sacked for a developer-planner bribes scandal - and "leading citizens" to do the right thing by Our Town.
Of all the people with money to spare in our flourishing extravagant little city, none saw the magic potential of this veteran structure or felt the passion to see a great landmark again bloom and flourish.
No New Beauty
That such a famous, shapely, and historic building could vanish so easily, without public whimper, forebodes darkly the fate of lesser yet more ornate and attractive structures, ones that place themselves at great risk by rising only one level 
above the street and allow (heaven forbid) sunlight to strike pavement, that falsely believe detailed crafts-built fascia and charismatic street-front ambiance (so passé nowadays), ensure survival in this sudden free-for-all urban knockdown.
As high-rise residential scars the small town character of Hunter Street, so fades an obvious future for this lovely city, to which the ugly money seems congenitally blind.
It’s a free country and investors are permitted to constrain architects to whatever banality their funds permit.
Yet as I view beautiful cities around the world that garner praise and attention, that attract both tourist and resident, I see little despoilment by texturally-curt monoliths such as those sprouting around us, suffocating the space, creating windy canyons of noisy shadow, blunting the intricately embroidered skyline.
Instead I see preservation and renovation of delightful architectural anachronisms, almost as if people actually prefer living spaces to look gracious and delicate, as if they enjoy structures of former times made in creative exultance, a pleasure to behold, a source of civic and personal pride.
Meanwhile, as Newcastle explodes in a frenzy of inelegance driven by apparently unlimited funds, I ask: Why are the new buildings not remotely picturesque, or even feigning attractive, in these times of constructional ease?
Stone the crows, Narelle, even brick veneer triple-fronters in Mayfield sport Greco-Roman columns and the odd concrete Venus de Milo! Must Council hand out gargoyles with each approved Dev-Ap? And what’s with 741 Hunter and Battleship Grey? Pick up a few thousand litres of cheap paint from one of Newcastle’s defunct Naval contractors, did we? But I digress.
Why do we allow those of such small-minded interest to generate impendent ghettos for immediate personal gain - to the long-term detriment of all?
Where is the new Customs House, the new T&G Building, the new .. Palais?
And we ignore, at the city’s peril, those who offer alternatives:
(adaptive re-use) is international best practice, but Newcastle is not doing this enough. By more … development our heritage is being destroyed.
The former ‘Palais Royale’ is a sad reminder of Hunter Street’s more glorious times. Such flexible building structures can easily be converted into exciting new public places, and are just waiting for an appropriate adaptive re-use.
It is now widely accepted that historic heritage places provide important cultural benefits and a sense of identity to the wider community, and therefore deserve continued protection, even if this means restrictions of operation or on development.
With those key elements embedded in an overarching strategy, central Newcastle could be turned into a model of a ‘Sustainable City’. For too long no overarching vision has been in place, and political leadership is needed to tackle those priorities.
* Urban Renewal in Newcastle (Link to PDF document - 5.5MB, lengthy download)
* Steffen Lehmann, University of Newcastle Professor, School of Architecture and Built Environment
Perhaps, as social venues go, Palais Royale was a poor relative from the wrong side of the track masquerading as grand lady - lately in shabby clothes, carrying dark secrets of past indiscretions - yet rich in hidden beauties and memories.
And now? Forever lost.
Farewell, old girl, from we who relish beauty from the past.
And good riddance from the city of barbarians.
Appendix:
Modification of consent for 684 Hunter Street, Newcastle West – old Palais Site
The applicant (Newcastle Palais Holdings Inc) asked Council approval to modify the original terms of consent in respect of the redevelopment of the heritage listing Palais Royale building site.
The original consent was based on retaining the Hunter Street façade as part of the development of an 8-storey mixed commercial/ residential development.
The developer asked for the consent to be modified as investigation has found that the facade is not supported on substantial foundations, and has been adversely affected by the Jun 07 storms.
Council approved the modification on the basis of conditions, including strict adherence to drawings by Span Architects and the Statement of Environmental Effects. The developer will be required to display examples of the 1920s ceramic wall tiling into the commercial area café.
* http://www.ncc.nsw.gov.au » in council » Council meetings » Meeting summaries » Development Applications Committee 19 Feb 08
The site is occupied by the derelict and partially demolished ‘Palais Royale’, a former
retail market and Dance Hall that has until recently been utilised as a youth centre.
The building is listed in the Newcastle LEP 2003 as a heritage item of local
significance and the subject site falls within the Newcastle City Centre Heritage
Conservation Area.* Report DA 05/0115 opens as PDF document
Court orders halt Newcastle development scheme
Tuesday 13 May 2008The Supreme Court of New South Wales has ordered the operators of an unregistered managed investment scheme linked to a Newcastle property development to stop promoting or issuing further interests in the scheme following an application by ASIC.
The Court made final orders and declarations by consent against Empower Invest Pty Ltd and Newcastle Palais Holdings Pty Ltd.
* ASIC.gov.au webiste publication
Loving Links
Damien Frost’s invitation card to opening of the Youth Venue. It shows the "Nite Club" sign below the Palais’ neon banner.
ABC Newcastle news piece on Lynn and Carol Carlyle, a Newcastle couple representing the good times.
Toby Duffill’s magnificent rendition of the Palais that properly illustrates its ‘counterpoising’ of those neighbouring monoliths. And the pertinent comment by Denver (US) resident: "I didn’t think Aussies would stand for the destruction of architectural wonders!"
Glory Days - Reliving the Palais is also linked in article above. Bachelor of Comms students Lexie Durbridge and Thomas Hancock made a half hour doco after gathering so much material 10 minutes was way too short.
Lexi, Thomas, please email editor at newcastleonhunter dot com if you wish to share transcript. Love to publish whatever you wish on its own 
page with your credits.
Paterson Real Estate ad for ‘Palais Royale Newcastle’ apartments - while it lasts. Snapshot here for posterity.
Lemminstone.com ~ click ‘comments’ for sense of what it’s all about: "a place where I sometimes played in my band … many national as well as international touring bands played here … I guess you could say it is a huge part of Newcastle and I am not the only one who is sad watching it fade away."
‘Eyesore’ Palais Demolition ~ ABC News report: "We actually had the whole place nailed up with steel banding and they could still break through that. You are just in despair, you cannot control them" .. oh, poor diddums.
I fail to understand what all the fuss about the Palais facade is. At the end of the day it is merely outdated brickwork that blends perfectly with the rest of Newcastle West (RUBBISH). I worked at the Palais as a drummer back in the 80s & it is just another room.
The sooner this town & its council move on the better. Hunter Street is a disgrace & an embarrassment to everyone that lives in the Hunter. Memories are one thing, progress is another.Time to move on Newcastle.