Architectural model from King Street streetscape

This is one of 23 architectural models representing King Street, Sydney, in the 1880s. This streetscape reveals a lost city of trades, shops and entertainment, in buildings of a human scale. King Street was a magnet at night and by day a retail mecca.

Yet Sydney was also taking on its modern form as a business and professional centre, with architecture to match. This lost city catches Sydney at a cross roads in its history. A bustling variety of people and activities began to make way for a …