Botanical gardens and General Post Office, Perth, Western Australia

Abstract

View from the Botanical Gardens looking across St Georges Terrace to the Treasury Building that was used for a period as Perth's General Post Office. The gardens include paths, formal beds and exotic plantings such aloes and conifers. The Botanical Gardens are located on land set aside as a public park in 1845. In the course of the park's existence it has been known by many names including the Treasury Gardens, Government Gardens, Stirling Gardens and the Supreme Court Gardens.The building is constructed in the typical style of colonial Perth with decorative brickwork and rendered facings. It has a high, steeply sloping roof with dormer windows, projecting pilasters and some Victorian classical ornament around the higher windows. The Treasury was built in two stages. The two storey Barrack Street frontage was designed by Richard Roach Jewell and completed in 1874. Around 1887 Chief Architect George Temple Pool designed the St Georges Terrace section and added a third storey to the earlier part of the complex.