| Historical notes: | The "Eora people" was the name given to the coastal Aborigines around Sydney. Central Sydney is therefore often referred to as "Eora Country". Within the City of Sydney local government area, the traditional owners are the Cadigal and Wangal bands of the Eora.
With the invasion of the Sydney region, the Cadigal and Wangal people were decimated but there are descendants still living in Sydney today.
(Information sourced from Anita Heiss, "Aboriginal People and Place", Barani: Indigenous History of Sydney City http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani )
Mark Foy’s Liverpool Street store was a Sydney landmark for eight decades after 1909. Mark Foy himself was, however, twenty-four years dead when his son Francis erected the building. Francis had come to Sydney from Melbourne after his father’s death in 1884, leased premises in Oxford Street with his brother Mark Jr and early in the twentieth century bought up the fifteen properties which occupied most of the block bounded by Liverpool, Castlereagh, Elizabeth and Goulburn Streets. The existing buildings on the first three streets were demolished in 1907 and the new building, two or three stories high, designed by McCredie and Anderson, opened in 1909. It had Sydney’s first escalator, the Escalier Hoquart, and first car delivery service. The inspiration for the building, though not its detail, seems to have been the Bon Marche in Paris (a connection commemorated still by UTS in its other former Foy building). Many contractors and suppliers were involved in the new store. The distinctive yellow faience brickwork outside was imported from Bermotoff in Yorkshire, the white glazed bricks from Shaw’s Rigg in Glasgow.
Mark Foy’s became a limited company in 1909 and the brothers Francis and Mark jr devoted more time to sport, horse-racing, motoring and, in the case of Mark, the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath. H.V. Foy, another brother, managed the firm after Francis’ full retirement in 1914.
Massive extensions and alterations were made to the store in 1927-1930, designed by Ross and Rowe, creating an eight-storey building. The display windows around the piazza and the upper level ballroom were celebrated features of the renovated store. A planned extension to the south to create a Goulburn Street frontage was not fully achieved before the Depression of the 1930s prevented further building, except for the Castlereagh Street entrance, associated with the Museum underground railway station.
In 1968 the Foy company was taken over by McDowell’s, who were in turn absorbed by Walton’s in 1972, but the store retained its name until Grace Bros leased it from the AMP Co. in 1980 and closed the store in 1983. Already in the 1970s courts of justice had begun to use the upper floors and in 1983 a government committee recommended a multi-court complex, with 16 new court-rooms in the Foy building. The new complex, named after Reginald Downing, a former state Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, was opened by the Premier, Mr Greiner, in 1991. |