The Tallest Building

This church (now a private dwelling) used to have a 40m high steeple atop its roof.

I recently was recommended a podcast by a good friend which was a recording of an interview with an academic by the name of Joseph Campbell. It was entitled “The Power of Myth”. Campbell’s primary research was into the heroes journey and he investigated this through the various myths from the cultures of the Earth. There’s a moment in the interview when Campbell is describing his love of the Cathedral of Chartres in France. If any of you have been there you will know that visiting this cathedral is a very special experience. I was lucky enough to have visited on a Friday when the monks remove the pews to reveal a labyrinth in the floor made up of different coloured stones. The labyrinth is supposed to represent the human journey from sin to redemption and pilgrims travel from all around the world to walk the labyrinth. At least they used to…

What caught my attention to this part of the interview was Campbell’s description of why he was fascinated by the cathedral. He states that “it takes me back to a time when these principles informed the society” and furthermore that “you can tell what’s informing the society by the size of what the tallest building is in the place”. He then goes on to describe the evolution of this through Western civilisations from Medieval (cathedral), to the 17th Century (political palace) and to the modern city (office buildings and dwellings). He uses Salt Lake City in Utah, that was built as an intentional community by the Mormons, as an example of this playing out in one place. First the temple was built tallest and at the centre, then the capital was built beside the temple and slightly taller and finally the administrative building that takes care of both the affairs of the temple and the capital was built even taller than both its predecessors. He describes this as the history of Western civilisation being played out in the architecture of a single city.

So then I thought an interesting exercise would be to view our local community if we used a similar lens as Campbells to describe the local architecture and therefore the evolution of our society. Firstly, I must premise this by stating that I am in no way an academic and I don’t pretend to do this in any other way than out of curiosity’s sake. Also, we need to acknowledge the fact that our local community is not a city and in the long history of people on the planet, that its occupation (in a Western sense) is very short. And finally, I will limit the exercise to the escarpment area from Stanwell Park to Thirroul. Now with my disclaimers out of the way, here it goes! 

First tall buildings would surely have to be that of the local pubs servicing the early mines in the area. Although only three storeys in height and unless I’m unaware of any church steeples that may have burnt down (local historians - feel free to correct me on this!), it would seem too me that either the Imperial or Scarborough Hotel would win the earliest tall building. Whilst not a place of worship to most, I’m sure some of the early coal miners would have disagreed. They both also occupy important locations along the escarpment being on the edge of sea cliffs standing quite prominent in comparison to the local context. 

Whilst technically not architecture in the strictest sense, second in the evolution of our area would be the chimney stacks of the Coking plant at Coalcliff (again, I’m anticipating the local historian’s jumping out of their armchairs on this but please re-read my above disclaimers;). Whilst this wasn’t that long ago, it does describe the transition from smaller underground coal mines to a more industrialised and larger approach to utilising the black diamonds that lie beneath our coastline. Of course, with the rapid expansion of coal extraction around the world, the Coalcliff plant rapidly became micro in size and now it sits as a reminder of the industrial past that dominated the area. 

Drumroll please for the third evolution… To be honest I’m a bit stumped on this and had to take a ride around to find tall/large buildings. Height wise it’s difficult to find anything taller than these still standing coke stacks. There is Anita’s theatre which is about three storeys high as well as the odd apartment building matching this height. There’s also a number of mobile phone and electrical towers that stand quite tall. Without having an accurate survey I believe its out of the lift tower at Thirroul railway station and the tallest portion of the Headlands Hotel. Of course, both of these might soon be surpassed by the new Coles development, but what does this say about our current society? I’ll leave you to answer that question, but when asked about whether new myths will come out of the new architecture of New York, Joseph Campbell answered “The only myth that’s gonna be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that’s talking about the planet - not the city, not these people, but the planet”.

If you’d like to listen to the full interview, you can find it on the Tim Ferriss podcast episode #456. Highly recommended!