Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 5

ON REPAIRS - GRACE BUILDING
Another major modernisation on which I was involved was at the Grace Building, bounded by York, Clarence and King Streets.

I don't recall if this was immediately after the Buckingham's job or not but it certainly sticks in my mind as the job with the most memories and the longest time I spent on one site.....almost a year, in fact.

The York & King Sts. corner of this magnificent Art Deco building. (Click for full -size)

Grace Building is now the Grace Hotel (click the link for historical information) but in my day it was a Commonwealth government building and was home to the Department of Veteran Affairs and was Sydney's largest Commonwealth office.

Arnold's were contracted to modernise the annunciator systems across all the lifts....and there were many of them, all car-switch-controlled and with just one being capable of switching from manual control to automatic.

All were 480V DC.......those horrible copper/carbon contactors banging in and out on slate panels, drawing green electric arcs as the Up or Down contacts opened!

If memory serves correctly, there were six passenger lifts at the front (York St.) of the building, with two opposite the other four, and at the rear, where the loading dock was situated (Clarence St.) there were two goods lifts.

The lift drivers were all ex-servicemen, many of whom had physical disabilities of some sort; I do recall at least one of the drivers having only one arm.

The entry foyer in York Street was magnificent, the walls lined with Florentine marble and with a soaring mezzanine between the ground and first floors. Under the stairway to the first floor was a small hole-in-the-wall kiosk which sold tobacco products and snack foods such as chips and chocolate bars, lollies...that type of thing.

Off the end of the the entry foyer was a hallway which led through to the Clarence Street entry and the goods lifts.

There was a post office on the King Street side of the ground floor.

Sadly, although there are many photos available online of the building as it now exists I could not find any as it was in the 1960s.

My time at Grace Building is filled with anecdotes, accidents and incidents, so in no particular order, here we go............

The Great Olympic Shot-put Contest.

Because the job we were doing involved the installation of new lift-shaft wiring and new travelling cables, large holes had to be bored in the machine room floor to take the conduits down to the half-way junction boxes. This work was carried out by another contractor and the method they used left a circular concrete coring which was the thickness of the floor....about 9 inches in length and 3 inches or so in diameter.

At this point perhaps I should list those who were working at the building. I can't remember every name because people came and went over the lengthy course of the entire project but the following names readily come to mind:-

Dave Rutter, Garth Brook, George Farham, Ken Rousham, Ray Johnson, Larry Evans and an Ernie something-or-other.

The building was also the depot for a maintenance run for Bobby Coates and his off-sider, so they were there usually around lunchtime.

We had unrestricted access to the roof area outside the motor-room and although it is not seen in any  photograph available today, there was a light-well which ran down from the roof to (I think) the first floor. At the bottom of this well there was a cyclone wire screen which prevented any falling objects from hitting whatever was underneath....maybe it was the top of the foyer, I'm not sure.

Current roof arrangement, looking south towards the King & York St, corner.
The light-well was to the left of those potted shrubs.

One day we decided to have a shot-putting event.

I think it was prompted by the fact that the Tokyo Olympics had only recently been held (so this must have been in early 1965).

The concrete cores were considered to be ideal for this event, so one of us (I can't remember who it was...truly, I can't) picked up a core, went into the dramatic pose of a shot-putter ready to launch and "pushed" the chunk of concrete into the air......and it arced directly into the light-well and could then be heard bouncing off walls before it eventually landed with a loud, echoing, metallic BA-DANG-CLANG! on the wire screen at the bottom.

Several overall-clad shapes could then be seen moving very, very quickly from the scene, back to the motor-room and scattering to various parts of the building in an effort to get as far away from the roof as possible!

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