It was 1961 when the Ultimo Power Station turned off its lights for the final time. Once a symbol of Sydney’s power and progress, it was left lifeless for more than two decades.



When it was finally reborn as the Powerhouse Museum in 1988, it took on a very different role in the city: a hub of science, design, culture and history, and one of the few learning centres that children actually wanted to go to.

From then until now, one feature of the Powerhouse has stayed the same: it has remained a beacon connecting Sydney to the rest of the world, and helping guide the city forward.

But upheaval is on its way to the site once again. On Monday the NSW premier, Mike Baird, finally unveiled his plans to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta. In a plan which was foreshadowed in 2015, the old site in the heart of Sydney will be sold to developers, who will turn it into high density apartments.

The museum may live on in the city’s west, but its importance – and legacy – is tied to Ultimo, and many believe that’s where it should stay. In February, 10,000 people, among them actor Cate Blanchett and her playwright husband Andrew Upton, signed an open letter against the move: “Nowhere else in the world are governments moving major museums away from the heart of their cities,” they wrote.

“The Powerhouse has the collections with which to create an original, exciting new museum for western Sydney without abandoning its historic home.”

The Power Station: the heart of the city

The original Power Station was commissioned in 1899 to help power Sydney’s small but growing tram networks. Soon it became a bustling lifeline, facilitating the city’s expansion.



Workers used the trams to access all corners of the city, turning Sydney into a world class commercial hub. By 1923, the tram network spanned 291km across greater Sydney, from Loftus to Wollomolloo, and by 1930 Sydney trams were carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers each day.



The Ultimo Power Station – the pulse of the tram network – had become the beating heart of the city itself.

But Sydney continued to grow, its occupants flooding into the tramlines, which soon became critically overcrowded. The city’s underground corridors became active, and soon heavy rail was the public transport of choice. From the 1940s trams declined in popularity, until finally the last tram stopped in 1961. The power station, now obsolete, was shut down.

The original power station, which became the Powerhouse Museum in 1988 Photograph: Supplied

In the decades that followed, the city underwent remarkable change. Seeking new ways to reinvent itself, Sydney looked to renew its forgotten urban spaces. The former Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences – which housed a growing collection centred around innovation, and Sydney’s history – was reaching a critical size, and in 1979 Neville Wran’s Labor government announced it would move to the site of the old power station. In 1988, the reborn museum was opened to the public.

The Powerhouse Museum retained its facade – the railway shed and power station – while housing some of the original tram lines and cars, in homage to the city’s history.

The wonder of the Powerhouse

Most children who grew up in Sydney have walked through the vast collections of the Powerhouse Museum, running through old train carriages, and climbing into model space ships.

Most museums take us back in time, to remember past worlds. The Powerhouse does that, but it does something different too.

‘Most museums take us back in time ... The Powerhouse does that, but it does something different too.’ Photograph: Supplied

Walking through its halls you can see the first locomotive in NSW, as well as combine engines, electric cars and spaceships. Its ever changing exhibits connect Sydney to the wider world, whether through a touring Star Wars exhibition, a retrospective of the 1980s, or an exploration of the tombs of ancient Egypt. It also connects us with our country’s past, whether through the stories of Indigenous women in Australia or Australia’s forgotten female pilots, or the history of HIV and Aids in Australia.

The Powerhouse is about progress as much as it’s about the past; it’s about charting a course, from what was to what will be. And for the hundreds of thousands of school children who have visited its halls, it led us to ask a very simple question: What comes next?

For Sydney, the answer to that question seems to be depressingly consistent: high density housing. The plans for Ultimo will see the site relegated to a perpetuation of the creeping inequality that has overcome the city, forcing more and more people into its fringes. To sell off the land to developers is to sell off one of Sydney’s vital organs, like a cheap trafficker looking to make a buck.

There is an important counterpoint: the move to Parramatta will undoubtedly enrich Sydney’s west. In a statement released on Monday, Baird said the new museum, which will have a 40% larger collection than the Powerhouse, will “serve as an anchor for a new arts and cultural precinct” in western Sydney. That’s a worthy goal, and overdue. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of one of the city’s greatest historical sites.

It remains unclear why a new museum entirely couldn’t be constructed in Parramatta, while saving the old Powerhouse site. The sheer cost of moving the exhibits themselves will be staggering; some estimates have it at over $500 million, more than double what the sale itself is expected to bring in.

So Sydney is once again left with a question about the future of a historic site. Like the tram power station before it, the museum that has occupied the same space for almost 30 years looks set to finally close its doors.

This time though, the way forward looks very different – and far more bland.