Sydney Oddity

In Foley Park, Glebe, in Sydney, you can find this odd structure. It is a wireless house! I had never heard of such a thing. I saw it mentioned on James O'Brien's blog. Rather than stealing his photo, I have stolen one from the organisation responsible for the wireless house renewal, in the interests of giving them some promotion of course.

Some time not too long after wireless broadcasts started in Australia, Grace Brothers, a department store, donated a wireless for the public to listen to and it was housed in this building at the aforementioned location.

A wireless would have cost a lot of money back in the early twentieth century, so the working class could not have afforded one. Here in Foley Park, they could sit around this building and listen to wireless broadcasts, and sit around they did, to the point where churches complained of declining Sunday church attendances and the wireless house was shut down.

Why are churches always against what people enjoy doing?

Maybe Melbourne had a wireless house, but I don't know about it. I bet Sydney copied the idea from the US.