Refinery Square

Date Built: 1906

Centre of CSR operations. Administration office built 1906.

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Refinery Square

Now

Leone Huntsman with retired CSR engineers who saved the weathercock Weathercock made in 1900 to celebrate the Relief of Mafeking, reinstated in 2010 Plaque for weathercock made in CSR workshop

Refinery Square is bounded by Bowman Street (south), Tablet House (north), Fleetview (east) and The Station and Glasshouse (west). There are many historical allusions and references.
The Station – once the entrance to CSR’s Administration Offices – serves as Jacksons Landing’s meeting room and community hall. The rest of the office block has been displaced by the Glasshouse pool and gymnasium.
The pool façade is cladded with sandstone from the carpenters’ workshop which stood here. The small building east of the Station (also on Bowman Street) has been retained and refurbished as offices for the Resident Services Manager and security staff.
Around and through Refinery Square, pick finished sandstone steps, terraces and planter boxes have been formed from recycled sandstone. Hand tooling of the surfaces represents the manual labour of the early quarrymen. Across the square runs a metal beam engraved with references to Pyrmont’s past and the CSR operation. Information blades serve the same purpose.
A large fig tree has been installed at the western end of the park. The fig is a replanted CSR tree, transported from the corner of Bank and Bowman Streets to replace a very old one that collapsed during heavy weather in about 1998. The basic configuration of the square is maintained.
In 2010 a startling feature was added. The weathercock that had topped the refinery building came home. When the factory was demolished, engineers rescued the weathercock and put it to work on the roof of their bowling club. When the club was demolished, they brought it home: in September 2010 it was mounted on the top of The Station.