Office Hallway

The hallway runs straight and silent, paint peeling from the walls in long curling sheets that have worked loose over years of neglect. Sunlight filters through windows filmed with grime, reaching the bare floor at a low angle and picking out the texture of what has been left behind: layers of paint, each representing a different decade of occupation, now exposed together. Nothing remains in the corridor itself. Doors are closed or missing. The far end recedes into shadow. The ATL Building at 37 Nancarrow Avenue, Meadowbank was purpose-built in 1947 for Automatic Totalisators Limited, the company founded by Sir George Alfred Julius in 1917. It was the company's third manufacturing site, succeeding premises at Alice Street, Newtown and 182 Chalmers Street, near Central Station. The Meadowbank complex comprised two buildings: one housing the factory floor, warehouse, and offices; a second providing dressing rooms, showers, and a canteen for the workforce. The road itself, Nancarrow Avenue, was created as part of the factory development. ATL manufactured mechanical and electromechanical totalisator systems for racecourse betting, along with automatic turnstiles, hospital communication equipment, vehicle registration plates, and precision tooling. By 1970, equipment made at Meadowbank was in use at racing centres across 29 countries. In 1966 the company developed the world's first computer totalisator system. Manufacturing at the site declined through the 1970s and 1980s as electronic systems replaced the electromechanical machines. After ATL's manufacturing operations were sold, first to the Smorgan group in 1980 and then to AWA around 1988, the factory building was repurposed as a multi-tenant facility accommodating a gym, a church, a dance school, and office space. The building was locally listed as a heritage item under Ryde LEP No 105 in 2003. Despite that listing, the Planning Assessment Commission approved it in principle for demolition in 2013 as part of the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Project. The building was demolished around 2016. The site is now residential apartments. This photograph, made in 2015, records the office hallway in its final period of vacancy before demolition. The peeling paint is the most visible record of the building's long second life as generic commercial space, layered over the fabric of a precision manufacturing operation that had supplied the world's racecourses for decades.