Showers Entrance

The showers entrance occupied the amenities building at 37 Nancarrow Avenue, Meadowbank, a separate structure from the main factory on the same site. Where the factory floor and offices produced precision mechanical and electromechanical equipment, this building was practical in a different way: dressing rooms, showers, and a canteen for the workers who made that equipment. It was the part of the complex that most people who worked there would remember most directly. Automatic Totalisators Limited moved its manufacturing operation to Nancarrow Avenue around 1947, relocating from 182 Chalmers Street near Central Station. The Nancarrow Avenue site was purpose-built, and the road itself was created as part of that development. Two buildings were constructed: the main factory, warehouse, and offices, and this amenities block serving the workforce. At its peak, that workforce was producing totalisator systems for racecourses across 29 countries, alongside turnstiles, hospital communication equipment, vehicle registration plates, and commercial signs. The people who used this shower block each day were precision engineers and tradespeople. ATL's manufacturing operations declined through the 1970s and 1980s as electromechanical systems gave way to electronic and computer-based equipment. The company was sold to the Smorgan group in 1980, then to AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd) around 1988. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the factory buildings were repurposed as a multi-tenant facility: a gym, a church, office space, a dance school. The amenities block, designed for a manufacturing shift, moved through different uses before vacancy set in. The ATL Building was listed as a local heritage item under Ryde LEP No 105 in 2003. Despite that listing, the Planning Assessment Commission approved its demolition in principle on 6 March 2013 as part of the Shepherds Bay Urban Renewal Concept Plan. This photograph was made in 2015. The building was demolished around 2016, and the site was redeveloped as residential apartments. What the frame records is the showers entrance in its final years: white and brown ceramic tiles streaked with grime, a red fire hose reel on the right wall, exposed wiring trailing from the ceiling, and debris carried across the width of the passage.