Glass Brick Wall

A wall of glass bricks at the Bankstown RSL runs floor to ceiling along one side of the foyer, each brick a square of cast glass set into a thin grid of mortar. The bricks are cloudy, translucent rather than transparent, in the classic post-war glass-brick pattern. Behind them, the light from the carpark side of the building filters through in soft squares that catch on the foyer's carpeted floor. The grid is regular: roughly twenty bricks wide, fifteen tall, set into a steel frame at top and bottom and bonded laterally with mortar. The wall reads as a single luminous panel rather than a window. Stainless-steel skirting runs along the floor at the base.

Glass-brick walls became a signature feature of mid-century Australian club architecture, sitting between the wholly-glazed walls of modernism and the solid brick of the older venues. They let light through without giving up privacy or thermal mass. Bankstown's glass-brick wall ran along the carpark side of the foyer, throwing diffuse light into the entrance area during daylight hours. The Bankstown RSL was demolished in March 2019. The glass-brick wall came down with the rest of the foyer; the bricks themselves are not the kind of fitting that gets salvaged.