Sydney Hotels near Powerhouse Museum

For the next decade, its slowly rebuilt collection was quartered next to the Sydney morgue, raising questions about the Museum’s claim to being sanitary. The Museum was finally given both a new address in Harris Street at Darling Harbour, and a new name, the Technological Museum.

By 1978 it had outgrown the initial Harris Street digs, and in one of those delightful coincidences, the abandoned Ultimo Power Station several hundred metres to its north was available. By 1988 the shell of the Power Station had been transformed into the Sydney Powerhouse Museum, a brick, steel, and stone structure with an onsite exhibition area covering five levels and three courtyards. Sydney’s largest museum, the Powerhouse has a collection so extensive that 95% of it must be housed elsewhere.

The Powerhouse Museum Collection

The museum focuses on Australian culture, history, and scientific and technological innovation through both its permanent and temporary exhibits, and offers frequent workshops, performances, and demonstrations. Computers; cyberspace; chocolate; fireworks and fire trucks; steam engines and horseless carriages; an astronomical observatory; and the recorded voices of Aboriginals are a tiny sample of the diverse offering at the Powerhouse Museum.

One of the Museum’s showcase items is the Strasbourg Clock, a perfectly functioning replica of the astronomical timepiece in the Notre Dame Cathedral at Strasbourg. It was constructed in 1887 by Sydney’s Richard Smith, who, amazingly, had never seen the original.

The Museum’s collection is so vast that less than 5% of it is displayed at any one time, but a recently-opened facility at Castle Hill allows the public to see over fifty thousand items rarely on view at Harris Street.

The Powerhouse Museum is open from 10:00 A.M to 5:00 P.M. every day but Christmas.

Accommodations near the Powerhouse Museum

One of the Novotel Sydney Darling Harbour’s newly-refurbished rooms will be the perfect place to unwind after expanding your mental horizons with a visit at the Powerhouse Museum, just a short walk away!