Formerly the ‘Rum Hospital’
- oldest surviving public building in Sydney’s CBD

Built for a cost of 45,000 gallons of rum and completed in 1816, the former Governor Macquarie’s Rum Hospital (for convicts) has been adaptively reused and now comprises NSW Parliament House and The Mint. The site is rich in history. The first major adaptive reuse of part of the site was to establish the first branch of the Royal Mint outside London. Today The Mint is home to the head office of Museums of History NSW, the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Bullion café and a spectacular series of venue hire spaces.

Completed in 2004, the adaptive reuse project represents a sophisticated blend of heritage preservation with thoughtful contemporary design. It was the first project to simultaneously receive the Australian Institute of Architects’ Sir John Sulman Medal for Outstanding Public Architecture and the Francis Greenway Award for Conservation. The Mint was also awarded the Lachlan Macquarie Award for Heritage and nominated in the UK’s Building Services Journal as one of the ‘top 30 ground-breaking buildings of the world’.

Twenty years later, as a significant heritage site, a public space and a place of work, The Mint remains an exemplary model of adaptive reuse, demonstrating how heritage structures can be revitalised to meet contemporary needs while maintaining their historical integrity.