Gladstone Regional Art Gallery & Museum

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Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum is a heritage-listed former town hall and now art gallery and museum at 144 Goondoon Street, Gladstone, Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Roy Chipps and built from 1933 to 1934 by relief workers. It is also known as Gladstone Town Hall & Council Chambers. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 July 1998.HistoryThe Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum, designed by Rockhampton architect Roy Chipps, was erected in 1933-34 as the Gladstone Town Hall and Municipal Chambers. It functioned as such for about 33 years and then as an entertainment venue until 1980, when the City Theatre opened. In 1985 the building was converted to an art gallery and museum. Gladstone was established by the New South Wales government in 1853-54 (prior to the separation of Queensland), possibly in an attempt to create a more centralised alternative to Brisbane as the capital of any future northern colony. The township acquired municipal status in 1863, and the first town hall was erected in 1868 in Goondoon Street, north of the Yarroon Street intersection.Gladstone languished in the 1870s and 1880s, but in the late 1890s sustained a period of strong development associated with the 1896 opening of the Gladstone meatworks and extension of the railway from Brisbane to Gladstone in the same year. However, by 1900 the cattle tick was decimating the local grazing industry, affecting meatworks production and cattle shipments. This, coupled with the great drought of 1900-02 and the 1903 opening of the Rockhampton extension of the railway which immediately deprived Gladstone of substantial port trade and passenger shipping, caused a crisis in business confidence in the town. The development of a local dairying industry and the 1905 opening of a butter factory at Gladstone, did much to revive the town's fortunes, and sustained the town during the interwar period, when many Gladstone business premises were rebuilt or renovated.