Colonial Architect on the design of the building. Extra work was approved after Bingemann and Dewar won their tender. This included the addition of a telescope dome and an increase in the height of the time ball tower. This increased height caused some dismay for Scott as it blocked out an increased area of the eastern sky. The completed building combined, for the first time in a major Sydney building, two architectural streams - Italian High Renaissance Palazzo and the Italian Villa forms. These contributed the symmetry of the townhouse facade for the residence and an asymmetry for the observatory born of the peculiar needs of transit room, equatorial dome and time ball tower. The building was thus elevated from basic necessity to fashionable stylishness. Dawson's budget had enabled him to emphasise the distinction between the private and the public, the domestic and the official. The style and form was overlaid with early Victorian theories of fitness and association, that style should be chosen to indicate the nature and status of the building and in some cases, the site. Operations, 1858 to 1980s Scott occupied the residence in 1858 and commenced a trial operation of the time ball in June. His initial equipment was modest, mostly the instruments from Parramatta. He did, however, obtain the money for an equatorial telescope. In 1862 Scott resigned, recommending prominent amateur astronomer John Tebbutt as his replacement. Tebbutt declined the offer and the search for a replacement was commenced. In the meantime, his assistant Henry Chamberlain Russell was left in charge of the observatory. In January 1864 the new appointee George Robarts Smalley arrived and Russell was his second in command. In 1870 Smalley died and was replaced by Russell. Russell's talent, entrepreneurial flair, intimate knowledge of how to work the political and bureaucratic system of NSW and longevity gave him a 35-year tenure as Government Astronomer and made him the Grand Old Man of physical science in the colonies. It was during Russell's period that Sydney Observatory was popularly believed to have been at its professional zenith, particularly from the 1870s through to the 1890s. Russell wasted no time in pressing the government for the necessary physical and instrumental resources to carry out his astronomical programs at the observatory. The addition of a west wing designed by colonial architect James Barnett was the main work resulting from this. It provided for a major