The Sydney Trades Hall is a heritage-listed trade union building located at 4-10 Goulburn Street in the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by John Smedley, with later additions Spain and Cosh and Minnett and built from 1888 to 1916. It is also known as Trades Hall Building. The building was built and owned by the Trades Hall Association, the original trade union affiliates who built the hall in 1888, and is now owned by Unions NSW. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. History The Trades Hall was conceived on 14 December 1882 when representatives of thirteen unions met at The Swan with Two Necks Hotel in George Street. This was the original meeting place for the Union Movement. It was there that the organisation that led to the building of the Sydney Trades Hall was formed. A grant of land was made for the Trades Hall site on 13 October 1885, to the trustees: Henry Copeland (Member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, MLA) of Newtown, Jacob Garrard (MLA) of Balmain, William Ferrier of Balmain (a stonemason), John Edward West of Woolloomooloo (a plumber and gasfitter), John Richard Talbot of Sydney (iron moulder), John Atkinson of Balmain (a boilermaker), Thomas Candy of Surry Hills (a draper), and Richard Mooney of Woolloomooloo (a journeyman tailor). The trustees were required to "hold and use or allow the said land hereby granted and the buildings to be erected thereon to be at all times hereafter maintained and used as and for a Trades Hall and Literary Institute for the use of the Artificers and Operatives of Sydney aforesaid and others under and in accordance with such Regulations as shall from time to time be made by the Governor". The Sydney Trades Hall is linked with the history of the union movement in New South Wales, one of the first formalised union movements in the world. Similarly, the birth of the NSW Branch of the Labor Party can be traced to Trades Hall leaders sending their own representatives to Parliament following the collapse of the Maritime and Shearers Strike early that century. The first portion of the building was designed in 1887, by architect John Smedley, one of Australia's first native born architects. Smedley won a design