“Victoria House”, 97 Victoria Street, Potts Point, is for sale through Jason Boon and Geoff Cox https://www.rwebay.com.au/4985489/

It is embedded in this history of the area. The site is located on the original land grant to Alexander Spark in 1828. He built a villa, Tusculum, designed by John Verge, built circa 1831 to 1835. The Victoria Street site was acquired by Charles William Roemer, a German born merchant in October 1841. He subdivided Spark’s grant into large villa allotments. In 1842 Roemer sold a part of the land, including the “Victoria House” to William Carr. It was subsequently re-subdivided and offered for sale as ” Part of the Tusculum Estate.” It then  went through several changes of ownership over the following five years during the economic boom. On 21 September 1857, it was sold to David Hill although Sydney Council’s 1855 Rate and Valuations prematurely recorded David Hill as the owner and occupier of the property. The property is first listed in the Sands Directory of 1858 -9 and the outline of the building is shown on the 1865 City of Sydney Trigonometric Survey. 

David Hill died in 1871 and the property was inherited by Hill’s daughter, Mary Dalgarno. She is still listed as living at this address when the last Sands Directory was published in 1932-3. Following Mary’s death in February 1932, her four surviving children sold number 97 to Isabella McMahon and her husband John Bernard McMahon, a civil servant, in 1934. Over the following thirty years the McMahons made number of building applications to Council for alterations, improvements and additions. 

The property was sold by Isabel McMahon to Katherine Anne Stibbard, a spinster and the eleventh owner in 1965. She subsequently sold it to Victoria Point Pty Ltd under developer Frank Theeman. His proposed to demolish a large number of properties along Victoria Street including number 97 but was met with resistance from local residents and green bans from the Building Labourers Federation. Whilst there was some new residential development number 97 and a number of other terraces were not demolished. Having been previously part of Strata Plan 20165 registered in April 1983 is now on its own title, Lot 6 DP 1156935.

With numerous mid-nineteenth century period features including a filigree balcony, fanlight door, Corinthian columns, shuttered windows and a rendered parapet it sits nobly in its heritage tree-canopied streetscape.

By Andrew Woodhouse, Heritage Solutions