BROUGHAM STREET is one of Sydney’s earliest streets in one of Sydney earliest suburbs.
It is bounded by Potts Point, Australia’s first suburb since 1834 and Woolloomooloo, originally an indigenous meeting place, later a farm, then the early site for early workers’ cottages.

Its fascinating streetscape containing townhouse terrace houses and an early colonial home.

Interestingly, the City of Sydney Council has heritage-listed the “Calidad” building, only 40 years old built in 1967 at 163 Brougham Street.

It was designed by Ian McKay, an award-winning NSW-born architect and one of the leading lights of an architectural movement known as the ‘Sydney School’. The commercial office building uses local natural building materials to create bold geometric forms and excellent natural lighting and ventilation. It is one of the few remaining intact examples of this genre of architecture. Council says and is an important example of early sustainable architecture in Sydney and that there is a growing awareness of the value of protecting modern architecture, although it is still uncommon to heritage list such recent buildings.
Buildings of the Sydney School have been described as ‘anti-urban’, with many built on steep slopes or hidden from view in bushlands. The Calidad sits atop one of Sydney’s most dramatic sandstone escarpments, peering down onto McElhone Street below.

Like many in the Sydney School, Ian McKay was influenced by the ‘organic’ style of internationally-acclaimed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but the architecture McKay produced is uniquely adapted to the dramatic rock formations and vegetation of the NSW landscape.

The Sydney School is a loose term that groups a number of Australian architects who were reacting against international modernism and whose designs were strongly influenced by the natural environment of the sites they were working on.

The Calidad is part of a larger site known as 153-165 Brougham Street. Some of the buildings on this site have already been individually heritage listed, including a pair of Victorian terraces and the remains of Telford Lodge, a colonial-era villa.

A collection of twin terraces at the southern and of the street were built during the 1880s building boom and designed in the original terrace style. The entrance way to the front door is approached by small steps with an undercroft which creates a ‘terrace’ above in the form of an open, covered patio above, used for seeing passers-by and for being seen.

They contain some original features including bi-fold cedar doors, cast iron lace-work balcony railings, original cast iron and marble surround fire places and rich, wooden-panelled doors.

Brougham Street takes its name from Brougham Lodge, built on the site in 1830 by Sir James Dowling, the second Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court.

He was granted eight acres on “Woolloomooloo Hill”, as Potts Point was then known, in 1831. Like many others of the period, he had a patron, Lord Henry Brougham. A patron was a financial backer who often subsequently received a quid pro quo later on. Lord Brougham was Chancellor of England and head of the judiciary, someone to be in favour with.

After Dowling’s death Brougham Lodge was rented and then used a boys’ school before being sub-divided and eventually sold to build today’s Holiday Inn hotel.
Today’s South Dowling Street, Paddington, is named after him

By Andrew Woodhouse, Director, Heritage Solutions

Image: Calidad building: heritage is about significance, not age