159 Victoria Street, Potts Point is a grand terrace house built in about 1872.

It is for sale through Jason Boon, Geoff Cox and Joss Reid https://www.rwebay.com.au/6405468/

Victoria Street is one of Sydney’s most elegant streets with its London Plane trees providing an umbrella of shade in Summer, opening to allow the warmth of sun in Winter. In Autumn the street is carpeted with golden leaves.

Victoria Street was probably built in about the 1840s, soon after, Potts Point, Australia’s first suburb, was established in the 1830s.

After the 1850s gold rush Sydney was awash with money and houses sprang up continuously.

Number 159 is typical with its cast iron lace verandah, fire place, surrounds, sandstone block walls in the basement, wooden stairway bannisters and a pallisade front fence, all of which remain. It is built in the Victorian Italianate style. The facade is rendered and embellished with stucco ornamentation. It has an unusual two-storey rear section with an intact room with a coffered ceiling over a garage. This section is a later addition but was also built in the Victorian period.

The home was later converted to offices.

It was originally built on part of the original land grant to Alexander Maxduff Baxter by Governor Darling in 1831. He built “Springfield”, a large mansion near the site of today’s Metro Theatre, and now demolished. A parcel of land from this grant was transferred to Thomas Hare Stewart in 1863 which was subdivided into 15 lots in 1867. Lot 10 became number 159 Victoria Street and was sold to Patrick John Hourigan, solicitor, in 1872. He was the oldest practising solicitor in Sydney, aged 78, in 1923, having been educated at Sydney Grammar.

Patrick John Hourigan was the son of John Hourigan, JP, who was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1825 and died in Sydney in 1900. On arrival, John Hourigan he was apprenticed in the building trade rising to become Clerk of Works at St Mary’s Cathedral. He was also the popular landlord of the Sir John Young Hotel in William Street. He retired in about 1870 with many landholdings.

Today, many original terrace houses grace Victoria Street, giving it an old-world charm and adding to the area’s heritage significance.

By Andrew Woodhouse 

Heritage Solutions