152 Victoria Street is the history of Potts Point. The site has undergone various subdivisions and uses over the last 214 years.

It is currently for sale through Jason Boon, Geoff Cox and Joss Reid

Property

In 1809 Colonel William Patterson was granted 30 acres of land to Patrick Walsh, a convict who arrived from Ireland in 1801. 1810 Governor Macquarie rules that all grants would be cancelled. In 1822, Patrick Walsh’s land grant was revoked and the land granted to Mr Drennan.

Governor Brisbane encouraged public servants in the Colony to build grand villas. One of the first of these land grants was made to Sir John Wyle Judge Advocate in 1822 who was Director of the Bank of NSW. The grant was for eleven acres and was situated at the entrance end of Potts Point. The largest of the grants was made to Alexander Macleay, then Colonial Secretary, who received 54 acres in 1826 from Governor Darling.

The purpose of the grants was to establish a stylish area of housing, and for this reason there were certain caveats on them. Residences were to be erected within three years, the house was to cost in excess of £1,000 and had to face Government House across the bay.
Major subdivisions of Macleay’s Estate included the Elizabeth Bay Estate, 1865 allotments on Macleay Street, Elizabeth Bay Road and Roslyn Gardens, Macleay’s Estate 1882 (Billyard Avenue, Onslow Avenue) and Elizabeth Bay House 1927 and 1934, (Onslow Place).

West of Macleay Street, the Challis Estate 1889, and various smaller subdivisions along Victoria Street represented the earliest layer of intensive residential development. Subdivision in the early twentieth century with Tusculum 1901, Campbell Lodge 1910, Grantham Estate, 1922 and Orwell House 1921. Many of the grand houses of the period remained until the 1930s when many were replaced by flat buildings. A further group were demolished in the 1960s such that only two of the original grand villas remain today (Rockwall and Tusculum).

The spread of flats in the 1920s and 30s was one of the most marked developments in Sydney housing. It was accompanied by large population increases in the municipalities it affected. Flats were the antithesis of suburbia and nowhere was that more evident than in Potts Point and Kings Cross.

During the 1970s, Potts Point became the focus of the green bans over development plans for Victoria Street lodged in October 1971. Many residents on the city side of the street had already moved out, as the principal developer, Frank Theeman’s, Victoria Point Pty. Ltd., offered them favourable terms. Those who wanted to retain the street’s historic buildings for low and middle income earners were not prepared to do so. The New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation indicated that it would block demolition of the buildings with a green ban and hosts of other sympathisers engaged in a protracted battle with the developers. The battle waged on until 1976 when a fifth plan which called for restoration of 22 of the 32 houses on the building site with a ten-storey complex behind them approved, and the “green bans” lifted.

152 Victoria Street was located within the Springfield Estate.

The Springfield Estate was granted to Attorney General Alexander Macduff Baxter in 1828. The grant comprised an area of around nine acres bounded on the east by Darlinghurst Road and on the west by Forbes Street, comprising both Woolloomooloo Hill (Kings Cross and Potts Point) and Woolloomooloo Bay. Baxter constructed a house on the estate between 1830 and 1832. However, he left the colony within the same year. The Springfield Estate was subdivided sometime in the early 1850s, and in 1864 the balance was subdivided as the Tivoli Estate by Thomas Ware Smart. The old Springfield Estate house and immediate garden were retained within a land holding sited between present day Springfield Avenue and Earl Street. The Tivoli Estate comprised a considerable number of narrow fronted residential building blocks located down the hillside between Victoria Street and Forbes Street. The opening up of the Tivoli Estate to small landholders resulted in the building of the multitude of terraced housing that characterises the area to the present day.

152 Victoria Street was developed as part of a pair of terraces along with its neighbour, 154 Victoria Street. The site was purchased by Robert Fitzgerald in 1855. The first resident recorded at the terrace, according to Sands Directory was W.R. Roach in 1885.
While the terrace was under the ownership of Robert Fitzgerald until 1914, the terraces were occupied by various tenants from its construction to 1914.

Robert Fitzgerald (1807-1865) was a landowner and son of an ex-convict landowner and farmer, Richard Fitzgerald. Robert, along with his wife Elizabeth Henrietta Fitzgerald (nee Rouse), acquired the villa named Springfield in Potts Point in 1856, only one year after the purchase of the 152 Victoria Street. Together, the couple had seven children, who were all born at their previous residence near St Marys during the 1840s. Robert was a director of the Bank of New South Wales and on the NSW Legislative Council from 1849 until his death.

Elizabeth died at Springfield in 1863, and Robert passed away in 1865 at Springfield. Ownership of the subject site stayed in the family’s ownership until 1914 when it was transferred to William Henry Wigzell and Annie Eliza Wigzell. Various tenants continued to live at the terrace under the Wigzell’s ownership until 1924 when the property was transferred to Benjamin Golden and Maude Ewens and upon his death to Frances Maude Murphy.

The earliest works to the terrace are recorded by Sydney Council as alterations and additions in 1957, however these works are unknown.

The property transferred ownership several times during the 1950s, until it came under the ownership of Stelios Coudounaris in 1958. While under Stelios’ ownership, unauthorised works were undertaken in 1959, for the erection of a timber frame and the enclosure of the verandah in 1962. An application for the erection of a three-storey addition at the rear of the premises was recorded in 1962, however this was never constructed. Ownership of the terrace was transferred to Challis Private Hotel Pty Ltd in 1971. It is assumed that the terrace was converted into a boarding house around this time.

The terrace continued to be used as a boarding house until a recent conservation and restoration.

Today it’s part of a continuing appreciation of the heritage of Victoria Street and make an important contribution to it.

By Andrew Woodhouse
Heritage Solutions