Hughes Street, Potts Point, is one of Potts Point’s more intimate streets. It runs east-west off Macleay Street to Victoria Street and is 5.5 metres wide, similar to streets in the fashionable Marais District of Paris. It includes a vintage clothes shop, Thai restaurant, hostel, laundrette, nineteenth century terrace houses, four apartment blocks, hair salon, laundrette, chapel and 1930s houses, Mediterranean-style apartments known as San Antonio and Hugheston apartments, named after Hughes Street. It has a European boutique ambience with its bright green-leafed, shady Robinia trees. Treescapes are just as important as streetscapes.

Hughes Street is named after Sir Thomas Hughes KCSG, JP (1863-930) . He was Lord Mayor of Sydne, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council and a prominent businessman.

He was born in Sydney on 19^thApril 1863, the third son of wealthy Irish immigrants, John Hughes, of Kincoppal, Elizabeth Bay, and Susan Sharkey.

After undertaking a tour of Europe, Hughes returned to Sydney and in 1882 entered the legal profession. One of his sons was a flying ace in the First World War, and other became a doctor but was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme on 11th December 1916.

Sir Thomas entered public life and openly supported Australian Federation, in 1898 uniting the colonies into one nation.

He stood as the Liberal Reform Party candidate (the Liberals had been formed out of the old Free Trade Party and were affiliated with Reid’s federal Free Traders) for Reid’s state seat of Sydney-King but was defeated by the Progressive Party candidate Ernest Broughton by a margin of only 18 votes.

Hughes instead found success in his role as Alderman, now known as a Councillor, on Sydney City Council for Bourke Ward, to which he had been elected on 5th September 1898.

He helped organise the Citizens’ Vigilante Committee which assisted in controlling the first plague outbreak in 1900. Hughes was elected as the last Mayor in January 1902, but was also the first Lord Mayor of Sydney after the issuing of the Letters Patent from Edward VII granting the title to the City. Hughes also became a supporter for the concept of a unified ‘Greater Sydney’, with a single municipal body owning and controlling key public services in the Sydney basin. He was re-elected for another two terms as Lord Mayor from 1907 to 1908.

In July 1908, Hughes was given a life appointment to the New South Wales Legislative Council. From 1908 to 1909 he chaired the Royal Commission for the improvement of the city of Sydney and its suburbs. He served on Sydney City Council until he resigned on 1st December 1912.

He was appointed as a Knight Bachelor in George V’s 1915 Birthday Honours.

An advocate of municipal reform, Hughes instituted an investigation into the city’s finances, which would eventually result in the formation of the Civic Reform Association in 1920.

Hughes became highly proficient in business circles and was appointed Chairman of directors of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Limited, Tooheys Limited and Washington H. Soul Pattinson (1906–1929).

His great grand-daughter was Lucinda (Lucy) Mary Hughes-Turnbull, AO, born in Manar, Macleay Street, and was herself a later Lord Mayor 2003-2004. She is the wife of Malcolm Turnbull, former Prime Minister.

Robert Hughes AO (1938-2012) was Sir Thomas’s grandson and was described byThe New York Times as “the most famous art critic in the world.”

Hughes Street is a small street remembering a great man.

By Andrew Woodhouse
Heritage Solutions