Apartment 1306, 226 Victoria Street, Potts Point is not what it seems. It’s much more.

It is for sale through Angelo Bouras and Penny Timothy https://www.rwebay.com.au/4742327/

It is a new sky apartment or home-in-the-sky overlooking neighbouring suburbs and part of an elegant, vase-shaped building.  It provides many or more conveniences than some modern homes such as a music room, gym., pool, sauna and garden atrium/lounge.

However, it was built as an adaptive re-use using the skeleton of the former Crest Hotel which once housed the Goldfish Bowl Bar, which itself was on the site of the former local Picture Palace and famous surf city dance hall.

It continues a trend of “residentilisation” of this dense inner urban area, Australia’s first suburb whose best attribute is its proximity to and views of the CBD.

As an early movie theatre, and in a different building, now demolished, it was called the Kings Cross Picture Palace. Saturday matinees in the 1930s were packed with children. Cost: three pence [2 cents] in the stalls and sixpence [five cents] in the lounge, including a free comic. During intervals, Burt’s Milk Bar nearby was jam-packed with youngsters enjoying milkshakes.

It was later a dance hall and then a popular 1960s venue for “surf music” and renamed Surf City where a new dance craze called the ’stomp’ was in vogue. The ‘stomp’ consisted of hitting the floor with feet. At one stage the dance was banned by local councils which feared their hall floors would not withstand such punishment [!]

Although the nearby Stadium at Rushcutters Bay attracted overseas artists Surf City was where the locals went – often nightly. Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, an Australian band, was among its most famous performers. This group was one of our most popular hard rock bands of the mid 1960s. In 1972 the Aztecs released their biggest hit and Thorpe’s signature tune, “Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy)”: it became a song now widely regarded as one of the classics of Australian rock. It was huge, peaking in the National Top 40 Singles Chart at number 3 in May 1972, propelled to the top by a triumphant appearance at the 1972 Sunbury Music Festival.

Thorpe claimed this as a pivotal moment in the development of Australian music, thanks to the promoters’ decision to feature an all-Australian line-up, rather than relying on imported stars.

The venue was later sold and a new hotel, The Crest Hotel built in 1963 catering to the emerging Japanese tourist market.  In 2011 it was rebadged The Mercure after a $30 million refit. Now the building has evolved again into boutique apartments a prtt of the gentrification of the area.

See the ‘stomp’:  http://splash.abc.net.au/media/-/m/522277/the-stomp-a-1960s-dance-craze

By Andrew Woodhouse, Heritage Solutions