Monday, June 6, 2011

Darlinghurst: Past and Present: Stoneleigh

I've become obsessed recently with browsing through the City of Sydney's online ArchivePix gallery, because I love seeing how Darlinghurst's streets once looked. My tailor friend Russell Wade dreams of having a pair of glasses that allows you to see and walk through Sydney's streets in the 19th Century. I'm happy, for the time being, just looking at the old photos, despite the fact that they only really cover the 1900s. It is quite rare to discover pictures of the area prior to then. 
If you have any old photographs, please send them to me and I can do another post in my brand new series, Past and Present. To begin with, here are some pictures of my dream house, Stoneleigh at 3 Darley Street. The picture above was taken in 1981, when the building was in quite a state of disrepair. It had been like that for some time and had been used as a storehouse for the neighbouring Marist Bros College. The roof was then badly damaged in a Sydney storm and it looks like workers in the Valiant and ute are about to start fixing the place up, for here is Stoneleigh four years later:


And here it is today:


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

there are some great photos taken by John Rae in the 1880s of this block of liverpool street and forbes st from his house "Hilton" which is now Robin Gibson's Gallery.

Anonymous said...

...and I forgot to add that they are on line in the Mitchell Library digital image archive if you search under "Rae Hilton Darlinghurst"

Violet Tingle said...

Thanks for the link Anon. See my post of the Hilton here:
http://mydarlingdarlinghurst.blogspot.com/2010/10/darlinghurst-heritage-items-hilton.html

Anonymous said...

The house was owned by Phillip Adams, media commentator in the mid and late 1980's. I used to visit often. It had a parquetry floor downstairs and upstairs the rooms were all carpeted. It had been severely renovated in the early 1980's