Rosebank Street to Forbes Street - Number 197

The central building here is one of the earliest in the William Street of 1916. Although heavily camouflaged by the addition of a late-century verandah, the original building of stone with a slate roof is clear. Built in the 1840s, when William Street was litle more than a track, the house is of four rooms with twelve-paned windows upstairs. The central window upstairs has been altered, allowing the use of glass larger than was technologically possible when the house was new. The overall flavour of the building is "colonial Georgian" at its most modest. Maurice Solomon, a man well known in Sydney property circles in 1916, owns the house and rents to yet another bootmaker, Jacob Applebaum. Council records show that the rent paid in 1916 was roughly 1 per week. From the posters we are told that "The French Fighting Front", a war show, is on at the Sydney Town Hall. The New Adelphi is playing "As You Like It" and "Othello", "Peg o' my Heart" is at the Marcus and at the Hippodrome is something entitled "Kultur", the Macquarie Dictionary definition of which is "culture as a social force causing evolutionary development to higher forms of civilisation". On the ground, beside the woman in Applebaum's doorway is a cocky in a cage, more visible on page 108), a symbol, very popular in Sydney at the time, of a less exalted culture.

Note: This woman, with her magnificent profile, was cropped from the original 1916 image by Max Kelly. Few days, even in winter, in Sydney, would require one to be wrapped up so warmly. Kelly had also cropped the image of the building, located within the City of Sydney Archives. The original image is this one below. I think I prefer the uncropped version. It emphasises the contrast between the 1840 style of building, and the buildings constructed toward the end of the century. The building, only having four rooms, did not lend itself to subletting by Applebaum. This sketch by S.T. Gill in 1856 (courtesy SL-NSW), gives an idea of what William Street looked like when No. 197 was in its prime.

Rosebank Street to Forbes Street - 209A (The St Bernard's Home for Working Gentlewomen); thence, 209, 207, 205, and 203

209A is the St Bernard's Home for Working Gentlewomen

This streetscape clearly shows the width of the old William Street. It also indicates that, despite the attentions of the street sweeper, the road is in poor repair. The prominebt building is the St Bernard's Home for Working Gentlewomen, occupying the three floors above the shops. It offers 35 rooms and has been built very recently by one of Sydney's great philanthropists, Eadith Walker. Eadith had not earned the money that she spent so usefully. She had inherited from her father, Thomas, a pastoralist, and parliamentarian, and one of the richest men in nineteenth century New South Wales. Part of the estate comprised this section of William Street. The building is architectually ambitious but, given its disregard for scale and its dominance over its neighbours, not particularly successful. This is curious when it is remembered that its architect, John Sulman, a big gun of his day, consistently advocated that buildings should be harmonious with their environment, that they were really part of the public domain, and that to retain homogeneity, buildings on the streets of Sydney should be regulated in terms of height and compatibility with their surrounds. A case of do as I say, perhaps, not do as I do. This building is eclectic if nothing else. As suggested earlier, it is an attempt to combine the cornice of a Renaissance palace with several Greek porticoes supported by Greek columns and modified capitals along with medieval turret windows adjoining four giant arches of a Roman aqueduct! John Sulman was a friend of Miss Walker, having married her adopted sister, Anne Masefield. Thus were combined the interests of money, of family, of architectual experiment and, in this instance, of Agnes Leonard, Ethel Hogg, Kate Ellen Watson, Mabel McKenzie, and those other twenty-five working gentlewomen in need of a place to stay. Numbers 209, 207, 205, and 203 The St Bernard's Home was entered through the doorway on the left of the shops, number 209A. Numbers 209 and 207 were rented by Eadith Walker to James W. Leighton and son, Frank, portmanteau makers. The shop was also the factory, a characteristic common to a number of the small-scale capitalist enterprises of the street. The windows are crammed with leather suitcases, tin trunks and Gladstone bags. At 205 the Federal Cleaners and Pressers, Hodges and Brown, specialised in the renovation of suits and costumes, and the reblocking of gents' hats. Next door, Joseph Chapman made and repaired boots. The boot shop, with its emphasis on repairs, invokes the poor German cobbler, Hans Paasch, in Louis Stone's Jonah, 1911, who began his working week by setting the heavy iron lasts on their shelves, where they looked like a row of amputated feet ... the peculiar musty odour of leather hung about the shop. A few pairs of boots that had been mended stood in a row, the shining black rim of the new soles contrasting with the worn, dingy uppers. They betrayed the age and sex of the wearer as clearly as a photograph. The shoddy slipper, with the high, French heels, of the smart shop-girl; the heavy blucher studded with nails, of the labourer; the light tan boots, with elegant, pointed toes, of the clerk or counter jumper; the shoes of a small child, with a thin rim of copper to protect the toes.

My Notes: Once again, Max Kelly choose the better of the images available for this building. Including the diagonnal, enabled him to show exactly the reason for the street widening. This next image, gives a good view of the shop facades, but not of the life of the street, and although Kelly liked architecture, he loved ordinary people and their life-style more.

Amongst the myriad of images held by the City of Sydney Archives, there are gems that go behind the mere facade, the attempt to SHOW prosperity when there was very little of that around. The photographer, once again, wanders around the back of Miss Walker's building into Premier Lane. We have been back here before. The jumble of outhouses. No longer the need to put on a show. A plethora of corrugated iron, and gates not quite aligned with hinges. The open, bricked drain, down which anything could sluice.

Darlinghurst Road to Rosebank Street - Number 225

William Henry Wigzel makes wigs, whilst around the corner Will Wearwell makes boots and shoes. Both names suggest an acute sense of commercial onomatapoeia. (There was also Mr G. Schark's fish shop across the road at number 128.) Wigzell was, however, almost legitimate, as it was a minor but useful variation of Weigzell, William and Annie's name as recorded by the valuer. They owned this building of eight rooms, and rented one portion to "My Valet", entered around the corner in Kirketon Road, a second portion to the bootmaker, a third to one "George Adams, cake expert", and a fourth to James McGregor, upholsterer. Note: Max Kelly selected the above image for his book, but the next image, not as good, was available from the City of Sydney "Archives", too. Kelly then did something that makes this book more memorable. He choose a figure from the image, enlarged it, and included that as well. Kelly does not assume that the figure is William Wigzell, but he was in shirt-sleeves, standing apart, and standing still. Kelly was telling the story of the PEOPLE who lived and worked on William Street.

Darlinghurst Road to Rosebank Street - Numbers 233 and 231

Numbers 233 and 231 Higgs' Corner, a good place to meet. Albert Arthur Higgs, shoe and boot maker, lived in the newly developing suburb of Waverley and commuted to this eight-roomed building owned by Flora Mann, one of the sixteen women owning property on this southern side of William Street. This photograph was taken on 19th June. The William Street resumption had been announced on 1st June. Already Higgs was advertising a "No Profit Resumption Sale" in his Darlinghurst Road window around the corner. On his William Street frontage the signs are a reminder that the world is at war. The afternoon winter sun allows us to see his merchandise, manufactured upstairs, and now selling for 16/- and 10/6 a pair. The building is all that a building on an important corner should be, noticeable and functional. In reality it is a simple two-storied structure of 8 rooms, but in visual terms its abundance of lush curvilinear detail ensures notie - something which, as the small capitalists of William Street realised, was half the battle. Higgs' neighbours, at 231, work from an 1860s building owned by Edwin P. Gostelow, a tobacconist nd one of the two JPs of the street. Gostelow's own business was directly across the road, a connection uncommon in William Street since property owners normally lived lives distant from that of the street. The tenant upstairs is George P. Fifedentist, whose clients enter by the door alongside the building's other tenant, Mis Mary O'Shannesy's street-level millinery shop. Poet, Mary Gilmore, knew such a shop. Her poem, The Bonnet Shop, was written at this time and invokes the "carriage trade" upon which William Street partly relied. In it she brilliantly invokes the 1916 reality of the shop girl, "slimmed to a pose became a need" and who must typically be "obsequious, compelled to please".

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This was not the only photograph that Max Kelly had to choose from to illustrate the first building at the top of William Street. Not only did the City of Sydney Archives have other shots of the William Street frontage for 233, but there were photographs showing how Higgs' Boot Shop fitted into the Darlinghurst Road street-scape.

From left No 53-55 Darlinghurst Road, Government Savings Bank of NSW, No. 51A left Stadler Hairdresser and Tobacconist, No. 51 P Kirby and Sons Undertaker. Higgs Boot Importer on cnr of William Street on the right. This photograph was taken 19th June 1916.

Three storey buildings along Darlinghurst Road occupied by at No. 53 the NSW Government Savings Bank,at No.51 Darlinghurst Rd, Mrs Kirby & Son, Undertakers, L.Stadler, Hairdresser and Tobacconist. Two storey corner shop A.A.Higgs Boot and Shoe maker, holding a no profit sale with extraordinary reductions and Irresistible bargains as building being resumed. This photograph was also taken on 19th June 1916.

View looking south along Darlinghurst Road with three men in uniform at the corner. The three shops are No 233 A.A. Higgs, Customs Boot and shoe maker. No 231 George P Fife, Consulting Tooth Specialist offering gold fillings and painless extractions. No 229 Elite Cleaning and Pressing, also Sinclairs stationery and toys. There is a bicycle at the kerb. The corner building has a plaster decoration of the horn of plenty. The photograph was taken 19th June, 1916.

Commercial buildings of two and three storeys. Corner shop has ornate facade and a large sign 'A. A. Higgs, Shoe Architect, Surgical Work a Speciality, Repairs by craftsmen skilled in the art'. Nextdoor (right) is Surgeon Dentist George P Fife, and further right is Sinclair's Stationers. A well-dressed lady stands at the corner kerb near a family of three and other pedestrian shoppers. This photograph was not taken until 23 March 1918.