THE MANSIONS, on the corner of Kellett Street and Bayswater Road, Rushcutters Bay, is now enjoying its third life: it was firstly a large mansion house, secondly a hotel, and has now reverted to up-market apartments. The first NSW Premier, Stuart Alexander Donaldson, was one of area’s first residents and can lay claim to the naming of Kellett Street. In the mid-1800s Donaldson moved into a large, two-storey, verandahed villa on a three-acre plot where The Mansions on Kellett Street and Baywater Road sits today. The villa, originally called Bona Vista, had been built for Samuel Augustus Perry in 1831, and Donaldson renamed it Kellett House, thus giving the street its name. The house was altered to build terraces, still there in Kellett Street today, although the main house was eventually demolished in 1877. By 1885 a five-storey hotel had been constructed but later in the 1930s its external appearance was dramatically altered in the flamboyant Art Deco style when Bayswater Road was widened in 1939. Only the original terraces were left unscathed. In 2012 the bow-fronted building was adaptively re-used to create 43 apartments with ground-floor retail outlets. During these works the imposing corner tower was found to be structurally unsound and a public safety hazard due to water ingress caused by defects in the original design. It was partly removed and then rebuilt using specially-made bricks to exactly replicate the original. The Sydney Morning Herald nostalgically observed in November 1937 that a great effort is required to imagine that the present throbbing centre of Sydneys night life was once sparsely dotted with stately homes where demure ladies drove leisurely through private avenues of trees in their carriages. Those were the days when land was owned by the acre. To-day century-old homes are being knocked down so that the task of converting the area into a swarming anthill can continue uninhibited ... these last survivors merit at least a brief obituary. The site is individually heritage-listed as a rare example of its type with 19th century terraces also separately heritage-listed.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:39:00 +0000
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