Darlinghurst Blog: Villas of Darlinghurst: Kellett House

Kellett House (detail), artist unknown, circa 1876.

Built on an allotment of over 3-acres granted to Samuel Augustus Perry in 1831.

The first NSW Premier, Stuart Alexander Donaldson, was one of Darlinghurst's first residents and can lay claim to the naming of Kellett Street. 

In the mid-1800s Donaldson moved into a large, two-storey villa on a 3-acre plot, where the Hotel 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, giving the street its name.

Perry was granted the allotment by Governor Ralph Darling, but unlike most of the gentry who were given the original 17 plots on the ridge of Woolloomooloo Hill - which came to be known as Darlinghurst - he had a rather scruffy appearance.

The London-born soldier and surveyor, who arrived in Australia with his wife and six children in 1829,  sat for his portrait in the 1800s and the unknown artist captured a man who looks more like the hipsters that roam around Darlinghurst today.

His hair looks like it could do with a good brush, his sideburns are very 2005 and his unbuttoned, military coat looks straight off the Autumn-Winter 2012 runway. A man ahead of his time, perhaps.

Perry came to Sydney to serve as the deputy to NSW Surveyor General Thomas Mitchell, and he clashed with the older man who was jealous of anyone he thought likely to succeed him.

Therefore, Perry was generally assigned mundane duties so Mitchell could accuse his underling of being idle.

Perry didn't live in Bona Vista for long and in 1834 sold it at auction to Richard "China" Jones MP, who renamed the villa Darlinghurst House, after his wife's good friend, Lady Elizabeth Darling, wife of the Guv.

While researching this transaction, I came across this gem of an article from the 30 November 1937 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, written by Joseph Reidle:

"Ghosts in Crinolines, When Kings Cross was dotted with stately homes.

"A great effort is required to imagine that King's Cross (sic) - the present throbbing centre of Sydney's 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 (sic), despite stout resistance to the demolisher's picks, century-old homes are being knocked down so that the task of converting King's Cross into a swarming, human ant-hill may proceed uninhibited.

"Roslyn Hall and Orwell House are already man-made ruins, and a similar fate awaits Kellett House, Springfield and Larbert Lodge. 
"But before modern mammoth structures completely annihilate even the memory of their long lives, these last survivors of a bygone age merit at least a brief obituary."

The article goes on to describe, in words and pictures, the ruin-like state of some of the original villas and, despite the fact that the Villas book states Kellett House was demolished in 1877, it appears from this article parts of the home were still around in the 1930s.

So, after Donaldson moved out of Kellett House in the mid-1800s, it was purchased by wealthy squatter W.F. Buchanan.
The original plot was subdivided from 1864 and Buchanan demolished part of Kellett House and built a terrace on the site, known as Bayswater Terrace - obviously how the road today was given its name.

The Hotel Mansions was built in the late 1800s and remodelled in 1918. 

The remains of Kellett House were sold in October 1937 and it was probably demolished soon after.
Today, the Hotel Mansions is about to be converted into designer apartments known as Manor, and the area continues to be a swarming, human ant-hill.

*

SOURCES: Villas of Darlinghurst

Trove

State Library of NSW

City of Sydney Archives

Australian Dictionary of Biography

Wikipedia

Across the Border: Kings Cross: New York Restaurant Photographs by John Webber

Take-Out Roast, The New York Restaurant, Kings Cross

Photograph by John Webber, 2010

When my photographer friend, John Webber, heard about the impending closure of the New York Restaurant, which I wrote about in a previous post, he grabbed his Canon camera and zipped over to the diner at 18 Kellett Street.

And I am so glad he did.

John Webber has lived in and around Kings Cross and Surry Hills for most of his adult life - if indeed he could be termed a "grown-up". He began his career in photography in the 1970s, shooting jewellery for magazines and advertisements and later took food shots for restaurant light-box displays (if you've ever seen a photograph of a Mr Whippy ice-cream, chances are John Webber took it).

In the 1980s he was employed as the staff photographer for Countdown magazine, which was a tie-in with the ABC TV music-program hosted by Molly Meldrum. During his years with Countdown, John Webber photographed hundreds of Australian and international musicians, including Hunters and Collectors, Mental As Anything, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol and Madonna.

As a result, he has dozens of stories to tell too.

In the 1990s he moved to Terraplanet publishing, based in Surry Hills, and worked across their titles, which included Australian Style, Monument, Juice and HQ. It was on Juice, a dedicated music magazine, that John Webber was able to express his creative side by each year shooting and printing a photo series for the Juice Annual.

The Juice Annual photos were heavily styled, quirky and published in punchy, vibrant colour. One such photo was of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin in a 1950s kitchen. Luhrmann wore a dress and apron and was holding up a plate of lamingtons, while Martin, dressed as a little school boy, sat perched on the kitchen bench.

Other photos included musician Kylie Minogue sitting on the bonnet of a hoon-car eating watermelon, actor David Wenham in a strip-joint (shot at the original Dancers Cabaret), and my favourite Darlinghurst-based actor, Hugo Weaving, playing a game of pool.

All the pictures were shot on John Webber's medium-format Hasselblad and printed on his home colour-machine as large broad-sheet sized prints.

These days John Webber uses the much less expensive digital method, but as you can see in the following pictures the results are still fabulous, even though he considers them his ''spares'' (he's keeping the even better ones for himself).

John Webber is presently working on a project with writer Louis Nowra to document the Kings Cross area. If you would like to contact him about photography, his email address is johnwebber33@hotmail.com

He took these photographs on the last night of the New York Restaurant on Saturday October 2, 2010.

New Yorker, New York Restaurant, Kings Cross

Photograph by John Webber, 2010

The Boss, New York Restaurant, Kings Cross

Photograph by John Webber, 2010

Last Supper, New York Restaurant, Kings Cross

Photograph by John Webber, 2010

Diners, New York Restaurant, Kings Cross

Photograph by John Webber, 2010

Across the Border: Kings Cross: New York Restaurant

This is such a sad photograph and shows the site of the New York Restaurant in Kings Cross, which last week turned off its gas stoves, put away the fry-pans and switched off the lights after 22 years at 18 Kellett Street and more than 50 years in the area.

I rushed over to Kings Cross when I learnt about its closure, but it was too late. Less than one week after owners John Kakaris and Paul Varvaressos handed back the keys to the landlord, the place was being gutted. Even the hanging, outdoor light-box signage, with its retro script, was gone.

The New York diner, as it was known, was one of those rare places where the menu didn't change in 50 years and the prices barely rose either. Sausages with chips and salad was about $6; a glass of orange cordial just 70c.

I only found out about its closure a few days ago, when my photographer friend, John Webber, showed me a picture he had taken last Saturday night of a couple from Picton, south of Sydney, eating their final New York T-bone steak. They had been travelling to eat at the diner for 30 years.

The diner was also great for lonely, old-age pensioners who could enjoy lamb-cutlets and chips for tea in a social environment, and without having to spend too much of their measly, fortnightly government-cheque.

I once knew a cheery old man called Little Col - not to be confused with Big Col - who lived at the KB Hotel in Surry Hills.

Little Colin was in his 70s but refused to retire from the job he had held since leaving school in the 1940s. The company owed him a motza in superannuation and long-service leave, because I don't think Little Col ever took holidays.

Every day Little Col would work his 9-5 day and after knocking-off, he would catch the train from Central to Kings Cross to have a 6pm dinner at the New York diner. I think he ate there most days without fail, until he died suddenly in 2005.

For a peek inside the New York Restaurant's doors - when they were still open - the deluxe food blog Not Quite Nigella, features a well-written and comprehensive account of the diner's characters and cuisine.

I never ate at the New York diner and I'm sorry about that now, but I was also saddened to learn that the only reason it closed was because the landlords doubled the rent.

The building is owned by Y S Pty Ltd, which is directed by Yvette and Rodney Studniberg of Vaucluse. Ms Studniberg is the daughter of John Steidler and the pair once jointly-owned 62 Darlinghurst Road (home of the Love Machine), but the site is now solely in her and her husband's name. Ms Studniberg used to operate the Lydia Florist from 62 Darlinghurst Road and is presently the director of about half a dozen companies, including the Flower Man florist in Double Bay.

I am really curious as to what is going to happen next to the Kellett Street building, because despite tradesmen gutting the place today, I could find no development application for the site lodged with the City of Sydney Council. There is also now a For Lease sign in the window.

I watched as the tradies tore out the kitchen and threw the rubbish on to the footpath and the reusable stuff in to the tray of this ute:

Oh, what stories those kitchen doors could tell.