The suburbs immediately to the south of the City of Sydney have traditionally housed much of the city’s industrial and commercial activity. But in recent decades land use in suburbs like Alexandria, Zetland and Waterloo has undergone a remarkable transformation…a lot of the old industries and factories have closed down or decentralised to Western Sydney. In their place high-density residential estates have emerged, modern housing complexes on the streets and blocks where light industry once monopolised the urban landscape. The industrial “desert wastelands” have gradually been replaced by new residential ‘precincts’… glossy property ads for these gentrified zones of inner-Sydney suburbia tend to emphasise the modern lifestyle attractions for home-seekers – “green-linked” neighbourhoods, “bike and pedestrian friendly”, “close to the city”, etc.
The suburb of Rosebery, six kilometres from the CBD, is part of the modern makeover of the once dominant industrial landscape of South Sydney. One of the suburb’s newer buildings, known as ‘The Cannery” (a former warehouse and cyclone fencing factory), gives a clue to a very different Rosebery 100 years ago. One of the building’s new tenants is a restaurant called Stanton & Co, the name references the man who was instrumental in developing the suburb in the early 20th century, Richard Stanton.
(Source: Broadsheet)
Market garden, cattle holdings and a midweek racecourse
The area of Rosebery was part of Cooper’s Estate (Daniel Cooper, 19th century property ‘baron’, owner of the Waterloo Estate amongst others), prior to 1912 had developed in a rather spasmodic fashion…’Rosebery’ comprised a “hodge-podge” of different enterprises and activities – “dairymen and gardeners” with their market gardens peopled much of the sand-soaked terrain, the occasional factory was scattered here and there interspersed with some isolated houses. The south side of Rosebery was the venue for a popular racecourse.
In 1912 Sydney estate agent Richard Stanton, fresh from creating his Haberfield garden suburb “model estate”, (see Planning for Suburban Bliss, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Haberfield, NSW — July 2018 blog), came to Rosebery with big plans. Stanton’s company, the Town Planning Company of Australia (TPCA), acquired for an outlay of £24,000 some 273 acres from within the greater Waterloo (Cooper’s) Estate, which he called the ‘Rosebery Workingman’s Estate’✱. The initial layout of the estate was planned by noted architect John Sulman using the land’s contours as a basis for design (once again reprising the ‘team’ of Stanton and Sulman who had done the ‘spadework’ for the earlier development of Haberfield) [‘Special Precincts’, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au].
An all-purpose suburb?
Stanton’s scheme envisaged turning Rosebery into a model suburb which harmonised industrial production with space for living. The estate would entail both industrial and factory employment sites with worker housing. The work force for the new industrial enterprises would be situated close by for easy access. The scheme also allowed for the creation of shops and other commercial outlets within the estate, as well as community and recreational facilities. Stanton envisaged that workers could walk to their work place, which was intended to be separated from their homes by parks [‘Sydney City Council’, www.sydneyyoursay.com.au; Craig Vaughan, ‘Obscure 1912 covenant protects pocket of Rosebery from overdevelopment’, Southern Courier, 30-Jul-2014].
⍐ Rosebery: Arts & Crafts/Californian bungalow
Californian bungalow village
After TPCA subdivided the Rosebery Estate in 1914, the early dwellings tended to be Federation style (single-storey, face brick exterior walls, terracotta roof tiles) although there was not many houses constructed until the early Twenties because of the outbreak of the World War. Increasingly though, the domestic building of choice for the “Rosebery Model and Industrial Suburb” was the Californian bungalow (horizontal overreaching roof forms, flat verandah roofs in asymmetrical composition, decorative front gables, roughcast masonry contrasting with dark brickwork). On a visit to the USA Stanton became enamoured with the “Cali-bungalow” and introduced it into his Sydney estates, especially in Haberfield and Rosebery [‘Special Precincts’, loc.cit.].
Stanton’s Rosebery covenant
Stanton established a covenant for the estate (cf. Haberfield) which provided a framework for house construction which gave the cottages a distinctive neighbourhood pattern and character…eschewing a rigid homogeneity Stanton allowed for individual differences between houses (no two cottages in Stanton’s estate were exactly the same!) [ibid.]. The covenant bound the buyer of residential lots to its adherence (it was codified into the deed of sale) – all cottages built in the estate had to be one-storey and double-fronted. Houses were to have (back)yards and to be divided by lanes. A 1913 prospectus on the estate released by TPCA heralded the estate as “the ideal of the manufacturer and mechanic alike”, offering the best of both worlds “modern factories and model homes” [Sydney Living Museums, (Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection), www.collection.hht.net.au].
A bulwark against overdevelopment
The detail of the covenant contains a clause inserted by Stanton which safeguards the core of the estate from being too built-up…the safety clause applies to a 121ha area bounded by Botany Rd in the west to Gardeners Rd in the south, to Dalmeny Ave and Kimberley Grove in the east, to Cressy St in the north, comprising in all some 3,353 homes. The covenant is particularly germane to the present as developers have saturated the areas surrounding the covenant’s jurisdiction with bulky, high-density apartments and units – which the covenant prohibits! [Vaughan, op.cit.].
Stanton’s 1922 ad for the new Rosebery estate – don’t spare the hyperbole! ⍗
Selling Rosebery to the punters
To drum up interest for the Rosebery Estate, the Town Planning Company of Australia launched a street-naming competition, inviting the public to come up with a name for each street planned for the model suburb. Stanton offered a first and second prize (valued at £10 and £5 respectively) for the best names – with himself to be sole arbiter of the entries. The newspaper promo was unrestrained in heralding the ‘unique’ venture in Sydney property: “Rosebery Model and Industrial Suburb – never before attempted in Australia!” Despite being a site dedicated to light industry, the advert interestingly depicted the new estate as “undulating beautiful grasslands and sand dunes” (used for) “pastoral purposes” [‘Rosebery Street-naming Competition. First Prize £10’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13-Jul-1912, www.trove.nla.gov.au].
⍐ Estate cottage in Tweedmouth Ave
(Photo: Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection)
⍐ Sweetacres of Rosebery: “It’s moments like these…you need Minties!”
Under these arrangements the private sector was not slow in establishing plants and factories in the new estate. One of the first to set up (1917-18) was ‘Sweetacres’✱, owned by a confectionary manufacturer, James Stedman-Henderson’s Sweets Ltd (makers of the iconic ‘Minties’, ‘Jaffas’ and ‘Fantales’). The 16-acre Sweetacres complex was generously equipped with a large canteen a social hall, sports and cricket grounds, a library, band and sports clubs, to cater for 1,000-plus mainly female workforce. The factory building was designed by John Burcham Clamp [‘Sweetacres and the iconic Aussie lolly’, City of Sydney Council, www.cityofsydney,nsw.gov.au].
The old Wrigley’s Factory converted in a modern residential complex ⍗
Reviving the Garden City Movement?
Extending the local confectionary theme, Clamp also designed the Wrigley’s Gum factory in Crewe Place Rosebery (1918)…a huge Chicago-style steel-reinforced concrete structure with grid-like facade, rooftop water tower and setback landscaping. The US-owned factory made the popular chewing gum brands ‘Juicy Fruit’, ‘P.K.’ and ‘Spearmint’. With a modern fit-out and de luxe designer-gardens, the heritage protected ‘Wrigley’s building resurfaced recently as state-of-the-art accommodation (‘The Burcham’), with ads connecting it to a revival of the UK Garden City Movement [‘Built to last – an old world soul redesigned’, www.theburcham.com.au]
Other industries within the Rosebery Estate included the Commonwealth Weaving Mills (AKA Dri-Glo Towels), Dunning Ave. The premises were later acquired by Bonds Industries with part of the site becoming a warehouse in the early 1960s for Union Carbide. American multi-national chemicals and polymers giant Union Carbide also had a large plant (cnr of Rothschild St and Harcourt Ave) where it manufactured Eveready brand batteries. Other manufacturing firms operating on the Rosebery turf included the Rosella Canning Factory, Parke Davies & Co (chemicals) and Noyes Bros (makers of ‘Gypboard’) [‘City of Sydney Warehouses and Industrial Buildings. A Heritage Study Report’, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au].
These days Rosebery remains quite a mixed bag architecturally. There is still light industry in the suburb but most of the old factory buildings with zero aesthetic appeal are either gone or transformed. Much of the landscape is occupied by glistening glass monolithic structures housing telecommunications and IT outlets, modern retail outlets and a seemingly inexhaustible conveyor-belt of new residential projects constantly in the process of erection.
PostScript: Beaconsfield, Rosebery writ tiny minus the green space
Beaconsfield, less than one kilometre east of Rosebery, offers an interesting point of comparison. Beaconsfield estate was hived off from Cooper’s Estate in an 1884 subdivision and promoted as a “Working Man’s Model Township”. The suburb’s potential however failed to elicit any interest from Richard Stanton, possibly due to several factors: the tiny size of the suburb (0.1 sq. ml.) which translates into a limited number of residential properties; and its topography was dotted with numerous sand hills✥. Accordingly Beaconsfield has tended to retain its industrial complexion longer – brickworks, noxious materials, soap and candle-making factories, and more recently mechanical and engineering works, a lack of green spaces. Recently though Beaconsfield, being close to Green Square, has been caught up with the process of gentrification and urban renewal affecting most of the South Sydney district [Anne-Marie Whitaker, Pictorial History South Sydney, (2002); ‘Beaconsfield, Sydney’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org].
Beaconsfield, NSW
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✱ ‘Sweetacres’ was later acquired by Nestlés (via Hoadley’s and Rowntree’s) and the plant was closed and replaced by high-rise housing…however a park nearby in Mentmore Street commemorates Sweetacres’ historic presence in Rosebery
✥ an observer in 1904 described the Beaconsfield estate as “among the dreariest parts of the environments of Sydney since the primitive sandhills remain”. So much sand that Sydneysiders would commute to Beaconsfield to engage in the pursuit of “sand-shifting” (ie, collecting bags of sand for free to take home)[Whitaker, ibid.]
Dacey Garden Suburb
A profusion of blueprints 
A quantitative shortfall!
A win for the working class?
The path (usually muddy here) skirts round the back of the Concord Repatriation Hospital, which itself continues the WWII theme. It was built in 1940 as the 113th Australian Army General Hospital, taking in wounded and convalescing servicemen from the War. The ground on which the hospital dominated by the huge “Multi Building” stands passed to the Crown after the death of Dame Eadith Walker, daughter of the second Thomas Walker associated with the area. This Thomas Walker was a Scottish migrant in the 19th century who made it (very) big from property and stock investment and finance in Australia (in his later years he was president of the Bank of NSW). At the time of his death his personal worth was estimated at up to £2,000,000, a staggering amount for 1886!
At its height the adjoining structures included an admin block, separate dining rooms and pavilions for men and women, concert hall and servants’ quarters, with a tennis court for convalescing patients. Staying on the foreshore path we reach the distinctive Dutch bell tower (above) on the water, from where a long stepped pathway leads impressively up to the hospital entrance. In the time it was a working hospital the bell tower was the landing-point for ferries conveying patients from Circular Quay, and it also served in a secondary function as a smoking room – for male patients only!
