Bellevue is a heritage-listed former residence and timber yard and now cafe located at 55–57 Leichhardt Street in the inner city Sydney suburb of Glebe Point in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Ambrose Thornley Junior and built in 1896 for William Jarrett who lived in the adjoining house. It is also known as site of former Venetia (demolished) and 55 Leichhardt Street. The property is owned by the City of Sydney Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History Indigenous history The Leichhardt area was originally inhabited by the Wangal clan of Aborigines. After 1788 diseases such as smallpox and the loss of their hunting grounds caused huge reductions in their numbers and they moved further inland. Since European settlement the foreshores of Blackwattle Bay and Rozelle Bay have developed a unique maritime, industrial and residential character. A character which continues to evolve as areas which were originally residential estates, then industrial areas, are redeveloped for residential units and parklands.
Early Colonial history The first formal grant in the Glebe area was a grant to Rev. Richard Johnson, the colony's first chaplain, in 1789. The Glebe (land allocated for the maintenance of a church minister) comprised rolling shale hills covering sandstone, with several sandstone cliff faces. The ridges were drained by several creeks including Blackwattle Creek, Orphan School Creek and Johnston Creek. Extensive swampland surrounded the creeks. On the shale ridges, heavily timbered woodlands contained several varieties of eucalypts while the swamplands and tidal mudflats had mangroves, swamp oaks (Casuarina glauca) and blackwattles (Callicoma serratifolia) after which the bay is named. Blackwattle Swamp was first mentioned by surveyors in the 1790s and Blackwattle Swamp Bay in 1807. By 1840 it was called Blackwattle Bay. Boat parties collected wattles and reeds for the building of huts, and kangaroos and emus were hunted by the early settlers who called the area the Kangaroo Ground. Rozelle Bay is thought to have been named after a schooner which once moored in its waters.
Johnson's land remained largely undeveloped until 1828, when the Church and School Corporation subdivided it into 28 lots, three of which they retained for church use.City Plan Heritage, 2005, quoting Max Solling & Peter Reynolds "Leichhardt: On the Margins of the City", 1997, 14
The Church sold 27 allotments in 1828, north on the point and south around Broadway. The Church kept the middle section where the Glebe Estate is now. Up until the 1970s the Glebe Estate was in the possession of the Church.
On the point the sea breezes attracted the wealthy who built villas. The Broadway end attracted slaughterhouses and boiling down works that used the creek draining to Blackwattle Swamp. Smaller working-class houses were built around these industries. Abbattoirs were built there from the 1860s.
When Glebe was made a municipality in 1859 there were pro and anti-municipal clashes in the streets. From 1850 Glebe was dominated by wealthier interests.
Reclaiming the swamp, Wentworth Park opened in 1882 as a cricket ground and lawn bowls club. Rugby union football was played there in the late 19th century. The dog racing started in 1932. In the early 20th century modest villas were broken up into boarding houses as they were elsewhere in the inner city areas. The wealthier moved into the suburbs which were opening up through the railways. Up until the 1950s Sydney was the location for working class employment - it was a port and industrial city. By the 1960s central Sydney was becoming a corporate city with service-based industries - capital intensive not labour-intensive. A shift in demographics occurred, with younger professionals and technical and administrative people servicing the corporate city wanting to live close by. Housing was coming under threat and the heritage conservation movement was starting. The Fish Markets moved in during the 1970s. An influx of students came to Glebe in the 1960s and 1970s.Murray, Dr Lisa, Central Sydney, 5 August 2009.
Bellevue Most of the lots near Blackwattle Swamp were purchased for slaughterhouses and other noxious industries which had been forced out of the city. These included tanneries, copper smelting, pig yards and tobacco works. In contrast the elevated blocks to the north, with harbour views, became "villa retreats" where the prosperous middle class merchants escaped the crush of the city.City Plan Heritage, 2005, quoting Max Solling & Peter Reynolds "Leichhardt: On the Margins of the City", 1997, 14
Alexander Brodie Spark (of Tusculum, Potts Point and Tempe House, ) purchased this site as part of his lot in the Church subdivision of 1828. In the 1840s depression Spark became bankrupt and his land was sold.
By 1870 Mary Chisolm owned large portions of the original grant, and she commenced the subdivision and sale of the remaining lots in 1873. Ambrose Thornley owned a house near the point at this time (west of the Bellevue & Venetia lots), and a bathing house (later known as Homecroft) had been built c.1858 on the foreshore of the land owned by James Rothwell, immediately west of lot 45/Venetia). A second bathing house was built in the shallows of the adjacent (to Lot 45) foreshore.
William Jarrett
Lots 45 & 46 adjacent to Rothwell's land were bought by William Jarrett in 1873, with a mortgage from the Industrial & Provident Permanent Benefit Building Society, of which Jarrett was manager. William Jarrett was born in Kent, England in 1829. In 1850 he married Margaret Roberts.UK Births Deaths and Marriages Jarrett arrived in Sydney in 1853 with his wife and their two infant daughters aboard the ship Beejapore.NSW Assisted Immigrant Passenger List 1853. Soon after their arrival in Sydney, Jarrett became licensee for the Tradesmen's Arms Hotel in Leichhardt. He was a publican until 1870 when he started his association with Industrial Buildings Societies. Over the next thirty years he acquired enormous amounts of land and property. His holdings are listed in an advertisement for the sale of his estate in 1902.Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1902, p. 15. In Glebe he owned many houses including the now heritage-listed seven adjoining residences in Glebe Point Road which encompass the houses called Favo and Gaza. In 1870 he founded the Industrial Permanent Building Society and remained as its Manager for the rest of his life.Obituary for William Jarrett, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1901, p. 5 William was also an alderman for Glebe for three years and gave evidence to the Government's Select Committee on Immigration in 1880.
In 1873 he bought two lots on Blackwattle Bay foreshore and two years later built a very large house which he called Venetia. Venetia was known to be full of art pieces, many collected on the Jarrett's overseas travels. A very strict father, his children and their spouses continued to live at Venetia, even after their marriages. By 1880 a row of seven houses had been built in then Kennedy Street (renamed in 1909 as an extension of Leichhardt Street). Jarrett also built a row of four houses further west in Oxley Street. Venetia was described in 1902 in an advertisement in the following terms:
Jarrett's wife Margaret died in 1891 at their country residence called Fairlight in Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 1891, p. 1. which is now also a heritage-listed property. In 1892 Jarrett remarried. His new wife was Lucy A. White.NSW Births Deaths and Marriages and Sydney Morning Herald 24 April 1903, p. 4 which is a notice of remembrance inserted by William Jarretts wife L. A. Jarrett In about 1896 Jarrett commissioned Ambrose Thornley, an architect to build Bellevue on the adjoining lot fronting the Bay (see photo on right). The house was described in an advertisement in the following terms:
In 1890 a residence, The Poplars, was built opposite Venetia. Jarrett built a second house Bellevue, adjoining Venetia in 1896. It was designed by Ambrose Thornley Junior, an architect who lived nearby in Florence Villa, and is typical of Thornley's designs, which included the Glebe Town Hall. Thornley was declared bankrupt in the 1890s and became a publican.
Jarrett rented this property from the time it was built. One of the first tenants was James George Warden who took the photograph of Bellevue shown above in 1899. Jarrett died in 1901 and his second wife, Lucy, lived at Venetia until 1903 and then moved to another house in Glebe.Sands Directory for 1902 and 1903 for Mrs L. A. Jarrett
James George Warden
James George Warden rented Bellevue from 1898 until 1903.State Library of NSW, Details with the photograph Bellvue and Venetia Warden was born in London in about 1860. He immigrated to Sydney in 1878 on board the ship Christiana Thompson.Obituary Mr J. G Warden, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 February 1937, p. 13. In 1886, he established the firm of Warden Hotel Brokers in Pitt StreetSydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1931, p. 7. and in the following year he married Mary Jane O’Dwyer.NSW Births Deaths and Marriages The couple had five sons and one daughter over the next 12 years. Their youngest child, William was born in Glebe in 1899.
Warden was a foundation member of the Royal Motor Yacht Club. He also owned the property Pine Park in . Warden's wife died in 1903 and he remarried in 1924 to Edith H. Palmer, and the couple lived in . Warden died in 1937 at the age of 76.
Ownership, 1910s to 1950s Following Jarrett's death, in July 1913 Bellevue and Venetia were sold to solicitor William Archibold Windeyer. Extensive reclamation and sea walls had extended Jarrett's original lots.viz. 1913 plan of Windeyer's purchase.
The 1905 Sands Directory shows Joseph Stinson (who owned the largest real estate agency in Glebe at the time) occupying Venetia and Thomas Riley occupying Bellevue. This was still the case in 1914, however from 1915 there are no further listings of Venetia, suggesting it was demolished by Windeyer in 1914/5, soon after his purchase.
Bellevue was occupied by Mrs Lena Reilly in 1920, and from 1924 until 1925 by George Cavanagh. After about 1925 the area around the Point at Blackwattle Bay became increasingly industrial and Bellevue became part of a timber yard for many years. By 1970 the whole foreshore was very unappealing and dirty. The newspaper The Glebe described it as “"a disaster area - deserted timber yards, empty fuel drums littered about, derelict houses and rusting hulks of barges moored to rotting jetties". 53 Leichhardt Street for a short time became a lighterage for McEnnally Bros. & Co. Ltd. While the sites of Venetia and The Poplars, together with Bellevue were incorporated into the Vanderfield & Reid Ltd. Timber Yards. 49–53 Leichhardt Street became Sylvester Stride's ship breaking yards. The crane which remains on the foreshore today (2004) to the rear of numbers 49 & 51B was part of Stride's operation. Although Stride demolished parts of the houses on his site, they remained relatively intact during his ownership, number 49 becoming part of the offices for the salvage and wrecking business.
Windeyer sold his land on the Point to Property Purchase P/L in 1939. Vanderfield & Reid Limited bought the property in 1948. The survey by the City of Sydney shows the extent of their timber yard holdings, north and south of Leichhardt Street. They also extended their holdings into the bay, as large numbers of logs were floated ready for processing. A photo shows a building (now demolished) had been attached to the rear of Bellevue (its south).
Ownership, 1970s to 1980s