In May 1848 Samuel paid £102 for a vacant block of land on Bourke Street, part of the Woolloomooloo Estate. The block, on the southern side of William Street, is outlined in red in the plan below.
Samuel then had constructed on the site a pair of terrace houses, and Ford’s Sydney Directory had Samuel and his family living there in 1850 (they probably moved in in 1849).
We don’t have an image of the houses, which were demolished in the 1970’s. The details in the plan above tells us that they were 3-storey terraces, built of brick or stone, with a small garden in front and a verandah above the front porch. Like many of the houses in Sydney at the time, the roof was shingled. The image to the right shows a similar pair of 3-storey terraces, which by time the photograph was taken had like many of the other large Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst houses probably been converted to flats.
The family lived in what was then number 183 Bourke Street (now 191 Bourke Street), the terrace closest to William Street and leased the other. This was the first home the young couple owned and they lived here for 5 years. During that time there were 2 more additions to the family, both boys; Alfred in October 1851 and Frank in August 1853. And sadly, they lost their 6-year-old daughter Kate, a victim of scarlet fever, in September 1853.
Alfred back at Bourke Street in 1874
183 Bourke Street re-appears in our story again in 1874, when Alfred, by then 23 moves to the house with his new bride, Emily (nee Cane), following their marriage in October that year. (Samuel’s portfolio of properties ended up providing the first home for 2 more of his children after their marriages; Rose at Rosebank, Newtown, (what was to be Samuel and Eliza’s next home), and Frank at one of Samuel’s other properties in Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo
After the Bennetts
The Bourke Street property, one of the properties against which Samuel had borrowed to help fund the purchase of The Empire, was sold in 1903 by Christopher Bennett and Walter Jeffrey (Managing Editor of the Evening News). They were acting as the executors of the trust created by Samuel’s will and were slowly selling all the properties that were part of the trust, in preparation for the later incorporation of the newspaper business.
In 1976 these 2 terrace houses, along with other properties in the vicinity, were resumed by the NSW Roads and Transport Authority for the construction of the Eastern Distributor and subsequently demolished. The site was then passed to the NSW Housing Commission and is now public housing units.