Sydney CBD

King Street, Sydney

In 1842 King Street was unpaved, low-built and loud with carts, and its signage still named individual traders one by one — among them the New Holland Grocery Warehouse. We know this because a man called John Rae drew it.

Rae became Sydney's first full-time town clerk the following year and held the job until 1857. He was a self-taught amateur, and his set of twenty-six street scenes records a city no camera ever reached. It helps to know what King Street is: a cross-street, running the short way from George Street up to the government end at Macquarie, which has always made it the seam between the retail city and the official one.

By the 1900s a single-deck tram bound for Rose Bay stands in the roadway outside the Surrey Hotel, with a chemist and a dentist along the block. By the 1940s the crowd has moved to the corner of Pitt and King, where Proud's the Jewellers had opened a five-storey flagship in 1920 — a shop so thoroughly the local landmark that people stopped saying its address and said Proud's corner instead.

Then a wet morning in 1951, looking west toward George Street: tram tracks set in a shining roadway, the street dipping into its hollow and rising again, and almost nobody in it.

5 works
English, Scottish & Australian Bank, George and King Streets, Sydney — photograph, from King Street, 1873
photograph·1873·Sydney CBD

English, Scottish & Australian Bank, George and King Streets, Sydney, 1873

A collection of photographs of buildings and views in New South Wales [Sydney and Zig Zag Railway, Lithgow] ... / Thomas Richards, Government PrinterNew South Wales. Government Printing Office
King Street looking west towards George Street — photograph, from King Street, 1951
photograph·1951·Sydney CBD

King Street looking west towards George Street, 1951

Sydney streets, August 1951
Crowds at the Prouds corner, King Street, Sydney — photograph, from King Street, 1949
photograph·1949·Sydney CBD

Crowds at the Prouds corner, King Street, Sydney, 1949

Sydney
Surrey Hotel and Rose Bay tram, King Street, Sydney — photograph, from King Street, c. 1900–10
photograph·1905·Sydney CBD

Surrey Hotel and Rose Bay tram, King Street, Sydney, c. 1900–10

King Street, SydneyStar Photo Co.
King Street looking north, Sydney — illustration, from King Street, 1842
illustration·1870·Sydney CBD

King Street looking north, Sydney, 1842

Views of Old SydneyCharles Bayliss; Freeman Brothers; John Rae (original drawings)