Bondi Junction 1915 Bronte Road

Original

Today (Google)

This was a mystery photo with no location info attached, only that it was in a photo album of Ichiro Kagiyama who lived in Sydney in the 1910s, held by the State Library of NSW. And yet, the scene was familiar. I had to get to the bottom of it. 

In the original photo above, at the opposite corner of that intersection, I knew that building but couldn't place it. It was a common Sydney corner Victorian 'shop + flat above', with a step-down addition at the rear. Also, to the left behind the theatre's cupola, was a large Victorian parapet, meaning it was a significant building.

After much online searching and cross-referencing, I arrived at this very pleasing result. It is Bronte Road looking to Ebley Street, - and to be precise -, it's a photo taken from #74 Cowper St (now Bronte Rd). The 1915 Sands Directory shows there was a laundry there run by ... K Yama.

So how did I know that building, even though only the facade remains after having been converted into high-rise flats, and the photo taken more than 110 years ago? 

The topography was the greatest initial pull, and then the buildings. Sydney's Victorian shops cluster around inner city intersections and main thoroughfares. The way the roads approach those intersections, by slope, shadowing, amount and background, all help. If you've spent my sixty odd years around inner Sydney, it becomes much part of your 'inner map'.

But mostly I felt this because it turns out, I'd briefly worked in that old building in the background, the Grand Hotel, in 1978. Across the road, in that corner Victorian shop with flat above, lived a barmaid with whom I'd worked.

The most interesting part of this discovery for me, as a Bondi old-boy, was that this is the only known photo of the original Star Theatre, (and I was the one who discovered it 😉). Initially it was an open-air boxing stadium, then it was roofed over to make a cinema when films became popular. It was then demolished and rebuilt in the 1920s as a major theatre.

 

This is looking back up Bronte Road from Bondi Junction in the mid-1920s, and shows the newly rebuilt Star Theatre.

The original Royal Hotel in 1948

and in 1970 showing its modernist make-over from the '50s.

Just as a cross-reference, I've included this pair of photos to show that the 1915 Grand Hotel parapet as in the original photo is different from the modern Grand. Yet they are obviously still the same building.