Sydneytecture: Lost Villas of Sydney: Woollahra, Orielton

Lost Villas of Sydney: Woollahra, Orielton

Original

Today (Google)

The pics above and below are from about 1880. The estate on Ocean Street began in 1840, and by the 1860s this new, large house had been built.

Original

Restored

Subdivision in 1918 got rid of most the grounds but the house lasted until 1928, when it was demolished for flats. Plans about that are shown next...

Original

At left, a 1918 sketch of the land subdivision sale. Below, as it is now. The large parcel on the right became the now heritage-listed Fenton, built in 1920.

Today (Google)

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Sydneytecture is more than vintage photos of Sydney restored in colour. The focus is on once-well known places that have been forgotten, and identifying their lost details.

I also geolocate historical mystery photos.

As an old Sydney architecture buff, I wanted to see how life really looked to our ancestors in these faded black & white photos. But just colouring the old-tech wasn't enough, so I strive to make each photo as realistic as if it was taken by a modern camera. And as I enjoy making these, I thought I'd share them here for anyone who's also interested.

[*It's important to know that there are websites on YouTube and Facebook which claim to show vintage photos of Sydney "come to life". However, they are auto-generated AI, and are just totally fictitious cartoons, full of errors and false-invention, nothing at all 'real'.]

My image restorations can take days to complete, ensuring they're accurate to the original for archival purposes.

Google Street View is usually linked, so you can check out how each scene is today. All photos are from Trove, and all dates are confirmed via Sand's Directory and Dove's Maps. I regularly upload new posts.

How I work

As an amateur, I work the manually-intensive way. First, the monochrome source image is enhanced in Photoshop to identify the various elements that require work, along with other areas for concentration. Next, I run any necessary elements through Flux2 for primary colouring. The next stage is layer work and assembling in Affinity. The final stage is PS again, where all the fine work on light levels, contrasts, colouring, toning, and refinements are done. Most importantly, everything is constantly cross-matched with the original source image to ensure accurate replication.

...And yet, as AI engines improve, within a year or two all of this will be redundant, as their image-generation capabilities will no doubt be on par.