Sydneytecture: Lost Villas of Sydney: Bondi Junction, Eastcourt

Lost Villas of Sydney: Bondi Junction, Eastcourt

Original

Today (Google)

Mr Pugh had a couple of cottages on Oxford St, Bondi Junction (when it was then The South Head Road, Waverley), at the corner of Waverley Street, just down the road from the eponymous House.

Eastcourt (pictured above about 1900) was built on the site in 1893, but only lasted until 1928 when it was demolished for the Olympic No.1 cinema (pictured below in 1937). Olympic No.2 was at the other end of Oxford near Ocean Street.

Original

Restored

I had a bit of fun working out the movie bill posters and researching to reconstruct them. They turned out great. And we think the parked car is a 1928 Dodge. (That's what I mean about historical accuracy in my restorations!)

In 1939, after renovation, it was renamed the Coronet (below in 1958), and demolished in 1968 for shops. (The two old buildings squeezed in between the Coronet and Grace Bros are still there today. I've no idea how they survived, if you look at the rest of the Jungo.)

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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 where little photographic detail of them can be found.

I also geolocate historical mystery photos.

As an old Sydney architecture buff, I wanted to see how life really looked to our forebears in these faded black & white images. Most of the photos have aged poorly and are difficult to see, which is why I set about working to get as much realism as possible. And as I enjoy making these, they're shared 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 take days to complete, to ensure they're accurate to the original for archival purposes.

From November 2026, the click-to-enlarge Restored images will be high-resolution, 3000px-6000px.

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 some time all of this may become redundant, if their image-generation capabilities will be on par. Or maybe AI is just over-hyped? We'll see.