Cleveland house - 146 - 164 Chalmers Street - Surry Hills - NSW
Part 2

Cleveland House, at 146–164 Chalmers Street, Surry Hills (best viewed from Bedford Street), is a State Heritage Register colonial Georgian villa built about 1823–24 for emancipist merchant Daniel Cooper on land earlier known as Cleveland Gardens / Cleveland Paddocks (Macquarie-era grant to Charles Smith). Design is attributed to Francis Greenway — Heritage NSW treats that as traditional belief rather than a signed commission. Cooper spent a large sum on a two-storey stuccoed brick house with encircling verandah, cedar joinery and cellars; the Coopers occupied it only briefly before marital separation, after which it was let.

From the 1850s the surrounding estate was carved up as Surry Hills densified around the Redfern / Central railway corridor. Later lives of the place included school, boarding house, laundry, cordial factory and bottle yard in the outbuildings; from 1903 a Good Samaritan convent and refuge; Franciscan aged care; and from 1958 the NSW Society for Crippled Children. Most later wings were cleared after a late-1980s sale. The villa itself remains privately owned, SHR-listed (no. 00065), and has spent long stretches vacant or in disputed repair — a rare early Sydney town residence now hemmed by apartments near Central.

Images in this Part 2 set document the house and its constrained urban setting.