Loftus Lane is the service spine behind Loftus Street at Circular Quay — the sort of lane customs agents, shipping brokers and wool buyers once used when the Quay was still a working harbour edge rather than a ferry postcard. For most of its life it has been rear access: loading, carts, the unglamorous backs of offices that faced the better street.
On the right as you walk it, the old three-storey sandstone that forms the rear of the former Gallipoli Club (12–14 Loftus Street) is the survivor worth stopping for. Built 1876 as Barker’s wool and produce stores, it is one of only a couple of early woolstore types left in this precinct — the other well-known peer is Hinchcliff House (former Hinchcliff Wool Stores) around on Young Street. The Gallipoli Legion of Anzacs bought the Loftus Street titles after World War II and joined the buildings as a club; the sandstone rear to the lane still reads as store, not as club fit-out.
Walk Loftus Lane for the wool-export Quay, not for café laneway theatre. Customs House and the shipping offices were the front-of-house; this was the back door.
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