Opposite the Botanic Gardens on Macquarie Street — 133 Macquarie, not the misspelt Macqaurie of the URL — sits one of the last proper Victorian gentlemen’s townhouses on that Domain edge. George Allen Mansfield designed it in December 1871 for his uncle, the Parramatta pastoralist-politician George Oakes; the house was probably finished in 1872. Italianate stone, a three-storey cast-iron verandah, cedar stair hall — the sort of Macquarie Street front that once told you who mattered in the colony.
It has lived several lives since Oakes. Clubs and boarding-house years, a long stretch as doctors’ consulting rooms, then a late-1950s rename to Wickham House. In 1970 the Royal Australian Historical Society moved in (officially opened as History House in November 1971), swapping its old Young Street wool-store for this Domain-facing HQ after an AMP land swap. The rear service wing went in the 1969–70 adaptation; the Macquarie Street face and principal rooms still read as Mansfield’s house.
Today it is SHR #00692 — a working history society, not a frozen house museum. Pair it with the Domain / Macquarie Street civic posts: this is where Sydney’s oldest historical society actually hangs its hat.