Oxford Square - Corner Riley & Oxford Street - Darlinghurst - New South Wales

Oxford Square is the named junction of Oxford, Riley and Burton Streets in Darlinghurst — on the old South Head Road / Oxford Street high street that climbed from colonial track to one of Sydney’s principal shopping strips by the late nineteenth century. The southwest Oxford–Riley corner was long dominated by Buckingham’s department store (drapery origins with William Buckingham; store presence on this corner from the 1890s; major emporium into the twentieth century). After the business was sold in 1967, the partly emptied building went up in the spectacular Anzac Day fire of 25 April 1968; the cleared site later became a shopping complex still known as Oxford Square / Oxford Village.

Opposite and around the junction, the Oxford Square Group of Victorian and Edwardian buildings — former Family Hotel, former London Bank / ANZ chambers at 52–54 Oxford Street, G. A. Zink & Sons at 56 Oxford Street, SILF Company building — remains a registered heritage streetscape. Those Neo-Classical corner compositions still frame the views into Riley, Burton and Oxford. Nearby Burdekin Hotel (Liverpool & Oxford) marks the western entry to the strip but is a separate landmark.

Photographs here survey surviving façades and the retail setting of the former Buckingham’s corner. Don’t confuse Oxford Square with Taylor Square further east.