argylecut

See the comments on the PowerHouse Museum Collection's version of this photo: www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/2844603389/

Thanks for letting us know, beachcomberaustralia! Those comments are very interesting.

Reverse view - www.flickr.com/photos/state-records-nsw/3863063529/

This photo was recently determined to be part of the Rocks Resumption photographic survey, the title and date of the image has been changed accordingly Here is a map of the Rocks Resumption area (last one in the sequence)

The Argyle Cut, illustration no. 21 from Relics of Old Colonial Days: A Book of Drawings by Sydney Ure Smith (Sydney: James R. Tyrrell, 1914).

Useful history and explanation of the Argyle Cut including this picture - www.sydneyarchitecture.com/ROC/ROC23.htm . I have a hunch that a photographer was commissioned to photograph The Rocks and Millers Point in c.1901 after the bubonic plague outbreak to capture the squalor and slums before the NSW Government resumed the area for rebuilding (and later the Harbour Bridge). Many similar photographs are showing up in the State Records NSW photostream on Flickr. My idea is that the prints are the documents the relevant Government department required, but the glass negatives from the unnamed photographer eventually became part of the Tyrrell collection.

A print on Flickr from State Records NSW -

The original - or from.ph/379072 which shows it was the same glass negative as this image -

The trees have grown! - Google street view - maps.google.com.au/maps?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Sydney+...

Looking north along Princes Street from the bridge above the Argyle Cut -


And looking south from the same spot -

Princes Street (c.1901) [SLV: H42656, b28034]

This photo was recently determined to be part of the Rocks Resumption photographic survey, the title and date of the image has been changed accordingly Here is a map of the Rocks Resumption area (last one in the sequence)