27 Adolphus Street, Balmain NSW 2041

Austinray

At the junction of Adolphus and Vincent Streets stands the house the journal identifies as Austinray. The original residence was completed in 1856 by William West. The corner allotment makes it part of the earliest substantial wave of residential building around Adolphus Street, preceding the later Victorian terraces that transformed much of central Balmain.

The journal records a difficulty familiar to house historians: the name appears in the directory record as “Austimay” between 1885 and 1891, whereas the study labels the property “Austinray”. This variation is preserved rather than silently resolved, pending inspection of the printed name and original Sands entries.

Charles Longford is recorded as a resident in 1872. There is a gap in the available early directory trail before K J O’Dea appears in 1878–79. The house provides a compact example of how a surviving nineteenth-century building can be tied to a source-backed sequence of householders without inventing continuous occupancy for missing years. The original Journal 17 photograph at PDF page 27, credited to Solomon Mitchell, shows the house at the Vincent Street corner.

Research and photograph: Peter Reynolds, “From Adolphus Street to Gladstone Park — Part 1”, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 17 (1993), pp. 15–50; photograph on printed p. 25, PDF page 27; photographer Solomon Mitchell. Original journal page. Photographic reuse requires separate permission review.