Town Lots 21 and 22 were on Cliff Street, between High Street and [[Croke Lane]. The earliest owner of these lots, recorded by Hitchcock was Henry Vincent.[1]
The building on the site in 2022 is the McDonald Smith Building, 22-32 Cliff Street, which has had various owners, including Vincent, James Lilly, and Tompkins and Co. The Vincent family rented a cottage and warehouse on the site in the 1870s and 1880s. The buildings were acquired by Captain Lilly for a time, and it was owned by J.E. McDonald and Smith from 1961 until the 1970s and then Tompkins and Company took it over as their general store. The building was designed, as Cliff Street Chambers, by architect Herbert Nathaniel Davis.
Hitchcock, writing in 1919, describing the eastern side of Cliff Street, south of High Street, as he remembered it was in 1869:
The corner now occupied by the Bank of New South Wales was vacant land, and next to it was the offices and store of Mr. Robert King, one of our earliest merchants. Of these only the store (which was later occupied by the W.A. Bank) now remains. The private residences of Messrs. King, Vincent, Dr. Shipton and others occupied the remaining space down to the [[../hotels/pier.html|Pier Hotel]] corner, which was then unbuilt upon. The only other buildings in the Cliff-street of that day were the Water Police Station and quarters at the corner of Marine-terrace ; these were practically rebuilt in later times, but were used for their original purposes until the recent disbandment of the water police, or rather, their amalgamation with the land forces.
References and Links
- ↑ Hitchcock, J.K. 1929, The History of Fremantle: The Front Gate of Australia, 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council
- Fremantle History Centre. Look for the PDFs called:
- Hitchcock, J.K. 1919, [[../books/hitchcock1919.html|'Early Days of Fremantle: High Street 50 Years Ago']], Fremantle Times, one of a series of articles on 'Early Days of Fremantle' publ. 21 March - 20 June 1919.
- streetsoffreo.com.au page for 18 Cliff Street.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 3 December, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/lots/21.html (it was last updated on 14 December, 2022), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.