Town Lot 19 was the corner of Cliff and High Streets.
The earliest owner of Lot 19 recorded by Hitchcock (1929) was Robert Menli Lyon (whose name was actually [[../people/milne.html|Robert Lyon Milne]]). It was owned by Richard Brown 1855-1876, when it was bought by [[../people/owston.html|Owston]] & [[../people/pearse.html|Pearse]] (probably the Pearse brothers, Silas and George).
Heritage Council:
The first building on Lot 19 was a long galvanised iron warehouse built for Pearse and Owston, to the rear of the lot. It was not until 1899 that a banking chamber and three offices were constructed.
The Bank of NSW building, at 7 High Street, on the corner with Cliff Street, was designed by Wilkinson & Smith, and built in 1899 for the Bank on land owned by Pearse and Owston. The building was fully leased to NDA when it was sold in 2014. The owner until 2022 is former mayor [[../people/tagliaferripeter.html|Peter Tagliaferri]].
Hitchcock, writing in 1919, describing the eastern side of Cliff Street, south of High Street, as he remembered it 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 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
Fremantle History Centre. Look for the PDFs called:
Purchasers of Fremantle Town Lots 1829-1837
Purchasers of Fremantle Town Lots 1855-1879
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.
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/19.html (it was last updated on 8 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.