A Brief History of the Site
Two centuries of Waterloo, one address.
Hunter Street looking towards Powell Street in 1951 (Image Source: City of Sydney Archives)
Prior to European settlement, the area now known as Waterloo was the traditional home of the Cadigal/Gamaygal peoples, collectively known as the Eora. The land was largely sand dunes covered with Banksia scrub, with a plentiful supply of groundwater running through the area.
With European settlement, the abundant water saw Waterloo become an early industrial precinct – home to milling, wool-washing, fell-mongering and tanning. Two large bodies of water, the Great Waterloo Dam and the Little Waterloo Dam, were formed across what is now Waterloo and Zetland, with part of present-day Powell Street once a watercourse flowing into the Little Waterloo Dam.
The land on which Mondrian now stands formed part of the Mt Lachlan Estate, granted to John Thomas Campbell in 1825 and later held by the Cooper family well into the twentieth century. The area remained largely undeveloped until 1887, when the Waterloo-Botany area ceased to supply Sydney’s water, and the conversion of Sheas Creek into the Alexandria Canal in 1894 allowed the land to be drained, levelled and connected by a more substantial road network. From the early 1900s, the site supported a mix of small industries – a stone mason’s yard, an engineering and blacksmith workshop (parts of which still line the Powell Street entrance today), and a machinery manufacturer.
In 1920, the Chubb Company began establishing its security manufacturing factory on the site, gradually expanding through the inter-war years by acquiring neighbouring lots. The factory prospered for decades until Chubb vacated in 1998. The buildings stood empty until the development of Mondrian Apartments and the adjacent Taylors College building, with Aras Lane retained as a landscaped area between the two properties.
