Chapter 9 - Creative Paddington
by Peter McNeil, art historian
Creativity embraces literature, art, music, design and many aspects of business, and it also encompasses the everyday and the domestic, the ephemeral acts of cooking, gardening and decorating, as well as the actions
of workers employed by others. Creative artists have often been associated with bohemianism, which has shifted meaning and emphasis over time. In the 1890s it might have been bohemian just to be a writer or painter; in the 1920s to attend an ‘Arts Ball’ semi-clad or dressed in masquerade; by the 1970s much of Paddington debated feminism and the Vietnam War and identified with the counter culture. They lived in share houses or bought a small terrace if they could find the money. The ‘musos’, actors and DJs of the 1980s and
’90s nearly always have a Paddington party story. The creatives of Paddington today are more likely to run an art space, architecture or design firm, engage in public relations and media, trade commodities, or be retired doctors
The Paddington we view today: well-kept, expensive, well-heeled and with many trees, bears little resemblance to the Paddington of just 50 years ago. Paddington was once poor and shabby. Yet it was precisely the flexibility
and charm – as well as the affordability – of this almost intact late Victorian streetscape that appealed to musicians, poets, artists, journalists, anarchists and ‘free thinkers’. Much of the accommodation was transient and therefore flexible, which was not typical outside the inner city. Paddington’s views towards Sydney Harbour or Botany Bay and its partly hilly environment also cannot be overlooked as a factor in its appeal. Anyone with an eye for beauty liked the vernacular architecture of mixed shops and terraced dwellings, and the sense of a slightly seedy Mediterranean hill town. The terrace house roofs run like the lines of a seashell up and down the Paddington hills and ridges, perfectly captured in a late work by Donald Friend. In an ABC documentary
for Four Corners in 1962 . . .
Chapter 10- Changing landscapes
by Helen Armstrong, landscape architect, academic
. . . Streets and gardens are layered cultural landscapes that often reflect changing social values. In Paddington, the streets and gardens have ranged from the high Victorian terraces defining streets to marginal slums and more recently various shades of gentrified landscapes, often including street closures in the form of pocket parks. . .
. . . the environment movement of the 1960s changed perceptions and
values related to urban bushland. As a result, the creation of Trumper Reserve in 1967, from the rehabilitation of a former quarry, included planting the area with native plants. By the late 1970s the reserve was heavily infested with weeds. At the beginning, people enjoyed the green space without discriminating between weeds and native bush, so weed control was
relaxed, however by the second decade of the 21st century, urban
bushland management has become more rigorous. . .
. . . Paddington became depressed and run down in the early 20th century.
The streets of terraces were treeless and the back gardens were ‘… a bit of grass, a frangipani tree, clothes lines and some staghorns’.14 With the advent of migration following World War 2, European migrants moved in and sought
to adapt their terraces, often changing the back garden in the process. Greek migrants for example planted olive trees, figs, lemons and herbs and arranged their back gardens for family gatherings with trellises and grapevines over paved areas to provide for dancing. In their turn, the migrants’ shops and vibrant street life attracted bohemian artists to Paddington. They altered their cheap rental properties, forming collectives with shared vegetable gardens.
The bohemians also embraced the environment movement of the early 1970s, digging up the concrete laid down for Greek dancing and planting eucalypts and bottlebrush in their small gardens and streets. These plantings were later to outgrow both the gardens and the narrow streets. . . .