25 Wellington Street, Petrie Terrace

Quinn died on 18 August 1881 and his unsold land passed to Mathew Quinn and James Murray. By 1883, Quinn’s remaining scattered town allotments in Petrie Terrace were advertised as the Bishop’s Hill estate with the various sites placed up for auction through Arthur Martin & Co. on Saturday 10 February 1883. At that time, Wellington Street had been formed with a number of downhill allotments already sold. Within that street, John Arthur Manis O’Keefe purchased subdivisions 12 and 13 of Section 2 of Allotment 307 in Bishop’s Hill on 18 September 1883. Each block was small being just 10 perches in area. 

J.A.M. O’Keefe was a prominent building contractor and mining engineer who had constructed the row of terrace houses known as the ‘O’Keefe Buildings’ at 226-230 Petrie Terrace in 1881. He had arrived in Queensland in 1864 and mined a 3,000-acre site at Gympie. In 1866, he married Ellen in Brisbane. O’Keefe was an Irish Catholic and was known to be Bishop Quinn’s favourite builder. He built St. Patrick’s Church in Fortitude Valley, St. Andrew’s Church in South Brisbane and the first part of St. Joseph’s Christian Brothers School in Gregory Terrace.  His best-known building was Her Majesty’s Opera House in Queen Street and he also entered politics gaining election to the local government Woolloongabba Divisional Board.    

On 12 November 1883, O’Keefe mortgaged lots 12 and 13 for £750 and may have used this money to build a row of terrace houses on this land. He built a row of four small, terrace houses across the two blocks on his sloping, Wellington Street land. Given that O’Keefe had employed the eccentric Italian architect Andrea Stombuco to design his ‘O’Keefe Buildings’ (1881) and the ‘Illawarra Buildings’ (‘Petrie Mansions’) at 242 Petrie Terrace in 1887, then Stombuco possibly helped with the design of the Wellington Street terrace houses. Despite Stombuco’s reputation being “marred by a fiery temper”, he is documented as having “established a working relationship with local contractor J.A.M. O’Keefe”1.

O’Keefe built a modest row of terrace houses whose form reflected their hillside location. He maximised usage of the 20-perch area available on subdivisions 12 and 13 by constructing each terrace house as a three-storey residence - the third storey attic with a dormer window. Each had a ground floor, first floor balcony and brick fireplaces on all three floors with a small rear courtyard of each building accessible from Wellington Lane. The row of terrace houses was completed by 1884. A year later, the Queensland colonial government’s Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act of October 1885 sought to prevent the kind of cramped urban development that O’Keefe had built in Wellington Street. The Act banned the subdivision and subsequent sale of land into house blocks smaller than 16 perches. O’Keefe had managed to place a residence on a 5-perch block. The first tenants of these terrace house row were potter George Fox (No.19), Department of Public Inspection clerk James O’Brien (No.21), labourer Ryan Owen (No.23) and building contractor Samuel Rose (No.25).

The 1890s Depression in Queensland badly affected O’Keefe’s business operations. On 29 September 1890, O’Keefe’s business went into liquidation with his Wellington Street terrace house row entrusted to his receiver Charles John Wesley South. There followed a rapid turnover of owners for the remainder of the decade. By the end of the 1990s, the Queensland National Bank Ltd took the title on 3 August 1899. 

On 21 January 1911, Eleanor Jane Walker, wife of Francis (Frank) Lawrence Walker, purchased the property from the Queensland National Bank. She held the property until her death on 22 March 1938.  With the development of Brisbane, Petrie Terrace, like Spring Hill, lost its status as a fashionable address. By the 1930s, it had deteriorated into a run-down, inner-city suburb, containing low-cost rental housing and attracted artists, actors, students and others seeking such accommodation. The 1927 Brisbane City Council sewerage map shows Numbers 19 to 25 Wellington Street as having their front entrances via stairs leading to the first floor level of each townhouse, with a water closet (WC) in the courtyard. These flats were located conveniently within a short walking distance of one of the main City tram lines.  

Frank Walker and the Queensland Public Trustees Office took joint control of the row of terrace houses on 21 March 1939. This remained the case until 7 October 1947 when Thomas Norman Chatworthy Pike became the new owner. Pike registered the property as tenements, and rented them as separate residences. Geoffrey and Joyce Pike took-over the property on 3 August 1964. The Pike family were the owners and landlords of the terrace houses until Geoffrey’s death on 9 February 1977. During this time, the condition of the nineteenth century terrace houses deteriorated, reflecting Petrie Terrace’s then status as a run-down, inner-city suburb offering cheap rental accommodation. The Sunday Mail described their state in 1977 as “unattractive tenements” and “crowded tenements, boxed in by chamferboards, housing three families each”.1

On 10 November 1977, advertising consultant Daniel Leon Breaden and his wife Lorraine Ann Breaden purchased the run-down, rental property with the purpose of restoring the terrace houses so that they could be sold separately as private townhouses. There was initial public scepticism to the proposed restoration. The restoration project aimed to return the buildings to their original 1880s exterior appearance with the (1979) project estimate cost being $60,000. The chamferboard was removed, the interior walls stripped to reveal the original sandstones and brick and new internal staircases, kitchens, bathrooms and wrought iron balcony railings installed. The builder was D.C. Tyler. 

In 1979, while under restoration, the row of terrace houses were noted by the Queensland branch of the National Trust in its publication Petrie Terrace Conservation Area – a walk and drive tour. In 1989, the Brisbane History Group included the Terrace Houses as Stop No.52 in its publication The Ups and Downs of Petrie Terrace Walk/Drive Heritage Tour.

This row of terrace houses at 19-25 Wellington Street neighbours the twin terrace houses ‘Hibernia Scotia Terraces’ (15-17 Wellington St) and is around the corner from the terrace houses ‘OKeefe’s Buildings (226-230 Petrie Tce) that is next door to the terrace houses ‘Petrie Mansions’ (242-246 Petrie Tce). It is a component of a unique part of Petrie Terrace as no other continuous, concentration of genuine nineteenth terrace houses can be found anywhere else in Brisbane.

1. Watson, Donald and McKay, Judith, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century – a biographical dictionary, (Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994), P.181

2. “Tenements transformed”, The Sunday Mail, 22 February 1981, p.2

3. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, website, post-1946 building cards

4. Brisbane City Council, 1946, 2001, 2005 & 2009 aerial photographs

5. Brisbane City Council’s Central Library, local history sheets

6. Brisbane City Council, Sewerage Map, 7 February 1927

7. Brisbane History Group, The Ups and Downs of Petrie Terrace Walk/Drive Heritage Trail, (Brisbane: Brisbane History Group, 1989)

8. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of Title and other records

9. W Morrison, Aldine History of Queensland Vol II, Sydney: Aldine Publishing Company 1888

10. John Oxley Library, Brisbane Suburbs – Estate Maps

11. John Oxley Library, photographic collection.

12. National Trust of Queensland, Petrie Terrace Conservation Area – A Walk and Drive Tour, (Brisbane: National Trust of Queensland, 1979?)

13. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949

14. "Tenements transformed”, The Sunday Mail, 22 February 1981

15. Watson, Donald and Judith McKay. Queensland Architects of the 19th Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994