634 Main Street, Kangaroo Point

Kangaroo Point was Brisbane’s earliest suburb, dating from the 1840s. Its residential development continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the 1920s. The land on which this house is sited was part of an original land purchase of 4 acres 3roods and 24perches from the New South Wales government made by David Bell in 1855. It was sold in 1875 to land speculator Harry Clifford Love, who later formed a  partnership with his brother Joseph Herbert Love. Their financial difficulties, which eventually resulted in insolvency, delayed the subdivision and sale of the land until the turn of the century. Sale of this Denver Estate started in 1902 so the majority of houses on Bell Street were not built until the twentieth century, whereas adjacent streets feature the colonial styles fashionable in the 1880s.

Between 1911 and 1915 builder John Herbert Gillespie purchased seven blocks in the Denver Estate. Using four contiguous blocks (lots 33-36) on Main Street, Gillespie excised land from the rear of them to create another block fronting Bell Street. The creation of a large suburban block was a deliberate strategy to produce a sufficiently spacious block for a middle-class residence at this key location on a main road. A house was built, on the 34.3 perches remaining of lots 33-35, between 1914 and 1922, probably by Gillespie. He amalgamated the blocks in 1931. 

Gillespie was listed in the Queensland Post Office Directory as a resident in Bell Street from 1913, where he owned land, then at this location on Main Street (between Bell Street and 650 Main Street) from 1930. He lived there until his death in 1954. The property was transferred to his wife in 1958 but she in turn passed away in 1961 and it was sold. 

In 1963, probably in accordance with the changing nature of land use in Kangaroo Point, the property was converted to a doctor’s surgery and used as professional rooms thereafter. Underneath the house was built-in using brick, with entry and double car garaging accessible from Bell Street.

1. Brisbane City Council WebBASX, maps, building cards

2. Brisbane Land Use Map 1882

3. Department of Natural Resources, titles information

4. The Denver Estate, Kangaroo Point 1902, Land Sale Poster No. 1976, John Oxley Library

5. McKellar's Map of Brisbane and Suburbs. Brisbane: Surveyor-General’s Office, 1895

6. Brisbane City Council City of Brisbane Land Use Maps 1951

7. Murtagh, Therese. Development of the cultural landscape in south Kangaroo Point through seventy years of land acquisitions 1854-1924. Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (History) thesis, The University of Queensland, 1994

8. Queensland Post Office Directories