PHOTO: An aerial view of 172-174 Victoria Street, Potts Point. Photo: Supplied
If only the walls could talk.
A pair of grand Victorian terraces on one of the biggest blocks of land in Potts Point has come up for sale, after years of notoriety as the city’s first ‘themed’ brothel, and then being a home away from home for overseas backpackers.
The four-storey twins, with an attic built on top and a old sandstone dungeon room below, are now ripe to be converted back into one massive home, two separate terraces or turned into a boutique hotel, mirroring the rapid gentrification of the Kings Cross area.
“We’re expecting a lot of interest in this as the properties are so massive and go back such a long way to Earl Street behind,” said agent Jane Schumann, director of Raine & Horne Potts Point.
“It would make a fabulous home or two different houses as the width is just extraordinary. We’d prefer to sell them in one line, but we can split them, too.”
The houses, at 172 and 174 Victoria Street, on 460 square metres of land, back in the heyday of Kings Cross as a red light district, served as the Crossroads Brothel.
The properties then had a series of distinctively decorated rooms, like the Leather Room and the Bondage Room, and had two caravans parked out on the back lane where women turned cut-price tricks for the punters who couldn’t afford the prices inside.
The terraces were then converted into the Crossroads Backpackers – to save money on using the same signage – and were then bought in 2011 by the current owners, Bruce Drayton and Simon Marsh, who completely refurbished the building, with 22 rooms, 124 beds and a big commercial kitchen, and renamed it Backpackers HQ.
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