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The Dictionary of Sydney
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Sitting on the Playfair Stairs c1901

Sitting on the Playfair Stairs c1901

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[PXE 921 (v.2), 96]

(Mitchell Library)

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Playfair Stairs

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Argyle Cut Playfair Stairs

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State Library of New South Wales

Playfair Stairs

Playfair Stairs in The Rocks was an unusually shaped stairway, which did not fit neatly into the typical stairway typologies of the city. The stairway bent around the corner into Cambridge Street like an elbow.

Children

Footpaths

Bridges

Playfair Stairs

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Set of steps built to link the higher Gloucester Street with Cambridge Street, The Rocks at the lower level on the south-east of Argyle Cut.

Argyle Cut

Roadway cut through deep rock between The Rocks and Millers Point, begun by convict labour in 1843, and completed in 1859, with later completion of bridges over the cut. The cut was altered again in the 1920s with the construction of the approaches to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

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The Rocks

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Suburb located north of the central business district on the western shore of Sydney Cove. Characterised by a precinct of restored nineteenth-century buildings which are a major tourist attraction, it was recognised as a separate suburb in 1993.