Explore "Sydney Cove" by J.H.M. Abbott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
GOVERNOR PHILLIP very early made his dispositions for the town that was to develop out of the little camp in Sydney Cove. In July of the first year he sent a plan of the place as he intended it to be to Lord Sydney--which may be seen in the Mitchell Library--and, if it had been followed out as he meant it to be, the great city of the side of Port Jackson would have been a place of wide and generous streets, instead of the picturesque but inconvenient, narrow, winding thoroughfares we are familiar with to-day.
"The principal streets," he wrote to the Secretary of State, "are placed so as to admit a free circulation of air, and are two hundred feet wide. The ground marked for Government House is intended to include the main guard, Civil, and Criminal Courts, and as the ground that runs to the southward is nearly level, and a very good situation for buildings, streets will be laid out in such a manner as to afford a free air, and when the houses are to be built, if it meets with your Lordship's approbation, the land will be granted with a clause that will ever prevent more than one house being built on the allotment, which will be sixty feet in front and 150 feet in depth. This will preserve uniformity in the buildings, prevent narrow streets and the many inconveniences which the increase of inhabitants would otherwise occasion hereafter."