Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 153
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[Page 153]
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Hunters Hill in the West to Watsons Bay in the East, or nearly straight across the water to McMahons Point, Milsons Point, Neutral Bay, Cremorne and Mosman. At night they gave the Harbour quite a beautiful Venetian appearance, as they glided back and forth on its darkened surface, their rows of windows brightly lighted from within, and their coloured navigation lights sparkling like jewels outside.
Mark Foys had left their very popular and profitable string of small shops in Oxford St, to occupy a large, new, multi-storey, emporium fronting Liverpool St. It was covered externally with shining white glazed tiling, banded with yellow ornamental trimmings, and was likened by the vulgarly facetious to a "glorified lavatory".
The tall clock-tower was in course of construction at the Central Railway Station; itself only recently opened for traffic.
Many substantial brick houses now stood amongst the native trees at Cremorne, Neutral Bay and Mosman, and plenty of smaller one-storey or semi-detached residences were scattered over Vaucluse and Dover Heights.
The first sustained "Americanization" of Sydney began with the recent arrival of a very able entrepreneur W.D. Griffith, from the U.S.A. He established the first indoor cinema in Sydney, the Lyric Theatre, in George St, near Central Square, and also installed the city's first soda fountain, in Washington Soul's main pharmacy in Pitt St. Griffith opened several more cinemas in the city and suburbs during the next few years, and quickly spread soda fountains all over Eastern New South Wales: a small one went into Laird's pharmacy in Parkes.
The old steam trams had disappeared, except away down at Cronulla. The Ocean St cable cars had been replaced by electric trams that went on out to Watsons Bay. There were new electric-tram services between Manly Wharf and Narrabeen, Circular Quay and Bondi via Bellvue Hill South, and between Milsons Point and Manly (with a break at the Spit). About the time of all these extensions, the tram conductors became powerful enough, politically, to have half-crowns abolished.