Doves Plans of Sydney, 1880

Rygate & West’s Plans, 1887

These two sets of plans together cover much of the City of Sydney and are similar in appearance and purpose. They were produced as commercial products for use by the fire insurance industry. Their major purpose is to record the locations and plan views of properties, the building materials used, and other fire risks, and the availability of fire precautions.

Doves Plans cover the City from Port Jackson to what is now Central Station, and from Darling Harbour to the western side of Macquarie St and Castlereagh St. Rygate & Wests Plans cover the Haymarket, Surry Hills, East Sydney, Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo.

Each sheet covers one or more city blocks. The surrounding streets around each plan are shown only as boundaries. However streets and laneways within each block are shown.

Construction materials are indicated by colour coding. The colours are explained on the Key Map for the Doves Plans. Brick and stone are red; Iron is blue/grey, wood is yellow/brown.

Each sheet, especially in Doves, is annotated to show the nature of premises (bakehouse, stable, finance agency etc) and sometimes construction details (verandah, passage). Circled numbers are used to show the number of storeys of each building. Names of owners or occupiers are also often indicated. Street numbers are shown on the ‘footpath’ outside each address.

Doves Plans of Sydney were executed by H Percy Dove, a surveyor, and published in 1879-1880, apparently as a bound volume. The scale of the plans is 40 feet to an inch (1:480). The volume has an index map which shows the block numbers (1-119) which identify the map sheets.

The Rygate & West plans are less well known and subject to further research. The firm of Rygate & West is still in business as surveyors in Sydney. The original plans digitised (50 sheets) here were located in the Department of Lands (Land Titles Office) and kindly loaned to the City of Sydney Archives for digitisation. There was no index map, so we have provided one.