A Sydney couple turned a 1907 tram substation in Rozelle into a four-bedroom family home, and the historic former transport building sold at auction for $3.9 million

A 1907 tram substation in Rozelle, converted into a four-bedroom family home, sold at auction in Sydney in August 2023 above its $3.7 million price guide. The heritage building at 10 Hancock Street is the last intact structure of its kind in New South Wales, and it still carries the industrial character of its working past inside a 470-square-metre interior. Its owners, a Sydney couple, adapted the former warehouse office space into a family home while carefully keeping the raw architecture that defines the building. The sale put a rare piece of Sydney’s inner west transport history into new hands.How a tram substation that powered Sydney’s inner west until 1958 ended up as a homeThe building at 10 Hancock Street was the Balmain tram substation. It dates to 1907 and supplied power to trams throughout the inner west until it was decommissioned in 1958, as buses took over Sydney’s streets.Simon Duffy, executive director of Taronga Zoo, and his husband Walter Murphy, head of service excellence in Westpac’s customer solutions division, spotted it on a neighbourhood walk in 2020. Duffy told Domain that life is short and they felt they had to take the opportunity. He said they were struck by the building’s sense of history and its “raw beauty”.A turbine door, lettered metal beams and a rolling crane remain from the building’s pastDespite the conversion, the rustic bones of the substation remain. A huge door once allowed turbines to be moved in and out, and massive metal beams still carry their original lettering. An almost sculptural industrial crane sits at the centre of the building, hung with pulleys and chains.Duffy also said the original horizontal crane is one of the home’s most striking features. It could roll along the length of the building and was used to move circuits around.Mezzanine bedrooms and a double-height living room turn an industrial shell into a homeMezzanine bedrooms leave room for a vast, double-height living room. Duffy said visitors were blown away by the scale, especially when they stepped through the front door and looked up.The couple divided the space into zones, partly with furniture, including a 16-seat dining table inherited from the previous owners. Their changes to the building were mostly minor, Duffy said: a better bathroom, an improved kitchen and a more workable layout. The main task was deciding which parts needed to feel cosier and where open space worked best, since the building already had good bones.Treetop windows, a native garden next door and a ground-floor retreat suit family lifeHuge windows look out over the treetops, offer glimpses of the city and flood the rooms with natural light, which kept the couple’s collection of indoor plants happy. From their mezzanine bedroom, Duffy said he woke to birdsong from the native garden next door. Neighbours planted it, and they own the converted stable that once housed the horse-drawn carts that serviced the tram line. He told the same publication that the room felt light and bright but also cosy.The sons’ bedrooms and the guest bedroom are more private and less open, though equally roomy. The children also had a ground-floor retreat suited to video games and movie nights with friends.Why the owners were selling a home they loved and the local rituals they wanted to keepWith their eldest son heading to university, Duffy said the huge space had become too big for the three remaining family members. They were also spending a growing number of weekends at their beach house on the South Coast.The couple had lived in Rozelle and its surroundings for almost all of their 24 years together, and they wanted to downsize nearby. They hoped to keep their routines of bay walks with their two dogs, Saturday mornings at the local organic growers’ market and drinks at one of the area’s many small bars. Duffy said they were just 20 steps from a coffee shop they loved, close to a French bakery and surrounded by grocers. He added that they hoped to find the same in their next property, along with good neighbours.The auction on 7 August 2023 ended at $3.9 million for the converted tram substationThe property went to auction on 7 August 2023 and sold for $3.9 million, according to Domain’s sold listing. The listing, handled by BresicWhitney Inner West, presented the building as a converted warehouse home inside a historic tramway substation. It said the original character had been carefully preserved and that the space had been turned into a flexible four-bedroom home with separate living areas suited to family life.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.