The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation has leased Horbury House, a Macquarie Street building in the Sydney CBD, for its new headquarters.
The heritage offices at 171 Macquarie Street are owned by UK businessman Sir Martyn Arbib. The offices are his family's only known Australian investment. They cost $5.35 million in 2005.
Built in 1842, the Georgian style, three storey building has just undergone a full refurbishment.
The newly launched centre, which supports arts and humanities teaching at universities, signed a five-year lease on confidential terms.
Colliers International's Tom Buxton handled negotiations.
Horbury House is a combined pair of three storey terraces with a basement, originally part of a terrace of seven residences extending from the corner, and part of a continuous streetscape of terraces.
They are one of the last residential terraces in Macquarie Street and are set between a 1970s office development and a 1940s office building.
The Macquarie Street building is of historic, aesthetic and social significance as a rare surviving colonial city terrace retaining its external form and indicating the type of development that characterised Macquarie Street in the mid-nineteenth century.
Only the facade and some roof framing survive from the 1842 building constructed for Ousley Condell.
It was named after Horbury, an area in England.
From the 1890's its access to Sydney Hospital made the terrace an ideal site for surgeon's professional rooms. More recently, as the medical character of the street changed, it has been used as company offices.
