Daceyville
Sydney, Australia

Bird's eye view of Daceyville (1918).Daceyville is a small suburb six kilometres south of Sydney central business district. It is named after John Rowland Dacey (1854–1912), who was a state parliamentarian for the area from 1895 to 1912. He urged the creation of a garden suburb modelled on the garden city of Letchworth.

Originally named Dacey Garden Suburb, it was executed after his death by the state's first Labor government, with the aim to provide low-cost housing for working-class people. Not long before he passed away Dacey said the following:

"The day is past, when free Australians were content to be herded together in terraces of mere dog-boxes. In some suburbs they are compelled to herd together like flies . . . the time has come when we should create a Garden City and provide houses of an up-to-date character at the lowest possible rental."

Three street layouts were eventually produced for Daceyville, with the second plan, drawn up by John Sulman and John Hennessy in 1912, providing the basis for much of the suburb as it stands today. Daceyville was to be a large self-contained suburb that was to extend to Botany Bay in the south, complete with its own tramline, schools and shops. But lack of funds, rising building costs and criticism by Charles Reade of the British Garden Cities and Town Planning Association made progress difficult. Therefore government architect William Foggitt revised part of the plan, mainly east of Cook Avenue, and made it smaller with curvier streets.

When construction finished in 1920 – after the Great War and a change of government – just 315 of the intended 1473 cottages had been built. Of the many amenities once planned, six shops, a baby health clinic, a large community hall, a police station and one public school were built. St Michael's Catholic Church and School joined the suburb in 1924.

(The northern area of neighbouring Pagewood was designed as part of the original Dacey Garden Suburb plan and is essentially an extension of it. In fact: many of the street layouts and park layouts in Pagewood remain unchanged from the original Dacey Garden Suburb plan.)

When in the 1970s the New South Wales (NSW) State Government proposed demolition of Daceyville's houses to make way for apartments, high rises, and an extension to a heavy rail line, residents created the Daceyville Preservation Society. In the end the Daceyville Garden Suburb Heritage Conservation Area was created, and the NSW government abandoned their plans to develop enormous public housing towers in Daceyville.

In the 1980s the NSW Department of Housing embarked on a renewal project in Daceyville, which resulted in some densification of the suburb. Numerous two-storey apartment buildings were constructed as part of the renewal, in a sympathetic architectural style to the rest of Daceyville. These new apartment buildings were mostly constructed in vacant land, which had previously been rear gardens and parks. Some areas of Daceyville now having three rows of houses squeezed in-between two roads (specifically in the western part of Daceyville) and that has undermined some of the original design goals of the Dacey Garden Suburb plan.

Daceyville starts in the north, where Gardeners Road and Bunnerong Road intersect to form a small park named Dacey Gardens. From there the fan-shaped layout stretches southwestward, with Cook Avenue and  Banks Avenue as important throughfares. These avenues are also some of the most unique residential avenues in the surrounding area, with trees lining both the sides and – very unusual – the medians of the roads.

Compared to most areas in Sydney, Daceyville was well-serviced, boasting amenities we now consider basic, such as sewerage connection, curbed streets and electricity. The style of the houses can be described as Federation architecture (an architectural style in Australia that was prevalent 1890-1915). Outdoor sleeping was then considered the healthier option, so large verandas were an important feature of the housing.

Gardens were a very important factor to Daceyville and its success. In the middel of the Daceyville is a small park named Haig Park that is encircled by houses, while in the south are two larger parks: Rowland Park (also named after John Rowland Dacey) and Astrolabe Park - with in between them sports fields.

Daceyville was one of the first suburbs in Sydney to have fenceless front gardens (no front or back fences were permitted), breaking down the boundaries between public and public space. All residents had enough land to grow their own food. Homes opened at the rear onto small parks where children could play. Daceyville also features Australia's first cul-de-sac street, on Colonel Braund Crescent.