The Mansions is a heritage-listed row of six terrace houses at 40 George Street in Brisbane’s Central Business District.

Since the 1820s, the north bank and adjacent ridgeline of the Brisbane River, now containing William and George Streets, has always featured a concentration of government and associated activities and uses.

Over the period of the Moreton Bay penal settlement, buildings constructed along this ridgeline, were used by government officials for “accommodation, administration, and control”.

When the settlement was closed in 1842, the remnant penal infrastructure was used by surveyors as a basis for the layout for the new town of Brisbane.

Set at right angles to the river, the prisoner’s barracks determined Queen Street, while the line of buildings along the ridge determined William Street.

Streets surveyed parallel to these streets included George Street and formed Brisbane’s rectangular grid.

The Mansions were designed in the ‘Queen Anne’ style by English architect George Patterson of the firm Oakden, Addison, and Kent.

Completed in 1889, the buildings consist of six three-story terrace houses built in red brick that are well-suited to Brisbane’s humid sub-tropical climate.

Large arcaded balconies line the facade, and limestone cat sculptures sit at the top corners of the buildings.

The mansions were built as investment properties for Boyd Dunlop Morehead, William Pattison, and John Stevenson, three prominent politicians of Queensland at the time.

Today the buildings house commercial offices and a restaurant.

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