When John Macarthur died in 1836 his Pyrmont estate was subdivided, and Thomas Chowne bought land west of Elizabeth Macarthur Bay in 1840. Chowne shipyards built at least 13 vessels over the next twenty years. Shipyards here and elsewhere in Pyrmont attracted related industries such as Low and Meeks tin smelters, Goodlet & Smith timber yard, Fyfe’s Foundry and the City Iron Works.
Workers in these industries, together with stone masons from the quarries, formed Pyrmont’s first working population. By 1850 Pyrmont boasted 130 dwellings. Pubs sprang up: so did Churches ­ a wooden Presbyterian Chapel in 1842, St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church in 1850, a school in Mount Street in 1857, and St Bede’s Catholic Church in 1867.
Pyrmont’s relative isolation ended as roads were made, bridges built to Glebe and to the city, and in 1856 the railway reached Darling Harbour. In 1864 a police station added the final touch to a community supporting many ventures centred on the anchorage of Elizabeth Macarthur Bay.