This site commanded a fine view of the foreshore, where quarries supplied ships’ ballast and building material. After the 1850s gold rush, Pyrmont yellowblock sandstone was in huge demand for the buildings that transformed Sydney. Teams of horses dragged great blocks of sandstone to city building sites.
Other activities sprang up on the shore. Thomas Chowne bought land at Elizabeth Macarthur Bay in 1840, to build ships. This initiative attracted other processes that would otherwise disturb the citizens of Sydney. A bridge linked Glebe Island to Pyrmont in 1857 and cattle to (and carcasses from) Glebe Island abattoirs were another trade that Sydney chose not to smell.
City Iron Works opened in 1865. By 1871 The City Iron Works

employ sixty men. Scrap iron is worked up here and pig iron is puddled [in furnaces, to produce wrought iron] About 100 tons a month is rolled here, and railway wheels and tires for contractors’ locomotives have also been turned out.

Even before the arrival of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, this was a busy industrial location.