Potts Point is a small and densely populated suburb in inner-city Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

The suburb has a roughly trapezoidal shape, and at its greatest extent is no more than 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) long by 200 metres (660 ft) wide.

[2] Kings Cross is a commercial area that is dominated by bars, restaurants, nightclubs, strip clubs and adult bookstores.

Kings Cross railway station is situated beneath Darlinghurst Road, and the Garden Island facility of the Royal Australian Navy sits on the north end of Potts Point.

He purchased six-and-a-half acres of harbourside land in an area then known as Woolloomooloo Hill – which he renamed Potts Point.

[3] Potts Point is mentioned in the poem William Street by notable Australian poet Henry Lawson.

The area was further subdivided after Macleay's time, and a number of grand Georgian mansions were built along the high point of the suburb's ridge line.

[8] Manar, in Macleay Street, is a complex of three blocks of flats which dates back from the original house c.1880 through to the Inter-war Free Classical style buildings of the 1920s.

Residents of Manar have included William Parker who served as Master in Lunacy in the Supreme Court of New South Wales,[9] Sir Mungo William MacCallum, Sydney Ure Smith, Sir Garfield Barwick, Senator John Ignatius Armstrong, Mary McEwen, widow of Sir John McEwen, and Mary Bailey-Tart, the only daughter of Sir Earle Page[10] Other heritage buildings in the area include the Mansions Terrace in Bayswater Road; the terrace and townhouse group extending from 13 to 29 Challis Avenue; the group of Late Victorian terraces from 1–13 Kellett Street; the gazebo in HMAS Kuttabul; and Bomera and Tarana on the corner of Wylde Street and Cowper Wharf Roadway.

These are chiefly located along Victoria Street, which bisects Potts Point from north to south, and is widely known for its impressive canopy of plane trees.

[citation needed] Potts Point was the site of some of Australia's earliest blocks of flats, and from the 1920s through to World War II the area was intensively developed along those lines.

[5] During the Vietnam War, the Darlinghurst Road precinct (commonly known as Kings Cross), which straddles Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay, became a popular destination for US military personnel on R&R, due chiefly to its proximity to a major naval facility.

Partially as a result of this, the area attracted organised crime syndicates and developed an unsavoury reputation as Australia's drugs and prostitution capital.

At the turn of the 21st century, almost all of Potts Point's hotels were acquired by developers attracted by the area's proximity to transportation and amenities.

By 2004 most tourist hotels had been converted or rebuilt as expensive unit developments, resulting in a rapid wider gentrification of the area and increasingly large numbers of gay residents that make up a significant portion of affluent same-sex couples in Australia[12] although the continued presence of a number of large and small backpacker hostels in Victoria Street and surrounding streets and dozens of pubs, nightclubs, restaurants and similar venues have confirmed the suburb's role as one of Sydney's leading entertainment precincts.