Aberdeen Villas - 61 to 69 Cambridge Street

The group of terraces from 61 to 69 Cambridge Street were built by James Dillon c1887 as part of his growing property portfolio.  They were named "Aberdeen Villas".  It is not uncommon for groups of terraces to be jointly named and you can see plenty of examples walking around Paddington where they have memorialised the name in render. This is the only example of a group name I know of on Cambridge Street, and when you don't put the name in concrete it does make it easier for the original name to fall out of use.

Here are some advertisements from the SMH for the Villas back in the day.  The top one is from 24 October 1887 and the below from 23 January 1888.

In a typical Paddington terrace development an owner may buy two blocks from a subdivision and build three or more houses.  So one issue for being the first to build on the street was that you wouldn't definitively know your actual house number until the whole street had been built out (which for the east side of Cambridge Street was by 1890).  In that sense, it helped to have a house name to identify your residence. For the residents of Aberdeen Villas they actually had 'sub-numbers' as this advertisement from May of 1888 shows. I would guess that No. 2 Aberdeen Villas would now be known as 63 Cambridge Street.

The name Aberdeen Villas gradually fell from use, the latest reference I found was from a funeral notice from December 1902. In it, the late resident of 65 Cambridge Street refers to his house as 'Aberdeen Villa'.