Reussdale  Reussdale is a heritage-listed former private house and now function centre located at 160 Bridge Road in the inner western Sydney suburb of Glebe in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built by Ferdinand Reuss from 1868 to 1870. It is also known as the former Presbyterian Manse. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. It is regarded as possible the earliest example of High Victorian architecture in Glebe, with a mixture of Italianate and Free Gothic influences. "Reussdale" was listed on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate. The Leichhardt area was originally inhabited by the Wangal clan of Aborigines. After 1788 diseases such as smallpox and the loss of their hunting grounds caused huge reductions in their numbers and they moved further inland. Since European settlement the foreshores of Blackwattle Bay and Rozelle Bay have developed a unique maritime, industrial and residential character - a character which continues to evolve as areas which were originally residential estates, then industrial areas, are redeveloped for residential units and parklands. The first formal grant in the Glebe area was a grant to Rev. Richard Johnson, the colony's first chaplain, in 1789. The Glebe (land allocated for the maintenance of a church minister) comprised rolling shale hills covering sandstone, with several sandstone cliff faces. The ridges were drained by several creeks including Blackwattle Creek, Orphan School Creek and Johnston Creek. Extensive swampland surrounded the creeks. On the shale ridges, heavily timbered woodlands contained several varieties of eucalypts while the swamplands and tidal mudflats had mangroves, swamp oaks ("Casuarina glauca") and blackwattles ("Callicoma serratifolia") after which the bay is named. Blackwattle Swamp was first mentioned by surveyors in the 1790s and Blackwattle Swamp Bay in 1807. By 1840 it was called Blackwattle Bay. Boat parties collected wattles and reeds for the building of huts, and kangaroos and emus were hunted by the early settlers who called the area the Kangaroo Ground. Rozelle Bay is thought to have been named after a schooner which once moored in its waters. Johnson's land remained largely undeveloped until 1828, when the Church and School Corporation subdivided it into 28 lots, three of which they retained for church use.