Within the local context of The Rocks, View Terrace is significant as a landmark façade that both maintains the aesthetic character of Gloucester Street as a Victorian/early Federation era streetscape through a combination of Italianate and post-modern architectural styles, forms and massing that responds to the whole site 'in the round' from Cambridge and Argyle Streets as well as Gloucester Street.
These landmark values are associated with the pre-eminent late-twentieth century architect Phillip Cox AO (in whose portfolio this is a minor but sensitive work) and several generations of nineteenth century speculative builders.
The changing public appreciation of the aesthetic values of the place are evident in the inspiration it provided to colonial watercolour painters, then fin de siècle photographers including the renowned Harold Cazneaux, the romantic 'old town' painters of the early 1900s, and finally the sketch artists of the 1960s and 70s who invoked an atmosphere of romantic ruin in their drawings as the now almost-forgotten Cambridge Street arts quarter briefly flourished before its demolition in 1984.
