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Woollahra House [Sydney, NSW]

c1920s. Vintage silver gelatin photograph, studio line in ink lower right, annotated in faded ink on label and “Longworth” in white chalk to old backing on frame, 38.1 x 87.8cm. Silvering and minor surface loss to left portion, foxing to image. Original frame with fragile paper backing.

Studio line reads “Hall & Co. Photo, Sydney.” Annotation reads “This picture is for Adrienne Hansen, 25 Dorset Road, Northbridge.”

This is image is held in Sydney Living Museum collection with the comment “The mansion Woollahra House was built in 1883 with a water frontage to Sydney Harbour at Point Piper for William Charles Cooper who had purchased the 77 hectare Point Piper estate from his father Sir Daniel Cooper in 1882. This building, which seems to have replaced an earlier building also called Woollahra House, was described in the magazine Commonwealth Home in October 1929 as ‘one of the largest examples of its particular type, which might be called early Victorian Colonial with a few touches of French Renaissance.’ It was a two-storey stone building with a mansard tower. The main entrance was approached via a carriageway that wound through the estate from ornate gates on New South Head Road. Adjoining the main house was a two-storey ballroom.”

“The first subdivision of the estate took place soon after the house was built and by the time the Coopers returned to England in 1888 the grounds had been reduced to ten hectares. The house was leased for the next decade to Lady Martin, widow of Sir James Martin, and then sold, as part of a further subdivision, in August 1899 to industrial entrepreneur Thomas Longworth (1857–1927) who lived there until his death in March 1927. The contents of the house were offered for auction in November 1927 and the house itself was demolished for residential subdivision in 1929. Its entrance lodge survives as Rose Bay Police Station and its stables, converted to apartments, survive in Wyuna Road, Point Piper. Ref. David Latta in Lost Glories: A Memorial to Forgotten Australian Buildings, 1986, pp.40-47.”

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Item #CL205-29

Price (AUD): $2,200.00  other currencies