Prestige Slip in South Yarra? Or Just Good Old Fashioned Underquoting?

‘Risby’, an immaculately well-kept c1887 High Victorian fronting Fawkner Park in South Yarra, has listed for auction with “expectations around $4m”, just two years after trading for $4.31m. Even more surprising, the interiors seem to have been refreshed since then (or at least a darker stain on the wood floor was implemented with some landscaping improvements). The quick turn-around of the listing coupled with its diminished price hopes from its 2010 sale reminds us of another still-listed South Yarra terrace at 9 Kensington Road of comparable size, vintage, and diminished pricing. It also comes hot in the heels of another prestige listing in Brighton that’s priced $2m below its last sale.  Then again, perhaps it’s just a case of underquoting?!?

The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home comes with (highly-coveted) garaging for two cars and a plunge pool not frequently found in South Yarra terraces. The interiors are well-maintained and the terrace’s patrician origins are clearly indicated in a floor plan that takes fills its parcel size on both floors and possesses a bay window at the side of the house. Lesser terraces of the same era typically had a reduced upper-floor with an auxiliary kitchen accessed from the outside of the house. This home never had any of those hallmarks of middle class terrace living. In fact, this portion of park-fronting Toorak Road has been desirable since its first development. The road was among the first suburban roads paved in asphalt at the turn-of-the-century (see image below); Toorak Road’s wide and sun-filled situation did not see heavy vehicular traffic until the post-war years. By then, many of the original estates that lined Toorak Road succumbed to apartment block development. Risby, however, survived. (And comes with some damn cool casement windows to boot!)

Risby’s bay window once overlooked an extensive side garden. Thanks, once again, to MMBW.

Macus Chiminello and Nicole French of Marshall White have the listing: 82 Toorak Road West, South Yarra

More listing images, a floor plan, and a site plan can be found below. 

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Conservation by Neglect: ‘Mintaro’ Lists for $3m+

‘Mintaro’ in days past and present.

‘Mintaro’, a James Gall-designed 1882 Victorian Italianate mansion 56km north of Melbourne, has listed in all its derelict glory for $3m+. The mansion has a storied history, initially serving as the country home to Captain Robert Gardiner. For the last 78 years, the home has apparently been under the ownership of the same family who have - or have not - gone room-by-room with repairs. Urban legend has it that the home is modelled after Melbourne’s Government House. It wouldn’t be a stretch for architect James Gall to have been inspired by that landmark Melbourne mansion completed 6 years before Mintaro’s construction; however, seeing that Government House typified an architectural style quite popular at the time - ‘(High) Victorian Italianate’ - it also wouldn’t be a stretch if Gall was just building a modern mansion en vogue with contemporary fashion. Furthermore, other designs of Gall including East Melbourne’s Inveresk, built contemporaneously with Government House (in 1877), showcase a similar Victorian Italianate treatment that would later be employed at Mintaro. A later design of Gall’s - Frognall in Canterbury - also crosses over with many of the architectural treatments found at Mintaro. 

Regardless of Mintaro’s typified styling, the mansion certainly represents a certain kind of pinnacle of pastoralist wealth. The Radical Terrace can not confirm if original owner Captain Gardiner was a pastoralist or not, but based on our findings, we do not believe Mintaro ever saw life as the centre of an extensive farming operation. On the contrary, we presume the home was a country retreat designed to impress visiting Melburnians. Interior images showcase a very urban kind of luxury with extensive dado wall treatments, marble work, and ceiling treatments not usually found in other rural homesteads of the time. One of Australia’s most prominent architectural historians Miles Lewis noted the sophistication of Mintaro’s interiors in several of his lectures.

The home’s more recent history is not quite as high-brow. Next door to the 24 acre property is a Department of Defence site that appears to be of an industrial use, and the last Google-able mention of Mintaro itself was the sale of some 150+ vintage cars on the property. Images that the Radical Terrace found from that sale show a home in need of some serious love. 

Mintaro just before its extensive sale of over 150 vintage cars in 2011. And in a car-less, but still quite shabby, state more recently (below).

A 1946 image of Inveresk, the East Melbourne mansion designed by James Gall several years prior to Mintaro. 
 

John Keating of Keatings Real Estate has the listing: ‘Mintaro’, 2137 Melbourne Lancefield Road, Monegeetta

Great Primer on Victorian Architecture

I promise my next post will be NSW-focused. But this overview of historic architecture from Heritage Victoria is just too good to pass up. It walks the viewer through the overarching architectural styles common in Melbourne. All styles are also common in Sydney as well (with the exception of far fewer examples of Early-Victorian north of the oval/field dividing line). Did I mention they have floor plans too?!? FLOOR PLANS! 

Click here for the link.