Villa
20 Mathoura Road TOORAK, STONNINGTON CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is significant?
The freestanding house at 20 Mathoura Road, Toorak built in 1885 for Charles White, most likely by its first owner Toorak builder Henry Everest, is significant.
The residence is two-storeys in height and fully expresses its architectural character to the front facade, including unusual massing beneath a full height cast-iron verandah. The house is high set, reached by a short flight of stairs. It is highly intact and retains its original cast-iron verandah detail.
How is it significant?
20 Mathoura Road, Toorak is of local architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Stonnington.
Why is it significant?
20 Mathoura Road, Toorak is architecturally, an intact representative example of a substantial house built for middle-class residents of Toorak during the boom years of the 1880s. The house adopts the architectural character more typical of a terraced house that were most commonly constructed with blind boundary walls and verandah wing walls in rows in the densely packed inner suburbs. In the better part of Stonnington, particularly Toorak, there were many free-standing houses that followed the terrace typology on more spacious sites. Mathoura Road is a transitional example that expresses exposed eaves to the front, more typically seen on earlier terrace examples. (Criterion D)
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Villa - Physical Description 1
The house at 20 Mathoura Road occupies an elevated site on the east side of Mathoura Road, mid-block between Malvern Road and Edward Street in Toorak. The house has a medium-sized front setback to the street behind a garden and a high masonry front wall.
Constructed in 1885, the building is highly intact and is a notable example of a grand Italianate villa that fully expresses its architectural character to the front facade, comparable to a terrace house. It is also a variation on the more common Italianate asymmetrical footprint, in this instance presenting the illusion of a symmetrical facade arrangement with a two-storey ogee profile verandah sheltering a canted bay window to one side which is continuous to both levels.
The building has a hipped roof clad in slate tiles that is supported on a deep cornice with finely detailed eaves brackets. The two visible chimneys have a painted cement render finish with moulded and corbelled cornices. The cast-iron verandah has high quality, fine and integrated lacework patterns across both levels including the frieze, brackets and first floor balustrade. It is particularly distinguished by the unusual peacock motif to the balustrade pattern. The verandah composition is further embellished by the shaped sawtooth verandah beams to both levels.
A rectangular single-storey portico located at the centre of the southern (side) elevation contains the recessed entrance. Windows are round-arched double-hung sashes grouped in threes (also to the canted bays), with run cement hood moulds that finish at continuous moulded imposts. The painted cement render finish is otherwise unadorned.
The stable and outbuildings shown on the MMBW plan of 1899 do not appear to survive in 2016 aerials.
Villa - Local Historical Themes
This place illustrates the following themes, as identified in the Stonnington Thematic Environmental History (Context Pty Ltd, rev. 2009):
3.3.3 Speculators and land boomers
8.2 Middle-class suburbs and the suburban ideal
8.6.1 Sharing houses
Heritage Study and Grading
Stonnington - City of Stonnington Victorian Houses Study
Author: City of Stonnington
Year: 2016
Grading: A2
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PRIMARY SCHOOL NO. 1467Victorian Heritage Register H1032
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BARWONVictorian Heritage Register H0825
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TINTERNVictorian Heritage Register H0208
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