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Villa

Location

20 Mathoura Road TOORAK, STONNINGTON CITY

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

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)

Aesthetically, 20 Mathoura Road is distinguished by its unusual massing which is a variation on the common Italianate asymmetrical footprint with a canted bay to one side, in this instance set within the symmetrical composition of the two-storey cast-iron verandah. The recessed entrance porch to one side is also an unusual feature. The cast-iron verandah has high quality fine and integrated lacework patterns across both levels including the frieze, brackets and first floor balustrade, which is particularly distinguished by the unusual peacock motif to the balustrade pattern. (Criterion E)

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Villa