5 and 7 Higham Road HAWTHORN EAST, BOROONDARA CITY

The pair of houses at 5 & 7 Higham Road, Hawthorn East, is significant. These two brick villas were built to a virtually identical design (apart from their width and location of the front door) in 1906-07. They were then transferred to sisters Olive Higham Glassborow and Frances Higham Ross. Their father had been the owner of the ‘Yallambee’ mansion estate that was subdivided in 1900 to create Higham Road.

 

The mature oak tree behind 5 Higham Road is a contributory element. The c1985 additions to the north side and south-west corner and detached garage at 7 Higham Road are not significant.

The pair of houses is of local architectural and historical (associative) significance to the City of Boroondara.

The pair of houses at 5 & 7 Higham Road is of architectural significance for the illustration of the transition between the standard Victorian period house and the Queen Anne. The Victorian Italianate elements include its massing with a low-line M-hipped roof clad in slates, eaves decorated with case brackets and paterae, and a separate roof form to the verandahs. The Federation Queen Anne aspects are the use of tuckpointed red brick with roughcast render dressings, gables to the projecting bays filled with half-timbering and topped with a turned timber finial-pendant, box bay windows beneath the gables, turned-timber verandah posts with delicate curved brackets and a frieze of turned timber balusters, and scalloped render aprons below windows. Considering their 1906-07 built date, they represent the conservative stream of building at the time. The mature oak tree to the rear of 5 Higham Road contributes to the place as a specimen planning that was typical of turn-of-the-century gardens, and whose large size suggests that it was planted around the same time as the house was built. (Criterion D)

‘Waverley’, at 7 Higham Road, is of historical (associative) significance for its association with businessman and Peruvian Consul Alfred Pfaff, who resided there from 1909 to the early 1920s. (Criterion H)