Former

"Auburn House", originally known as "Malling Grove", was built circa 1851 and extended in 1856 mid 1863. It has historical significance as a rare survivor of the many fine residences built for notable men and their families in the early years of settlement in Hawthorn. It is associated, also, with the period of development from the middle-1850s when Hawthorn grew from a small village into a popular Victorian garden suburb. "Auburn House" is important, also, for its associations at first with John Collings, farmer, who was a founder of the Augustine Congregational Church in Hawthorn, and, from 1856, with Robert Hepburn, the owner of numerous substantial properties in Melbourne.

Later distinguished occupiers included Nicholas Fitzgerald, MLC, founder of the Castlemaine Brewery and son-in-law of Sir John O'Shanassy, Premier of Victoria.

HO164 Leslie Street Precinct, Hawthorn

The Leslie Street Precinct, Hawthorn, which includes both Leslie Street and the Urquart Estate and Oxley Road precincts, is an area of heritage significance for the following reasons:

The place illustrates most of the significant development phases affecting Hawthorn including the early years of settlement (1835-1855), the growth of Hawthorn as a Victorian garden suburb, the Federation-era prosperity of 1901-1919; and interwar concepts of the garden suburb.

- The place contains a number of individually significant buildings exemplifying High Victorian and Italianate design, the Federation style in its formative phase, and a series of characteristic interwar designs.

- Individually significant buildings in the Oxley Road precinct include institutional buildings such as St Columbs Church, Auburn Uniting Church and its accompanying buildings, and notable houses including Terrick Terricks and Auburn House.

- The place has a particularly well-preserved and notable collection of the prevailing house styles of the 1880s through to the 1930s, with homogeneous concentrations of style in several streets. The interwar Old English and Mediterranean is particularly well represented in Urquhart Street and Swinburne Avenue and homogeneous arrays of 1920s Bungalows are found in The Boulevard and Lyall Street. Oxley Road, Elmie and Goodall Streets have a good variety of Victorian and Federation houses. Leslie Street is a homogeneous run of 1880s workers' cottages, and Minona Street has a relatively intact group of small late interwar housing units.

-Through the road layout, the footpaths transecting parts of the precinct, the broad street lawns in the Urquhart Estate component, mature street trees and other landscape features, and concrete road paving (Swinburne Avenue), the place clearly demonstrates the application of the 'garden suburb' ideal as variously interpreted in the later nineteenth century, Federation and inter-war periods. In Hawthorn the precinct compares interestingly with its primarily Victorian and Federation predecessor, the Grace Park Estate (HO 152). The Urquhart Estate component (Urquhart Street, Swinburne Avenue, and The Boulevard) was the last substantial land holding in Hawthorn to be subdivided for residential purposes (in 1919).

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

House