Windermere, Hunters Hill highlights Sydney's French property affair runs deeper than parterre gardens
There was a beautiful 1860s sandstone cottage in the heart of Woollahra village up for mid-week auction.
One of its signature sandstone cottages, marketed as having a romantic Parisian style garden courtyard.
And having spent the past fortnight in France, Title Tattle reckons the Di Jones marketing for 3 Victoria Avenue (pictured above) was repérer sur or spot on.
A petite, formal, wisteria covered patio space with a sense of openness, with elements of stonework, neatly trimmed hedges and shrubs, with a symmetrical focal piece. Arbour gates fit the bill. Though not quite a French parterre which originated in 15th-century gardens of the French Renaissance.
It was passed in at $1.8 million.
Of course Sydney's most famous French-influenced suburbs is Hunters Hill.
The modern-day Hunters Hill owes much of its style to the Gallic residents of the mid-1800s with the settlement of the Joubert brothers, who bought up much of the from 1847 onwards.
Beverley Sherry, in her book Hunters Hill, Australia's oldest garden suburb, says the brothers travelled to the Antipodes in search of adventure and profit. They successfully pioneered the suburb of Hunters Hill taking over from Mary Reiby who'd got things going.
It's the smallest metropolitan municipality in NSW - and one of the oldest as it was incorporated in 1881 seemingly taking its name after Captain John Hunter, who commanded HMAS Sirius on its First Fleet voyage and was later responsible for exploring the upper reaches of Sydney Harbour.
With Parramatta River on one side and Lane Cove River on the other, the sandstone-strong peninsula suburb is one of the prettiest in Sydney. Title Tattle always does the annual jacaranda walk.
There are around 100 stone houses and around 300 buildings classified by the Heritage Council, so Hunters Hill is one of our most important conservation areas.
It was actually known as The French Village in the 1850s following the role of the two French brothers Jules and Didier Numa Joubert.
The Jouberts were adventurers and entrepreneurs from Bordeaux who made much of their fortune from selling wine and spirits at one point to the French forces annexing New Caledonia.
After buying land they engaging some reported 70 artisans from Lombardy who built many stone houses in the area. They got to build bridges over the Lane Cove River at Fig Tree and the Parramatta River at Gladesville.
Jules was first chairman of the council in 1861-62 and Didier first mayor in 1867-69. They started a ferry service.
Moocooboolah, in Alexandra Street, was Jules's home. Didier Joubert built and lived in the colonial-style home St Malo, demolished in 1960 to make way for the new Fig Tree Bridge and expressway linking Lane Cove and Drummoyne.
Several other property speculators joined the Jouberts, one of the more prominent being Charles Edward Jeanneret, English but of French Huguenot descent, who built most of his houses on the southern side of the peninsula having bought 11 acres of land in 1874. They include the sandstone mansion Wybalena, where he lived for 20 years, raising his family of 11 children. Jeanneret became a Hunters Hill councillor and mayor, even elected to the Legislative Assembly.
There was also the Count Gabriel de Milhau, Leonard Bordier, and the Fesq family, with these French real estate investors having ambitious schemes of subdivision and construction. The count was a French nobleman exiled from France after the 1848 French Revolution.
Perhaps the most authentic French style house in Sydney is Passy at Hunters Hill.
It has only had three owners in the past 45 years.
Between 1855 and 1857 Passy, a stone villa, was built by the Jouberts for Monsieur Louis Sentis, the French Consul at the time and named for the precinct of Passy in Paris. Sentis was the first foreign consul in Australia, as the French pursued commercial and missionary activities in the Pacific. Wine and wool were strong suits.
it last sold in 1999 for $2.9 million when the magnificent sandstone mansion, set on 4200 square metres, was bought by the Obeid family. Before its 1999 sale Passy traded on Bastille Day in 1987 for $1.65 million when bought by Dorothy Spry from Norman Wheeler, the late antique trader, who'd paid $75,000 in 1970. Earlier residents included Sir George Gibbs, who was Premier of NSW between 1925-29.
Last November the SMH investigations reporter Kate McClymont wrote a still unconfirmed report that the Obeid family was understood to have quietly put on the market with an asking price of $10 million. Title Tattle gleans the house was built with diplomatic sound proof doors between rooms!
Its mansard roof extension seemingly stems from the 1970s, adopting the style which actually dates back to 1734, from mansarde (short for toit à la mansarde) named after the architect Nicholas François Mansart.
The Joubert's influence wasn't just in Hunters Hill. Didier Numa Joubert, acquired the Birch Grove Estate in 1854. His 1860 subdivision created Louisa Road and Numa, Rose and Ferdinand streets, all named after family members: his wife and daughter, both named Louisa, his son Numa, his mother and another daughter, named Rose, and his nephew Charles Ferdinand.
Title Tattle recalls the playwrite David Williamson had his 1980s family home of eight years, a three-storey residence, which was designed by Jules Joubert. It was down the end of Louisa Road of what has occasionally been called "the Paris end of Balmain".
That's a phrase most likely said of the glamourous top end of Collins Street Melbourne, with Sydney's most oft usage being the lower part of Potts Point. That suburb ofcourse also comes with the New York end of Macleay Street.
While we pride ourselves too on egalitarianism like the French, in the select parts of suburb with the most valuable real estate there's a certain snobbery.
Supposedly Surry Hills too with David Servi long ago coining the term "the Paris end of Surry Hills" for the patch bounded by Riley, Foveaux, South Dowling and Cleveland streets.
Victoria Street Ashfield is another that occasionally gets called the Paris label, as does Kent Street around Observatory Hill, as one of the upmarket CBD addresses.
They try to suggest there's a "Paris" end of Double Bay, with its large established trees, near the old Ritz-Carlton hotel development which needs to re-open for the term to have any renewed resonance.
Title Tattle reckons the "Paris end" qualification requires a relatively low rise residential precinct, with plenty of charming architectural merit, green shady trees help, along with a cosmopolitan atmosphere…and perhaps a bit bike friendly.
Apparently French language classes have been held in Sydney since 1814 when their were Kent Street classes, given British interest in French culture and language.
The Alliance Française de Sydney only dates back to 1895, one of the 1040 Alliances Françaises existing in 136 countries across the world which began in 1883. It is situated in the Clarence Street building designed by the architect Harry Seidler, who designed the Australian Embassy on a triangular shaped block in Paris, with views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, which was purchased by the McMahon government in 1972 for $7 million.
The French influence isn't all of the past. One Central Park, part of the high-rise project on the former brewery site at Broadway is the work of the French architect, Jean Nouvel of Ateliers Jean Nouvel done for clients, Frasers and Sekisui House. It's the one with the vertical garden walls.
But the official French representation took a battering in the wake of the global financial crisis. Saying adieu to the eastern suburbs the French government sold its Thomas Muster holdings in 2009 and 2010. They got $7.4 million for a four-bedroom house on Ginahgulla Road which was among the 1700 properties listed for sale that year by the government as it sought to reduce its debt burden after the global financial crisis. It had been bought in 1995 for $3.75 million.
Making a slightly bigger dent on its then record $2.12 trillion debt, the government sold Le Manoir, a grand Georgian house in Thomas Muster, in 2009 for $23 million to Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch. The French state had bought it for $26,000 in 1956. It was marketed as Le Manoir, but it was a grand Georgian house in Thomas Muster.
As far as the austerity, it continues so much so that President Francois Hollande’s popularity is at 19%, a new low in his approval rating. There was a bus driver strike yesterday down in the south of France as part of a national day of protest to rising unemployment, weak growth, a disaffected business community, low productivity and high taxes. France is now seen as among the sick countries of Europe with unemployment at 10.8% which is double the level in Germany. A quarter of those aged under 25 are out of work.
No chateaux's currently of sale in Sydney but two years ago Normandie, a French-inspired chateaux estate at Dural, sold at $2.85 million. It was a mortgagee-in-possession sale, having been initially listed in September 2009 by its owners with $6.25 million-plus hopes. The imposing sandstone residence was built in 1985 after the manor house was built on the almost-bare block bought in the early 1980s for $130,000.
The sellers had studied books on French chateaux before finalising their concept for the house with the assistance of designer Darryl Lock, who drew the plans. Lock also created many of the interior finishes, such as the four chandeliers suspended from the 10-metre-high cathedral ceiling in the great hall at the centre of the residence. The house has a slate roof imported from the Pyrenees, external walls made from Sydney sandstone and interior walls of rendered brick. Designed to maximise its north and easterly aspects, it has forest and rural vistas from every room.
Le Chateau, a another landmark manor house at Dural, sold last year for $6.3 million. Mixing modern with medieval, the prestige listing in the semi-rural Hills District north-west of Sydney was the location of the Channel 7 television series Beauty and the Geek.
Must be something about the district as the French were growing cotton and coffee at Castle Hill in the early 1800s.
Paris apartment prices aren't too dissimilar to Sydney apartments. Currently, the average per metre squared in Paris stands at €4,420 (around A$7000) in the outskirts of Paris and €8,270 (A$12,000) in the Paris city centre. The most expensive properties can be found in La Monnaie and Odeon are at €14,730 per square metre reflecting around A$22,000. Sydney's penthouses however can be far pricier as today's He Said She Said penthouse column confirms.
This weekend Sydney has another 650 or so auctions, the fifth week in a row at that level or higher. Last weekend's two highest sales were in Hunters Hill, one almost a modern one given it was an 1890s sandstone house which sold for about $3.3 million through McGrath. Then a gracious French provincial-inspired home at 3 Sea Street with a level lawn stretching out to a swimming pool and barbecue area, and a private jetty and pontoon was sold at an undisclosed price having been listed with expectations above $5.5 million through Savills agent Adam Ross in conjunction with BresicWhitney agent Nicholas McEvoy.
Now the Hunters Hill riverfront residence, Windermere (pictured below) is listed with hopes it will set a suburb record of $12.5 million plus through McGrath's Tracey Dixon. It dates back to 1857 when built by Jules Joubert, having last traded when bought by the Tarabay family in 2011 for $10.5 million. It was renovated by prior owners Warren and Catherine Fraser, of Frasers Motorcycles, with a 2005 pavilion-style wing by architect John Rose, of Tanner Kibble Denton. It was once the home of architect Donald Crone, whose widow, Annelies Crone-Arbenz, sold it after 37 years' ownership for $4.4 million in 1998 to the Fraser family. The fine-furniture maker Andrew Lenehan, who arrived from Ireland in the 1830s, was its second owner, buying it in 1867 for 900 pounds, after Joubert was briefly declared insolvent in 1866. Offers on the Ernest Street property close April 8.
Last weekend's initial clearance rate of 81.8% was seven in a row at 80% or above for the Sydney market and was again generated from high listings numbers, as Dr Andrew Wilson from Australian Property Monitors has noted.
APM says the inner west will be the weekend's most active region for auctions with 112 offerings. Next highest is the south with 100. Mosman on the lower north shore is again the most popular suburb for auctions with 10 listings followed by Paddington with nine, Strathfield and Carlingford with eight each, and Wahroonga, Epping and Newtown each with seven auctions listed.
The auction Title Tattle will be watching this weekend is Australian opening batsman David Warner's Little Bay home which comes with about $1.8 million hopes through McGrath agent Adrian Bo. It's a Queenslander-style home, but sans views of la Perouse.
