Hollyford, St Vincent Place - mooted $10 million plus record setting Albert Park mansion
Albert Park's record price has swung from the beachfront Beaconsfield Parade to the stately St Vincent Place estate.
There's no paperwork trail as yet, but Hollyford, the much admired 1873 residence, is the most likely home to now hold the mantle of the suburb's top sale.
Local agents suggest its undisclosed price is the suburb's first $10 million plus double digit million dollar sale, and some agents tell Property Observer it possibly even got up around $12 million.
Hockingstuart is being credited as the selling agency, though they say confidentiality clauses prevent confirmation of any details regarding the off-market mystery sale.
Hollyford was built about 17 years after St Vincent Place was laid out, modelled on the English idea of houses clustered around its central landscaped gardens.
The heritage listed St Vincent Place home comes with rear Nicolas Murray-designed extension on its 480 square metre block.
The project involved restoring the front four rooms of an Italianate Victorian double fronted house along with a full width linear pond which marks the transition to the modern more informal living spaces which flows onto the garden and lap pool.
There apparently is a glazed walkway crossing the pond.
The rear double storey heritage stables are separate guest quarters and garaging.
It last sold in 2002 at around $2.2 million.
Hollyford, which has its 1873 construction date on its gorgeous vined facade, was the home of the mariner, Thomas Mowbray Hutchinson, according to the land title documents that Property Observer has researched. He owned the holding from 1867 to 1875, there with his wife, Honora and six children. He died in 1888 in Chusan Street, St Kilda with a subsequent 1899 court case over his estate.
Then pawn broker James Healy owned Hollyford for just 14 months. The Hammond family held the property from December 1876 until its sale to the Ryan family from Tipperary in 1899. It seems they gave the house its name as Hollyford is a small village in County Tipperary. The best known family member was George Ryan, who died in 1986, and was old enough to recall the picket fence left over from St Vincent Place's days as a racecourse. The Ryan's sold around 2002.
St Vincent Place's previous highest sale was $6.62 million when Rosebank sold unrenovated at its 2011 Marshall White auction where there were four bidders, highlighting the depth of prestige buyer interest when properties hit the market. The 1866 double-fronted Victorian home was up for sale for the first time in over 52 years.
The street's last big listing, No. 85 (pictured below), on a corner at the southern end of the square, a late-Edwardian solid-brick mansion with lacework and balconies, settled earlier this year at $6.2 million, but only on its second attempt through Cayzer Real Estate.
It had sold at $4.8 million in 2009 when offloaded by veteran stockbroker Peter Hollick, nicknamed "the red bullet".
Then known locally as "the big red brick one on the corner with the red Porshe out front", Hollick moved to a 17th floor apartment at Becton's One East Melbourne development, on Wellington Parade South near the railcards, costing $3.6 million.
Albert Park's prior record was Duart, the $7.25 million mansion sold in late 2009 on Beaconsfield Parade by the Salvo family to Sonia Hill, wife of Globe International founder Stephen Hill through Hockingstuart.
Gallery photos courtesy of Nick Murray Architects.