Haverbrack Avenue, Malvern trophy home sold post-auction
The Haverbrack Avenue, Malvern, listed with demolition approval, sold post-auction mid-week through Andrew Hayne at Marshall White after it was passed in at $9.7 million.
There were three bidders.
The price guidance for the sun drenched five bedroom family home on 1485sqm was given as $9.1 million to $10 million.
The 1924 home was designed by the young architect Fred Ballantyne, the first articled pupil in the Melbourne office of the international acclaimed couple, Walter and Marion Griffin.
Fred had visited some of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses before he designed the U-shaped residence in the Prairie School style.
Ballantyne, who died in 1988, appears in the Dictionary of Unsong Architects.
Timber floors flow through the wide entrance hall to a spacious study, formal dining room and beautiful sitting room boasting vaulted ceilings and an open fireplace. It enjoys wonderful private garden outlooks with a northern aspect.
It last sold in 1992 at $800,000.
There are just the 25 homes in the street which crashed through the $1 million barrier in 1988.
There are six homes that haven't come to market since the 1980s or longer.
The tightly held house next-door at 11 Haverbrack holds the avenue's record price on selling last year at $11.2 million. It was designed by SJB Architects on its 1514sqm parcel.
Its seven sale prices in the past four years have ranged from $4.395 million to $11.2 million, averaging $7.75 million.
The most recent sale was a reputed $9 million plus sale price to Ego and Natalie Seeman of the minimalist Haverbrack offering sold by former St Kilda Football Club vice-presiden David Strange and his wife, Tracy, who runs a destination banner and bus scroll business, Trambanners.
They'd commissioned architect David Watson and AGUSHI Builders to construct the home within gardens by Jack Merlo.They owned the original period house for a decade until subdividing it, building this one eight years ago as the family home and selling the vacant half which is an Alan Powell designed home within Paul Bangay gardens that is currently for sale by the Holckner family with $8.5 million to $9.25 million price guidance.
The originating Haverbrack was an 1854 homestead on 20 acres built for Colin Campbell, pastoralist, politician, author, educationist and cleric. Just 20 years after Melbourne was founded, Campbell erected a small pre-fabricated house which he had imported from England, the first Malvern dwelling to be erected on the east side of Glenferrie Road.
The house featured solid iron doors which the Tabletalk magazine wrote was for "added protection from warlike natives." He sent his boys to Melbourne Grammar.
This article first appeared in The Weekend Australian.