Curraghbeena House, the Mosman harbourfront mansion with Chinese oriental boatshed, listed with $7 million hopes
Curraghbeena House, the 1905 Mosman harbourfront home of the Alliance Aviation Services chairman Steve Padgett and his wife, Lorraine has been listed with $7 million-plus hopes at its May 30 auction through Kingsley Yates of Ray White Lower North Shore.
The four-bedroom, four-bathroom house is set at the tip of Curraghbeena Point, between Mosman Bay and Little Sirius Cove with landscaped terraced gardens and a staircase leading down to a sandstone-wall harbourside pool.
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Title Tattle reckons the highlight is its rare Chinese-style timber boatshed, one of only two on Sydney Harbour influenced by the late Victorian fashion for the East and oriental design.
The other is at the Point Piper home of Warren Daly, the big band performer and his wife, Karen Daly, the successful author of the Fats & Figures range of books.
Curraghbeena House has unobstructed views to the city skyline even from the boatshed.
The property's restoration was overseen by architects Gary Barnes and Mike Blakeney after the house had been split into three apartments until purchased by the couple between 1996 and 2004 for a total of $2.29 million. The three-level building had three acquistions starting with $475,000 in 1996, then $520,000 in 2001 and finished of with a $1.3 million acquistion in 2004.
The boatshed is a rare surviving example of the fashion for oriental architecture often seen in follies attached to grand houses, according to NSW Heritage. It is the earlier and possibly most intact of the two examples on Sydney Harbour and being on a prominent headland it gives it landmark status in the Harbour. The Mosman boatshed (pictured below) appears pre-renovation on the NSW Heritage website.
NSW Heritage says its one of the finest small boatsheds on the harbour despite the structure being very simple while relying on the decorative oriental design elements for its form and charm. The roof is upswept simulating Chinese roof design and the building has a raised lantern section with matching roof, exposed eaves and rafters. The roof is malthoid over timber. Fenestration is simple with two windows on each side and a pair of doors leading onto a small cantilevered landing that is of recent origin. The building sits on stone piers and does not have sliprails.
The other Chinese-style heritage listed boatshed (pictured below) at the northern end of Seven Shillings Beach in Point Piper has a colourful history.
The boatshed was part of the property once owned by W. G. "Knockout" Smith, a millionaire industrialist and horse owner-breeder whose mansion Danmark was at the top of the ridge, but Knockout preferred to spend most of his time in his one-room shed, allegedly because he couldn't stand his wife.
The founder of the glassmaking giant Australian Consolidated Industries was noted for having a glass of champagne for breakfast, on doctor's orders, and swimming daily, summer and winter, in the harbour. Smith made a reputation selling upper Hunter horses to Hollywood bigwigs including the movie mogul, Louis Mayer, of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The horse Shannon left Smith's stable after being bought in 1947 for $54,600, an then Australian record. Smith raced him briefly before selling him for $62,500 to US owners who when racing him as a seven-year-old - won the San Francisco County Handicap, in a time of 1m:55.6s for the nine-and-a-half furlongs (1,900m) which was 0.2s faster than the record established by US legend Sea Biscuit in 1936.
Apparently Knockout Smith he was easy to spot swimming because of his bather's cap. It last sold when retailer John David secured $7.75 million in 1997 when bought by Daly's wife, Karen Alice Peerless.
