Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin list Iona, the Italianate Darlinghurst record setter mansion
The film makers Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin have $15 million-plus hopes for Iona, the 1880s Darlinghurst mansion.
The couple want to buy a family home with a garden in the eastern suburbs of Sydney rather than keep the inner city premises from where they have maintained their Bazmark film production offices.
The couple paid $10 million for the grand Victorian building (pictured below) in 2006 having previously rented the Italianate mansion, for almost the prior decade.
The creative duo never made a secret of their desire to buy so the couple engaged a buyer's agent, Janne Sutcliffe, to secure it before the real estate agent, Peter Blacket, scheduled inspections in 2006. The initial weekly asking price rent for the property in 1995 was a hefty $6,400.
It sits on a 2700 square metre block reduced over the years since built in the late 1880s as the residence for the pastoralist Edward Chisholm.
It next sold in 1908 to Adela Taylor, wife of Sir Allen Taylor, the then timber merchant and former lord mayor of Sydney who'd been in office in 1905 and 1906 and again between 1909 and 1912.
The Taylor's sold in 1912 to Eliza Hyem, wife of Alexander Hyem who leased the site to Jessie Robertson, Elizabeth Robertson and Annie Ellie McAndrew, spinsters according to the NSW Heritage site, who converted the house to Wootten Private Hospital, a psychiatric facility.
Jessie Robertson became the owner of the property in 1918 and after leased the hospital to Florence Inglis, Elizabeth Fraser and Annie Paton, these nursing spinsters purchased the property in 1927.
With most mansions around Darlinghurst demolished between the 1920s and 1960s, the extended use of Iona as a hospital saved it from this fate.
However in 1973 the site was purchased by developers, Cascais, Westport Holdings and Inciti Developments, who also purchased many surrounding houses. They sought approval for three 60 storey tower block home units in the area. Consent was granted in 1977 which included a lesser scale development and the conversion of Iona into 13 strata apartments.
But the developers suffered financial problems and each property was sold off individually.
The National Trust and other conservationists fought to protect Iona before and after its purchase by Jesseme Pty Ltd, the company was owned by John Rutherford who prepared plans for the conversion of the building into 15 flats but the proposal did not proceed. John Rutherford acquired from Home Units of Australia for $700,000 in 1980.
Rutherford subsequently applied to the Heritage Council for funding assistance for restoration works to the property, and $20,000 was granted.
The Luhrmann couple's McGrath estate agent has told Fairfax Media that the News Ltd report that the listing arose to help cover a cost blowout in their upcoming blockbuster, The Great Gatsby, were inaccurate.
The 1880s oasis was sold for $2.04 million in 1993 by John Rutherford to Ian Gowrie-Smith, the London-based entreprenuer who sold to the Luhrmann-Martin couple.
It has the best rose corniches Title Tattle has seen.
Image courtesy of My Darling Darlinghurst.
