Globe International co-founder Peter Hill sells Hawthorn's Invergowrie for likely $20 million
Peter Hill, the skateboarding Globe International co-founder and his wife, Angela have sold the colonial-gothic style mansion, Invergowrie Estate, on 1.1 hectares in Hawthorn.
The hush hush sale of the Coppin Grove home - once a finishing school for the city's young ladies - has probably fallen short of setting a record price for the Melbourne market.
The sale estimates are $20 million plus, possibly in two separate sales. It cost $10.75 million in 2002. The buyers are undisclosed using solicitors, Arnold Bloch Leibler as their intermediaries.
The first president of the Legislative Assembly, Sir John Palmer, began building the estate in 1846 which comes with a tennis court, fountain, botanic gardens and a sweeping driveway.
There were five buildings on the estate, including a free-standing hall, an annexe, stables of convict-mined bluestone converted into a guest house when last sold.
The $24 million sale in 2010 of the former Baillieu family estate on St Georges Road, Toorak to the soft-drink magnate Harry Stamoulis ranks as the Melbourne bigtime sale from January 2010. The title of Victoria's most expensive residential property is currently held by clifftop Portsea mansion Ilyuka, which sold for $25 million in December 2010.
Invergowrie (pictured below) is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.
At one time it was owned by theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin, who is said to have tried to demolish it. The building was saved when businessman Sir William McPherson bought it. Sir William (pictured below) rose to political heights as premier of Victoria in 1928.
On his death, the property was handed over to the Association of Headmistresses of Independent Schools when it became the Invergowrie Homecraft Hostel and was later headquarters of the Victorian Post Secondary Education Commission.
It was bought by the Coogi knitwear entrepreneur Jacky Taranto in 1992 for $2.7 million who sold in 2002 to the Hills.
It was last October when the Hill's boght in St Kilda from the former TV personality Steve Vizard who sold his St Kilda mansion, Clendore.
The three-storey Italianate Victorian with 17 rooms and a rooftop pool was sold by Vizard and wife Sarah who had renovated the seven-bedroom, 10-bathroom home after paying $3.96 million in 2004.
There is a rooftop Paul Bangay-designed garden above the grand colonnaded building, which sits on a 782-square-metre Fitzroy Street block.
The mansion has a 15-person Schindler commercial double-door lift that connects all four floors.
One of the original three adjoining terraces was the home of Sir Graham Berry, the distinguished radical politician, for several years.
Images courtesy of the State Library of Victoria and The Invergowrie Foundation.
