Osborne House, 456 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
Butler, Graeme21 Jan 1985
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Total copies: 1
Title:
Osborne House, 456 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
Creator:
Date of work:
21 Jan 1985
Reference number:
BIF-NORTH 109800
Level of description:
Item from Collection: Heritage Collection (HC)
Type of materials:
Graphic materialsTextual material
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Access restrictions:
UnrestrictedOpen access.
Use restrictions:
UnrestrictedPlease contact City of Melbourne Libraries about obtaining permission to reproduce images.
General notes:
Grading as at 1985 : APeriod : Early Victorian (1854)Grantee : G W Cole 1852This house, which was erected for the grantee, George Ward Cole in 1854, is believed to have imported prefabricated framing of white pine (pinus strobus). It was originally built as a five-roomed house and attic then extended while still under his ownership to a variously described nine to fourteen-roomed house including four attics by 1865. [National Trust FN 746 Datasheet C Kelloway 1975]After 1868, the building was owned by Miss Sarah Ann Haynes and operated as a Ladies College until at least 1895. The name, Osborne House is used in 1885 Melbourne directories.By 1854, George Ward Cole was already an established figure in Melbourne. On his arrival in the colony in 1841, he set up as a general merchant and constructed Cole's wharf in 1842. During the same year, he acquired twenty-four acres on the Brighton seafront where his teak house, St Ninian's, also prefabricated, was the scene of much genteel entertainment for the cream of Melbourne Society. Just before he had this house in Victoria Street built, he was elected to the Legislative Council as the member for Gippsland, resigning two years later in 1855; he was the MLC for Central Province for a longer period of time in the 1860s and 1870s. He was involved in a great number if the political, social and economic questions concerning Victorians at the time, e.g. unemployment, defence, flooding of the Yarra: the development of the Harbour Trust, the Railways and the Constitution,His private interest in horticulture extended to the establishment of agricultural colleges and the introduction of seaweed as a fertiliser. He died in 1879. [Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 1 1788-1850 p 233-234]As St Ninian's has been demolished [National Trust Register Melbourne 1976] and his wharf long since dismantled. this house may be the only known surviving building associated with George Cole , who was such a significant figure of his time.The house is a two-storey timber ship-lap boarded house with attics, a transverse gabled roof, clad with Marseille patter tiles, and a triple arched, gabled roof porch. Shaped timber architraves surround the upper windows, each with six-pane sashes, whilst the lower windows are set in bays with tile-clad hipped roofs over. Rough cast stucco overs the wall between the porch arches under the gable.A connecting aspect to Cole's former house, St Ninian's in Brighton (demolished), is this arched and gabled porch : there having had a scalloped barge. The interior is reputedly paper on 200 mm rough-swan grounds and the studs are numbered; given the imported timber boards, it appears that the house was probably pre-assembled. [Saunders "Historic buildings of Victoria" pps 117, 125] [National Trust FN 746 Datasheet C Kelloway 1975]Illustrations associated with the Ladies College occupation show a gabled building to the west of this house which has now gone.Architecturally, a large and early example of a relatively small number of known pre-assembled buildings in Victoria, although of intermediate integrity and in part possessing some of the picturesque decorative details, generally lost from other examples, such as the porch : of statewide importance.Historically, perhaps the only surviving building of Cole , who was prominent in the early commercial development of the colony : of Statewide importance.This is the oldest extant house in North Melbournehttps://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/890
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Images, maps and artefacts
Record number:
1629253
| Type | Reference No. | Extent | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original | 109800 | 1 PDF : 893 KB ; A4 | Group of Items (May not be issued, may not be reproduced) |