| `Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English) ... |
| What Alice said, indeed! This house is next door to that which I showed you yesterday. This one, however, has a heritage listing indicating value of a local variety. It is called "Roselea". It last traded in August 2007 for $794,000 and sits on 665 square meters of land. |
| I would love to know the provenance behind this structure! It stands in High Street, Willoughby, and last traded in August 2001 for $660,000. At the moment, it is valued at about $2,000,000 give or take $200,000. As you might suspect, the front is deceptive as Google Maps reveals it to be an extensive property, with banks of solar-panels to heat an outdoor pool. It sits on 672 square metres of land. Willoughby is an old suburb, and weather-board houses, although not rare, are not a dime a dozen, either. But, what is with the shingles, and the key-hole cutout? |
| Of course, for every one of these houses that has been restored, rather than renovated, there is another next door, or across the road, that has been totally botched. Of course, the owners will contend that family requirements have altered over the last century. And this is probably true. But why oh why totally stuff the external appearance of the front. I understand if the rear of the house has been opened 'out'. If the garden is an extension of an enlarged living area. But if the frontage faces either west or south, why bother stuffing it up with pretensios to grandeur. Just go pourchase a different property, as this one is obviously not for you. The houses shown this week would, in my estimation, fetch between $1.75m and $2.25m in the Sydney property market. |
| Sometimes stepping back enables one to get just that little more perspective on the issue. I read somewhere today that photography is warping the way that our brain stores memories. There are times, like the dance concert in which my grand-daughter performed on Sunday, where I do not even take a camera with me. I just want to see what she does, rather than setting up my fingers, and my eyes, for that preordained, perfect keeper. Obviously, though, this house is a keeper, being between 80 and 100 years old. Although, I suspect it is like my father's axe, having had three new heads and a dozen new handles! |
| Perhaps not Bedford Street, but in that general vicinity. Seem to remember turning a corner, and the fall of the sun is slightly different. |
| On my meanders back from High Street, I try different 'ways through the woods'. This way had me looking through windows with a view on the past, a favoured view. This week the focus is upon a selection of awning windows on Federation houses in Bedford Street. |
| Some coffee shops are straight out of 'Home Beautiful", with their white interiors, with aluminium trim, and blonde-wood floors. Other coffee shops, are really greasy burger joints, making ends meet by repackaging their grey-water effluent. |
| However, MY coffee shop has that gritty patina that screams inner-city-leftie-bleeding-heart-up-yerself-liberal-academic. The coffee is yummo. The croissants are to die for. The baguettes are freshly baked (every 20 minutes), and overflowing with filling. High Street Bakery, owned and run by ex-pat Vietnamese, is ALWAYS busy. A great place in Willoughby to sit and watch the world go by, lost in one's own thoughts. |
| Glover Street is in north Willoughby, and runs between High Street and Warrane Road. |
| Most of the houses in this street, and in adjacent streets are of the 'Californian bungalow' design. This architectural style was popular from just before World War I, until well into the 1920s. |
| Very few houses in Glover Street are unrenovated. However, generally speaking, the external appearance (from the street) is unchanged. The street is very neat and tidy, well-kempt. It appears to be well-populated with young families. |
| There is one example of a Californian bungalow which is of recent construction. Some other examples have been demolished, to be replaced by style I like to think of as 'modern nonentity'. I have not been able to identify 'Glover'. However, the streets in this pattern (running from High Street to Warrane Road) all appear to be named after people: McClelland, Alexander, Glover, Bedford, Cambridge, and Chaleyer. This leads me to reason that they were all in the same release of land. There are only 41 houses in the street, each of the blocks of land being very regular, and approximately 558 square metres. Using Google maps, there are only 8 swimming pools in the street. Very few of these houses would change hands for under a million dollars. The house in my lead photograph is valued at approximately $1.4m. |