Eastwood, East Brisbane

I just stumbled across this superbly presented Federation house in East Brisbane that is currently listed for sale. It appeared in The Weekend Australian Magazine of 13 April.

(Photo: realestate.com.au)

The house, Eastwood, was built in 1908 for Llewellyn Stephens, a Brisbane lawyer and council alderman. It was designed by the distinguished architect Robin Dods, who must have done a good job because three short years later he was engaged to design nearby Kitawah for the same client. 

The Stephens family was prominent in Brisbane. Llewellyn's father Thomas Blacket Stephens was himself an alderman and mayor as well as being elected to the Queensland parliament. His business interests were diverse, evidenced by his owning of a tannery at Ekibin and the newspaper The Brisbane Courier.

Llewellyn's older brother William took over the family interests after their father's death, and he was instrumental in the construction of two other fine residences that we have seen on these pages, Waldheim and Cumbooquepa.

About Eastwood, the newspaper piece says "Shifted to one side of its sizeable block to make way for townhouses, the owners set about restoring four-bedroom Eastwood to as-new 1901-style. They used the plans of the architect, Robin Dods (1868-1920), whose designs still pervade the city in the form of homes, schools, hotels, churches and public buildings." The photographs for the real estate advertising are spectacular.

Click here for a Google Map.

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Cumbooquepa, South Brisbane

Each October over the past three years some of Brisbane's fascinating architecture has been opened to the public to view. Brisbane Open House has become so popular that the one-day format has been extended to a full weekend in October 2013. More than 33,000 visits were aggregated across 51 sites last year, so the expectation will be for even higher numbers this year. You can register to receive further information here.

One of the sponsors is the legal firm McCullough Robertson who funded the photographic competition for the event, and this is the photograph that won last year's first prize. 

(http://brisbaneopenhouse.com.au; A Yip)

The image depicts Cumbooquepa, a fabulous house that dates from 1890 and is now part of the campus of Somerville House, the prominent girls' school. Congratulations to photographer Andy Yip.

This is the second Cumbooquepa to be built here. The first was erected not long after Thomas Blacket Stephens acquired the land in 1856. The establishment of the railway line to South Brisbane meant that the original house had to be demolished, and a new Cumbooquepa designed by GHM Addison was built nearby.

TB Stephens passed away in 1877 and his son William Stephens took over the family businesses. It was he who oversaw the construction of the second Cumbooquepa in 1890. In fact William was an extremely busy man at this time - he was mayor of South Brisbane, he had taken over the family businesses and accepted the responsibility of looking after his mother and siblings; he also got married in that year and saw to the construction of Waldheim, another family house at Annerley around this time.

Here are a couple of older photographs of Cumbooquepa - the top one is from around 1920 and the one below it is from around 1979.  

(Photo: wikipedia)

(Photo: © 1979 National Trust of Queensland; R Stringer)

Evidently the interior of the building is quite detailed. Don't miss visiting it on the next Brisbane Open House.

Click here for a Google Map.

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Waldheim, Annerley

This building in the southern suburb of Annerley used to be a fine dining establishment known as The Clansman. My spouse and I went there a few times back in the eighties. We saw royalty there too - I can recall spotting Wally Lewis, the Emperor of Lang Park, and Dick Johnson, the King of the Mountain, there at various times.

It appears that the current use of the former restaurant is as a child-minding facility or pre-school, hence the sand pit and cubby house in the foreground of my picture.

(Photo: © 2012 the foto fanatic)

Actually, this building was originally the house of an early Brisbane mover and shaker, William Stephens, pictured below around the year 1889.

(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #167293) 


William Stephens was the eldest of the eleven children of TB Stephens, a very versatile man who was a politician and owned a tannery business and a newspaper as well. William must have been cut from the same cloth, as after the death of his father when William was only twenty, he managed the considerable Stephens estate on behalf of his mother and siblings. He also followed his father's footsteps into politics, becoming a councillor in the shire of Stephens (named after his father) for over thirty years including seven terms as chairman. He became the first mayor of South Brisbane in 1888, and was elected mayor twice more after that.

William Stephens married in 1900, and built Waldheim (a German word meaning "home in the forest") just off Ipswich Rd at Annerley Junction shortly thereafter. I'm not sure how long he lived there - another house, Knutsford, was built in 1907, and William was also very influential in primary industry in the Nerang area near the Gold Coast. In April 1907, the wife of William Stephens' brother Llewellyn gave birth to a son at Waldheim. Whether Llewellyn and his wife were living there then, or Waldheim was made available to them for her "confinement" is not known. Llewellyn and his wife were to move to their own house Kitawah in 1911.

The Stephens family has left quite a legacy in Brisbane - I'm sure we will hear more of them in this blog.

Click here for a Google Map.

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Kitawah, East Brisbane

Another of Brisbane's fine old homes has changed hands. Kitawah, a large timber residence in East Brisbane was sold at auction in the beginning of March for around $2 million. Here is my recent photograph of Kitawah.

(Photo: © 2012 the foto fanatic)

Kitawah was built in 1911 to a design from one of Brisbane's favourite architects, Robin Dods. It was one of Dods' final Brisbane commissions before he moved to Sydney. The house was built for Brisbane lawyer Llewellyn Stephens, the son of prominent politician and newspaper proprietor Thomas Blackett Stephens.

The Stephens family owned Kitawah until 1943, when it was sold to the Parer family who had plantations in Papua New Guinea. It was bought from them by Dr James Hemsley in 1969, and the residence has been in the hands of that family until its recent sale. 

 You can even have a video tour of the house if you click here.

  
The house is listed on the state heritage register.

Click here for a Google Map.

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