A stately mansion in the Edwardian style with extensive gardens.
Located at 43-69 Balmoral Road in Leura, 'Leuralla' stands as a stately mansion, built in Federation Arts & Crafts style, and surrounded by extensive gardens. Leuralla is one of the oldest Blue Mountains' heritage listed homes, at Leura, a suburb in the Blue Mountains, in New South Wales, Australia..
The property has a rich history as a Toy Museum, sprawling across approximately 5.5 hectares of land.
Leuralla, a seven-bedroom Federation Arts & Crafts style house, (others say "Federation Free Classical" style), was built in 1912 for wealthy yachtsman Harry Andreas (an Australian businessman and company director; and a big-game fisherman) and his family.
In 1928, NSW MP and barrister, Clive Evatt senior, married Marjorie Andreas and later bought the home from his in-laws. His grandson, Victor Evatt, is the current owner and vendor of Leuralla.
It was open for expressions of interest late last year, and attracted a range of potential buyers looking at converting it to a boutique hotel, a weekender, a family home or for redevelopment, but it didn't sell.
In November 2023 the AFR bravely reported: "Spanning 11 land titles and featuring a grand home, the Evatt family’s holding is likely to land somewhere in the “mid-teens” in terms of millions of dollars, real estate sources say.
Christie’s prestige agent Darren Curtis – who is selling the property alongside McGrath’s Craig Pontey – says "of all the grand homes in New South Wales, Leuralla is up there with the very best."
“I’m fortunate enough to see some of the best homes on the lower north shore, upper north shore and eastern suburbs, and Leuralla is by far and away the most significant estate in the Blue Mountains,” Mr Curtis said.
Beyond the grand entrance portico, the property features a drawing room, formal lounge, music room and games room designed to fit a full-size billiard table.
A grand staircase connects to the upper level of seven bedrooms, a study as well as balconies and verandahs. Original details include French-polished Queensland maple panelling with an intricate fretwork of native plants."
Leuralla was previously the location of the Leuralla Toy & Railway Museum, which closed in 2022, and the toys all sold by auction. The house is now vacant.
In 1903 a house, known as Leuralla, was built on the current site but was destroyed by bushfire in 1909.
The present house was built between 1910 and 1914 and was designed by architect Edward Hewlett Hogben.
The design was influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright (see right).
The house is an example of an early 20th Century permanent residence for a wealthy family.
It is an imposing two-storey house set in extensive grounds and the solid, decorative interiors are reminiscent of Babworth House, Darling Point NSW.
Andreas established an exotic garden from his earliest ownership of Leuralla and much of it was saved from the 1909 bushfire. The garden was developed around the new house and is 5 hectares (12 acres) in size.
A formal garden layout was used originally designed by Andreas and later the noted landscaper Paul Sorensen improved the garden overall. An amphitheatre is located on the edge of the escarpment and overlooks the Jamison Valley.
Leuralla is an imposing two-storey house set in extensive grounds and is notable for its entry portico and stair, symmetry, and bracketed cornice.
The walls and chimneys are rendered and the building is on a rock-faced sandstone base.
Leuralla has a Federation-style hipped roof with short projecting hipped wings on the southern and northern sides.
The wide external sandstone staircase has twin flights from the ground under a single storey portico. The portico is topped by a first floor balcony with balustrading. Doric columns complement the entry and the front door is multi-paned and has sidelights.
There are symmetrically placed hipped roof bay windows on the northern and southern sides of the portico. The roof is covered in slate and ridged in terracotta.
The garage has Federation Anglo-Dutch style influences and its walls are shingled with a weatherboard spandrel.
There is a single-storeyed sandstone outbuilding with a gabled roof on the Olympian Parade side of the grounds.
Leuralla was built for the independently wealthy yachtsman and big-game fisherman Harry Andreas (1879 – 1955), his wife Alice and their young family.
Harry and Alice Andreas lived at Leuralla until after World War II in the mid-1950s.
Built by local, skilled trades people who took great pride in their workmanship, all of the construction of Leuralla was carried out by hand. The timber work took two years to complete as the home was built in a pre-electric tool era and included wood panelling, sideboards, cabinets, dining room table and tulip motif chairs.
The house was considered absolutely modern for its time and has a central vacuum cleaning system as well as an intercom system.
The home was supported by a group of servants until the mid-1950s, when it was handed to Victor's grandfather.
From that point, Leuralla was visited as a weekender, and hosted notable musicians, artists and friends.
As the home of the Katoomba Music Society in the 1930s, Leuralla hosted numerous interesting musical guests including:
the internationally renowned pianist Solomon Cutner CBE, known as The Great Solomon;
the composer and conductor Sir Eugene Goosens;
and music critic and cricket commentator Sir Neville Cardus CBE.
During the 1927 Royal Tour of Australasia, Harry Andreas had acted as a fishing guide for The Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) in the Bay of Islands, whilst the young Princess "Lillibet" was at home in London.
Leuralla Toy and railway museum
In 1928, Clive Evatt QC (1900 – 1984) married Marjorie Andreas, a daughter, of Harry and Alice, and the Evatt family connection to the property began.
Clive Evatt Jnr, an Andreas grandson, managed the property. Clive Evatt and his wife, Elizabeth Evatt, are the founders of the present museum.
They are responsible for the exhibition of H.V. Evatt QC KStJ (1894 – 1965) memorabilia and for the toy and railway collection displayed in various buildings.
Herbert Vere "Doc" Evatt was Clive Evatt Snr's brother but had no particular connection with Leuralla and had a home of his own in Leura.
Leuralla housed the toy museum from 1980 to 2022. It included a collection of toys, children's literature, games and models from the 20th Century.
Items included rare tinplate trains, airplanes, zeppelins, ships, automobiles, lead and elastolin figures, as well as working model train layouts complete with train station, harbour, farm & garden and military scenes.
Represented characters included Alice in Wonderland, Tintin, Babar, Winnie the Pooh, Noddy and Rupert Bear, Popeye, James Bond, Action Man, Barbie and Harry Potter. Important dolls, teddy-bears and stuffed animals,
Meccano, construction kit, games and jigsaws, children's literature & comics were also represented.
The grounds feature an outdoor display of model trains and original ephemera from NSW railways such as signage, benches and station contents, which were being disposed of in the 1980s.
The house also featured a commemorative museum to the great Australian politician, intellectual and statesman Dr. ("Doc") H V Evatt.
Herbert Vere "Doc" Evatt, QC, PC, KStJ was an Australian politician and judge. He served as a justice of the High Court of Australia from 1930 to 1940, Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs from 1941 to 1949, and leader of the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1951 to 1960. -Wikipedia
When Victor Evatt decided it was time to sell the family mansion — valued at up to $10 million — he opted for an unconventional approach.
Heritage-listed Blue Mountains mansion Leuralla is for sale for first time since built 110 years ago.... (ABC News June 2024)
Interiors Slideshow: Press < or > to proceed
Leuralla in the Blue Mountains was about to go to auction (not sold, enquiries welcome). The property has been in Victor Evatt's family for more than a century.
"But then again, some people are not happy looking through a garden and seeing a bust of Vladimir Lenin," Victor Evatt said.
Along with seven bedrooms, verandahs, function rooms, drawing rooms, dining rooms, servants' quarters with a Downton Abbey-like bell system, and gardens, the 2.2-hectare (?) property in the Blue Mountains town of Leura comes with a sculpture of the Russian revolutionary.
Victor's father, renowned defamation barrister Clive Evatt Junior, mounted the "slightly larger than life" ceramic Lenin torso high on a plinth in the front garden in 1983.
The next morning, the bust lay smashed to pieces.
"[Some] disgruntled locals decided they didn't want to have Lenin along Olympian parade looking over them," Victor said.
But his father, undeterred, pieced it back together and resurrected it with concrete.
"That's why it still stands today, because it's so hard to break," he said.
Exterior Slideshow: Press < or > to proceed
Read more:
McGrath Property Listing: https://www.mcgrath.com.au/property/190p41862
Heritage-listed Blue Mountains mansion Leuralla for sale for first time since built 110 years ago (ABC News 2 June 2024)
Blue Mountains Heritage Register | Leuralla
About Paul Sorensen
Paul Sorensen Landscaper - Photographed by Harold Cazneaux. c1936
Paul Sorensen (1890 - 1983) was a landscape gardener born and trained in Denmark. He had experience working in gardens in Denmark, Germany, France and Switzerland, some of which were in large estates with extensive grounds.
He arrived in Australia in 1915 and settled in the Blue Mountains in 1917. The main source of information about him is the book "Australia's Master Gardener: Paul Sorensen and his gardens" Kangaroo Press (1990) by Richard Ratcliffe.
He was celebrated for his distinctive designs and his mastery of the use of the dry stone wall technique combined with a skill in managing dramatic changes of levels in gardens.
He is reported as being extremely versatile with skills in design, propagation, planting and the building and maintenance of gardens of a wide range of size and style. Paul recognised the local craftsmen as skilled practioners of the art.
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