PADDINGTON HOUSE RECORD SET WITH $12M SALE OF LANDMARK ‘GOVERNESS’ HOME
A restored 1860s Brisbane residence transformed by GRAYA has smashed Paddington’s house price record, selling for more than $12 million.
3 min
Queensland’s Paddington has a new benchmark.
The Brisbane suburb’s residential price record has been reset following the sale of ‘Governess’, a landmark 1860s-era home reimagined by local builder-developer GRAYA.
The five-bedroom residence at 49 Reading Street has transacted for more than $12 million, the highest price achieved in the tightly held inner-Brisbane suburb, underlining continued strength at the top end of the market.
GRAYA, led by brothers Rob and Andrew Gray, has built a reputation for delivering design-led homes and boutique residential projects, but ‘Governess’ represents one of its most ambitious undertakings to date, both in scale and execution.
The home was marketed by Ray White Collective’s Matt Lancashire and Josh Brown, who said the result reflects both the quality of the product and the depth of demand for premium homes in established suburbs.
“Governess is an absolute showstopper,” Lancashire said.
“It’s easily one of the most significant and meticulously transformed character homes ever to hit the Brisbane market, and the record result reflects exactly that.”
Brown said the sale reinforced a consistent trend emerging across Brisbane’s prestige market.
“To achieve a result like this in Paddington proves there is still an incredible appetite for ultra-premium, character-rich homes when they are executed flawlessly,” he said.
For much of the past year, the home has been a point of local intrigue. During its transformation, it drew regular attention from passersby along Reading Street, a reflection of both the scale of the site and the prominence of the build.
Set on a 1,634 sqm corner parcel, ‘Governess’ sits elevated above the surrounding streetscape, capturing sweeping city and ridgeline views. The position alone places it among a limited pool of homes capable of achieving outcomes at this level.
What distinguishes the project, however, is not just the site, but how the existing home has been reworked.
Rather than a conventional renovation, GRAYA has undertaken a full-scale reinterpretation of the original 1860s residence, retaining its heritage elements while introducing a contemporary extension that reshapes how the home is used.
The transition between old and new is anchored by a central spiral staircase, which acts as both a functional connection point and a defining architectural feature. It separates the more traditional elements of the home from the contemporary addition, creating a clear but cohesive distinction between the two.
Internally, the material palette has been carefully considered to reflect the surrounding environment. Green marble and walnut-toned cabinetry echo the leafy outlook, while large expanses of glazing bring in natural light and frame the elevated views.
Ceiling heights of 3.1 metres and floor-to-ceiling glass reinforce that sense of openness, allowing the home to operate across both indoor and outdoor zones. Living and dining areas extend to a wraparound deck overlooking landscaped lawns and a resort-style pool, positioning the home as much for entertaining as it is for day-to-day living.
The kitchen has been designed as a central hub, anchored by a 4.5-metre island beneath a skylight and supported by a concealed butler’s pantry. Outdoor entertaining is equally integrated, with an alfresco BBQ area connecting directly to the main living spaces.
Below, additional amenity spaces reflect the growing expectation for lifestyle-driven design at this level of the market. A gym and tasting room, complete with cellar, bar and lounge, sit behind thermally insulated glass, providing dedicated zones for both recreation and entertaining.
Accommodation is spread across five bedrooms, alongside a study and additional office space. The primary suite occupies the uppermost level, functioning as a self-contained retreat with its own lounge, private deck, dressing room and ensuite.
The inclusion of features such as an internal lift, home automation via Electronic Living, and a five-car garage reinforce the level of specification.
The sale highlights the continued evolution of Brisbane’s prestige housing market.
Suburbs like Paddington, long defined by their character housing and proximity to the CBD, are increasingly seeing a new layer of product emerge. Rather than incremental renovations, developers are delivering full-scale transformations that position heritage homes at the very top of the market.
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Two architecture lovers created a real-life version of the home in Utah. It is now on the market for $45 million.
5 min
Near the end of “North By Northwest,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller, the protagonist, Roger Thornhill (played by Cary Grant), follows the seductress Eve Kendall (played by Eva Marie Saint) to a sprawling Modernist house reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
Except this house is situated not over a waterfall but, absurdly, atop Mount Rushmore.
The Vandamm House, named for the movie’s villain, never existed except on a Hollywood soundstage.
But it seems so real on the screen that Christine Madrid French, an expert on the architecture of Hitchcock’s films, says people sometimes tell her: “I went to Mount Rushmore, but I forgot to visit the house.”
John Boccardo, who grew up in Los Gatos, Calif., was 11 when the film came out. He saw it nearly a dozen times at the Studio Theatre in San Jose.
He was especially taken with the Vandamm House, which seemed completely real to him.
“I promised myself I would visit it one day,” says Boccardo. In the meantime, he drew surprisingly realistic renderings of it, from memory, while still in grade school. undefined
Years later, as an architecture student at SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) in downtown Los Angeles, he learned that the house didn’t exist.
A couple of rooms and two small sections of its exterior had been built on MGM’s Culver City lot under the supervision of production designer Robert Boyle.
For scenes in which the house was in the background, Hitchcock relied on paintings of the imaginary building by special-effects artist Matthew Yuricich.
The paintings, known as mattes in Hollywood, weren’t terribly realistic, but with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint moving across the screen, moviegoers didn’t notice.
“It may be the most famous Modernist house that never existed,” says French, an architecture and film historian and the author of “The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock.”
Boccardo went on to become a successful architect who worked in both northern and southern California.
Then, while semi-retired and living in Utah, he decided it was time to build the Vandamm House. His partner, Derek Esplin, threw himself into the project, working out details of everything from financing to furnishing. Says Esplin, a film producer, “I took it on as my life’s work.”
Boccardo, 78, Esplin, 59, and their three dogs (two schnauzers and an aussiedoodle) moved into the house in February.
The men have used it the last four months to ensure that everything is working perfectly. Now they are offering the house for sale at $45 million. The furniture and fixtures are available separately. “It can be turnkey,” Esplin says. The broker is Paul Benson of Engel & Völkers in Park City.
“I expect to get the full price,” says Benson. “It is not an outlier. We sold a house by the same architect in Park City last year for $65 million. And this is one of the most exceptional homes ever built in the state of Utah. You couldn’t recreate it for $45 million.”
Boccardo and Esplin declined to say how much it cost to build the house. But they got a bargain when they paid about $2 million for the 1.7 acre lot in 2021. (Benson says the land alone would command $7 million to $10 million today.) They chose the site, high above Park City, after searching for property that would let the house, with its dramatic cantilevers, be seen from below.
The property, which offers unobstructed views of the Wasatch Range, is in the Pinnacle , a gated community (complete with a clubhouse and a concierge) within the Promontory, a larger gated community—like a nightclub’s VVIP room entered through its VIP room.
With the site selected, they turned to Salt Lake City architect Michael Upwall, who is known for designing very large houses for the very rich. The dramatic aerie in HBO’s “Mountainhead,” with Steve Carrell, was one of his.
Laying out the house, Boccardo and Upwall, who served as co-architects, knew it would have a large living room with a wall of windows at one end and a stairway at the other. The stairway would lead, via a mezzanine, to one of the bedrooms. But that was all they could glean from the movie.
To finish the floorplans, says French, they had to answer all the questions the filmmakers never asked, such as “What’s behind that door?”and “What’s around that corner?”
And how many bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens are there? Their answer: six, eleven and three. (Boccardo and Esplin met French when they attended a lecture she gave about Hitchcock. The two men have since hired her to write about their house.)
Boccardo and Esplin also had to answer questions the filmmakers, even the wildly imaginative Hitchcock, would never have thought to ask:
How many black leather seats, fully reclining and heated, should there be in the home theatre? (18)
How much will it cost to fire-harden the house? (Over $1 million. “You can’t make a house completely fireproof, but you can improve its chance of surviving,” Esplin says. A special pump allows the water in the extra-deep, 75-foot lap pool to be used for firefighting.)
How much should we spend on custom walnut cabinetry? (Also over $1 million.)
What if our dogs’ feet get cold? (Relax. The house’s 100-foot-long gravel dog run is heated.)
Structural engineer Cambria M. Flowers figured out how to support the living room, which cantilevers 40 feet into thin air. The answer was to build two 160-foot-long steel-reinforced concrete beams, 120 feet of which anchor the cantilever while also supporting the ceiling of the garage.
Thick diagonal beams, like those shown prominently in “North By Northwest,” were slipped in later to provide additional stability. In the end, the project required 400 tons of steel, 4,000 cubic yards of concrete and 24 miles of electrical wire, according to contractor Gary Hill.
Now the men are ready to return to the last dream house they built, against dramatic red rocks in the southern Utah town of Ivins. Boccardo hopes the buyer of the Vandamm house is a lover of “North By Northwest.”
Esplin says that he and Boccardo, who dreamt of the house for more than 60 years, occasionally wonder if they really want to sell it. But then they remind themselves that it will be okay for someone else to own it. After all, Esplin says, “Many houses are built without stories. But this house has a story. And the story of this house belongs to us.”
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