South Yarra house redesigned like a luxury hotel but with a bit more homeliness

Being so beautifully proportioned and positioned, with six-metre-wide frontages and a prestigious address in the between-parks precinct of South Yarra, the classic single-storey, mid-Victorian brick cottages were among the first to be remodelled in the 1970s.

And what a shocking job those early Melbourne gentrifiers did!

As architect Travis Walton noted of a house he was asked to remodel, furnish and style right down to choosing the objects on the shelves, “it had almost been renovated to the point where it didn’t feel like a Victorian property at all.

“It had been left with only one bedroom and had been completely ruined”.

With so little to redeem but within a heritage-laden streetscape that deserved respect, for an oft-travelling gentleman who asked for a two-bedroom house “with a hotel-like feel”, Walton restored to elegance the front room with a marble mantle but behind that, rebuilt a modern townhouse as a 2.5-level structure with bedrooms upstairs and cellar and garage in a sub-basement.

There is a big distinction between the atmosphere of the “moody, broody” front room/study and the skylight brightness of the rear living, dining, kitchen that steps up to an elevated deck.

Yet Walton reckons what makes the parts cohere is the consistency of scale. “The spaces have a high level of decoration,” he says; it has style, “the furniture has a Deco look – but squared”, and sophistication. “It has that Manhattan feel.” Walton would know. He works internationally.

This “gentleman’s residence with a masculine aesthetic”, is a great example of what can happen with an open-handed budget and an open-minded client. “The client respected that there were things he didn’t know about and told us to go ahead ‘because you know best’ “.

So what you see is the best. The kitchen bench set right at the rear of the living space is Calacatta marble, “with a slight brown vein that goes really well with timber”.

The replaced timber floors are oak – real not engineered boards, and the wooden rail on the upper level balustrade is ebony, “with a piano finish gloss”.

Apart from the moving furniture, the paintings and displayed collectables, Walton and his team custom-made just about every other element. The upholstered bedheads and the side tables in the bedrooms, the french doors leading to the front garden, the shield-shaped mirror in the study. Walton insisted on hidden audio speakers in every room.

‘It’s subtle but it creates a continuous experience and it takes the place to a whole other level”, he says. “Like a luxury hotel to which we’ve also added a bit of hominess”.