By Marianne Taylor
Marianne Taylor is “The House Detective”, a freelance architectural historian who specialises in investigating the history of houses. If you have a house you want investigated, visit www.housedetective.com.au.
Last year, I was hired to research Edward Lodge, a luxury boutique B & B at 75 Sydney Street, New Farm. The land on which the building is today located was part of the Turner Estate, a 1901 subdivision of the grounds of the grand mansion, Kinellan.
By 1910, Alfred Minshull was operating the “Mirror Steam Laundry” on the site. Minshull also built a house there, which he christened Badu, after the Torres Strait Island where the Minshull family had lived on arrival in Australia. After Alfred’s death at Badu in 1916, his wife, Lily, continued to run the laundry until about 1920.
Irishman, Thomas Healy became the new owner of the property in 1922. Thomas and his wife, Mary, renamed the house Baddow and continued to operate the laundry. Like Lily before her, Mary took over the running of the laundry after her husband died in 1924. However, unlike Lily, Mary owned the Sydney Street property, so she was now the proprietor of valuable real estate.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Brisbane, and New Farm in particular, were experiencing a boom in the construction of flat buildings. Mary likely recognised this would be more profitable than the laundry. Thus Mary began construction of a new brick, two-storey building on the site. The flats were completed by May 1935, when Mary first advertised “furnished new brick apartments” for rent.
Mary christened her new apartments Rosslare, likely after the village in her hometown of Wexford, Ireland. It was designed in the popular “Old English” style. Many other examples of flat buildings this style can be found throughout New Farm, a number designed by prominent architects. Unfortunately, the architect of Rosslare remains unknown. Mary died in 1939 and the flats changed hands many times over the next 50 years.
Gary Martin and Grant Thorburn purchased the property in 1992 and converted it for use as a “gay only” guest house, known as Edward Lodge. Homosexuality had been decriminalised in Queensland in 1991 and it was one of the first specifically gay-orientated accommodation establishments in Brisbane.
In 2006, Gerald Searle and Phillip Curnuck bought Edward Lodge. They continue to run it as luxury boutique accommodation, but with no restrictions on the type of clientele!
