An elegant Regency style 1856 house built for Portuguese merchant John Gomez De Silva, with a columned portico added after 1878. It is most famous as the Oberwyl private girls school established by Swiss-born Madame Pfund, which ran from 1878 to 1931.
1855 (prior to) Crown Allotments Maps - indentifying areas 24 25 26 and 41 as owned by F G Dalgety. With 41 being where 35 Burnett Street is located. The general area was primarily divided between F G Dalgety and H F Gurner. Burnett Street was not constructed at the point of the original land sales.- https://stkildahistory.org.au/our-collection/resources/m27
1857 (prior to) Crown Allotments identified on St Kilda Planning Maps reflecting subdivisions starting in 1843 Crown land sales. https://stkildahistory.org.au/our-collection/resources/m27
1853 (in) the 12 acres (4.85 hectares) of land referred to as Dalgety’s Paddock was subdivided with the provision of 2 new streets - Burnett Street and Gurner Street. Most allotments were auctioned with Oberwyl being built on five of these allotments (See source Cooper Vol 1 pg 134 and SKHS Place of Sensuous Resort).
1855 Kearney Map 4 shows the new subdivision and associated streets - 35 Burnett Street is vacant at this point. https://stkildahistory.org.au/our-collection/resources/kearney-1
1857 Etloe Hall identified in St Kilda Rates book and also described as being next door to the house owned by Lampierre in Coopers Vol 1.
1873 J Vardy WW3 Number 115 owned by J MacKenzie. Outline of house now largely formed.
1856 The architect was John Felix Mathews.
1861 Mackenzie as owner added the ballroom, to the north-west corner, near Barkly Street.
1878 the colonnaded verandah and two-storied south-east wing were added.
Oberwyl is a two storey symmetrical house is a most refined architectural composition in severe Greco-Regency style, with four principal rooms on each floor, divided by a broad hall, the facade slightly recessed at the central entrance bay. The five bays each have French doors. The façade is decorated with Ionic pilaster-pairs, guilloche at ground floor openings, cornice-band and mould. It's early neo-Classical manner, although rare in Melbourne, did occur in other St Kilda houses of the mid-nineteenth century, such as Berkley Hall, Princes Street (1854) and Barham in Grey Street, before the alterations of the 1870s.
Several technical elements survive from this early period: fragments of an early canvas, or oil-cloth verandah-roof, (the only other example in Victoria is at Mill’s cottage, Port Fairy) and the corrugated pressed iron fence with very wide corrugation pitch of 135mm, survives from the 1850s.
The verandah has been altered twice, with the oringal design featuring a balcony over a central classical portico and balconettes in front of each upper floor window. This form is shown in a photo dated c1878 in the Port Phillip Heritage Collection. This was replaced by a double level verandah, the ground level incorporating and repeating the Ionic columns and piers of the portico, and a timber porch above supported on pierced piers with Corinthian capitals. This is shown in a photo from the State Library Victoria, dated between 1900 and 1930. This upper level verandah was removed by 1949, the date of a photo from the State Library.
1856 Henry ‘Money’ Miller, MLC (1809-88), financier and opportunist (who died leaving an estate of over £1.6 million) is said to have advanced £4,000 to merchant John Gomez De Silva to finance construction of de Silva's house Etloe Hall- an amount so fabulous that the house is said to have been known as De Silva’s Folly. De Silva was a Portuguese merchant and importer who lived in Melbourne from 1851-59, the initial prosperous years of the Gold Rush and of Separation of Victoria from the colony of New South Wales. Even in this brief time, his business is said to have failed twice, leaving Etloe Hall undecorated. 1859 de Silva had suffered sufficiently in business to have escaped from the colony and the house was resumed by Bank of Victoria. The building commenced in July 1856 and was required to be sold in 1857.
1857 March the Argus reported the auction of De Silva’s newly erected 17-roomed house.
1858 Etloe Hall was purchased from the bank? by John Mackenzie, who retained it for almost twenty years.
1861 Mackenzie added the ballroom, to the north-west corner, near Barkly Street.
For a period of 3 years from 1874 to 1877 prior to MacKenzie's death in 1977 it was leased to the Archibald Johnson and his family.
1877 purchased by Swiss-born Madame Pfund.
1878 Madame Elise Pfund started her own school there, calling it 'Oberwyl', said to be her home town in Switzerland (there are several places in Switzerland called Oberwil). Madame Pfund (nee Elise Tschaggeny) married James Pfund in Richmond in 1863, with the notice stating they were both from Thun, Switzerland. At about the same time James Pfund obtained a poisition within the Public Works Department, and after about 1871 they lived at Fassifern in Barkly Street, accross the road from the rear of Oberwyl. In 1877 she is identified as a teacher at the school attached to the Congregational Church on Alma Road, which backed onto Fassifern. Madame Pfund has been made famous by the painting of her by the great Australian painter Tom Roberts, considered one of his finest, and was purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1948.
Madame Pfund added the two storey verandah, and the large two storey wing to the south in 1878.
1885 purchased by sisters Berthe Mouchette and sister Marie Lion who continued to run it as 'Oberwyl Ladies College".
1692 Oberwyl and college sold to Miss Lucy Jones.
1898-1910 sold to Miss Garton and Henderson (nee Goldstein) who continued to run it as a school (they had previously owned the school Kalmna in Acland Street).
1910-1996 Various members of the Garton family continued living there inciuding initially Miss Garton with her 5 sisters and great nephew John Arrowsmith Bromley who continued to live there. At some point before a photo at the State Library dated 1961-1875 the upper level of the verandah was removed.
1996 brought by Michael and Marion Webster and was 'brilliantly restored into a spacious family home'.
It continues as a well maintained private home. A recent article about the current owner's work to maintain and enhance it is in Issue 228 Newsletter.
Newsletter Issue 228 has an article by Sarah Lowe (the current owner) on the recent 2019 restoration work done on the house and the gardens.
The history of Oberwyl is is the subject of a chapter of 'A Place of Sensuous Resort' by Richard Peterson on the SKHS web site . http://www.skhs.org.au/SKHSbuildings/27.htm
Some errors were revealed in research done by local historian Ken Norling, March 2022. He notes that :
1857 THURSDAY, 2nd APRIL.
Magnificent Freehold Property. Certain and Profitable Investment.The Most Elegant Residence In Victoria, Etloe Hall, St. Kilda.
FRASER and COHEN have been favoured with Instructions from J. G. Silva, Esq. to sell by auction, on the promises on Thursday, 2nd April, at twelve o'clock precisely,
Those Newly and Elegantly Erected Premises, at present occupied by the Proprietor, ….
1857 (May) “ST. KILDA.-To be LET or SOLD, a most Commodious and handsome FAMILY MANSION, known as Etloe Hall” ads begin, continue to August. [presumably the property was sold to Mackenzie]
1857 (August) John Gomez Silva insolvency.
1858 (March) Rate book - John Mackenzie, owner & occupier, Brk, 17 rooms
1859 - 1873 same entry
Rate Book 30 November 1874 McKenzie o/o of Etloe Hall Archibald Johnston, gent, pencilled in as occupier
Rate Book 13 Dec 1875 Archibald Johnston, gentleman, Mackenzie owner
Rate Book 11 Dec 1876 Archibald Johnston, gentleman, Mackenzie owner
Rate Book 20 Dec 1877 Archibald Johnston, gentleman, Mackenzie owner, but Pfund, James (??), C.S., pencilled in as owner
1877 (Sept 16) MACKENZIE. On the 16th inst., at Inverleith, Acland-street, St Kilda, John Mackenzie, aged 64 years.
30 January 1878 Sale by executors of John Mackenzie
1878 (February) EDUCATION for YOUNG LADIES. — Madame PFUND having purchased OBERWYL, the residence of the late John Mackenzie, Esq.,situate in the very best part of St. KILDA, is prepared to receive into her SCHOOL a limited number of BOARDERS. Terms on application.