Windsor Gardens, Chatswood, Heritage site in Chatswood, Australia.
Windsor Gardens is a late Victorian, two-storeyed rendered brick house with a two-storey verandah and a four-storey tower. Its interiors are finished in cedar and walnut imported from the USA, and Frank Coffee's initials are worked into the internal plasterwork and staircase joinery. Exotic trees, some brought from Japan and California, partly hide the house from the street.
Frank Coffee, a reporter for the New York Herald who reached Sydney in 1882, built the house in 1888 and named it Iroquois after a visiting American warship. The Coffee family lived there until the late 1920s, when it passed to the Burkes; Allan Gilbert bought it in 1945, renamed it Windsor Gardens and ran it as a wedding-reception venue. An Interim Conservation Order followed on 13 May 1986, a Permanent Conservation Order on 28 July 1988, and State Heritage listing on 2 April 1999.
The house was named Iroquois after an American warship visiting Sydney in 1888, and was renamed Windsor Gardens in 1945 when Allan Gilbert turned it into a wedding reception venue. In its early years a priest from Riverview College said Mass monthly in the drawing room for the local Catholic community, as no Catholic church stood between North Sydney and Pymble.
The property is privately owned and operates as a retirement village, so it is not open to the public. The house stands behind mature exotic trees, some imported from Japan and California, which partly screen it from the street; it can be viewed from the public road only. The NSW State Heritage Register entry, listing it since 2 April 1999, is the reference for its details.
Frank Coffee's initials are worked into the interior plasterwork and staircase joinery, and both survive. The garden's exotic trees, some brought from Japan and California, still partly hide the house from the street.
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