William Hardy Wilson - 'Eryldene'

Leading architect William Hardy Wilson (1881-1955) designed this house for his friend Professor Eben Gowrie Waterhouse (1881-1977), a lecturer in modern languages and renowned expert on camellias. Completed in 1914, the house was influenced by the colonial revival architectural style which Wilson had seen while travelling in the United States. Now a heritage-listed house, garden and museum, ‘Eryldene’ is probably one of the best-known houses on Sydney’s upper North Shore, famous for its beautiful garden of camellias.

'Eryldene' is a long, low, white house, with a pillared verandah and a flagged path leading to it through a garden brilliant with flowers... It is satisfyingly modern behind its quaint exterior, and its plan and treatment suffer from none of the disabilities usually inseparable from old world houses... In the garden the more ordinary suburban treatment has been happily abandoned in favour of flagged paths, masses of colour in the shape of flowering shrubs in huge tubs, flower beds and borders…It is astonishing what a beautiful and interesting garden can be made on these lines, a source of never-ending joy to its possessor, and incidentally providing an unusual and delightful setting for his home.  

(“Eryldene, a Hardy Wilson House, home of Mr E.G. Waterhouse at Gordon, NSW”, The Australian Home Builder, Jan 1925)