SCHOOL ZONES:
Meadowbank Primary, Remuera Intermediate, Selwyn College
CONTACT:
Lisa MacQueen, 021 221 8622, or Amanda Morrison, 021 174 5928, Barfoot & Thompson
AUCTION:
Wednesday March 23.
*Plus off-street parking
When Frances McLean walked through the Lippincott house for the first time, she had no idea the home that was shaping up well as the next base for her teenage family came with an impressive architectural provenance.
She knew it had been built in 1927 and that it had been sympathetically extended and remodelled by subsequent owners.
What she did not know was that Roy Lippincott, the American-born architect who reportedly ran his practice out of his home office downstairs during the Depression, was the architect behind some of Auckland's most significant commercial buildings of that era.
In the early 20s his Gothic design for the Auckland University's famous Clock Tower building was widely criticised by commentators as "freak architecture". From 1927-29, his design for Smith & Caughey's Wellesley St/Elliot St building was taking shape, ahead of the 1940 remodelling of the iconic department store's Queen St facade.
Amid these two high-rise projects and his subsequent residential commissions, Roy Lippincott put together this plastered concrete house for his own family. It featured in the August 1933 edition of NZ Homes and Gardens, according to Auckland University's architecture archives. In March 2011 a little more history was revealed in Herald Homes when its then owner, Karen Shepherd, pointed out where previous owners had added the kitchen and family room in 1987 and the front sunroom off the formal lounge in 1995.
Coincidentally it is the lines of the sunroom with its overhangs, roof slope and horizontal lines, rather than the original design, that bear the strongest resemblance to the Prairie style of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom Roy Lippincott worked before leaving the United States for Australia in 1914.
Today, exactly five years on, Frances McLean's appreciation for all of this is complete.
"I didn't know about the architect, but I love history being English, and when I heard a bit more about the architect and what he had done around Auckland that was an added bonus.
"We bought this as a family home first; everything else was a bonus."
Image 1 of 10: Clock Tower architect Roy Lippincot designed this house for his family. Photo / Fiona Goodall, Getty Images
They've hosted several large-scale significant birthdays here from the big casual living areas -- and covered the pool to create a dance floor -- without encroaching on the formal living areas and their private spaces, including the four bedrooms upstairs (one of them on a mid-level).
The bedrooms all have built-in wardrobes and in the case of the master bedroom the walk-in wardrobe is alongside a dedicated dressing room.
Throughout, Frances' own decorative touch has been minimal. She replaced pelmets with curtain rods and, in the case of the formal dining room, linen and wool drapes on the windows in keeping with the leadlight French doors the previous owners installed leading into the hall and the adjacent formal lounge.
Downstairs, Roy Lippincott's original study exudes a real sense of the original with its built-in shelving, panelled doors and brass handles and French doors out to the slate terrace and separate entry steps.
Frances, a human resources consultant, and Steven McLean, the university's director of faculty operations, are looking for a smaller house, leaving behind their own subtle imprint on the grounds here.
They collaborated with their landscape designer to take account of the proportions of the house when altering the rear upper garden. They replaced the upper potager garden with a new faux upper-level lawn, installing tall conifers along the boundary for effect and another in the front as a nod to the strong vertical form of the double chimney.
"The house has such beautiful lines and we made sure we continued that in our landscaping," says Frances.
