The house was completed in 1870 for owners Edward Thomas Slack and his wife Rosetta. Thomas was superintendent of mail services at the GPO. He died in 1907 and the house passed to Rosetta. She died in 1921. At this time the inventory of her assets described the house as 'a very old house of nine rooms three of which are of brick and six of wood'. She left Yewsley to two of her daughters, Ethel Orme Slack and Muriel Isabel Slack, for life. The house was eventually put up for sale in 1936 as a development site. However it survived and by the 1950s was the office of Harry A Norris, architects. Norris was a leading architect in Melbourne in the Art Deco era and is remembered for such well known buildings as Majorca House, the Nicholas Building and David Jones (formerly Coles)
NB Street numbers changed c.1955. The old number for this house was 36.