East Melbourne, Berry Street 020

This house was designed and built in 1898 by Joel J Eade for Herman Dehnert.  Joel James Eade was the son of Joel Eade who was also an architect, and a founder of the Collingwood School of Design.  The house appears to be one of the very few documented works by this architect. 

Herman Dehnert was a jeweller.  He was only 23 at the time of commissioning the building.  The Dehnert and Eade families had lived within a few blocks of one another over many years.  This may have influenced the choice of architect. 

Ten years later Herman’s older brother, Paul Edward Dehnert, also a jeweller, appeared in the rate books as owner or ratepayer and remained so until his death in 1952.  The house was let throughout that time.

Paul left an estate of £107,845, substantial for the time.  His estranged wife contested the will in which she had been left nothing. The story was followed avidly in the press. She was eventually awarded £1000 plus £15 a week. 

An early tenant of the house was Frederick Oehr and his family who were there from about 1903 to 1907.  Also living there was their good friend Rudolph Jenny, an engraver.  He died at the house in 1905.  

Miss May Rushbrook moved in soon after.  She was killed on 22 April 1908 as a result of what was possibly Australia’s worst train accident, barring Granville in 1977.  The Bendigo and Ballarat trains collided at Sunshine station. 43 people were killed, and hundreds injured. May Rushbrook was an aspiring miniaturist and black and white artist.

Following Paul Dehnert’s death the tenants occupying the house at the time, Richard James Garton, munitions worker, and wife Emily, purchased it and lived there for the next twenty years.