Arthur Waterhouse uses assets built by his father Thomas as big 19th Century Adelaide financier and developer
Arthur Waterhouse had the North Terrace, Adelaide city, home (at left) built in the early 1880s. He was also involved in other prominent buildings, including St Margarets (top right), Brougham Place, North Adelaide; Hawker House, later St Mark's College (middle right) on Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide; and Mount Lofty House (bottom right) in the Adelaide Hills.
The house designed and built for Arthur Waterhouse in the early 1880s is one of the few mansions surviving from the string that dominated Adelaide city’s North Terrace in the 19th Century.
Arthur Waterhouse was the son of Thomas Greaves Waterhouse, who started with a grocery shop on the Rundle-King William streets corner and began building his fortune as a shareholder in the Burra Burra copper mine. During the exodus of many South Australian men to the Victorian goldfield 1851-56, Waterhouse invested heavily in land in Adelaide city centre and continued to increase his holdings so that a large part of the city’s freehold land belonged to his estate.
Among Thomas Waterhouse's purchases in 1866 was the North Terrace property that had belonged to David McLaren, who’d been resident manager of the South Australian Company for the colony from 1837-41.
Arthur Waterhouse, who took over the business from his father, commissioned architect William McMinn in 1881 to design the home for the North Terrace site. McMinn’s most notable work was on the other side of North Terrace: the Venetian gothic building, later called the Mitchell Building, for the new University of Adelaide.
Arthur Waterhouse continued as a financier and developer. Among his developments was a Hindmarsh Square hotel called the King William. Along with Ambassadors Hotel and the Princes Berkley, it was among the many properties bought by his father. The King William was rebuilt in 1886 and, after four name changes, became the Griffins Head in 1988 – a survivor when other Hindmarsh Square hotels, the Hindmarsh (from 1851) and the Black Eagle, later Aurora (1859) were demolished in the 1980s.
Arthur Waterhouse was involved with other prominent Adelaide homes. In 1865, Waterhouse, with his wife Laura, the daughter of South Australian premier William Morgan, bought Mount Lofty House from Arthur Hardy. The Waterhouses extended the front of the Adelaide Hills mansion to create the format that became a designer boutique hotel in the 21st Century.
