Wahroonga

Distinguished and Famous people from Wahroonga

🏠 Harry, Rose and Max Seidler

Harry Seidler designed the Wahroonga house in Clissold Road for his parents Rose and Max, completing it in 1950. Open planning, glass walls and modern fittings challenged familiar suburban domestic arrangements, and the design won the 1951 Sulman Medal. His parents lived there until 1967. The surviving furniture and fittings make the house a particularly complete record of postwar design as well as a building to admire from outside. It was a family commission with far-reaching architectural influence: the practical question of where Rose and Max would live helped introduce a bold modernist approach to Australian homes.

🎨 Sir Lionel Lindsay

Lionel Lindsay lived at Wahroonga during a career spanning illustration, etching, wood engraving and writing about art. An account of his engraving methods, signed from Wahroonga in 1937, describes the careful arrangement of dark and light before the anxious moment of taking a proof. Travel supplied subjects, but the finished image depended on patient decisions at the block. His strongly held tastes also made him a combative critic of modernism. The suburb was home to an artist whose technical skill and outspoken opinions both left a substantial mark on Australian cultural life.