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Samson House
Samson House, 61 Ellen Street, cnr of Ord Street, was built 1888-9 by John Hurst to Talbot Hobbs's design for Michael Samson, eldest of Lionel Samson and Fanny Levi's six children. Michael's son, Sir Frederick Samson, the third Samson mayor, left the house to the WA Museum. For most of his life he slept in the room in which he was born. One verandah is his personal cinema, with seats salvaged in 1952 from Fremantle's last tram.
The turret was added fifteen years after the main building, also by Hobbs. There is a well inside the building, as it was extended at the back with the effect of enclosing the well in a corridor.
References and Links
Building Management Authority 1995, Samson House: Cottage and 'Stables', WA Museum, July, 167 pp.
Davidson, Ron 2007, Fremantle Impressions, FACP: 209-210.
Webb, David & David Warren 2005, 'Pioneer family's lasting link with Fremantle', Fremantle: Beyond the Round House, Longley, Fremantle: 20-22.
Page about Samson House; page on the same site of photos of the interior.
Notes about the house in Fremantle, the newsletter of the Fremantle Society: September 1987, October 1994, March 2010[[Buildings/society/newsletter/1973August.html#rosehotel|]].
My snaps.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 28 December, 2017 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/samsonhouse.html (it was last updated on 7 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.