Price's Folly, or Sunnyside as it was first known, was probably built in 1901, shortly after the site on which it rests was purchased by Thomas Price. Thomas Price arrived in Nelson from England on the 'Olympus' in 1842 at four years of age with his parents and five siblings. He married Ann Jane Chattock at Wakefield in 1867, and eleven years later became a storekeeper in Carterton. By 1885, he had become a sawmiller there and over the next seven years he expanded the business, establishing mills at Dalefield and Maungamahoe. In 1890 he set up as a timber merchant and sawmiller in Petone, while maintaining his sawmills in Carterton and Maungamahoe. By 1896, the Petone township had grown to 523 dwellings and an estimated population of just over 2,600. Thomas Price was able to offer dressed and undressed building timber, mouldings, skirtings, architraves, doors and sashes to settlers in the expanding settlement. In 1901 Price purchased land in Sydney Street and shortly afterwards he constructed a grand new house on the premises. Price's new home, built to house his large family, became a showcase for all the products he could offer, as well as a sign of his affluence. The house stands as a leviathan, towering over its surroundings even today where it stands on the border between a residential area of primarily single storey former workers' homes and a light industrial area. It is a great, timber, Gothic mansion of two storeys plus attics, multi-gabled, with steeply pitched iron roofs, bay windows, lancet windows and bulls eye windows. Ornament is chiefly confined to the gable ends, but there is also cast iron fern frond decoration as a balustrade fronting the first floor balcony over the entranceway. Old photos show that there was once more iron lace around the front door. Gone too are the original brick chimneys. The former bulls eye window on the south face gable has been replaced by an oriel window of appropriate design, and the gable decoration above it has been simplified. An external staircase has been added at the rear of the building for first floor access. During his residence at Petone, Price became involved in the community. He donated the spire to St Augustine's Church and became a vestryman there; he was a keen cricketer, having served as President of the Carterton Cricket Club between 1895 and 1896. He was also a Freemason, an Oddfellow and a member of the volunteer militia. Price retired from businee in 1904, and ill-health prompted him to move with his family Roxburgh Street in Wellington. Sunnyside was sold to the Education Board of the District of Wellington in October 1905. The Education Board used the building to house the Petone Technical School until 1908, and then as the secondary department of the Petone High School and, finally, from 1915, for the infant classes of the Petone West School. In 1928, the house was sold to a manufacturing tailor, Barnet Goldberg. Subsequently, the building had many owners, and provided the scene for the television drama 'Open House' over a 27-week period of shooting one day or night per week. It reverted to a dwelling following a major fire on 19 July 1987. Considerable renovation and maintenance work was necessary to repair the fire damage as much of the interior, including the wood-panelled hallway, was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Why did it become known as Price's Folly? Two theories about the name have common currency today. The first is that, at the time of erection, the locals claimed the foundations were too small and weak for the size of the building, and that it would not last. The second was because he only lived there for a few years before moving to Wellington. Price's Folly remains a significant landmark in Petone, commemorating the building skills of Thomas Price, and the township's educational history.

A complex, two-storey bay villa with a symmetrical front and two bay windows at ground-level on either side of a recessed front door with a roofed open-fronted balcony above. At first floor level are two pairs of Gothic-style lancet sash windows, with two small, curious rectangular windows above, and to the right and left of each pair. The steeply pitched gables above the windows are decorated with large timber finials supported by bracketed half hoops. In the centre of each gable is a bulls eye window. On the north face of the house is a protruding gable with a single, rectangular bay window beneath at ground level, and a small Gothic porch on one side; decoration is similar to that on the Sydney Street frontage. On the south side of the house (Campbell Terrace), a decorative gable breaks the roof line but with less elaborate decoration than the others. An oriel window has been added at the attic level. The rear of the house is similar to the front, but less complex and now has an external staircase leading to the first floor level. Decorative cast iron in a fern pattern forms a balustrade to the first floor verandah at the front of the house. The total length of the front of the house is approximately 19 metres and the length on the Campbell Terrace side is approximately 17 metres.