Laid out around a spacious salon, the unusually grand townhouse known as Guisnes Court was designed in 1914 by the architect Roy Keith Binney (1886-1957) for his mother. The design of the house is a mixture of Neo-Georgian and Arts and Crafts styles and was heavily influenced by the eminent English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, under whom Binney studied in England. It was Binney’s first design in Auckland and is significant in that it helped bring the Arts and Crafts style into the domestic mainstream, whilst also maintaining Remuera’s reputation as one of the city’s most fashionably built suburbs. Binney is considered important for influencing a whole generation of Auckland architects and for ‘bringing to the city’s domestic architecture a greater sense of style than had previously been evident.’ As exemplified by Guisnes Court, Binney consciously designed in an English style, at a time when ties between New Zealand and Britain were strengthening during the First World War (1914-18).

Remuera has been associated with the settlement of rich and successful Aucklanders since the middle of the nineteenth century. From about 1900, the palatial houses of the richest settlers of the 1800s made room for the smaller, but grander townhouses of the city’s commercial or industrial elite. The development of the site to an urban environment started in 1884 with the acquisition of large allotments in the area, amounting to over four acres. In 1915 the property was subdivided into seventeen separate lots. One of these was acquired by Mary Binney, widow of the successful auctioneer George W. Binney. She commissioned her son, Roy, returned from studying architecture in Europe, to design a house for her.

Roy Binney’s European work between 1908 and 1912 had been in the office of the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens; his design for Guisnes Court was very much influenced by Lutyens. The soaring roof planes clad with Marseilles tiles, bold chimneys and red brick exterior walls are of the English Arts and Crafts style, giving a grand country cottage quality to the building; however, much of the rear fenestration and the large French doors, with an ornate, semi-circular transom above are of Neo-Georgian styling. Both styles are an indication of Lutyens’ influence. The house had twelve rooms, laid out around a grand salon. The master bedroom looked out from a covered balcony, or loggia, to the garden. Construction was completed by September 1915.

After the First World War, Roy lived at the house with his mother; after Mary’s death in 1925, the house was sold and has passed through the hands of several owners. In 1927 a garage was built on the Remuera Road frontage; parts of the interior were remodelled in 1938. In 1976 the building was split into two separate residences and later, in 1978, the main bedroom’s loggia extended. In 2001 the building was converted back into one residence and the garden extensively remodelled; the loggia was also rebuilt. In 2007, the garage was demolished and a new garage built.