Everglades is a heritage-listed former residence, art gallery, cafe and garden and now tourist destination, house museum and garden at 37 - 49 Everglades Avenue, Leura, City of Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. The garden was designed by Paul Sorensen (possibly in collaboration with Henri van de Velde) and the design of the house is also attributed to Paul Sorensen; and built from 1915 to 1938 by Ted Cohen. It is also known as Everglades Gardens. The property is owned by the National Trust of Australia (NSW). It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 1 March 2002. History Indigenous history Colonial history Until 1813 the Blue Mountains proved a restriction to the expansion of settlement in Australia. In that year Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson made the first successful crossing and opened the vast interior of the country to settlement. The construction of a road soon followed and in 1863 a railway was built as far as Penrith and extended as far as Mount Victoria by 1868. By the 1870s it has become fashionable for elite families to acquire mountain retreats with magnificent views where in summer the air was considerably cooler than Sydney. Villages such as Leura developed to serve these retreats which over time developed large European gardens. The Everglades had borne that name for at least a decade before 1933 (when Henry van de Velde acquired it) and had formed part of a more extensive estate in Leura for over half a century, ever since Captain Reynolds took out a series of conditional leases of Crown land in 1880 and 1881. Reynolds' acquisitions included portion 91, where Everglades is situated. The face of modern south-east Leura was shaped by the activities of Reynolds and his successors. Intensive subdivision of Reynolds' estate by Ernest Nardin, continued by his widow Ellen, created both residential and recrecational possibilities. More people bought and built in south-east Leura and the golf course which plays an important role in Everglades' story was created on Nardin land. This in turn was the context which tempted Georgina Stonier to move to the heartland of the present Everglades, which the percipient Nardins had retained for themselves. Mrs Stonier's shrewd appraisal of the landscape led her to build her large home in 1915-16 in that part of the estate where the van de Veldes erected their house 20 years later and enjoying