The house dating from 1861 is one of the oldest in Johannesburg. For over 130 years, the farm was owned by the family of Cornelis Johannes Smit (born 1829). Each generation added to the character of the house. It began as a three-roomed structure with walls of mud brick, a yellowwood ceiling and thatch roof. A tornado destroyed the thatched roof in 1879, to be replaced with the present corrugated iron roof. By the late 1930s Cape Dutch gables were added. In 2007 the farmhouse was incorporated in the Gables Office Estate.