The area at this time comprised a mixture of large farming estates and smaller residential subdivisions and was developing as a middle-class suburb following the opening of the Yeronga railway station in 1885.

It was designed in 1888 by the Italian architect Andrea Stombuco,[2] and features a two-storey bay window front, gabled roof and decorative cast iron verandah trim.

Constructed of stone and brick, it included a cellar, separate service quarters, kitchen, dairy, coach house and stables.

Andrea Stombuco, in practice with his son Giovanni, was an Italian who had arrived in Brisbane in the 1870s after working for a period in the southern colonies.

He was noted for his residential work, which included Palma Rosa at Hamilton, an elaborate three-storeyed sandstone residence erected in 1886–1887.

The decorative finishes included cedar joinery, marble fireplace surrounds and ornate plaster ceilings and cornices.

During the depression of the 1890s Williams was forced to relinquish the heavily-mortgaged Rhyndarra to the Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP) who became mortgagee-in-possession.

The AMP Society organised the sale of the Rhyndarra estate at which time the property was subdivided into 13 residential lots, each having a street and river frontage.

[1]Booth had established the Salvation Army in England in the mid 1860s as a church with a strong social conscience, campaigning against poverty and the sins of alcoholism and other moral failings.

A large part of the work of the church was in establishing homes for people who were destitute, aged, unmarried mothers, orphans and others in need or in peril.

[1]The Girls' Industrial School at Yeronga was one of a number of similar institutions conducted by the Salvation Army in Queensland at this time, including maternity hospitals, receiving some financial assistance from the government for the orphanages.

In 1910 the matron noted that "each girl is taught housework in all its branches, gradually passing through the different stages from dormitories to dining room, laundry to kitchen and pantry."

[1] Numbers at the orphanage fluctuated with changing circumstances and the institution accommodated girls who were orphaned, whose parents were destitute and could not care for them, who had run away or were difficult.

[1] The greatest change to the physical fabric of Rhyndarra during the Salvation Army's occupation was the construction of a two-storeyed timber and masonry extension at the rear of the house.

Like women's hospitals, these were constructed in the capital cities and in areas of great troop concentrations, and were more likely permanent structures of timber, fibrous cement sheet and/or corrugated iron, or were established in existing buildings such as houses, which the Army took over as a matter of national importance.

It comprised fibrous cement and weatherboard wards with kitchens, operating theatre and admission building, all linked by covered ways.

As a distinct medical unit 2WH had been situated at Redbank, in association with the 2/4 Australian General Hospital (AGH), but it moved completely to the purpose built complex at Yeronga by 1943.

[1] In the administrative carving up of Australian Government's wartime property after 1945, the Rhyndarra site was allocated to the Department of Social Services.

After the 1951 federal elections young men over the age of 18 had to register and serve in the Army, Navy or Air Force for a period of 5–6 months.

The existing personnel depot at Indooroopilly was inadequate and Army officials believed that the former women's hospital at Yeronga would satisfactorily handle the recruits.

[1] Subsequently, the hospital buildings were demolished, leaving only the house Rhyndarra, stable and significant trees, prior to the property being subdivided into approximately 30 residential allotments.

The former stables is located on a separate allotment and became part of a new house, with the hay bale hoist beam on the upper floor still readily identifiable.

Walls are scribed to represent ashlar, the projecting bay has sash windows framed by rendered pilasters supporting a deep cornice and the gable above has a scalloped bargeboard.

[1] Internally, the ground floor contains a wide entrance hall, with a cedar staircase with turned balustrade and a tall arched sash window.

The northeast rooms on the ground floor are connected by a wide opening that originally housed folding cedar doors.

These include a large Jacaranda to the southeast, Lilly Pilly to the west and a small garden to the north which contains a Crows Ash, Frangipani and Silky Oak.

Constructed in 1888–89 Rhyndarra, comprising house, stables and surviving grounds, is important for the evidence it provides of the way of life of Brisbane's more prosperous citizens in the late 19th century.

Rhyndarra is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of its class of cultural places: large, late 19th century villa residences set in substantial grounds.

These characteristics include: the form (two-storeyed); materials (brick on stone foundations); planning of both the main residence (public rooms downstairs, bedrooms on the upper floor, attached service wing) and the grounds (siting of the house overlooking the river, relationship of the house to auxiliary buildings such as the stables, and garden plantings) and decorative detailing and finishes (including ornate plaster ceilings and cornices, cedar panelled doors, architraves and skirtings and a variety of marble fireplace surrounds).

Through its form, scale and siting as a riverside residence and together with its remnant plantings, Rhyndarra is of considerable aesthetic significance and the detailing of its materials and finishes reflects a fine quality of workmanship.