Author Archives: David Murray

Bell Hill House (Reichelt’s Building)

Built: 1872, 1873, remodelled 1935
Address: 110-114 Princes Street
Architects: Henry Frederick Hardy (1872 and 1873); Stone & Sturmer (1935)
Builders: Charles Prouse (1872), N. & A. Wood (1873), T.R. Hindle (1935)

Dramatic events led to the building of Bell Hill House. A spectacular fire in 1871 destroyed the previous building on the site, and the bizarre circumstances led to the sensational arson trials of its owner, a former Prussian soldier named Friedrich Reichelt. Acquitted, he built a new building in which he ran a fancy goods and toy shop.

Upstairs, the London Portrait Rooms was a popular place for people to get their photograph taken. Tragedy occurred here in 1886, when rocks from nearby blasting works hurtled through the roof, killing two women in the studio reception room.

The later history of the building, though less dramatic, is varied and colourful. Photographers and artists occupied the upstairs rooms well into the twentieth century. Braithwaite’s Arcade, one of the largest book shops in Australasia, traded in the ground floor space for over 40 years. Other occupying businesses have included cake shops, a camera shop, and a fashion retailer. Now the building is home Shinjuku Sushi and Beauty Mirror.

The site, between the Dowling Street steps and Moray Place, is on the western side of Princes Street. The earlier wooden building had been built, for the most part, in 1863, as part of the City Buffet Hotel. Friedrich Reichelt took his leasehold from about 1869, with the City Buffet scaled back to the southern end. They were effectively two separate buildings behind a unified facade. Born in the Prussian province of Posen in 1834, Reichelt had served in the Prussian Army. He did not see active service but, perhaps because it amused him, he did say a lump near the back of his ear was from an unextracted bullet, received in battle. His fancy goods and toy shop operated under the name F.W. Reichelt & Co. and the business appeared to be prosperous. Reichelt generously helped fellow Germans who had fallen on hard times, or who were trying to establish themselves in business.

A view over Princes Street in 1865. In the centre foreground is the City Buffet Building, the right-hand portion of which housed Friedrich Reichelt’s shop from about 1869. The larger buildings in the background are the Synagogue (left) and the Congregational Church (corner Moray Place and View Street). Part of a Panorama by William Meluish. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, P1990-015/49-039-006.

Above Reichelt’s shop, Marion Cane ran a women’s employment agency named the Central Registry Office. She lived on the site with six other women, including Ann Wright. On the morning of Tuesday, 13 June 1871, a little after 2 a.m., Wright woke Cane. She said she had heard a cry of ‘fire!’. Looking out of a window to the back of the building, the pair saw flames coming from a ground floor office. They roused the other women and made their escape. When Cane descended the external stairs for the final time, she was surrounded by fire. Meanwhile, from a window in the neighbouring City Buffet, musician Eugene De Berg saw a man exit the front door and run southward.

At about 2.25 a.m., a watchman rang the alarm bell from the fire tower at the top of the Dowling Street steps. On nearby Maclaggan Street, where the police station was located, Sergeant O’Keefe observed a man without coat, hat, or boots. The sergeant cried out something like ‘Holloa mate, where’s the fire?’, but the man ran away. After a chase, O’Keefe and a Constable Hodgkins knocked him down and arrested him. Another constable identified him as Friedrich Reichelt.

Fortunately, there were no fatalities. The fire brigade saved the City Buffet, but Reichelt’s was left a charred ruin. Reichelt himself was burned, especially about the hands and beard. After rough treatment and interrogation form police, he was charged with arson.

According to Sergeant O’Keefe, Reichelt said ‘Well I’ll tell you the way it was. I was bad with dysentery, and got out of bed to go to my shop to get some quinine. On striking a match to look for it, I went near a tin that contained lucine [a type of kerosene]; it exploded like powder, and I was on fire all in a moment.’ In a statement, Reichelt said he could not put the fire out and so ran outside, and then up the Dowling Street steps towards the fire bell. Hearing the alarm, he ran down to Rattray Street, eager to warn Mrs Howard. She was the landlady of his lodgings in High Street. Her husband owned a neighbouring business to Reichelt’s but kept poor health and was easily upset.

At an inquest, held just a few days after the fire, the jury found the fire to be accidental. At the Mayor’s Court the next day, the bench disagreed. Reichelt was committed to trial on a charge of arson, with intent to defraud his insurers.

Among the suspicious circumstances was the fact that Reichelt had, admittedly, entered his building by sliding down the bank at the back. Miss Cane said Reichelt had come through the back window on other occasions when he had forgotten his key. Accusations were made of doctored financial accounts, but without hard evidence. Questions were also asked about why Reichelt had kept stock on another site, and why, when he fled the fire scene, he locked the door after himself.

The jury failed to return a verdict. A second trial was held and, on 30 September, Reichelt was acquitted. The insurers initially refused his claim, but Reichelt successfully sued them, winning damages as well as his insurance payout.

At this final court case, in January 1872, Reichelt admitted he had not given his real reason for fleeing the scene. He now said he had an assignation with the aforementioned Ann Wright, a young widow, who was formerly a barmaid at Waipori. He had not admitted this before to protect her name.

The insurers’ lawyer, James Smith, argued ‘People were not usually so straight-laced and squeamish that they would take so much trouble to avoid detection even when they paid a visit to their own shop at night upon amours of that sort. He supposed that one time or other they had all gone astray more or less’. The judge, H.S. Chapman, replied, ‘Speak for yourself, Mr Smith’!

Reichelt said Miss Cane would have torn his eyes out if she had known why he was there, because he had also had an affair with her. He further admitted he had slept with another woman living there. According to Reichelt, he entered the building via the bank because Miss Cane slept over his shop door and would have heard him. Wright and Cane both denied Reichelt’s claims of intimacy. The jury were left to decide whether they did this to protect their own reputations, or if Reichelt was lying.

Reichelt’s barrister, George Barton, was a somewhat eccentric and Rumpolian figure, with a frayed and torn gown, and a wig that was seldom straight. His closing speech for the second trial took nearly four hours and was later lauded as a masterpiece. In response to the opposing counsel’s claim that Reichelt had deliberately burned incriminating financial records, Barton said it was absurd to claim that ‘Reichelt first cooked and afterwards burned his books’! Referring to Reichelt’s treatment by police, he said he:

‘…had been under the impression that there was only one place where a man, when burning, would be kept without a drop of water. It did appear, however, that there was another, and that place was the Police Court of Otago. The treatment, the recollection of which brought tears into Reichelt’s eyes when giving evidence in the witness box the previous day, must have been very bad indeed’.

Barton’s junior counsel was the future premier Robert Stout, who emerged from the trials as a rising legal star. Awarded £1,000 damages, Reichelt fended off further litigation and collected his insurance payout.

The remains of the old building were cleared and a new one was quickly erected, with tenders called in March 1872. The Otago Daily Times published a description:

‘The blank in the Cutting where the fire took place some time ago is in a fair way of being filled up; new premises being erected on the site for Mr Reichelt, in which he intends to resume his former business. The building is to be of brick. The ground floor will be used as a shop, and the upper storey as offices, to which there will be a separate entrance from the street. The upper part of the front wall is to be supported upon wrought iron girders, and there is to be a handsome plate glass front. As the hotel next door abutted on Mr Reichelt’s ground, a piece has been cut off along the side of it, and some delay has been thereby occasioned in putting up the new building. The plans have been prepared by Mr Hardy, and the work is being carried out by Mr Prouse.’

The F.W. Reicheilt & Co. building about 1872. At the left can be seen the entrance to the London Portrait Rooms. Stout family Collection, PAColl-10493-10-02, Alexander Turnbull Library.

Detail from the above. Likely Friedrich Reichelt wearing the hat, and his assistant William Noonan on the right.

The well-established architect Henry Frederick Hardy first worked as a carpenter in Dunedin in the 1850s. He received some architectural training from Augustus Poeppel, who briefly lived in Dunedin in the frantic gold rush year of 1862. Hardy’s other works of the early 1870s included his own large house, Waimoana, in High Street, and woollen mill buildings at Mosgiel. Other works include the former Otago Daily Times buildings, which still stand at the bottom of Dowling and Burlington streets. Less familiar is the name of the builder, Charles Prouse, whose name I have not associated with other local building projects.

The original facade decoration of Reichelt’s Building was in the Renaissance Revival style. It included distinctive window mouldings, with lugged or ‘eared’ architraves. Hardy was fond of these and used them on other designs, including the ODT buildings. Other decoration included quoining, a balustraded parapet, and an ornate pediment. The name ‘F.W. Reichelt & Co.’ featured on the parapet in relief lettering.

Detail from an 1874 photographic panorama by Burton Bros showing Reichelt’s Building. The asymmetrical remaining portion of the City Buffet Hotel is on its left (south) side. O.043675, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

The London Portrait Rooms, and tragedy

Only a year after it was built, the building was extended eighteen metres at the back. Tenders were called in April 1873. The addition created an upstairs studio and gallery for the London Portrait Rooms, a photography business established in Dunedin in 1863. It was described on completion:

‘The lower part has been fitted up for the display of fancy goods, the dividing wall between the old and the new building having been removed, and an elliptic arch erected in place of it. The upper portion of the premises has been built by Mr Reichelt expressly for a photographic gallery for the proprietors of the London Portrait Rooms. The operating room is 34ft, long by 16ft wide [10.4 x 4.9m], and is well lighted by side and ceiling lights. The printing room and dark room have been specially fitted up for their respective purposes with every convenience. The waiting, dressing, and showrooms, which are elegantly furnished, front Princes street, and are approached by an easy staircase, 5ft [1.5m] in width, from Princes street — the lobby being available for the display of photographs, etc.’

Frederick Henry Irwin owned and operated the photography business. His studio was one of the most popular places in Dunedin to have a portrait taken, and many examples from it can now be found in museums, libraries, and private collections.

Unidentified girl and boy photographed at the London Portrait Rooms c.1880. O.004070, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

On Monday, 17 May 1886, Irwin’s wife Louisa and her sister Julia Finch were killed in a terrible accident on the site. It was 4.45pm when a blast intended to loosen rock sent showers of debris over buildings and towards Princes Street. A group of relief workers, engaged by the Council, had been removing rock for use in reclamation work in Cumberland and Crawford streets, and to reduce the level of Dowling Street. Julia and Louisa were seated at a table in the first-floor reception room of the London Portrait Rooms, along with a Mrs and Miss Vivian. This was the front room with windows overlooking Princes Street. Julia was crocheting a little boot. Seconds after the explosion, rocks weighing up to 15 kilograms came crashing through the roof and ceiling. Julia was struck on the head and died within minutes. She was 41 years old. Louisa also suffered head injuries and she died a week later. 42 years old, she was survived by her husband and nine children, the youngest of whom was three years old.

An inquest found that the blast was poorly planned, over-charged, and undertaken without proper safety precautions. It also emerged that the supervisor of the works, William Barnes, was the son of Mayor John Barnes, and had been appointed to the position even though he lacked suitable qualification. An experienced foreman was available to assist with blasting, but he was not called upon.

Controversy over the accident dogged and divided the Council, with both John Barnes and councillors on the Relief Committee attempting to shift blame to one another. Barnes did not stand for re-election later that year.

Handel’s Dead March in Saul played as Julia’s funeral procession left St Paul’s in the Octagon, and a few days later Chopin’s funeral march played for Louisa. A large marble cross by monumental mason Henry Palmer marks their grave in the Southern Cemetery.

The grave of Louisa Irwin and Julia Finch in the Southern Cemetery. David Murray photo (2015).

Braithwaite’s Book Arcade

Reichelt sold his business in 1875, but continued to own the building up to his bankruptcy in 1884. He married and later lived a comfortable life in Lilydale, Victoria, where he died in 1913. His old shop was leased by Reith & Wilkie, booksellers and stationers, from 1875. They continued the fancy goods business under the same manager, William Noonan. The firm operated as J. Wilkie & Co. from 1878 and moved from the site in 1885. The shop was taken over by another bookseller, Joseph Braithwaite.

Joseph Braithwaite had established his business as a book stall in Farley’s Arcade in 1863, when he was just 15 years old. The arcade was rebuilt in brick a few years later and Braithwaite moved to one of its corner shops, where he remained until he moved to Princes Street in 1885. The store opened in the old Central Hotel on the north side of Reichelt’s Building, and has been discussed in a previous post about the hotel. Within a few months it expanded into Reichelt’s, taking on a horseshoe-shaped footprint: Braithwaite’s two shopfronts were separated by other small shops, but connected at the rear. The horseshoe theme was carried through to distinctive frames over the two entrances.

Braithwaite’s Arcade shown in detail from an advertising supplement in the Evening Star, 15 May 1893. Eph-E-BUILDINGS-Dunedin-1893-02, Alexander Turnbull Library.

A detail from Robert Baré’s block pan of 1889. Reichelt’s building is at the centre. Red indicates brick buildings, and yellow wooden. The numbers in the circles indicate the number of storeys. The letters beneath indicate the roofing materials (e.g. iron or slate). The rear portion of Braithwaite’s arcade stands out with its many skylights, indicated by green spots. The only wooden building is the remaining portion of the old City Buffet. H++ 885.927 [1889], Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

It was claimed over 10,000 people visited the arcade on Christmas Eve 1885, and Braithwaite’s became so well-known it was considered a tourist attraction. It was a popular place to shelter from bad weather, and was described as something of a ‘public resort’ where everyone from unchaperoned children to the local business elite might be seen browsing the shelves. In 1893, Braithwaite stated he often took almost half of his takings between 8pm and 9pm. The shop was particularly busy the day after the English mail arrived with the latest newspapers and magazines.

A Braithwaite’s slogan was ‘No one asked buy’, which was emblazoned on the shop front. A promotional article in 1890 stated:

‘you may wander through the crowded avenues, or idle away your time in one of the secluded niches, of this hospitable warehouse for a whole afternoon, and never once be importuned to buy anything. Neither is the inadmissibility of systematically reading books proclaimed in scarlet letters on the walls; and, although this custom is not encouraged, because of the inadequacy of suitable sitting accommodation, the visitor will meet with no interference who may elect to spend a pleasant half an hour with an author whose works the force of circumstances prevents him from becoming acquainted with by his own quiet fireside.’

By 1900 the business employed thirty sales men and women, and that December it imported 300 cases of goods. The southern entrance, in Reichelt’s building, initially led to the stationery and fancy goods departments. A rearrangement in 1889 saw books and literature here, with other parts of the premises displaying stationery, fancy goods, art supplies, and music. Later, secondhand books were introduced.

The northern entrance to Braithwaite’s Book Arcade, in the Central Hotel building. The Leader Supplement 26 January 1895 p.11. State Library of Victoria.

The Book Department in Braithwaite’s Book Arcade, within Reichelt’s Building. The Leader Supplement 26 January 1895 p.11. State Library of Victoria.

The Fancy Good Department in Braithwaite’s Book Arcade. This was in a single-storey portion at the rear of the Central Hotel building, and was well lit with skylights. The Leader Supplement 26 January 1895 p.11. State Library of Victoria.

‘Braithwaite’s Book Arcade’. A Muir & Moodie postcard from the 1900s. Private Collection.

Back to the studios

The London Portrait Rooms continued until 1891. After refurbishment that year it briefly became the London Duplex Studio, run by Thomas Mintaro Bailey Muir, who had been a partner in Burton Bros. In 1893 the established photographer John G. Wills took a second studio here. His well-established American Photo Co. already had rooms a few doors to the south, in Farley’s Building.

The artist Alfred Henry O’Keeffe occupied this space for about a year, beginning in July 1895. Though brief, this was significant. O’Keeffe had recently returned from study in Paris, and offered evening classes in life drawing as well as private tuition. He was among twenty-five artists, including Girolamo Nerli and Grace Joel, who formed the Easel Club. This group, which represented a reaction against the Dunedin art establishment, held meetings in O’Keeffe’s studio.

O’Keeffe was followed by a succession of photographers: Armstrong & Greer (1896-1905), Shearsby & Wootton (1906), F.E. Austin & Son (1906-1916), Elizabeth Rossbotham (1916-1918), and Flora Niven (1918-1925). A photograph of the newly-formed Otago and Southland Photographers Association in 1918 shows Niven as the sole woman in the group, and she highlighted her ‘novelty’ in advertising, referring to herself as ‘Miss Niven the Lady Photographer’.

Advertisement for Miss Niven from the Bruce Herald 14 July 1919 p.6.

The Photographers Association of Otago and Southland in 1918. Top row (from left): John Steadman, C.C. Armstrong, Guy Morris, Henry Luscombe, H.C. Gore. Second row: J.J. Webster (Treasurer), Robert Rodger, William Esquilant (Vice-President), S.E. Wootton, G.W. Palmer, M.K. Parkes. Third row (sitting): T.F. Girvan, C.E. Merrie, H. Beauchamp, J.R. Morris (President), H.J. Gill, C.W. Pattillo, Flora Niven. H.M. Morris. Box-208-001. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

View looking north along Princes Street in either 1915 or 1916. Muir & Moodie photo, Te Papa C.011844.

Cropped detail showing ornamental features, including the parapet balusters, pediment, and vermiculated quoins and keystones.

Between the world wars

In 1916, the Empire Theatre was built behind the buildings, to the designs of Mason & Wales. It was the seventh purpose-built cinema in Dunedin. The first had been built just four years earlier, which shows how rapidly the movie industry was expanding and its increasingly important role in popular culture. The theatre’s entrance was from Princes Street, between Braithwaite’s two frontages. In 1928 the entrance moved to Moray Place, after the theatre was remodelled in lavish ‘atmospheric’ style to the designs of Edmund Anscombe. The intact gallery and various remnants can still be seen in the Rialto multiplex that now occupies the space.

Joseph Braithwaite died in 1917 and the arcade closed in 1928. Where there had been one shop, there were soon two. Sucklings Limited, a photograph processing and camera business, moved into the one on the north side. It claimed to offer ‘New Zealand’s Pioneer 4 Hour Photo Service’, having introduced this turnaround time at its earlier site about 1923. It became a branch of Kodak in 1929 but continued to use the Sucklings name until about 1931. It moved to another building further down the street in December 1934.

Queue outside the Empire Theatre in 1931. At this time Kodak had one of two shops in the building. Tamblyn, McKenzie & Rhodes were updstairs. Evening Star 4 December 1976.

Tamblyn, McKenzie & Winton (later Tamblyn, Mckenzie & Rhodes, and then Tamblyn Rhodes), land agents and auctioneers, occupied offices in the building for 46 years, from 1915 to 1961. Their advertisements featured extensively in newspaper real estate columns for many years.

From 1929 to 1937, artists Russell and Eunice Clark occupied the studio flat. Russell gave art classes, making use of the design studio at John McIndoe’s printing business in Vogel Street, where he worked. His fully nude classes were popular with students, as the Art School did not offer anything of this kind. According to Peter Entwisle, the Princes Street flat was the scene of lively, some even said ‘wild’ parties. They were a meeting place for artists and theatre peoples, with Doris Lusk and Max Walker among the attendees. The atmosphere is captured in one of Russell Clark’s oil paintings, Students entertain theatricals. I don’t have a license to reproduce it here, but follow the link to see it through the Te Papa website.

During this period the building was remodelled. The Evening Star architecture columnist, ‘Cornice’, described the newly-completed work in 1935. Their opinion reflected a prevailing distaste for Victorian architecture:

‘The very old-fashioned front to this building has been pulled away, and the old parapet and useless ornamentation, which was in vogue in old days, entirely removed, and the building completely cleaned up. Coloured plaster now adorns the façade, and it has been carried out in a style which is finding increasing favour in northern centres, but which had not yet found expression in Dunedin.’

T.R. Hindle carried out the building work. The two shops were internally remodelled, with oak panelling and ornamental plaster ceilings. Clipped plate glass shop windows included black glass. The architects, Stone & Sturmer, were known for some of the city’s more jazzy architectural work of the 1930s. The Victoria Building on Crawford Street is a good example of one of their remodelled facades and its restoration has shown their use of sophisticated coloured finishes, not apparent in old black and white photographs. Subsequent painting of these finishes has tended to dull the overall effect of such remodelling.

A cake shop operated from the shop at 110 (the northern one) for 66 years. Edna Meffan opened it as The Snack Bar in 1935 and continued to run it until selling to E.C. Thomson about 1946. Creations displayed included a seventh birthday cake for Mickey Mouse in 1935, a slice of which was given to every child who attended a special matinee event at the Regent Theatre. As it happens, Edna Meffan (later Edna Scott) was the first owner of my own house. I would be interested to know more about her, if anyone has information to share.

The shop became Chave’s Home Make Cakes about 1948, run by Stewart Chave for much of the 1950s. Stewart’s son Errol remembered it as a family affair as Stewart’s brother, Doug, sister-in-law Elsie, and his father Charles all formed part of the team. Errol sliced sandwich bread each morning before heading to school. The business was popular, particularly with pupils of nearby King Edward Technical College and Otago Girls’ High School. The fare included Lamingtons, custard squares, date scones, shortbread, pies, Cornish pasties, lettuce and Marmite sandwiches, banana sandwiches, and baked bean sandwiches. Stewart Chave sold to the business to Jim Clark and it became Clark’s Cake shop, trading under that name from 1957 until about 1985. It then continued as Bell Hill Cakes up to 2001.

A long-standing tenant at no. 112 was Marlene Mantles, which opened under the management of Mrs J.S. Campbell in 1939. The name was likely inspired by Marlene Dietrich, one of the most glamourous Hollywood film stars, then at the height of her fame. The name was later tweaked to Marlene Outfitters, and then to Marlene Fashions. The Princes Street shop closed in 1976 but the business continued in George Street for a few more years.

The name Bell Hill House only dates from recent decades, but has its historical roots in the fact that this part of Princes Street was cut through what was known as Bell Hill. For some years the building was referred to as Braithwaite’s Building. For a very long time, up to the 1970s, it was owned by the Solomon Estate. At the time of writing Shinjuku Sushi (since 2008) and Beauty Mirror (since 2022) occupy the ground floor shops. They are the latest in over 150 years of businesses in the building.

Newspaper references:
Evening Star 17 June 1871 p.2 (fire inquiry), 30 December 1885 p.2 (10,000 visitors to Braithwaite’s), 1 June 1889 p.2 (Braithwaite’s description after expansion), 4 June 1903 p.7 (George Barton obituary), 2 March 1918 p.7 (Rossbotham), 14 May 1930 p.5 (Sucklings advertisement), 1 December 1934 p.8 (Kodak move), 16 April 1935 p.2 (remodelling and alterations).
Otago Daily Times 14 July 1863 p.8 (City Buffet Café), 18 August 1863 p.6 (taken over by Riordan Brothers), 29 December 1863 p.2 (alterations), 28 July 1864 p.2 (offices designed by David Ross), 13 June 1871 p.2 (fire), 14 June 1871 p.2 (fire), 19 June 1871 p.2 (inquest into fire), 27 January 1872 p.2 (court proceedings re fire), 30 January 1872 p.2 (court proceedings re fire), 26 February 1872 p.2 (auction), 19 March 1872 p.3 (call for tenders), 24 April 1872 p.2 (new building description), 18 April 1873 p.3 (call for tenders), 25 July 1873 p.2 (description of additions), 22 February 1879 p.4 (sale of property), 10 February 1885 p.3 (Braithwaite’s shift), 18 May 1886 p.2 (blasting accident), 23 November 1887 p.4 (Braithwaite’s evening hours), 21 January 1890 p.3 (Braithwaite’s description); 17 December 1891 p.3 (London Portrait Rooms sold); 23 April 1900, supp. (Braithwaite’s description), 26 September 1935 p.11 (Mickey Mouse birthday);19 September 1936 p.1 (The Snack Bar).
Otago Witness 3 February 1872 p.7 (court action).
Saturday Advertiser 4 May 1878 p.10 (J. Wilkie).
Tuapeka Times 1 February 1872 p.4 (court action).

Other references:
Entwisle, Peter. ‘114 Princes Street’. Unpublished report for Dunedin Amenities Society.
Entwisle, Peter. ‘The Easel Club’s Rooms’. Unpublished report for Dunedin Amenities Society.
McDonald, David. ‘Braithwaite, Joseph (1848-1917)’ in Southern People: A Dictionary of Otago Southland Biography. Dunedin: Longacre, 1998, pp.59-60.
Murray, David. ‘Victims of blasting’. Stories in Stone series in Otago Daily Times 2 October 2010 p.50.
Murray, David. ‘B462-B464 Bell Hill House’. Report for Dunedin City Council, 21 April 2013.
Baré, Robert, City of Dunedin Block Plans Dunedin: Caxton Steam Printing Company, [1889].
Council of Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations of New Zealand, block plans, 1927.
Directories (Stone’s, Wises, telephone)
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans.
Personal communication from Errol Chave, 15 March 2016.

Clifford Muir 1904-1968

10 Replies

‘C. Muir, Chief Architect’ (1960). Otago Education Board records. AG-294-48/93. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

A progressive figure in New Zealand school design during the mid-twentieth century baby boom, Clifford Muir headed the Otago Education Board’s architectural department through a period of extensive school building. After 36 years in public service, he spent the last phase of his career in private practice.

Clifford Muir was born in Dunedin on 20 June 1904, at his parents’ home in Maryhill Terrace, Mornington. His father, Robert Swan Muir, was a self-employed bootmaker originally from Dalkeith, Scotland, but resident in Dunedin from childhood. His mother, Marion Mossman Muir (née Greig), was born at West Taieri where her father worked mostly as a tailor. Clifford’s only sibling, Doris, was born in 1911.

Cliff, as he was known, attended Mornington School from 1909 to 1917, before studying for two years at Dunedin Technical High School, the secondary division of King Edward Technical College. He was described as a bright pupil and an ‘industrious lad who gives careful attention to all his work’. He showed particular talent in mechanical drawing and workshop classes.

From 1920 to 1924 Muir was apprenticed to G. Simpson & Co., an established Dunedin building firm. Its largest contract during this time was for Arthur Barnett’s new department store in George Street. Meanwhile, Muir took evening classes in carpentry and joinery at the Technical College.

Muir joined the Otago Education Board’s staff as a draughtsman in January 1925. The Board was responsible for the buildings of over 200 primary and district high schools throughout Otago, and for nearly 150 associated teachers’ residences. The architectural staff occasionally carried out work for separately administered state high schools. Muir was initially one of three draughtsmen working under Education Board architect James Rodger, a practical man of kindly manner.

Over half of Otago’s school buildings at this time were Victorian, and increasingly unsuited to modern educational requirements. Many had been constructed during the major building programme of the mid-1870s to 1880s. The Board’s official history describes the 1920s as a ‘remodelling period’, with architectural work mostly limited to alterations and additions. The largest new building complexes were at the rebuilt Caversham and Balclutha Schools, and the new Tainui School.

From 1927 to 1930 Muir continued his studies through evening classes at the Dunedin School of Art, attached to the Technical College. His subjects included drawing, modelling, and painting. W.H. Allen and R.N. Field were the principal art instructors at that time. Some of Muir’s surviving sketches are annotated with an address care of the Dunedin architect and Otago Art Society member Eric Miller.

‘Roman Composition’. Student drawing, University of Auckland School of Architecture. Mason & Wales Architects collection.

‘A Shop Front’. Student drawing, University of Auckland School of Architecture. Mason & Wales Architects collection.

A Suburban House’. Student drawing, University of Auckland School of Architecture. Muir’s student drawings show a wide range of stylistic influences. Mason and Wales Architects collection.

Muir studied at the School of Architecture, Auckland University College, from 1930 to 1933, including two years of full-time study. The School was the only one of its kind in the country, and from 1931 its qualifications were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Muir would have received instruction from the first professor, Australian Cyril Knight, who combined aspects of the Beaux-Arts teaching tradition with Modernist ideas. The course included studio instruction integrated with university lectures and classes. Muir’s surviving set exercises demonstrate versatility in wide-ranging styles, from Revived Classical through to Streamline Modernism, influenced by Bauhaus.

Muir’s Diploma Thesis was for a boys’ secondary school and the Diploma was conferred in 1934. In February 1936 he was elected an Associate Member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

In 1932, Welch had succeeded the retiring James Rodger as Board Architect. Muir was his only assistant. The Great Depression reduced the Board’s building programme to a low point that year, when there was almost no expenditure on either new buildings or maintenance. Funding did not fully recover until 1937.

Projects achieved during the 1930s included the building of Dunedin’s first Intermediate Schools: Dunedin North (in Albany Street) and Macandrew Intermediate. The largest new school was Kings’ High School, opened in 1936. Muir’s role in the design of these buildings is unclear, but he certainly contributed. He was the lead designer of another large project, the Teachers’ Training College complex built on a new Union Street site. A striking Modernist design completed in 1939, it was illustrated in the prestigious English publication, Architectural Review. Unlike the earlier College buildings, it was constructed with both timber framing and cladding as, after the Napier Earthquake, the Education Department had effectively banned the use of brick for educational buildings. This directive was somewhat relaxed from 1940, but timber remained the material of choice for educational buildings in the decades that followed. The Training College building was destroyed by fire in 1968.

Dunedin Teachers’ Training College, completed 1939. MS-2857/366/001. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. C.M. Collins photographer.

Dunedin Teachers’ Training College, completed 1939. MS-2857/366/005. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. C.M. Collins photographer.

Welch enlisted for military service following the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939. Muir was appointed Acting Architect and held this position for the duration of the conflict. Projects underway, such as the rebuilding of Mosgiel District High School, kept the building programme busy through 1940, but by 1942 there was little expenditure on new buildings. The only new schools begun between 1941 and 1944 were at Stirling and Oamaru South. Welch formally retired at the end of the war and Muir was permanently appointed Board Architect in June 1945.

A new era of school building was on the horizon. An increase in school enrolment occurred even before the post-war baby boom. Birth rates had declined after the First World War but picked up from 1935, reaching a peak in 1947. Despite this, school building activity remained sluggish and the Education Board did not overtake its pre-war annual expenditure until 1949. Many buildings considered to be in a lamentable state twenty years earlier were still in use, often with little alteration. Muir described the effect of some older classrooms as:
‘…almost one of imprisonment; caging the child in cells with high windows (to concentrate attention on the chalkboard?); with “serviceable” tongue and groove boarding on all walls to withstand the impact of small hands and feet; with deep brown dadoes to resist grubby hands and with long backless forms to make a relaxed attitude impossible.’

The largest school completed in the late 1940s was at Kensington, south of the Oval in Dunedin, where an old complex was completely replaced. An equally large project was Stuart House, a women’s hostel at the new Carrington Hall, which housed both Teachers’ College and University of Otago students.

Main block, Kurow District High School, erected 1940. This was one of few Otago school buildings built in brick after the Napier Earthquake. From Otago Education Board Report for the Year 1947. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

8. Kensington School, 1940s. This was the largest school complex completed in the late 1940s and it replaced Victorian buildings. This was partly done on the original site and partly on an additional area. Most schools were built by private contactors, but this one was built by the Board’s own workmen. The school closed in 1968. But the buildings have been repurposed for foundational and vocational training. P1998-028/03-047. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. Otago Daily Times photograph.

Examples of two small school buildings, at Lovells Flat and Becks. Both were erected in 1949. From Otago Education Board Report for the Year 1949. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Stuart House, the women’s block at Carrington Hall, completed in 1947. It contained accommodation for 40 students and a matron. The building is still in use. Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/270/013. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Material shortages further stymied progress. Timber, in particular, was expensive and difficult to procure. In 1948 the Board resorted to milling pine trees on some of its own school properties. Portable huts were built to accommodate single teachers.

Bureaucratic processes were cumbersome. Sketch proposals and working drawings required the approval of not only Board, but also the Education Department and the Dominion Building Controller. The latter described some boards’ proposals for 1948 as ‘bordering on the fantastic’ and severely pruned their lists. The Dunedin City Council and various borough and county councils also had to be satisfied, as they issued and administered building permits.

Through the 1950s, economic conditions improved and shortages eased. Investment in school building greatly increased over the course of the decade, with a sixfold increase over 1940s expenditure. More than 35 Otago schools were either newly established or entirely rebuilt, and over 30 new teachers’ residences were erected. Numerous classroom additions, dental clinics, and other additions were also constructed. This involved extensive travel for Muir. He had the use of large Chevrolet cars, suited to gravel roads in the country, and accommodation was in local hotels.

The Board’s 1957 history described Muir as one of the foremost school architects in New Zealand, with ‘progressive ideas frequently ahead of the Department of Education’s financial provision for school buildings which favours standardisation’. This, it was noted, ‘restricted him in doing anything which he would himself consider outstanding’.

Before the war, common features in school design could be seen throughout the country, but individual education boards did have a degree of design independence. Small schools were typically built to standardised plans, but these differed from region to region. The Canterbury Education Board, for example, preferred open verandahs over the enclosed corridors more usually found in Otago. Larger schools tended to be more bespoke in design.
The National Government elected in 1949 imposed a new standardised classroom design with aims of efficiency and economy. The Dominion Basic Plan of 1951 provided a row of classrooms with a corridor along its south side, and incorporated toilets, cloakrooms, and staffrooms.

Muir referred to the Dominion Plan as a straightjacket, although some refinements were possible. A late example, Rosebank School in Balclutha, added brick patterns that cast ‘enriching shadow’, and incorporated bolder roof planes. The thoughtful siting and orientation of buildings was a particular enthusiasm of Muir’s and many projects benefited from this aspect of his expertise.

Bradford School, completed 1954. According to the annual report: ‘The erection of this school of three classrooms on a sloping site presented the Architect with a problem of design. The Architect’s aim was to fit the buildings to the hillside and keep excavations to a minimum. The result is a building of pleasing appearance but unusual design. Each classroom is on a different level, and as the school climbs the slope, each room is advanced by several feet, thus creating a separate court in front of each, free of interruption from the others.’ Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/029/001. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Group in the office of the Otago Education Board Secretary, 17 September 1953. Left to right: C.R. McLean (Secretary), J.L. Fraser (Chairman), Hon. R.M. Algie (Minister of Education), C. Muir (Architect), and P. Carroll (Minister’s Private Secretary). Otago Education Board records. AG-294-48/69. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

A new school building code in 1956 prescribed the reduction of space taken up in corridors, circulation spaces, and ancillary rooms, and a relative increase in teaching space. More planning freedom was allowed within a ‘white lines’ policy that set minimum standards of accommodation and maximum cost per pupil.
Muir described this as an opening to ‘improve schools by better design and greater local freedom,’ and as a ‘challenge to architects to replan within the financial limits and to gain as much as possible from the change by better design’. He wrote that ‘If buildings affect the users it is the hope of those engaged in school design that the measure of lightness and pleasantness achieved might be reflected in the lives of the children’.

Architect’s perspective drawing of Dunedin North Intermediate School. The buildings were completed in 1956, and an assembly hall followed in 1959. Most of these buildings still stand. Changes have include the redevelopment of the entrance and the addition of larger covered balconies to the two-storey block. From Otago Education Board Report for the Year 1954. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Pine Hill School additional classroom block, completed 1957. This school was situated in a State House area and its growing roll led to two major additions in the 1950s. The block shown included underfloor heating. Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/201/001. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Maia School, completed 1958. ‘Wherever possible teaching spaces are provided outside the classroom in the form of grassed terraces or concrete strips together with fixed seating. At Maia is seen a method of providing this on a sloping site’. From Otago Education Board Report for the Year 1954. Private collection.

For the models block at George Street Normal School (1959), Muir identified the classroom as the basic unit of a school, and the starting point for improvements. He described the project in an article, ‘The “Family” Classroom: An experiment in Otago’, published in Education magazine. He wrote:

‘…the classroom should be a “home” for the children and should express the ideas and feeling of a “family” room. Then the teacher would take his or her rightful place as the head of the family, the whole pattern thus giving a feeling of unity and security to the children. It seems that in the changing society of today the school has to provide more to make up for the loss sustained by the passing of the pioneer home with its social activities and larger family circle. The classroom should therefore be a complete and set contained unit not sharing anything with any other class. In order to express this idea all activities should take place in the classroom or in the family room and under the direct control or supervision of the teacher.’

To achieve the self-containment, Muir gave each classroom its own projecting wing, incorporating lavatories and other ancillary space.

George Street School models block, completed 1959. ‘In the latest Otago School plan each classroom has its own outdoor teaching space. The projecting wings contain the classroom’s own toilet block’. From Otago Education Board Report for the Year 1954. Private collection.

Emerging educational and architectural trends can be seen in other designs made or overseen by Muir. A primary school on a new site at Port Chalmers included generous windows with wide eaves to reduce direct sunlight glare. The scale of the buildings was smaller than a traditional school and intended to be ‘more in character with children’. This was also evident in the entrance to the Dunedin North Intermediate (1956), described in one the Board’s annual reports as illustrating ‘the belief that the height of buildings should not overpower the children who use them’.

At the Lawrence District High School (1957), a ‘prow’ in the centre court thrusted it into the sunshine. Muir likely provided the commentary in an annual report that ‘not only should school buildings be designed to function easily but by trial and judgment of shapes such as these should the search for forms expressing the aims of education and architecture continue’.

Continued budgetary constraints are reflected in a comment about the Dunedin North Intermediate assembly hall (1959): ‘The simplicity of the exterior arises from the desire to use the greatest portion of the limited expenditure on the interior where the children can appreciate it most’.

Dunedin North Intermediate hall, completed 1959. The photograph shows a raised corridor which could be used as ‘foyer and circulation area, or as a form of stage, and allows a greater provision of space in the Hall with little increase in cost’. Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/059/029. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. Campbell Photography photo.

Tahuna Intermediate School, photographed in 1960. ‘The two-storey classroom block and assembly hall form an internal courtyard, well sheltered from prevailing winds. The projecting blocks are stair towers.’ Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/250/003. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. Campbell Photography photo.

Dunstan High School, Alexandra, under construction. Completed in 1961, this was one of Muir’s last major projects as Education Board Architect. Otago Education Board records. AG-294-49/061/002. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena.

The extent of work undertaken saw an increase in the size of the Board’s architectural staff to thirteen. Their offices were located in the Education Board buildings in Moray Place, on the site now occupied by the Dunedin Public Library. As Chief Architect, Muir worked in a separate location from the Design Office, which was on the upper level at the rear of the building in an area cleverly altered to include a mezzanine floor. One of the junior draughtsman, Norman Ledgerwood, remembers Cliff as a good person to work for, and someone who encouraged him to pursue an architectural career.

The relationship between the Architectural Office and Management was sometimes fraught, with many challenges in achieving a large quantity of work within a rigid and financially pressured bureaucracy. Muir resigned in July 1961, and although he lost the security of a public service job he had enjoyed for 36 years, he was freed from many of its constraints.

Departure allowed Muir, for the first time, to embark on a career of private practice. He went into partnership with a contemporary, Lance Lowther (1901-1970), who had been chief assistant to Harry McDowell Smith in the 1930s and in independent practice since 1945. Lowther’s designs included the Otago Co-operative Dairy Company factory in Anzac Avenue, which later became the Hocken Library.

The Lowther & Muir partnership designed several private residences, with Muir’s contributions including the Stanton house in Waverley, the Wong house in Stafford Street, and a block of flats in Queen Street. Country homes included ‘Clairdon’ at Kaihiku. Muir was able to make continued use of his education sector connections. He designed additional buildings for the Taieri High School, and a four-storey accommodation block for Carrington Hall.

Carrington Hall additional hostel building, completed 1968. This was Muir’s largest project within the Lowther & Muir partnership, and one of his final works. Mason & Wales Architects collection.

21. Plan for ‘Birk Cottage’, the Muir family holiday home at Wanaka, designed and built by Clifford Muir. Mason & Wales Architects collection.

Over the course of his career, Muir designed three houses for himself and family: a residence in Easther Crescent (1936), another in Belmont Lane (1959), and ‘Birk Cottage’ a holiday home at Wanaka (1953). The latter was a modernist design with a ‘butterfly’ roof – for which he built the timber framed walls in Dunedin. It had a coal range and wetback, with no electricity nor water supply. Muir’s versatile practicality was demonstrated, after the connection of electricity, in his building a purpose-made refrigerator with an insulated, steel shell and internal ice-box, and separate compressor. He also constructed two caravans.

Muir was an active member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects. He served on the Otago Branch committee from 1938 to 1959, including as Chairman from 1953 to 1955. His significant contribution to institute conferences was especially notable and he was supported in this by his wife, Karen.

Cliff Muir had married Karen Schacke Andersen at Caversham Presbyterian Church on 5 January 1938. The daughter of Danish immigrant parents, Karen was born in Invercargill where her father worked as a bricklayer. She had studied at the University of Otago and the Dunedin Teachers’ Training College and was a teacher at Macandrew Road School before her marriage. The Muirs had three sons: Maxwell (born 1940), Alastair (born 1944), and Ashley (born 1946). Tragically, Alastair died at the age of 11 months.

A tall man, Cliff Muir stood at 6 foot 3 inches and was described by many as a ‘gentle giant’. His personal interests included woodworking, tennis, and chess. He was a member of the Athenaeum Chess Club and as a young man participated in local tournaments.

Clifford Muir died from blood cancer at Wakari Hospital, Dunedin, on 12 February 1968, aged 63. Karen Muir survived him by twenty years. Their older surviving son, Maxwell, was a pharmacist. The younger, Ashley, trained as an architect. He was influenced in his choice of career by constant exposure to architectural magazines and books, and what he describes as ‘Cliff making “all sorts of things” and the discussions regarding the design of those “things”.’ Ashley joined Mason & Wales, New Zealand’s oldest architectural practice, in 1970, and became a partner in 1972.

One of Cliff’s four grandchildren, Hamish Muir (born 1978), represents a third generation of architects in the family. Hamish is a Fellow member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, and currently the Director and Owner of Mason & Wales Architects.

The legacy of Clifford Muir can be further seen through the longevity of his school buildings, many of which are still in use some seventy or more years after they were built.

List of principal school projects designed during Clifford Muir’s tenure as Otago Education Board Acting Architect (1939-1945) and Architect (1945-1961).

The year given is the year of completion.

Kurow District High School 1940
Macandrew Intermediate School 1940
Mosgiel District High School 1940
Tarara School 1940
Duntroon School 1941
Stirling School 1942
Maheno School 1946
Naseby School 1946
Oamaru South School 1946
Stuart House (women’s block) at Carrington Hall 1947
Wakari School additions 1947
King’s High School additions 1948
Balclutha School 1949
Becks School 1949
Kensington School 1949
Lovells Flat School 1949
Corstorphine School (stage 1) 1950
Grants Braes School 1950
Roxburgh Hydro School 1950
Wanaka School 1950
Alexandra District High School additions 1951
Kelso School 1951
Oamaru North School 1952
Palmerston District High School (stage 1) 1952
Pine Hill School infant block 1952
Tapanui District High School 1952 (stage 1)
Abbotsford School 1953
Andersons Bay School – four additional classrooms 1953
Mosgiel West School (stage 1) 1953
Bradford School 1954
Corstorphine School (stage 2) 1954
George Street School 1955
Taieri Beach School 1954
Tokomairiro District High School 7-classroom addition 1954
Halfway Bush School (stage 1) 1955
Omarama School 1955
Queens High School 1955 (for Otago High Schools’ Board)
Riselaw Road (Calton Hill) School 1955
Roxburgh District High School 1955
Blacks School 1956
Dunedin North Intermediate School 1956
George Street School infants block 1956
Green Island School 1956
Mosgiel East School 1956
North Taieri School 1956
Arthur Street School 1957 (stage 1)
Halfway Bush School stage 2 1957
Heriot School 1957
Lawrence District High School 1957
Mosgiel West School (stage 2) 1957
Ngapara School 1957
Patearoa School 1957
Pine Hill School three classroom addition 1957
Port Chalmers Kindergarten 1957
Port Chalmers School 1957
Rosebank School 1957
Ocean View School 1958
Ardgowan School 1958
Fernbrook School 1958
Maia School 1958
Queens High School assembly hall and additional classrooms 1958
Waitaki Girls’ High School laboratory block etc. 1958
Berwick School 1959
Dunedin North Intermediate assembly hall 1959
Flag Swamp School 1959
George Street School models block (1959)
Musselburgh School 1959
St Leonards School 1959
Sawyers Bay School additional block 1960
Waipahi School 1960
Arthur Street School stage 2 1961
Brockville School 1961
Dunstan High School 1961
Macraes Moonlight School 1961
Otakou School 1961
Otematata District High School 1961
Palmerston District High School Secondary Block 1961
Reid Park School (stage 1) 1961
Tahuna Intermediate School 1961
Taieri Beach School 1961
Oamaru Intermediate School 1962
Taieri High School additions 1962
Tapanui District High School additions 1962
Waikoikoi School 1962
Waitaki Boys’ High School dormitory block 1962
Waitaki Girls’ High School administration and library block 1962
Caversham School (stage 2) 1963

Selected sources:
Birth, death and marriage registrations.
Cemetery records, Dunedin City Council.
Dunedin Technical High School report, Hocken Collections AG-763-027/028.
Mornington School records, Hocken Collections MS-0905/06.
Annual reports, Otago Education Board records, Hocken Collections AG-294-15.
Contract books, Otago Education Board records, Hocken Collections AG-294-30/12 to 14.
Site books, Otago Education Board records, Hocken Collections MS-5197/094 and 095.
New Zealand Institute of Architects records, Archives New Zealand.
Evening Star 21 June 1945 p.4 (appointment), 12 February 1968 (obituary).
Otago Witness 27 September 1921 p.53 (David Greig).
Garnock-Jones, Alan Peter. ‘Architecture – School Buildings: Primary Schools’ in An Encyclopedia of New Zealand edited by A.H. McLintock (1966). Retrieved 16 Nov 2025 from Primary Schools | Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Gatley, Julia. ‘Back to the South’: Cyril Knight and the modernisation of the Auckland School of Architecture’ in The Journal of Architecture v25 n4 (2020) pp397-418.
Madanovic, Milica. ‘Persisting Beaux-Arts Practices in Architectural Education: History and Theory Teaching at the Auckland School of Architecture, 1927-1969’ in Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts Auckland School Centenary special issue (Sep 2018), pp.9-24.
McDiarmid, Elizabeth: ‘Early Woodside, East Taieri’ (1916), unpublished remiscences. Hocken Collections, MS-0579.
Miller, James McKerrow. The Otago Education Board, 1856-1956: a brief history. Dunedin; Otago Education Board, 1957.
Muir, Clifford. ‘The “Family” Classroom: An experiment in Otago’ in Education, v9 n3 (Apr 1960) pp.80-82.
Muir, Clifford. ‘Schools: Otago Education Board’ in Home and Building, v22 n10 (Mar 1960), pp.25, 107.
Williams, Murray Noel. Building Yesterday’s Schools; An analysis of educational architectural design as practised by the Building Department of the Canterbury Education Board from 1916-1989. PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, 2014.

Acknowledgments:
Special thanks to Ashley Muir, Anna Muir, Hamish Muir, Karl Sasse, Norman Ledgerwood, and David Ojala for information and assistance.

This article was commissioned by Mason & Wales Architects.

Angus Motors Building / Spanish Restaurant

7 Replies

Built: 1874-1875, 1908 (addition), 1938-1939 (remodelling)
Address: 471-473 Princes Street
Architects: Unknown (1874), James Annand (1908), Stone & Sturmer (1938)
Builders: Key & Ashton (1874-1875), James Annand (1908), R. Mitchell & Sons (1938)

Fire raged in Princes Street South on the morning of 22 August 1874. The blaze began on the premises of Guthrie & Larnach, a firm of timber merchants that employed two hundred men in its timber yard, sawmill, and woodwork factory. A watchman discovered flames near the main boiler at about 3.30 a.m and raised the alarm, but the fire spread quickly.

The Guthrie & Lanarch buildings were destroyed. So too was the adjoining iron and spouting store of brothers Robert and Thomas Haworth, and a three-storey wooden building to the north of it – a boarding house named the Spanish Restaurant. Its fifty-four occupants were lucky to get out alive. They scrambled through narrow passages, some lowering themselves from the upper storeys with escape ropes. A youth had dashed off on a horse to Larnach Castle, to inform factory owner William Larnach. Several mothers were in a half-dressed state with children in their arms, and an observer noticed a man frantically rushing up the street with a cruet stand. By 5.00 a.m. an estimated 2,000 people were gathered near the site. A ‘magnificent climax was reached when the roof, front, and gables collapsed with a terrible crash, followed by the tottering fall of a high brick chimney. The crowd shrunk back some yards at the intense heat that shot out from the roaring, hissing, and flaring ruin’.

The Spanish Restaurant had been established in 1864 by Joseph Fort and Olegario Guardiola, a Catalan born in Barcelona. Unsuccessful in their application for a liquor licence, they operated a ‘dry’ hotel and offered cheap accommodation for single men. Within a year Guardiola was sole proprietor. One of his advertisements promised ‘every delicacy that art and genius can devise’, with cuisine arrangements under the supervision of a ‘first class artiste’. Another stated: ‘No Beer! No Ale! No Spirits! No Rubbish! Dinner for 1 shilling, with cup of coffee’.

The Haworth brothers owned both their own store and the restaurant building, on land leased from the Dunedin City Corporation. The site had earlier been a steep section of the foreshore and was part of an area set aside in 1853 as native reserve. Subsequent legal disputes over its status are part of the history of failure by colonial governments (regional and national) to honour promises for reserves made to mana whenua. This can be read about in detail in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ngāi Tahu Report 1991 (pages 347-385).

After the fire, the Haworths wasted no time in employing the builders Key & Hewitt to construct a new Spanish Restaurant, begun about September 1874 and completed six months later. The three-storey building was of substantial brick construction. If it lacked distinction, its plastered front with decorative mouldings was at least dignified, and three ball finials added a touch of pretention. The finials matched those on the new Guthrie & Larnach buildings next door, rebuilt on an imposing scale to the designs of David Ross.

The Spanish Restaurant (left) in late 1881 or early 1882. To its right are seen the rebuilt Guthrie & Larnach buildings, designed by David Ross and destroyed by a second fire in 1887. Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum; 1919/134/1180.

Guardiola’s rebuilt Spanish Restaurant occupied the top two floors and was described as ‘fitted up in the best manner for saving labour and securing comfort’. It included a large dining room and nearly fifty bedrooms. One resident was the journalist and poet Thomas Bracken. He had been a regular in the old restaurant since at least 1872 or 1873, possibly earlier. One person recalled ‘many a friendly chat’ with Bracken at a table there around that time. Patrick Galvin first met him in 1875 and wrote: ‘I stayed with him for some time at the Spanish Restaurant, Dunedin, and in his bedroom – pillow on knee – I saw him compose some of the poems which are included in the large editions of his works. It was always a hard struggle to make ends meet and pay the printers (Messrs Coulls and Culling), but the idealist was never totally lost in the practical man, though in some respects Bracken was a keen man of business in those days.’ It is possible this is where Bracken wrote words for what became the national anthem, ‘God Defend New Zealand’. The verses first appeared in his Saturday Advertiser newspaper in 1876.

The ground floor was divided into two parts, one originally occupied by the Haworths as a showroom and workshop. Their business wound up in 1878 but Robert Howarth retained the leasehold up to 1893, with his ground floor tenants including the seed merchants Nimmo & Blair, and the plumbers Short & Pearce.

In 1877 Bonfacio Zurbano, a native of Bilbao in northern Spain, succeeded Guardiola as proprietor of the Spanish Restaurant. By the time he sold the business to Robert Easton in 1880 he boasted of having the largest restaurant trade in the city. Easton was followed by Albert Leung Chung, who worked at first in partnership with Sue Kum Cheun and Leung Voy, then from 1883 and for the following thirteen years in his own name. Leung Chung was a native of Nam-hoy, Canton. A leader within the local Chinese community, he often gave his services as a court translator. His wife Jane (formerly Mrs Whitman) was originally from London and had run the Bath Street School for some years.

In 1887 another fire destroyed the next-door factory, now operated by the Dunedin Iron and Woodware Company. Some of the firefighters battled the blaze from the roof of Spanish Restaurant. Tragically, four men lost their lives.

Herbert Neville took over the hotel in 1896. He was followed by Margaret Clyma who in 1899 renamed it the Federal Coffee Palace, likely after the massive Melbourne edifice of that name. Following renovations in 1903, including new fire escapes, it became the Federal Private Hotel. Clyma leased the hotel to others from 1904, before selling to Norman Harper Bell, the founder and owner of the established Bell Tea Company.

Bell built a new tea warehouse on the north side of the property. Deeper than the old building, it increased the street frontage by one third and replicated the treatment of the original facade. James Annand both designed and built the additions. Construction began in June 1908 and an advertisement in December advised of the Bell Tea Company’s removal to ‘commodious three-storey building, which we have had specially erected in conformity with the very latest scientific sanitary ideas of handling, blending, and mixing Tea.’ Electric mixing and blending machines were located on the top floor, the first floor was used for packing and labelling, and on the ground floor were offices, reception, sample, and tasting rooms. Bulk cases and finished product occupied the basement, which was equipped with tramways and equipment for moving heavy goods.

Bell’s tenant, hotel proprietor Isabella Mackechnie, objected to the addition blocking her windows and described the hotel as leaking and uninhabitable at the time of her departure, although she was motivated to get out of her lease as cheaply as possible. Bell had the Federal refurbished as the Masonic Private Hotel in 1910, after identifying a demand for a place where ‘young men not earning large wages could get a maximum of comfort for about 18 shillings a week’. It was leased and managed by Allen and Essie Bedford, and described as a working man’s palace.

At the bottom of the hotel (the basement from Princes Street) was the kitchen, with a ten-foot Shacklock range and steam-heated racks and warmers. The outbuildings included a storehouse, larder, and butcher’s shop. Also at this level, a ‘light’ and ‘airy’ dining room decorated with wallpaper and hung pictures seated up to 140 people at about 20 tables. On the ground floor, a smoking room included tables for writing and playing cards. Further along was a billiard room with comfortable sofas around the walls. The top two floors contained 52 bedrooms, lit by electricity. On each of these floors were separate lavatories, and a suite of bathrooms where a ‘man who works at a “black” trade can get a splendid sluice-down either at the basins, under the showers, or in a Doulton bath, without having to wait, and he may splash about as much as he likes without making a mess’.

William and Eliza Knight became the hotels last managers in 1914, remaining until its closure in September 1936.

Bell Tea remained on the site until 1924, when it moved to a new factory in Hope Street. The old premises were occupied by the Colombo Tea Co. for a few years, and later by businesses in the motor trade. Motorcycle specialists Mewhinney & Geddes (later Mewhinney & Anderson) opened for business in 1929 and were followed by a company called Motor Sales in 1935.

The site was redeveloped on an expanded footprint in 1938 for Todd Motors. Established by Charles Todd, this business had begun as a stock and station company. Based in Dunedin from 1915, it had the agency for Ford Cars, with branches throughout Otago. The Princes Street redevelopment involved gutting the existing buildings, adding an additional storey to adjoining buildings in Bond Street, remodelling the exterior, and complete interior refurbishment. The architects and structural engineers were Stone & Sturmer (Gorton R. Stone and Frank Sturmer) and the builders R. Mitchell & Sons. During the work they discovered charred timbers, evidence of the 1887 fire.

The Masonic Hotel building during reconstruction. Evening Star 13 September 1938 p.3. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.

The Todd Motors service department, with its large workshop, occupied the connected building fronting Bond Street. Its additional storey was a continuation of the ground floor level from Princes Street. It housed a used car showroom under a single-span steel roof. The showroom for new cars faced Princes Street, with plate glass windows beneath a suspended verandah. It featured Queensland maple panelling and polished stainless steel mouldings, with white plaster walls above and heavily moulded ceilings. Glass bricks set into strips in the floor allowed light to filter through to the basement workshop, accessed from Bond Street. ‘Executive offices’ described as ‘American plan’ featured clear glass partitions and mirrors on the walls to help create an illusion of space.

The facade was almost completely remodelled. Only the retention of the original sash windows continued to give away its Victorian origins. A new amber and green plaster finish, with orange bands, must have turned heads. The Otago Daily Times described it as an ‘attractive splash of colour and modernity’.

Architects’ perspective drawing. Otago Daily Times 2 August 1938 p.3. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.

The newly completed Todd Motors premises. Otago Daily Times 28 January 1939 p.11. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.

Cross section (north side) from the 1938 drawings of Stone & Sturmer, architects.

Mayor A.H. Allen opened the premises on 30 January 1939. Some of his comments give insight into the fashion for stripping old buildings of their original ornamentation and facelifting them. The Otago Daily Times reported him as saying:

Many shops erected from 70 to 80 years ago were still doing duty. During the passing of those years the only improvement to some of them had been an occasional reconditioning and modernising of their frontages only, whereas others still retained their original and very unattractive architectural features. Todd Motors Ltd that day were showing them how to modernise and brighten the city and incidentally give better financial return to property owners.

Just months later, world war broke out. Petrol rationing was soon introduced and the assembly of sale of private vehicles greatly declined. Bill Angus, who had been manager, purchased the Dunedin business from Todd Brothers, and registered Angus Motors Ltd in June 1941. Angus had served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, and during the Second World War the Princes Street building housed the headquarters of the Air Training Corps and the recruiting office of the RNZAF. Angus Motors had the agency for Hillman and Humber cars, British marques from the Rootes Group. It also had agencies for American Chrysler and Plymouth cars, and later for Valiant.

In the 1960s, office accommodation was leased to government departments, including the Geological Survey Section.

The building in 1965. S.E. Kershaw papers, Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-5401/001/001.

Gardner Motors bought out Angus Motors in 1971. Surplus to requirements, the building was sold to W.L. Cameron, a director of Andrews & Beaven Ltd, a Christchurch engineering firm established in 1878. It employed over 100 people from its Dunedin branch premises, extensively refurbished and opened in 1972. The complex included a warehouse and showrooms for general and industrial engineering supplies, equipment, machinery, and car accessories. Hodge & McKenzie were the main contractors for the alterations. Andrews & Beaven was taken over by Repco in 1983 and the Princes Street operation closed not long after. The motor division continued on Bond Street until about 1987, as Motor Specialties.

Over the summer of 1987-1988 the building underwent a major redevelopment by City Motors, which changed the name of its vehicle trading arm to European City Ltd. It retailed Jaguar, Volkswagen, Audi and Fiat cars. Mason & Wales were the architects and Mitchell Almet the main contractors. The most significant external change was the installation of a curtain wall of tinted and mirrored glass over (but not destroying) the old facade. M.C. Fraser was the engineer. The pavement in front of the entrance was cobblestoned, and flanked with two evergreen trees, which it was suggested added a ‘little touch of European influence’. Through new automatic doors, trendy 1980s décor included charcoal grey carpet, powder grey walls, and smoky-pink vertical blinds. Improvements included the installation of underfloor central heating.

The building in February 2015. David Murray photo.

Mayor Sir Clifford Skeggs opened European City on 3 March 1988. It closed in 1992 after one of the directors was charged with, and subsequently convicted of, fraud and dishonesty offences, in his attempts to keep the business trading through economic downturn.

Later occupants of the Princes Street retail space have included the bed and bedding retailer Bedpost from 1995 to 2003. Then a similar business, Back to Bed, up to about 2009. Upstairs office spaces were converted to flats

In 2015 came another major refurbishment. The glass curtain wall was removed from the Princes Street frontage and the facade regained most of its 1930s appearance, surprising many who had only ever known its 1980s look. It was repainted in warm colours, sympathetic to the style, and refreshingly bucking staid trends. Important earthquake strengthening and maintenance work was undertaken and the upstairs apartments refurbished. The end result is a credit to the owner, Bill Brown.

From 2012 to 2021 the ground floor was occupied by Toffs Recycled Clothing. After a period as Proctors Auctions it is about to begin a new chapter as an SPCA op shop.

Newspaper references:
Otago Witness 18 June 1864 p.18 (Spanish Restaurant advt); 8 April 1876 p.8 (description of 1874 fire by David Kennedy); 26 January 1893 p.23 (Haworth auction notice); Otago Daily Times 6 January 1864 p.4 (Spanish Restaurant advertisement); 22 March 1864 p.4 (SR advt); 14 April 1864 p.2 (SR advt); 1 November 1865 p.3 (SR advt); 3 November 1865 p.3 (SR advt); 24 August 1874 p.3 (description of fire); 30 September 1874 p.2 (description of rebuilding); 6 February 1875 p.2 (description of rebuilding); 24 January 1887 p.2 (fire); 18 September 1899 p.2 (Federal Coffee Palace); 3 October 1903 p.6 (Federal Private Hotel); 4 July 1908 p.12 (Bell Tea warehouse); 26 December 1908 p.13 (Bell Tea warehouse); 12 February 1909 p.7 (Mackechnie v. Bell); 7 January 1911 p.9 (Masonic Hotel description); 30 July 1938 p.5 (Todd Motors perspective drawing); 28 January 1939 p.11 (Todd Motors feature); 31 January 1939 p.4 (Todd Motors opening); 5 March 1971 p.1 (sale of Andrews & Beaven); 9 March 1971 p.1 (sale of building); 13 May 1972 p.13 (refurbishment); 16 December 1987 p.26 (European City perspective drawing); 3 March 1988 p.16 (European City opening); 5 November 1993 p.21 (European City closure); 23 August 1995 p.5 (Bedpost); 23 October 2003 p.8 (Bedpost); 6 October 2009 (Back to Bed); 2 February 2015 (facade restoration); 13 November 2021 (Toffs closure); Evening Star 3 September 1870 p.2 (SR advt), 22 August 1874 p.3 (description of fire); 13 June 1908 p.5 (Bell Tea warehouse); 22 December 1910 p.2 (Masonic Hotel); 11 July 1914 p.6 (Thomas Bracken); 12 September 1936 p.17 (closure of Masonic Private Hotel); 14 June 1941 p.13 (Angus Motors announcement); Bruce Herald 26 July 1895 p.3 (Nimmo & Blair); New Zealand Tablet 12 January 1877 p.17 (SR advt); Evening Post (Wellington) 16 February 1907 p.13 (Thomas Bracken).

Other sources:
Dunedin City Council building registers and deposited plans
Stone’s, Wise’s, and telephone directories
Clements, John Ingram Paul. Ready Aye Ready: 150 Years of Dunedin Fire Brigades, 1861-2011 (Dunedin: Dunedin Fire Brigade Restoration Society, 2010)
Kung, Melanie (with additional comments from Helen Edwards), ‘Jane Leung Chung’, retrieved from https://nzhistory.govt.nz/suffragist/jane-leung-chung
Sidney Kershaw papers. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. MS-5401/001.

This post is based on research I prepared for the Dunedin City Council in February 2015.

Scurr’s Buildings

6 Replies

Built: 1912 (back portion 1908-1909)
Address: 21-33 Princes Street
Architects: Salmond & Vanes (James Louis Salmond)
Builders: Callender & McLeod (back portion C.W. Wilkinson)

Otago Witness, 1 April 1914, p.41. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena.

In July 1935, Des Neilson attempted an 80-hour endurance record for stringed-instrument playing at the Green Parrot Tea and Dining Rooms, a basement café in Princes Street. The Evening Star reported:

Dunedin has stolen a march on America’s formidable list of ‘stunts,’ for never before has this one been attempted. At noon to-day, the youthful seeker of a Dominion record had played 44 of the intended 80 hours. Surrounded by a violin, a Spanish guitar, and a steel guitar (which accompanies his voice in yodelling numbers, just to break the monotony), Desmond reclined on a wicker settee, and told a reporter that his immediate wish was for a single feather bed. On a nearby table was an orange. His music has as yet made no difference to his diet, though his meals are varied by egg flips and beef tea. No, he is not tired, he asserts, but he certainly looks partly exhausted as his mitten-enclosed fingers quietly run across the strings of his instrument. Resort to massaging has been made, an attendant rubbing his back, stomach, and hands to the sound of vibrating strings. And when his audience is absent during long night hours he strolls up and down the floor to break the monotony. A signboard outside on the street and a periodic broadcast of his music by means of a microphone keep the public posted as to his progress.

A resident of King Edward Street, Des made regular concert appearances and radio broadcasts. At dances he led the Savonia Dance Band, formerly Dagg’s Band. Unfortunately, the record was not to be. Not long after speaking to the reporter he developed strong stomach pains and had to be assisted to a waiting car.

This is just one story of the buildings that have stood at 21-33 Princes Street since 1912. A long history precedes them. For centuries mana whenua sourced food, mahika kai, throughout the area. The site was at the northern foot of a large rocky promontory. To its south, at the mouth of Toitū stream, was the waka landing site of Ōtepoti.

The colonial built history dates from after surveying in 1846, with the partial formation of Princes Street across the promontory, which became known as Church Hill and then Bell Hill. Around 1850, the steep and muddy street was traversed by its first wheeled vehicle: a cart pulled by a bullock named Bob. A cutting was put through in 1858, and a photograph taken two years later shows a re-formed Princes Street and a ragged-looking Octagon. Set back from and below from the street is a one-storey building with vertical weatherboards and shingle roof. Much original vegetation is gone, but the photo shows some native flaxes and scrub, as well as the denser growth of the Town Belt.

Demolition of the top of the Bell Hill began in late 1862. Earlier that year, Thomas Corbett built a three-storey wooden building up to the street line, dwarfing the old one behind it. Its three shops faced Princes Street, including Corbett’s own drapery, with another level below where the land sharply dropped away. Offices above were leased to the Provincial Engineer’s Office, and the whole took the name ‘Provincial Buildings’. All buildings on the site were destroyed in 1865, in one of the devastating block fires of the period.

The Octagon in 1860. The site of 21-33 Princes Street is partially occupied by the building at the bottom left. William Meluish photographer. Te Papa O.030506.

The Octagon in 1862. The old building remains, attached to Corbett’s new Provincial Buildings. William Meluish photographer. Te Papa O.030515. A good view of the front of the building, photographed by Daniel Mundy, can be seen at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum.

Corbett had a replacement built, possibly to the design of W.T. Winchester, in fire-resistant brick and stone. A portion became the Rodney Hotel, soon renamed the South Australian Hotel, with a hall in which one of New Zealand’s first roller skating rinks opened in 1866. The next year another big fire struck, and Corbett’s was the only building to survive on the eastern side of Princes Street, between the Octagon and Moray Place. The pub became the West Coast Hotel in 1879 and a skittle alley was attached. It lost its license in 1891. Others businesses on the site included the Comet Café, and signwriting firm N. Leves & Co., which in the 1880s had decorative figures painted on the facade.

In 1882, Mary Gill opened her Mrs Gill & Co. millinery and drapery business. In its early years it specialised in underclothing and millinery. It expanded and became known for women’s and children’s clothing more generally, and for fabrics, while Gill also taught dressmaking. The business was sold to David G. Ford in 1903, to James Ross & Co. (Otago Drapery Company) in 1907, and later the same year to Jeffery Moody. Moody had been apprenticed to the drapery trade in London in the early 1870s, and recalled being told: ‘You must, of course, dress in keeping with the position. While on duty in the shop you will have to wear a frock coat, a white bow tie, and “diamond” studs’.

Detail from a Burton Brothers panorama, 1880. The first lamp belongs to the West Coast Hotel, and the second to the Comet Café. Between them is the shop of Leves & Scott (later N. Leves & Co.). The taller building is Charles Begg & Co. Te Papa C.012119.

A similar view from 1889. The verandah shows signage for Mrs Gill’s drapery. Leves & Co. have decorated the first floor facade. Burton Brothers photographers. Te Papa C.011961.

Baird’s Trust
Thomas Corbett died in 1898, and in 1900 his estate sold the property to Baird’s Trust. The trust had formed in 1895, when Borthwick Baird set aside a large part of his property for his nieces and nephews. Baird was born in Mid Calder, Scotland, in 1828. After a time in Australia he arrived in Otago in 1861. He was assistant to goldfields commissioner Vincent Pyke, gold receiver at Naseby, and clerk of the District Court of the Otago Goldfields. He became a wealthy investor and property owner, eventually purchasing Coronet Peak Station. His brother, Thomas Baird, was a storekeeper at Naseby. When Thomas died in 1897, Borthwick returned to his home village in Scotland, dying there in 1906.

New Buildings
The trust made a three-storey addition in brick, at the back of the property, in 1908. Salmond & Vanes designed it, and C.W. Wilkinson was the building contractor. The architects’ drawings show a handsome balustraded staircase and large rooms. Initially Jeffery Moody used this space, but his drapery was liquidated at the beginning of 1910 and the premises were taken on by Riedle & Scurr, land and financial agents and auctioneers. J.A.X. Riedle left the partnership in 1911, and the business changed its name to Scurr & Co.

Architectural drawing showing floor plans for the rear portion of the current buildings, erected 1908-1909. Salmond & Vanes architects. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-3821/2367.

Architectural drawing, foundation and sections, for the rear portion of the current buildings, erected 1908-1909. Salmond & Vanes architects. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-3821/2367.

In January 1912 the front building was found to be in danger of collapsing into the street. In March, tenders were called for putting up a four-storey replacement. Callender & McLeod were the builders and Salmond & Vanes were again the architects. Louis Salmond’s diary records him consulting with the clients, drawing the plans, writing the specification, and supervising the work. He noted completion of the building on 20 December 1912, although it was not ready to be occupied until about April 1913.

Built on a concrete foundation, the building has a brick superstructure. The specification stated that none of the 1860s structure was to be retained, although bluestone from the basement level could be used for packing-in concrete. The facade is in an Edwardian style with Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne influence. Though exhibiting the trend toward simplified composition, the level of decoration still suggests a prestige building, with Oamaru stone facings, balustraded parapet, dentil cornice, and cartouches. The exposed rather than plastered brickwork was in ascendant fashion. So too were the casement type windows, increasingly preferred over hung sashes. The uninterrupted bays between the first and second floors give a sense of verticality where the overall proportions of the building might have made it appear squat.

The building is sometimes referred to as Baird’s Building, and this name appears on the pediment in the original drawings. Once completed, however, it was known as Scurr’s Buildings. This was because the first major tenants were Scurr & Co., headed by Thomas Scurr, while upstairs were the rooms of lawyer Charles N. Scurr, the brother of Thomas.

Front elevation drawing [1912]. Salmond & Vanes architects. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-3821/2321.

Floor plans [1912]. Salmond & Vanes architects. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-3821/2321.

Sections and detail drawing [1912]. Salmond & Vanes architects. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-3821/2321.

A view from 1916. Note the tall chimneys, later removed. Cropped from a photograph by R. Vere Scott. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena Box-287-001.

The Ground Floor
Scurr & Co. had a double front to the street but were not there long. They moved out in 1914, when the drapers and ready-to-wear specialists F. & R. Woods Ltd took their place. The name Scurr’s Buildings was still in use as late as 1924 but changed to Woods’ Buildings. The smaller shop at the Octagon end was taken by Duncan & Simpson, booksellers and stationers, from 1913 until 1923, when Woods expanded into the space. Alterations in 1927 included a new shopfront, finished in oak with a granite base, and with an island window display. The leadlight glass, in contrasting black and white, was reported to be the first of its kind in Dunedin. New interior features included fibrous plaster ceilings and X-ray shade lights. F. & R. Woods also expanded into the first floor of the Strand Building on the north side, where they opened a showroom. Another feature was a ladies’ restroom with settee, easy chairs, and a supply of writing materials.

A plan of the rebuilt shopfront with island window display, installed in 1927. DCC Archives.

At the end of 1933 the ground floor was once again divided to create two shops. Woods remained in the larger one until 1935. The National Electrical & Engineering Co. briefly occupied it before it became the Dunedin City Corporation Electrical Showroom in 1936. They shared this space with the Gas Department Showroom from 1942, and there was a workshop in the basement. Gas moved to another site in 1957, but Electrical remained until 1980, when it moved to the new Energy Centre in the Civic Centre.

The DCC Electricity Department Showroom c.1970. DCC Archives, Electricity Department Series Photos 14/1/6/2.

Hallensteins, which had its menswear shop across the street, opened a footwear outlet in 1981. This operated until 1987 when the shop became Vanity Wear, which lasted until about 1992. Last year, Card Merchant Dunedin opened here.

Chin Bin Foon opened the Central Fruit Co. in the smaller shop in 1934. By then he had already established the larger Sun Fruit business in Rattray Street. At Central Fruit he went into partnership with his cousin Chin Yew Kwong, who managed the shop. More of its history is told in the excellent two-volume publication The Fruits of Our Labours: Chinese Fruit Shops in New Zealand. Three generations of the Chin family worked here before the business was sold in the 1970s, and the shop continued to trade until 2001. The next year a Subway fast food outlet opened, and it is still there today.

A little tobacconists and newsagents faced the street from the late 1930s. It was originally in the space in front of the stairs, but was moved into a small front part of the shop space to the north. It was successively run by W.C. Ruffell, K.E. Bardwell, Frederick Grave, and P.B. Devereux, and finally became Esquire Bookshop, which closed around 1985.

The First Floor
On the first floor was the barrister and solicitor Charles Nunn Scurr. In 1907 he had joined in partnership Alfred Barclay, whose practice dated back to 1887. The rooms were sparsely furnished with linoleum flooring, typical of professional offices, and warmed with smouldering coal fires. Scurr was the Mayor of St Kilda when he died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, aged only 37. His practice was taken over by Alf Neill, as Scurr & Neill. Through various partnerships it eventually became Ross Dowling Marquet Griffin. The space was extensively refurbished in the 1960s and the firm remained until it moved across the road in 1986. Its total of 73 years on the site is yet to be beaten.

Many took rooms for short tenancies. In 1917 Fred George, metaphysician and clairvoyant, offered vibratory and magnetic massage and promised ‘evil habits cured’. First-floor tenants with longer tenancies included the tailor George Reilly (1910s-1930s), piano and elocution teacher Florence Clifford (1910s-1920s), dressmaker and costumier Margaret Gebbie (1920s-1940s), photographic retoucher Mary Ritchie (1920s-1950s), timber agent and architect J.D. Woods (1930-40s), and photographic artist Jessie F. Pollock (1930s). Pollock had been an employee of the well-known photography firm Wrigglesworth & Binns. Her services included tinting and enlargements, and in 1932 she advertised: ‘Bring your cherished photographs to Miss J. Pollock and have a choice Miniature made’.

In January 1928 a fire broke out in Reilly’s workroom. This was gutted and the office of Alf Neill was also fire damaged, with records destroyed. Other levels of the building suffered smoke and water damage.

John Kernohan (1891-1975), a watchmaker and jeweller, had rooms on the first floor from 1919 until his retirement in 1964. Born in Dunedin, Kernohan had begun his apprentice with W.J. Paterson at the age of 14. An officer in the Machine Gun Corps during World War I, he was wounded at the Battle of Messines. He became particularly known for his work with clocks, and remarked that very few watchmakers liked handling them because they often had to visit houses and other buildings. He trained between fifteen and twenty apprentices. Kernohan was timekeeper for brass and pipe band competitions and a life member of the Horological Institute. In 1961 he and his wife Elizabeth organised an exhibition in Queenstown, of antique clocks gathered from around the country. ‘JK Jewellers’ continued to operate in the building for about five years after Kernohan’s retirement, and were then another four years in Moray Place.

’13th National Salon’ exhibition by the Dunedin Photographic Society, 1964. From Camera Craft: The Official Journal of the Dunedin Photographic Society (June 1964, p.8).

The Second Floor
The Civic Club, a billiard hall, was first on the top floor in 1913. It was promoted as handsomely and comfortably furnished, with five Alcock No. 5 commercial tables. ‘Novelty has been aimed at, but not overdone, and an effect has been obtained which is at once soothing and cheerful’. The Civic remained until its last proprietor, Hugh Healey, died in 1955. The Otago Art Society and Dunedin Photographic Society took a joint occupancy later that year. They refurbished the space and held exhibitions in it. The central location suited them well, but access was poor, with two flights of stairs and no lift. By 1963 the Art Society had moved its annual exhibitions to Otago Museum and in 1965 it moved out altogether. The Photographic Society stayed on until 1967.

The accountants Thomson & Lang moved in around 1968, remaining until about 1982. This firm had been founded by Thomas Henry Thompson in 1900 and operated until about 2015. In its later years it claimed to the oldest private accountancy firm in the world.

The Western Building Society, a Whanganui-based co-operative, also moved into the second floor in 1968. A new lift and staircase were installed in the summer of 1969-1970, much improving the access. Large neon signs were put up in 1970 and 1971. One on the roof replaced the one which since 1965 had advertised Bell Radio & TV. It gave the society’s name, while another on the facade gave the building’s new name: Western House. The rooftop sign survived until the 2010s. Western moved out about 1979 and merged with Countrywide in 1982. By then the ownership of the building had changed. It was the last asset of Baird’s Trust, which wound up following the sale of the building in 1976.

Since at least 2015 the upper floors have been home to The Learning Place, a vocational training institute.

A 1970s postcard, from the Octagon looking south. Colourchrome Series 4073.

‘Ern Society’. The last remaining part of the Western Building Society signage in 2013. It has since been removed.

The Basement
The basement was often used by the businesses immediately above, although at times others used it. In 1929 Woods’ drapery sublet it for an ‘Italian Art Exhibition’ managed by Antonio Salutini and directed by Giovanni Stella. This was a commercial venture and included marble statuary, advertised to ‘gladden your home with radiance of beauty and taste’. It included works by Rossi, Cambi, and Spinelli. The Green Parrot café, the scene of Des’s exploits, opened in the basement in 1932 and boasted ‘business men and women specially catered for’. In 1935 the Regent Dining Rooms replaced it, but only lasted a few months before closing. The auction of chattels included fourteen square tea tables, high-backed chairs, split cane occasional chairs, a seagrass settee, heavy linoleum, Axminster sofa rugs, Axminster carpet runners, and large wooden partitions.

As for our banjoist Des, later in the 1930s he performed as the ‘Yodelling Hobo’ as part of the Rosette All-Star Variety Company. He served overseas during the Second World War and was invalided home. Soon after he was jailed for breaking and entering, and theft. He later worked as a carpenter, moulder, and boilerman, and he died at Tokoroa in 1985. Following his session at the Green Parrot another man made the proprietor an offer, ‘to make an attack on the existing record for protracted piano playing’!

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times 11 March 1862 p.5 (Corbett’s building); 7 August 1865 p.5 (Corbett’s, reference to Winchester & Clayton); 28 December 1866 p.6 (skating rink), 5 April 1867 p.4 (fire); 15 April 1913 p.4 (billiard hall); 6 November 1913 p.11 (‘A Question of Rating: Corporation v. Baird’); 14 July 1917 p.1 (Fred George); 26 February 1921 p.7 (Pollock); 2 March 1932 p.1 (Pollock); 28 April 1932 p.9 (Green Parrot opening); 9 August 1927 p.10 (description of alterations); 31 October 1929 p.17 (Italian Art Exhibition); 13 December 1929 p.13 (Italian Art Exhibition); 11 August 1936 p.11 (Electrical showroom cooking demonstrations); 14 February 1942 p.5 (shared electrical and gas showrooms); 3 January 1976 p.8 (Kernohan obituary); 13 August 1986 p.31 (Ross Dowling Marquet Griffin).
Evening Star 22 October 1908 p.2 (additions at Moody’s); 13 February 1909 p.4 (builders nearly finished); 27 March 1909 p.5 (conveniences); 7 May 1909 p.10 (new fur department); 15 April 1913 p.6 (billiard hall); 7 November 1917 p.3 (Kernohan, World War I); 30 January 1928 p.6 (fire); 28 July 1932 p.11 (Green Parrot advertisement); 19 July 1935 p.10 (Des Neilson at the Green Parrot); 20 July 1935 p.14 (Des Neilson record attempt); 10 August 1935 p.17 (Regent Dining Rooms); 14 May 1935 p.10 (National Electric); 30 July 1935 p.14 (pianist offer to the Green Parrot); 15 October 1935 p.12 (Regent Dining Rooms auction); 13 August 1936 p,12 (National Electric withdrawal from retail); 18 March 1961 p.3 (Kernohan exhibition).
The Press (Christchurch) 20 September 1949 p.6 (93rd birthday of Jeffery Moody); 10 November 1982 p.27 (Western merger with Countrywide).
Manawatu Standard 21 September 1938 p.2 (Rosette All-Star Variety Company).

Other sources:
Duncan, Ian N., ‘The stories of the lives and descendants of Borthwick Robert Baird and Thomas Baird’. Hocken Collections Misc-MS-2029.
Ledgerwood, Norman. The Heart of the City: The Story of Dunedin’s Octagon (Dunedin: Norman Ledgerwood, 2008) pp.8-9.
Prictor, W.J., Dunedin 1898 [map], J. Wilkie & Co., Dunedin, 1898.
Tod, Frank. Pubs Galore: History of Dunedin Hotels 1848-1984 (Dunedin: Historical Publications, [1984]).
‘Dunedin family firm sets world record’ in Chartered Accountants Journal vol. 87 issue 5 (June 2008) pp.14-17.
Architectural drawings, Salmond Anderson Architects records, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-3821/2367 and MS-3821/2321.
Specification, Salmond Anderson Architects records, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-3821/2367 and MS-3821/0295.
Diaries, Salmond Anderson Architects records, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-4111/011 and MS-4111/012.
Council of Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations of New Zealand, block plans, 1927
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory
Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory
Telephone directories
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans

Plume, formerly the Ernest Adams shop

9 Replies

Built: 1909 (building), 1929 (shopfront)
Address: 310 George Street
Architects: James Clark (1909), Miller & White (1929)
Builders: George Lawrence (1909), Ross, King & Mullenger (1929)
Glass artist: Robert Fraser

The glasswork at Plume

The Adams Bruce Ltd shopfront, photographed by A.A. Ancell in 1929. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-2931/050/001.

An illustration of the rebranded Ernest Adams shop, from an advertisement in the Evening Star, 27 May 1936. Image courtesy of Allied Press through Papers Past.

The lead-lighted shopfront of Plume has added a touch of panache to George Street for over ninety years. Built for the retail bakery chain Adams Bruce Ltd in 1929, it originally showed off arrays of cakes and biscuits, and the company’s Queen Anne brand of chocolates. Just a few months after its completion, Adams Bruce split in two, and the South Island operation became Ernest Adams Ltd. The shop operated under this name for nearly fifty years.

Ernest Adams (1892-1976) was an English-born baker. His father, Herbert Adams (1860-1953), had owned a large bakery business in Taunton, Somerset. Herbert went bankrupt after planned expansion went wrong, but successfully re-established himself in Melbourne in 1909. He made his fortune and introduced mass-production cake baking to Australia, where the Herbert Adams brand survives to this day. Herbert’s sons followed him into the bakery trade and Ernest opened his own shop in Melbourne in 1915. He soon moved to Ballarat, where he married and did well in business, but tragically his wife died in childbirth. He moved briefly to Tasmania, and in 1921 decided to try his luck in New Zealand, where economic prospects looked brighter.

An Ernest Adams advertisement from 1934, outlining some of the product range. Christchurch Star, 30 August 1934.

Ernest met Hugh Bruce, an established baker in Christchurch, and they agreed to pool resources to form Adams Bruce Ltd. Ernest had already bought the Dunedin bakery of his brother, Joe, and within two months the new company had three shops in Christchurch, two in Dunedin, and one each in Timaru and Oamaru, with further distribution to independent ‘agencies’. This was also an eventful time for Ernest personally, with his marriage to Jean West in 1922. Early that year Adams Bruce expanded into the North Island, and by 1925 it used over four million eggs per year and even had its own poultry farm.

The first Dunedin shops were at George Street and Cargill’s Corner. A third shop opened at the Grand Hotel corner in 1922, and a fourth at the Gardens in 1928. Ernest initially lived in Dunedin, as did his three sisters, but in 1923 he moved to Christchurch, home to the Adams Bruce head office.

Adams Bruce expanded into chocolate, bringing over an expert from Canada and establishing a factory in Wellington. Launched in 1926 under the Queen Anne brand, the chocolates were sold both loose and in boxes, with a portrait representing the queen on the lid. This looked little like the real Queen Anne, with dress that appeared more Tudor than early eighteenth century, but the image served its marketing purpose well. The extensive product range included such delights as the Strathcona Vanilla Cream, Kismet (‘cocoanut cream’), Ginger Jellies, Nips (rum flavoured, with a darker coating), Gloucester (Brazil nut in cream), Trinidad Plain blocks, and marshmallow bars.

An advertisement for Queen Anne Maple Walnuts. Christchurch Star, 4 July 1929.

In 1929, Hugh Bruce decided to sell his share of the firm, but Ernest didn’t have enough capital to buy him out. Shareholders bought the North Island business and retained the Adams Bruce name. Ernest took ownership of the South Island assets and formed a new company, Ernest Adams Ltd. Each company agreed only to sell bakery products within its respective island. Adams Bruce retained the chocolate factory and operated separate Queen Anne shops in both the North and South islands. Ernest Adams continued to stock Queen Anne chocolates.

The George Street shop had moved only weeks before this restructuring, from 203 to 209 George Street. Those are the old street numbers. The current numbers date from 1950 and the move was from the northern half of where The Good Oil café is now (316 George Street) to the Plume site (310 George Street).

The existing building had been erected in 1909 for the bootmakers and repairers Lawry & Restieaux, with architect James Clark and builder George Lawrence replicating the facade treatment of an adjoining building on the corner of Hanover Street. Edward Walden had designed this in 1906 but it was demolished in 1991, so now only the mimic survives. The bullnose verandah on the 1909 building featured decorative cast ironwork by Brinsley & Co., bearing the words ‘Rugby House. Lawry & Restieaux. Bootmakers and Repairers’. The firm also had its name burned into tiles below the window frames. Fitted out in Oregon pine, the shop opened into a large ladies’ fitting room with adjoining lavatory. This lavatory was an important facility as there were no public conveniences for women in the central city until 1910. A single-storey workshop occupied the back of the property. Upstairs, a professional’s room faced the street, with a separate three-bedroom dwelling behind it.

Architect James Clark’s drawing for the new Lawry & Restieaux building of 1909. DCC Archives.

A postcard showing George Street in late 1909 or early 1910. Rugby House, the premises of Lawry & Restieaux, can be seen at the far left, adjoining similarly styled buildings demolished in 1991.

The building facade, 2023.

Detail of pilaster capital. Meg Davidson photo.

Lawry & Restieaux appeared to be flourishing, repairing 5,000 pairs of boots per year, but they lasted less than a year in their new premises. Other footwear businesses succeeded them: first Hilliker & Co., and then Rugby House Shoe Stores.

From the 1920s the building was owned by John Hillsdon Hutton (1873-1949), who since 1918 had operated a music and sports shop in the adjoining building to the north. It seems he used the top floors of both buildings, and for time ran a studio where he taught violin, piano, banjo, Hawaiian steel guitar, and other instruments. He is best known for owning Cargill’s Castle and opening a cabaret there. After serious illness he experienced a religious epiphany, and in 1944 he dedicated the castle as ‘a church to save souls, to heal the sick, and to help the distraught minds of the people of this country’. Part of his George Street buildings became the ‘Cargill’s Castle Mission Hall’.

Adams Bruce leased their premises from Hutton. Architects Miller & White designed the alterations made at the time of the move. The relatively new partners, Eric Miller and Jim White, had recently bought the local practice of Edmund Anscombe when he moved to Wellington. Their other late-1920s projects included the Regent Theatre, the Fels Wing of Otago Museum, and the remodelled Allbell Chambers in Stuart Street. Rodney Dalziel, the last principal of the firm, credited the Adams Bruce shopfront to Miller in particular, but I haven’t found any further evidence to confirm this. The drawing isn’t enough to go on. It looks more like White’s hand to me, but the practice was big enough to employ numbers of draughters adept at preparing finished drawings under the supervision of the principals and in the house style. The drawings show many aspects of the completed work, including the ‘birdcage’ entrance structure, the stylish doors, bevelled glass panels, and some of the lead-light patterns. A striking feature not shown is a stained glass Queen Anne emblem.

The Adams Bruce Ltd shopfront, photographed by A.A. Ancell in 1929. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-2931/050/002.

‘Proposed alterations to shop front George St for Messrs Adams Bruce Ltd’. Drawing by Miller & White, architects. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-2758/0554.

The clients presumably contributed to the design to some degree. A 1970s source attributes it to Jim Quin, who it turns out was both the first manager of the shop and Ernest Adams’ brother-in-law.

I almost gave up trying to identify the glass artist responsible for expanding upon and realising the vision. The building permit issued in June 1929 records the builders as Ross, King, & Mullenger, but the glass subcontractors are not named in council, architect, or newspaper records. The main local firms carrying out lead-lighting at this time were Smith & Smith, Arnold & Raffills, John Brock, and Fraser’s Art Glass Works. It was only when looking through my photos that I saw ‘Queen Anne’ had been staring me in the face with the answer the whole time! Her background is subtly signed ‘R.H.F.’. These are the initials of Robert Henry Fraser of Fraser’s Art Glass Works. He was one the country’s best glass artists and his work featured in many churches, houses, and commercial premises. He produced lead-lights but was best known for his stained glass. Examples of his work include the Stuart Memorial window in Knox Church, several panels in the house Melrose on Highgate, and the Salisbury Cathedral window for Arthur Barnett Ltd (now in the Meridian Mall).

‘Birdcage’ glasswork

The Queen Anne emblem

Robert Fraser’s initials: R.H.F.

The original doors with their bevel-edged glass happily survive, although a carved feature above them has long gone. Granite facings have twice been covered over, the last time when found to be too damaged to practically restore. A rubber carpet with the firm’s monogram in the centre reportedly led to the front door, but it is not seen in early images. The 1929 changes included the replacement of the original verandah with a suspended one, and this might have been when steel-framed windows replaced the original wooden sashes on the first floor. Pressed metal ceilings date back to the original Edwardian build.

The ‘birdcage’ glasswork seen from inside the shop, photographed by Meg Davidson in 2013

Ceiling rose, photographed by Meg Davidson in 2013

The elaborate shopfront reflected the successful marketing strategies of the Adams family companies. In Australia, Herbert Adams put his shops on streets with heavy foot traffic, presenting massed displays of cakes on glass shelves, often with their cut faces to the window. Ernest made similarly special features of his window displays.

Ernest Adams Ltd removed its George Street commercial bakery to new buildings in Great King Street in 1931, with Miller & White again employed as architects. The bakery stood where the Bella Vista Motel is now.

Gourley’s delicatessen, or ‘Delicacies Ltd’, shared the shop between 1931 and 1950. This business was well-known for its pies, meats, and ready-cooked meals.

Gourley’s delicatessen advertisement from the Otago Daily Times, 20 December 1934

After the Second World War, the centre of shopping activity shifted northward, benefitting some established George Street businesses. Small business associations formed to promote their own particular blocks. The block with Arthur Barnett, Penroses, and the DSA, was promoted as the Golden Block from 1956. Malls opened here: Harvest Court (1970), the Golden Centre (1979) and Centre City Arcade (1985). The block to the north, which included the Ernest Adams shop, contained many small businesses. From 1955 its business association marketed it as the Progressive Shopping Centre. In 1977 this name gave way to New Edinburgh Way. The Dunedin City Council and its architect Bill Hesson supported a project that aimed to facelift the businesses ‘in authentic style and colours of the early twentieth century’. Verandah fascias were painted in dark red, giving something of a unifying effect. The Ernest Adams shop fitted right in with the new theme, one article stating: ‘Old-fashioned goodness is a key-phrase at Ernest Adams and in its windows you can still see the cakes that grandmother might have bought fifty years ago when she was too busy to bake. There are simnel cakes, Genoa fruit cakes and even Napoleon sponges.’

In 1974, Ernest Adams bought out the bakery business of Adams Bruce, reuniting the firms and creating a nationwide company. The company decided to rationalise its business, phase out the retail shops, and concentrate on distributing its products wholesale. The George Street shop closed on 3 August 1979. Control of the company fell to a corporate raid in 1995, leading to the end of Adams family involvement. The Great King Street bakery closed that year, and Goodman Fielder bought the business in 2000. The Ernest Adams brand continued until 2022, when Goodman Fielder deleted the range without offering its customers even the courtesy of an announcement. The Queen Anne brand had been withdrawn in 1976 but remained a separate entity. It was successfully relaunched by Sarah Adams, granddaughter of Ernest, in 2011.

Margarita and Chris Robertson opened Plume in 1979 and the space has retailed exclusive ranges of fashion for 44 years – nearly as long as it offered Ernest Adams cakes! Margarita launched the now famous label NOM*d (as in nom-de-plume) in 1986 and you can read about its nationally significant history at the New Zealand Fashion Museum. In 1994 the retail space at 310 George Street nearly doubled when a new steel stairway opened up the shop into the disused first-floor flat. The alterations retained many heritage features. As it did in 1929, the shopfront continues to impress, and it seems as well suited to promoting clothing as to showing off tasty treats to eat.

310 George Street is listed as a Category 2 Historic Place by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

The Plume shop interior in 2010. Photo by Dunedin NZ on Flickr (CC-BY-ND).

The Plume entrance in 2010. Photo by Dunedin NZ on Flickr (CC-BY-ND).

Newspaper references:
Evening Star 1 October 1909 p.6 (Lawry & Restieaux opening), 10 September 1929 p.2 (brief description in ‘The Home Builder’), 19 May 1936 p.10 (Gourley’s), 6 July 1938 p.16 (advertisement listing Ernest Adams shops and agencies), 2 November 1940 p.1 (J.H. Hutton, above Ernest Adams), 19 January 1945 p.5 (Hutton and Cargill’s Castle); Otago Daily Times 1 October 1909 p.7 (Lawry & Restieaux opening), 24 July 1925 p.12 (four million eggs), 8 May 1933 p.8 (fire, ownership), 19 May 1936 p.9 (brief history of Gourley’s Delicatessen), 24 October 1950 p.9 (closure of Gourley’s George Street branch), 30 November 1967 p.14 (Progressive Shopping Centre feature), 29 November 1977 p.16 (New Edinburgh Way feature); 27 September 1978 p.9 (New Edinburgh Way, James Quin), 24 July 1979 p.12 (closure of Ernest Adams George Street shop), 29 September 1995 p.19 (closure of Great King Street bakery), 21 September 1994 pp.32-33 (Plume supplement); Auckland Star 28 August 1931 p.10 (Queen Anne range); New Zealand Herald 18 September 1931 p.3 (Queen Anne range).

Other sources:
Adams, Hugh. A Baker’s Tale: The Life and Times of Ernest Adams (Christchurch: Hazard Press, 2005).
Ledger (Miller & White) from Dalziel Architects records MS-2758/0146, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena
Entwisle, Peter. Schedule Heritage Place Report B126 for the Dunedin City Council, 2013.
Stone’s, Wise’s and telephone directories
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans

Acknowledgments:
Special thanks to Meg Davidson, for her interior photographs; to Brian Miller, for sharing his expert knowledge of glass artists; Prue Milbank, for help with council records; and to the late Peter Entwisle, with whom I discussed the history of the building back in 2013. Hugh Adams’ book, referenced above, is a great read and a mine of information.

Philip Laing House, the former Government Life Building

4 Replies

Built: 1971-1973
Address: 144 Rattray Street
Architects: Collins, Hunt & Associates
Structural consulting engineers: E.G.S. Powell, Fenwick & Partners
Main contractor: Naylor Love Construction Ltd

Philip Laing House opened fifty years ago today. Not that it had that name then – it was the Government Life Building. The Government Life Insurance Office had been set up in 1869 with government capital, in response to concerns about the affordability and security of life insurance. It was New Zealand’s first major life insurance provider with a network of offices, and in 1877 it was bigger than all of its rivals combined. It dominated the local market for more than a century.

In 1885, Government Life purchased a property at the corner of Princes and Rattray Street, including what had been Ross & Kilgour’s store. Built in 1860, and later extended, this was one of the city’s earliest stone buildings. The location became known as Wise’s Corner due to its association with the publisher, stationer, and printer Henry Wise. After occupying the old buildings for some years, Government Life had a lavishly-appointed new building designed by Mason & Wales erected for it between 1895 and 1897. It housed them, other government departments, and various tenants, for more than seventy years, but sadly ended its days in a rundown and mutilated state.

A new nine-storey building was announced in 1970. Demolition work ended around January the following year. The cost was over $1.8 million dollars, which adjusted for inflation (imperfect as these comparisons are) is about $30 million in today’s money.

The architects were Collins, Hunt & Associates of Christchurch, long-standing architects to Government Life. They were the second-oldest architectural firm in the country after Mason & Wales, having been founded by William Armson in 1864, and through various names and partnerships they practiced until 1993. John Kempthorne Collins (1916-1983), principal and apparently the lead architect for the Dunedin project, was from the third generation of his family in the business. Naylor Love were the main contractors and C.T. Morgan, formerly the council’s chief building inspector, was the clerk of works.

Largely complete by the end of 1972, the building was officially opened by Roger Douglas on 15 August 1973. Then the youngest member of Norman Kirk’s cabinet, thirty-five-year-old Douglas was Postmaster-General and the minister in charge of the Government Life Insurance Office. He said it was pleasing that, despite a population drift to the north, the office could build such impressive structures, ‘knowing there are plenty of South Islanders left who require insurance policies’. Also present was James Barnes, the mayor, who in full booster mode said: ‘This city is certainly on the march. No longer have we any idea that we are in the backwash of New Zealand. We will not stop making progress’. Dunedin Central MP Brian MacDonell, the other guest speaker, said the building was evidence of the government’s policy of placing departments in towns and cities outside Wellington. These words all reflected an optimistic view that the city might be pulling itself out of stagnation.

The building is 40 metres tall, built with 9,624 tons of concrete and 371 tons of steel. The street facades have vertical shafts of grey Tākaka margle, ‘relieved by the vertical lines of white window reveals and coloured tiled spandrels between them’. The current tiles are not the originals. The main entrance from Rattray Street led to three lifts. This space was panelled in marble, with marble and quartzite tiles on the floor and a bright orange-spangled ceiling. It was later renovated in a more sober modern fashion, but some original features remain.

A few other features of the building included radiant ceiling panels, fluorescent lighting, and reversible windows, so both sides of could be cleaned from the inside. Oil stored in the basement was pumped to the boilerhouse on the roof, where other services were also housed.

Government Life did not need most of the building – it occupied the ground and first floor at the corner. The Department of Social Welfare occupied a significant portion, and the top floors were used by the Ministry of Works. Three shops faced Princes Street.

Government Life became Tower Corporation in 1987, and the building was sold in 1988. It was after this that it was named Philip Laing House, after the second of the colonist ships to arrive in Otago in 1848, and a nod to the even larger John Wickliffe House diagonally opposite.

In 1991, Tower Insurance announced it was moving its office to Moray Place. By this time ownership of the company had transferred to the policy holders, and in 1999 the company was demutualised. Its old building continues to make itself useful.

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times 13 January 1885 p.2 (purchase of property), 15 August 1973 pp.16-17 (supplement), 16 August 1973 p.8 (report of opening), 15 July 1988 p.3 (sale).

Lost Dunedin #6: Janitor’s house, Otago Boys’ High School

2 Replies

Built: 1885
Address: 18 Arthur Street
Architect: John Somerville
Builder: William Duncan
Demolished 1971

The house in September 1964. Gary Blackman photographer. From a Kodachrome slide.

Gary Blackman’s beautiful Kodachrome image of the janitor’s house at Otago Boys’ High School in 1964 has inspired me to look at the history of the building, demolished over fifty years ago.

The school used the title of janitor for its caretaker until about 1980. The janitor’s tasks included maintaining the playing areas and other grounds, managing lost property, recording absenteeism, first aid, and supervising the ‘fatigues’ issued as punishments.

The janitor’s residence was immediately to the left of the main school entrance on Arthur Street. It was built fairly quickly in the early months of 1885, just as the school was moving from its original site where Otago Girls’ High School is now. The main stone building, designed by R.A. Lawson, had taken two years to build and was formally opened in February 1885.

John Somerville, not Lawson, designed the janitor’s house. Somerville’s main salaried employment was as the Otago Education Board architect. He also worked for the Otago High Schools Board of Governors, the body responsible for the management of Dunedin’s two public high schools.

William Duncan won the contract to build the house, for the modest sum of £228. This was approximately a year’s wages for a senior clerk or teacher. The contract price for the main building had been nearly £15,000. The house was built largely of Baltic pine, with some kauri, in a carpenter gothic style with a distinctive steeply-pitched roof and carved bargeboards.

‘Dunedin North’ by Burton Brothers. Te Papa O.000988. The photograph was taken between 1887 and 1890. The janitor’s house can be seen to the right of the main school building. In the foreground is the then new Arthur Street School Infant Department building.

Detail from the Burton Brothers photograph.

The janitors who lived in this house, and their dates of occupation, were:

John Wallace 1885-1902
Edward Carter 1903-1934
David McEwen Hall Hanlin 1934-1960
William James Hammond 1960-1966
William Kirkland 1966-c.1969 (continuing as janitor to 1975)

The first, John Wallace, was one of 86 applicants for the position. He lived in the house with his wife Maggie and their five children, staying in the job for seventeen years. One of the children, also named Maggie, died at the house in 1896, aged 20. I have not found out much more about the family. John was born in Innerleithen, in the Scottish Borders, and also worked as a carpenter. He appealed against cuts made to his salary when the school went through a period of straightened finances. He later lived in Dundas Street and died in Auckland in 1923, aged about eighty (sources vary). Maggie died in 1930.

The longest-serving janitor was Edward Carter, better known as Nick, who took up the position in 1903. Born in Dunedin in 1869, he had worked as a gardener and married Martha Murdoch in 1895. Martha and Nick moved into the janitor’s house with four children under the age of thirteen, and another two would be born after the move. The youngest, John, died at the age of just two weeks. Martha died in 1915, aged 45.

Nick was described by one former Otago Boys’ pupil as ‘small and nondescript’, someone who would have made a good spy! ‘Many of us can still see him as he toddled from room to room with the absence book or up to the dais in the hall to ring the handbell at the end of a spell’. He was a skilled gardener and produced beautiful displays of spring flowers. He built a rock garden next to the house, beside the front entrance. Nick remarried, to Florence Evans, in 1926. The couple were presented with a suitcase, a pair of vases, and an enthusiastic haka by the schoolboys. After more than thirty years in the job, Nick Carter retired in 1934. He died in 1942, and Florence in 1949.

I have found no informative sources about what life was like for the janitor’s wife, living on the school grounds. Perhaps this post might elicit something.

David and Louisa Hanlin came to the house with their two children in 1934, during the later part of the Great Depression. Davie, as he was known, was selected from 171 applicants. Born in Glasgow in 1895, he came to Otago in 1912 and worked with his father in a cartage and contracting business in Mosgiel. He served in France in the First World War, in the Machine-Gun Section of the 23rd Reinforcements, Specialist Company. He would be part of National Reserve in the Second World War, and afterwards had a long association with the RSA. An accomplished association football player, he had played for the Southern and Mosgiel clubs. He was highly regarded as a coach, including of the High School Old Boys’ Team, and was a soccer writer for both the Otago Daily Times and the Evening Star. He was given the title of assistant rector because one of his duties was to ring the bell that called the school to order. He was also known to have Scotch broth for lunch every day of the year, no matter what the weather! Davie Hanlin retired in 1960 and died in 1985, aged 90. Louisa, who was born in Middlemarch, died in 1986 at the age of 92.

The north front of the house in the early 1960s. From the Old Boys’ Register.

Bill Hammond was janitor from 1960 to 1966. It seems he later worked as a swimming pool manager in Timaru, and as a security officer in Auckland.

William Kirkland took over in 1966 and was the last janitor to live in the old house, with his wife May. They moved out about 1969, when the building became vacant. William described it as ‘still quite serviceable’. Nevertheless, it came down in the first weeks of January 1971.

The Otago Daily Times reported: ‘There will be many who will regret the demise of this charming house and who will wonder whether its end was absolutely necessary’. The reason given for the demolition was the re-landscaping of the area, with a larger entrance to the school. One regular passerby, who was asked for comment by the reporter, thought it a great pity. She said something could have been done to save the building, possibly by moving it. Two years later, even the main stone building faced demolition. It was saved only after lobbying and objections, and a change of heart from the school governors and ministry officials. For those interested, Rory Sweetman’s superbly researched and very readable history of the school, Above the City, gives more information about this.

Happily, the main building survives and has been strengthened, but the long-gone janitor’s house fades further from memory. If you have memories of it, please do share them in the comments.

Newspaper references:
New Zealand Herald 26 January 1923 p.2 (death of John Wallace).
Otago Daily Times, 8 January 1971 p.9 (‘Early Dunedin building is being demolished), 18 December 1985, p.3 (‘Fond memories of caretaker’, David Hanlin), 27 April 2015 p.3 (‘Veteran to lay poppy for Dad’).

Other sources:
Griffiths, G.J. and E.J. McCoy. Otago Boys’ High School and its Historic Neighbourhood. Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1983.
Sweetman, Rory. ‘Above the City’: A History of Otago Boys’ High School. Dunedin: Otago Boys’ High School Foundation, 2013.
Magazine, Otago Boys’ High School (including staff lists).
Otago Boys’ High School Old Boys Register. Dunedin: Otago High School Old Boys’ Society, 1963.
Electoral rolls
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory
Minute book, AG-266/002, from Otago High Schools Board records, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena.
Voucher book, AG-266/067, from Otago High Schools Board records
Ancestry.com genealogical resources

Daniel Heenan’s mausoleum

9 Replies

Built: 1900-1901
Address: West Taieri Cemetery, 1130 Lee Stream-Outram Road
Architects: Mason & Wales
Builders: J.W. Joseph contractor, William Dick stonemason

On the outskirts of Outram is the picturesque West Taieri Cemetery. It sits beside the highway to Middlemarch, as the road begins its ascent of the foothills. Maukaatua presides over the landscape from the southwest. Not far beyond the gates is a striking Gothic mausoleum – an unexpectedly big memorial to come across in a rural Otago burial ground. On closer inspection a plaque is found above the doorway. It tells us this pointy pentagonal pile is the resting place of Daniel Heenan, who died on 9 December 1898, aged 59. I would say final resting place, but… more of that later.

The only grander Dunedin memorials I can think of are the one built for the Larnach family in the Southern Cemetery, and the now mostly demolished one for Bishop Moran in the Southern Cemetery. These were different in conception, being mortuary or memorial chapels with the coffins in vaults beneath them. Daniel Heenan’s remains are above the ground.

Ngaire Ockwell transcribed many of the West Taieri Cemetery headstones in 1979. Daniel’s story had become part of local legend, and Ngaire recorded what she was told:

Daniel was a farmer, and prized the possession of land. He had arranged that on his death, he was not to be buried, but to be laid to rest above ground. This was accomplished by the building of the […] mausoleum, which contains inside it, clearly visible because of the open wrought-iron work of the door, two concrete shelves. On one of these shelves, in a very plain, shallow, wooden coffin, are the human remains of Daniel. I can’t help wondering how long very dry wood can stay in the form of a coffin, while borer busily devour it? The remaining shelf was to accommodate Daniel’s friend. Together, when Christ came to the earth for the second time, Daniel and Friend, as believers in God, would rise up as promised. Logically, as they were not beneath the ground to start with, they would be the first to ‘arise’ and in that instant, they would claim all of the good Taieri land they desired, before the ‘others’ appeared.

Daniel departed this life first, and duly took up his place on a shelf, but his friend’s wife would have none of this nonsense and saw to it that on becoming a widow, her husband was decently buried in the accepted manner. So the second shelf remains vacant and presumably Daniel is free to claim all the Taieri land he desires, without the need to share!

How much of this intriguing tale is true? Ngaire was careful to include a cautionary note stating she had not verified what she was told. Since then, short versions of Daniel’s story have been published from time to time, usually along the lines of the above. What follows is my effort to piece together more than has been told before, and separate some fact from fiction.

Daniel was born in the market town of Birr (then known as Parsonstown) in County Offaly, Ireland, in 1835. He was the fifth of thirteen children of farmers Dennis and Johanna Heenan. Birr had large Catholic and Church of Ireland (Anglican) churches, as well as independent and Wesleyan chapels, and a Quaker meeting house. The Heenans were Catholic until what was known as the Crotty Schism split the local church.

The former Crotty chapel in BIrr. Image courtesy of the BIrr Heritage Centre.

Michael Crotty, the parish’s disaffected curate, began preaching independently in 1826. He found popular support, particularly among the poorer members of the community. For a while his masses attracted higher attendance than the original church. Michael’s cousin William became co-leader, and together the Crottys increasingly adopted a reformed doctrine. From 1836 this included an English mass. The cousins had a volatile off-and-on collaboration and eventually split over divergent allegiances to the Anglican and Presbyterian churches. William took sole charge and adopted the Presbyterian form of worship, with the congregation joining the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster in 1839. Internal division, external hostility, famine, and emigration, all contributed to a sharp decline in membership and the Crotty movement petered out in the 1840s.

The Heenans maintained their Presbyterian affiliation and were still at Birr about 1848. In 1850, Daniel’s parents and ten of his siblings emigrated from Portsmouth, England, on the ship Mariner, arriving in Otago in September. Daniel’s older brother had come out the year before, and another sister would be born in Dunedin.

Settling in North East Valley, the family established a small farm off what is now Norwood Street, Normanby. They cleared bush and built a fern hut thatched with mānuka bark. For food they caught wild pigs, kererū, and weka. Their first crops included potatoes, grown within log fences to protect them from the pigs. While establishing themselves they were helped by mana whenua Māori, who supplied mangā (barracouta) and kūmara.

The Heenans gradually cultivated more land and Dennis took up cattle breeding. The family home was the first dwelling seen when entering the valley from the north, and Susannah offered warm hospitality to passing tramps and other travellers. She was known to sometimes break into spontaneous, exclamatory prayer. Dennis was described as ‘a stalwart man, to whom persevering work was a delight’. In the mid-1850s he took up an additional and larger tract of land in West Taieri, and some of sons would end up managing the family properties. Active Presbyterians, Dennis and Susannah were members of Dunedin’s Knox Church from its establishment in 1860.

In the mid-1850s Daniel followed his two older brothers to the Australian goldfields, working his passage on a small schooner and arriving with only sixpence in his pocket. Over about ten months in Bendigo the brothers made £600 between them. Daniel operated a team of horses in Victoria for three years before returning to Dunedin in the Otago Gold Rush. In 1862 he was briefly in partnership with his eldest brother, Dennis, building and operating the British Hotel in Dunedin. Daniel then ran a successful business carting goods to the Tuapeka and Dunstan diggings, obtaining as much as £100 per ton of freight, but it was difficult work and he lost one of his best horses when ‘snowed up’ on the Lammerlaw Range.

Daniel next turned to farming, taking up freehold and leasehold land in the Maungatua District. The 1882 return of freeholders records him with 331 acres here, while three of his brothers had larger landholdings in the same district. Daniel’s oat threshing machine was put to much use, and in 1892 did all of the threshing for the Hindon District.

Daniel never married. He served on local committees, including the road board. He was associated with the West Taieri Presbyterian Church in the 1870s, and was an enthusiastic proponent of building a new church at Maungatua in 1879. He eventually became disaffected with Presbyterianism. It is tempting to connect this with an 1892 report, which would at least refer to someone Daniel knew:

A rather unusual circumstance occurred at the Maungatua Presbyterian Church. According to a correspondent of the Taieri Advocate one of the congregation interrupted the Rev. Mr Kirkland’s sermon on Justification, Sanctification, and Faith, by standing up with Bible in hand and saying, ‘I can’t listen to ye anither meenit. Ye are just makin’ a perfec’ hash o’ God’s truths. Frae this book (holding up the Bible) I get comfort and counsel ; but from you I can get neither one nor the other’; and after thus delivering himself he walked out of the church. The minister paid no attention to the matter beyond saying, ‘Poor Mr – I am afraid he has misunderstood me.’

What is known is that Daniel left Presbyterian Church and joined the Christadelphians. He was almost certainly among those who heard the Christadelphian leader Robert Roberts, during his lecture tour in 1896. Roberts preached at Dunedin’s Choral Hall, as well as at Green Island and Mosgiel.

Christadelphians claim to represent the true faith as revived by John Thomas of Brooklyn, New York. Thomas was an English-born restorationist whose movement gained momentum after his 1848-50 tour of the United Kingdom. Christadelphians believe Jesus Christ was a man, not God, and reject the Trinity doctrine as unbiblical. They do not believe in the immortality of the soul and hold that nobody goes to heaven upon death. They say that with the second coming of Christ there will be a resurrection and God’s kingdom will be established on Earth. Christadelphians do not have ordained ministry and local churches are autonomous. Since the start of their movement they have conscientiously objected to war.

The 1896 census records 952 Christadelphians in New Zealand, with 381 in Otago and 32 in the Taieri District. One of the more active groups was at Green Island. In 1898, Gilbert McDiarmid gave a lecture at Hindon on the principles of the Christadelphian movement. McDiarmid was a labourer from a well-known West Taieri farming family, and a newspaper report described him as a fluent and well-informed man who impressed with his earnestness and belief. It was Daniel who introduced the lecture. The Otago Witness reported:

Mr Heenan is evidently an enthusiastic believer in the Christadelphian religion. His rich Irish accent when speaking of the ‘sky hevvins’ was amusing in spite of the solemness of the subject, and many could hardly restrain a smile. Mr McDermid was listened to attentively by his audience, and I venture to assert that if he comes again he will have a larger congregation.

A correspondent to the paper protested that ‘sky hevvins’ was a mishearing, but whatever was said, Daniel’s earnestness cannot be doubted. About this time he became sick, and after an illness of six months he died at a private hospital in High Street, Dunedin, on 9 December 1898, His death registration records his cause of death as heart failure.

Daniel left a convoluted will and a large estate valued at £4,147. To give that figure some context, most school teachers of the time were paid less than £200 per year. The executors were Gilbert McDiarmid and Outram man William Charles Snow. The will was signed in October 1896, and a codicil just three days before Daniel died.

Heenan made monetary bequests to fourteen people, some of them children, totalling £625. McDiarmid received the books and household furniture, and a ‘rich-toned piano’ was sold. £50 was left to Robert Roberts, for the benefit of orphaned Christadelphian children, and £100 was set aside for the erection of a Christadelphian Hall on freehold land. For such a modest sum a small wooden building would have been the most that was affordable. The probate file records that the expenditure was made and a title secured, but I have not found any trace of the building.

Land was left to Daniel’s brother John, to his nephews James Heenan and James Baxter, and to Herbert Scott. Some sections were bequeathed on the condition of a payment to a Christadelphian fund in Birmingham for the relief of destitute Jews, and another on a rental basis, the income to be used to fund annual prizes for local children with Christadelphian parents. The property left to minors went into trust, and if they died before the age of 30 it was to be spent on Christadelphian literature, or to go towards the hall. In return for some land, Baxter was required to pay an annuity towards the relief of destitute Christadelphians ‘of good repute’.

Daniel specified his mausoleum was to be built ‘in some convenient cemetery’. He left £25 for the purchase of plots and £500 for erecting the building. This was more than the average cost of a three-bedroom home. He instructed:

The dimensions shall be 14 feet by 12 feet by 18 feet in height. The walls shall be two feet in thickness of good Portland cement built upon a good rock foundation and with cement benches in the vault to accommodate any of my friends or relations as well as myself. And I direct my Executor to have the following words engraved on a plate fixed on the vault “Go home, my friends, and shed no tears, I must rest here till Christ appears, And when he comes I know that I shall rise, And get from Him the everlasting prize.” “This is my earnest hope”. I direct that my body shall be enclosed in a leaden coffin.

An extract from Daniel Heenan’s will (1896).

The plaque on the mausoleum, manufactured by Moller & Sons.

Daniel’s body was temporarily interred on 12 December 1898. Nearly a year passed before, in November 1899, Gilbert McDiarmid approached the architects Mason & Wales. Patrick Young Wales, then the sole director of the firm, sent a sketch for approval in January 1900.

Fortunately, the wonderful archive of Mason & Wales records details of the job. Daniel had not specified whether his remains were to be above or below ground, or at least not in his will. It was Wales who suggested:

Instead of placing the vault underground which would be damp and difficult to ventilate, we propose that the building be wholly above ground, and five sided instead of square, each side measuring 7ft inside. This will give space for twelve or sixteen coffins according to the number of shelves put in, the first being raised a few inches above the floor.

What a lot of coffins! The letter from Wales records more details of the original design:

We propose to set the building on concrete foundations using the Port Chalmers stone you have on the ground for the base course and Oamaru stone for the walls and inside of roof and slated outside. The height of the walls &c 12 ft. The roof will rise 12 ft making the total height above ground 24 ft.
We have shown the door as passed of wood solid and a window on each side. These may be built up solid showing panels instead and the door may be fitted with an iron grill leaving the interior exposed to view which we think would be preferable.
Perhaps we should say why we have made the place five sided instead of square. The size of the ground 15 ft by 14 ft would not, after the thickness of the walls are deducted, have room on any side for two coffins in the length so that with the door on one side, there would only be three sides where coffins could be placed and only one on each side where with the pentagonal form we have four sides with room for one coffin on each side.

Architectural perspective of the mausoleum by Patrick Young Wales, as approved by William Snow for the Cemetery Committee, but later revised.

In February, McDiarmid advised the site had been changed for a smaller one. This necessitated reducing the scale of the building, and no longer allowed for coffins on all sides. Despite the reduction the estimated cost still came in over the £500 allocated. The scale was reduced without altering the design, although Wales suggested the iron door could be plainer, the spire could be timber framed and slated instead of stone, and tracery work could be omitted from the gables. He also raised the possibility of building in concrete, or cement-plastered brick.

A new drawing was ready in May. After tender the contract was awarded to John W. Joseph of Woodside on 7 June 1900, his tender being £420. The specification stated that materials were to be obtained through Mr Snow, and local labour was to be used where possible. It also stated that the plaque should give Heenan’s age as 61, but this was changed to 59, and some sources suggest his actual age was probably closer to 63. Moller & Sons manufactured the plaque.

In early August, Wales made new drawings and working copies, including one for the door. He must have been disappointed and was likely annoyed when, on 29 August, McDiarmid wrote to say he no longer required him to supervise the job. McDiarmid said he intended to simplify some things in connection with the plan ‘so as to leave (at least) a payable wage’ to the contractor. In a separate note he wrote:

I am sorry things turned out as they have, I thought you understood that the contract was to be flexible. The body of true believers that I belong to would never think of holding anyone to a contract rigidly that would not pay him. That is the way of the world and the so-called Christian world too but Christendom is Astray in doctrine and practice, but it is not so among us. […] Mr Dick is a magnificent craftsman and is making a beautiful job, I am sure we would all be pleased if you came and had a look unofficially at your design being executed.

That Mr Dick was William Dick of Sandymount can be confirmed by a 1970s reference to a plan of the monument in the Dick family’s possession. William Dick was a master stonemason. Born in 1837, his wealth of experience included much of the work at Larnach Castle, the Portobello Bay Road and other roads, and his own stone farmhouse, ‘Luscar’. Among his monumental work was the headstone for Kāi Tahu rangatira Te Mātenga Taiaroa at Ōtākou.

The newly-completed mausoleum, with stone still on the ground. Otago Witness 15 May 1901. George Hicks photographer. Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena.

Presumably Dick acted as subcontractor to John Joseph, who was himself a stonemason and monumental mason, as well as a brick maker. Joseph was also a Christadelphian. The only other mausoleum in the West Taieri Cemetery is one built for John’s wife Elizabeth, who died in 1882. John died in 1907 and was also laid to rest there. There is a note in the burial register that Elizabeth had been interred in another plot. I don’t know when the Joseph mausoleum was erected, but the plot was purchased in June 1883. Gilbert McDiarmid died in 1909 and is buried in the cemetery, but without memorial. Possibly his widow, Janet, was the person described to Ngaire Ockwell as the widow wanting ‘none of this nonsense’.

The mausoleum of Elizabeth and John Joseph.

Daniel’s remains were disinterred and moved to his new mausoleum around the autumn of 1901.

This is about as much as I have found out. If some points are unsettled, it at least seems improbable that Daniel was itching to claim the best farmland on the day of resurrection. There is no record of him directing his coffin to be above ground – it is not in his will, and if his executors had been given additional instructions then the architect would not have needed to make the suggestion. The words Daniel chose refer to receiving ‘the everlasting prize’. It was heaven on earth he was looking forward to.

His monument has captured imaginations over the last 120 years, and is still a place of some mystery. I will leave you with the childhood memory of Madeline Orlowski Anderson. Born in 1907, she described Dan Heenan as a local character who ‘had a gadget built over his grave with a glass front and a suit of clothes in it, there for him to use when he returned. He was coming back. It was a box with a door. I’ve seen it. It was quite a good suit waiting for him.’

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times 22 February 1866 p.5 (British Hotel partnership); 26 April 1879 p.20 (proposed new church); 21 July 1890 p,4 (Johanna Heenan obituary); 6 November 1899 p.8 (piano); 16 April 1904 p.5 (William Dick), 17 October 1974 p.14 (William Dick)
Otago Witness 26 April 1879 p.20 (proposed new church); 2 June 1892 p.21 (threshing machine); 25 May 1893 p.3 (interruption of sermon); 9 June 1898 p.30 (McDiarmid’s lecture), 23 June 1898 p.39 (further re lecture); 30 June 1898 p.17 (further re lecture), 15 May 1901 p.34 (photograph of mausoleum); Bruce Herald 24 August 1875 p.5 (call of Rev. Kirkland); Evening Star 24 February 1896 p.2 (Roberts lectures), 21 October 1904 p.6 (Denis Heenan obituary).

Other sources:
Heenan-Davies, Karen. ‘Touching the past: an encounter with some Heenan migrants’, blog post, 9 March 2019, retrieved 7 September 2022 from https://heenan.one-name.net/touching-the-past-an-encounter-with-some-heenan-migrants/.
Holmes, Gwenda. The Berwick Story. Mosgiel: Gwenda Holmes, 2016.
Ockwell, Ngaire. West Taieri Cemetery Otago: Headstone and plans transcript 1859-1979. Dunedin: New Zealand Society of Genealogists, 1979.
Ockwell, Ngaire. West Taieri Cemetery: A transcription of burials, headstones, purchasers and plan, completed in 2009. Dunedin: New Zealand Society of Genealogists, 2009.
Scrivens, Barbara. ‘Madeline Orlowski Anderson’, web article, 2017 (revised 2018), retrieved 7 September 2022 from https://polishhistorynewzealand.org/madeline-orlowski-anderson/.
Death registration for Daniel Heenan. Births, Deaths, and Marriages ref: 1899/250.
Death registration for Gilbert McDiarmid. Births, Deaths, and Marriages ref: 1909/6069.
Death registration for John Williams Joseph. Births, Deaths, and Marriages ref: 1907/4741.
‘Heenan, Daniel’ in Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol. iv, Otago and Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905) p.648.
‘Mr Denis Heenan’ in Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol. iv, Otago and Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905) p.385.
‘Daniel Heenan’s Mausoleum’ in Heritage Quarterly, Summer 2013, p.10.
‘Farmers remains lie above ground and without company’. From the Stories in Stone series, Otago Daily Times, 3 September 2005 p.Mag2. (This source was the first to use information in Daniel’s will to explore the story of the mausoleum. It includes research by the late Stewart Harvey).
A return of the freeholders of New Zealand giving the names, addresses, and occupations of owners of land: together with the area and value in counties, and the value in boroughs and town districts, October 1882. Wellington: New Zealand Government Property Tax Department, 1884.
Will and probate file for Daniel Heenan. Archives New Zealand R22045651.
Mason & Wales Architects archive. Correspondence, drawing, and specifications.

Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Mason & Wales Architects for use of their archive. My interest was sparked after finding the mausoleum drawing in their records, and I was delighted to find they had also preserved the specification and relevant correspondence.

My thanks to Ngaire Ockwell for her valuable work, and for permission to quote from it at length.

Something to mark ten years, 2012-2022

22 Replies

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the Built in Dunedin blog. The first post I wrote, in July 2012, was about the Hallenstein factory in Dowling Street, so I thought it would be fitting to revisit that by sharing something I didn’t know about at the time.

Illustrated here is the original front elevation drawing made by architect David Ross in 1882. It was only recently added to the Hallenstein Brothers archive in the Hocken Collections, after being rescued some years ago from a rubbish skip.

Ross was an artist and a skilled draughtsman, but sadly few of his drawings survive, making this one even more special. The most striking feature is the large cupola ventilator above the parapet. Modern ventilation and lighting were a feature of the building, which has a long gallery and roof lantern. This drawing raises some interesting questions about the planning. Ross had travelled in Europe and the United States and Bendix Hallenstein had looked at factory design in England. It would be interesting to know of specific ideas they borrowed from elsewhere.

Unfortunately the other sheets in the set of plans are not known to have survived. The drawing is the contract copy, signed by builders Meikle and Campbell, and the strikethroughs suggest the cupola was deleted by the time of the agreement. Possibly it was more of a grand statement than a functional feature. To me it looks somewhat discordant, partly because the parapet treatment is restrained in comparison.

Thanks to everyone who has followed blog over the past decade, and apologies for not posting much in recent times. When I started , my idea was to write very short posts, but they almost all turned into quite lengthy pieces. I would like to have shared more economical writing, but on the other hand this has allowed stories that have brought out human interest, with more glimpses into the lives of people who lived and worked in the buildings.

The blog has generated many curious questions, sent to me about various local buildings. Apologies to anyone I didn’t get back to – I try to answer them all but they do get away on me sometimes.

And I have the best of intentions to write more here soon!

Milnes’ Building

9 Replies

Built: 1877
Address: 34 George Street, Port Chalmers
Architects: Mason, Wales & Stevenson
Builder: Robert Bauchop

James P. Milnes’ store, Port Chalmers, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena. Ref: MS-5014/002/001.

In 1877 the Cameron family moved into their newly-built home, bakery, and grocery store in George Street, Port Chalmers. The building’s association with the grocery trade continued for more than a century, and today it is part of a precinct of Victorian and early twentieth-century buildings.

The Māori history of the locality reaches back centuries, through the people of Waitaha, Kāti Mamoe, and Kāi Tahu. The north-facing bay, Kōpūtai, is known as a tauraka waka, nohoanga, and wāhi tapu: landing place, seasonal settlement, and sacred site.

It was at Kōpūtai that Kāi Tahu and the New Zealand Company agreed the sale and purchase of the Otago Block in 1844, a pivotal point in the establishment of a colony by the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland. The town’s survey followed in 1846, ahead of central Dunedin, and the organised settlement of Otago began with the arrival of the first migrant sailing ships in 1848. The name Port Chalmers is taken from Rev. Dr Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), the founding leader of the church and influential social reformer.

Growth was slow in the decade that followed. About one hundred people lived at Port Chalmers in 1860. The next year the Gold Rush began, and by 1865 the township’s population numbered over 900. Shipping within Otago Harbour accounted for about 500 more people, over 90% of them men, and the port was one of the busiest in Australasia. Overseas routes provided essential transport and communication links, as did coastal shipping, especially before completion of the Christchurch to Invercargill railway in 1879. The global significance of the port grew through its association with Union Steam Ship Company, established in Dunedin in 1875. By 1891 the company had a fleet of 54 steamships and was the largest shipping company in the southern hemisphere.

Mana whenua connection to Kōpūtai continued throughout these developments. Reading about this can be found in Nyssa Payne-Harker’s thesis, Shared Spaces or Contested Places? Examining the role of Kāi Tahu Whānui in Port Chalmers and Bluff, 1848-2016.

Port Chalmers township about 1872. Burton Brothers photographers. Ref: Te Papa C.011806. The site of the Milnes Building is behind the wooden church in the left foreground.

The port in 1905. Muir & Moodie photographers. Te Papa PA.000180.

Andrew and Margaret Cameron were born at Paisley, near Glasgow in Scotland, and spent their early married life there, with Andrew working as a baker. They came to Otago with their four children in 1863 and settled at Sawyers Bay, where in 1864 Andrew established a bakery and general store.

The family moved to the Port Chalmers township in 1872, when Andrew took over the business and wooden buildings of Taylor & Kilgour. The bakery flourished – its success at least partly attributed to it supplying the Union Company.

The first commercial buildings of Port Chalmers were wooden, and timber constructions still dominated George Street in the early 1870s. By the end of the decade many of these structures had been replaced in more ‘permanent’ materials. In 1877, Andrew Cameron engaged the architects Mason, Wales & Stevenson to replace his existing buildings with structures in stone (for the basement) and brick.

Thomas Stevenson was the architect partner responsible for the design, which was conventional in both layout and form. On the ground floor were a shop, storeroom, and office, while on the first floor were four bedrooms, a sitting room (with two windows facing the street), kitchen, and bathroom. The facade was in the Renaissance Revival style, often referred to in architectural description of the time as simply ‘Italian’. It was the most fashionable style for commercial buildings, and its manifestation ranged from the elaborate to the relatively plain. While not ornate, the Camerons’ building did feature a distinctive arched pediment. Surviving architectural drawings show this with the date 1877 in relief, but in the end the plasterers were instructed to put ‘Established 1864’ in its place. This presumably refers to the business’s Sawyers Bay beginnings.

The original 1877 drawing by Thomas Stevenson, signed by the contractor Robert Bauchop. From the collection of Mason & Wales Architects.

Robert Bauchop won the building contract; at the time he was one of the busiest and best-known builders in the town. Under a second contract he built a stable and large bakehouse at the rear of the section.

According to his Otago Daily Times obituary, Andrew had ‘ever a cheery word for friends, and rarely left them without a quiet joke’. He was closely involved with the local Presbyterian Church but less interested in local politics and societies. Margaret and Andrew had three sons and a daughter. Their youngest son, Andrew Cameron, became the Presbyterian minister at Andersons Bay, and in the early twentieth century was a prominent public figure, known for his leading roles in founding Knox College and the Presbyterian Social Service Association, and as a vice-chancellor and chancellor of the University of Otago.

Detail from a William Williams photograph, c.1890s. Ref: Alexander Turnbull Library 1/1-025830-G. The front of the building is indicated by the arrow.

Another of Margaret and Andrew’s sons, James Muir Cameron, took over the Port Chalmers business when Andrew retired in 1884. He ran the store for over twenty years. One incident that made the court news was a disagreement between two of the bakers, with one throwing a stone that wounded the other above the eye.

James Pickford Milnes bought the business in 1905, and it is the Milnes name that remains most associated with the building’s history. James was a Yorkshireman and had worked as a farmer at Akatore in the Clutha District. When they took up residence, James and his wife Mary Ann had six children, ranging in ages of one to twelve. A seventh child, Robert, known as Bob, was born in 1907. One of his childhood chores was cleaning out large pits where thousands of eggs were preserved for use in the bakehouse.

Photograph of grocer and baker’s van, Port Chalmers. D.A. De Maus photographer. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena. Ref: MS-5014/002/002.

A photograph from around this time shows the horse and cart used for bread and grocery deliveries. For many years Dick Thurlow was employed as the driver. Change eventually came in 1920, with alterations made to the stables and storeroom so that motor deliveries could replace the horse-drawn service. This building work was designed by Salmond & Vanes and carried out by Love Brothers.

A branch store opened along the road at 12 George Street in 1917. This became the cake shop, although its function might have varied over the more than thirty years it operated. Milnes were the local agents for Ernest Adams cakes.

A section of a block plan from 1932, showing in red the site of the Milnes’ Building and outbuildings on the left, and the second store to the north near the Mount Street corner. Drawn by George Duncan. Colour edited. National Insurance Company records, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena. Ref: MS-2081/037/00.

Advertisement from the Evening Star, 8 November 1934 p.3. Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand.

James died in 1926. For a few years Thomas ran the business with his brother-in-law, Peter Lawson. In 1933 the registered company Milnes Limited formed for the stated purpose of operating as ‘bakers, grocers, storekeepers, confectioners, restaurant and refreshment room proprietors, and wholesale and general merchants’. The largest shareholders were Thomas and his brother Bob, with smaller holdings by their mother Mary Ann and sister Nellie. Thomas moved to Clinton and after his sudden death in 1941 Nellie increased her stake in the business.

Nellie managed the finances from the office adjoining the shop. Ian Church records that she sold children bags of broken biscuits for a penny, and her niece revealed at her funeral that she sometimes broke the biscuits herself so that she had enough to give them!

The building has undergone many alterations. A suspended verandah was added in the 1940s, and in 1947 the exterior walls were replastered. Most of the old mouldings were removed and Art Deco/Moderne touches added, including a circular motif at the centre of the pediment. The name ‘MILNES’, added to the parapet in relief lettering, can still be seen.

Despite these changes the building still reads as Victorian from the street: the window openings and proportions , the door, the surviving dentil cornice, and the shape of the pediment, are among the original features.

The bakery was in use until the early part of the Second World War, when baking shifted to the other George Street site. This operation closed in either 1953 or 1954.

Bob Milnes had a house in Island Terrace, but Nellie was resident on site until about 1965. The following year she transferred her shares and Bob ran the shop on his own until his retirement in 1967. By this time the grocery had converted to self service.

Bob Milnes in the old bakehouse at the time of his retirement in 1967. Reproduced by permission of the Otago Daily Times.

In later years Nellie was known for her involvement with the meals on wheels service, and for being a keen golfer. She died in 1991. Bob moved to Queenstown where he died in 1994. His son Robert owned and operated a new supermarket at Frankton.

The old Port Chalmers store became Dent’s Mini-Market in 1967, under Charles and Pearl Dent. From about 1971 Lex and Daphne Taylor ran it as Taylor’s Mini-Market, as part of the Four Square chain. Robert and Linda McLean took over in 1980, changing the name to Port Chalmers Discount. In the mid-1980s Foodstuffs, the owners of Four Square, decided to build a New World supermarket on the opposite side of the street. This opened in December 1985 and the old shop closed.

The store in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Duncan Montgomery.

Later occupants have included Port Chalmers Trading and the Tuanako Private Training Establishment. A new venture on the site, Milnes Market, launched in 2008. Since 2012 the ground floor has been occupied by 2gpysies furniture, homeware, and giftware.

In 2020 the current owners received a Dunedin Heritage Fund grant for earthquake strengthening and fireproofing, which will hopefully secure the future of the building for many more years to come.

Acknowledgments:
Special thanks to co-owner Rebecca Wilson, and to Mason & Wales Architects. Whenever researching Port Chalmers I’m also reminded of the debt owed to the late Ian Church.

Newspaper references:
Bruce Herald 6 July 1865 p.3 (population). Otago Daily Times 7 February 1872 p.2 (Andrew Cameron), 9 May 1877 p.1 (tender notice), 25 June 1877 p.4 (tender notice), 30 July 1877 p.3 (‘City Improvements’), 14 May 1902 p.6 (Andrew Cameron obituary); 18 August 1905 p.4 (assault); 21 April 1920 p.6 (alterations and motor deliveries); 1 December 1967 p.11 (‘Mr R.B. Milnes’); 10 December 1985 p29 (opening of Port Chalmers New World); 28 February 1994 p.5 (Bob Milnes obituary). Evening Star 14 May 1902 p.3 (Andrew Cameron obituary); 19 August 1905 p.6 (assault); 24 August 1905 p.5 (for lease). Grey River Argus 23 June 1891 p4 (size of Union Company fleet).

Other references:
Church, Ian. ‘A Grave Story – The Milnes Family’ in Rothesay News, vol. 20 no. 1 (November 2007) p.12.
Church, Ian. Port Chalmers and its People (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1994)
Church, Ian. Some Early People and Ships of Port Chalmers. Dunedin: New Zealand Society of Genealogists, c.1990.
Church, Ian. Sawyers Bay, including Sawyers Bay School 1861-2010. Port Chalmers: Sawyers Bay School 150th Anniversary Committee, 2011.
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory
Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory
Telephone directories
Port Chalmers rates records (with thanks to Chris Scott)
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans

	David Murray on Lost Dunedin #3: Oriental…
	David Murray on Plume, formerly the Ernest Ada…
	David Murray on Bell Hill House (Reichelt…
	longwhitekid on Bell Hill House (Reichelt…
	David Murray on Bell Hill House (Reichelt…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: