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.
Front elevation, Hallenstein’s New Zealand Clothing Factory, Dowling Street, Dunedin. Hallenstein Brothers records, Hocken Collecions Uare Taoka o Hākena. MS-5193/001.
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!
Built: 1951-1954 Address: 90 Anzac Avenue Architect: L.W.S. Lowther (1901-1970) Builders: Love Construction Co.
The building as it appeared when new in 1954. Image courtesy of Naylor Love.
The 1950s Streamline Moderne building that is home to the Hocken Collections was originally built as a dairy factory and offices. The Dunedin-based Co-operative Dairy Co. of Otago produced Huia brand butter and cheese for 75 years, and from this site for over 40. The company disappeared in the dairy mergers of the late 1990s, and their premises became the University of Otago’s new Hocken Library in 1998.
Outwardly, the building perhaps looks older than its years, although it was internally and practically up-to-date when new. It is a late example of a style of architecture introduced to Dunedin in the mid-1930s. Plans were ready in 1947, but there were numerous delays in securing permits and consents, followed by a long construction period of three years. The factory finally opened in 1954.
I’m getting ahead of myself though. First some earlier history of the dairy company…
Dunedin has a long a long association with the dairy industry. New Zealand’s first co-operative dairy factory opened on the Otago Peninsula in 1871, when the eight shareholders of John Matheson & Co. established the Peninsula Cheese Factory at Matheson’s Springfield property. The development of infrastructure and technology saw rapid growth in the industry from the 1880s, when further factories were built around the country. Improved transport networks, refrigeration in both factories and transportation, cream separators, new testing methods, and selective breeding all contributed to the rapid growth of an export industry in the decades that followed. Combined exports of butter and cheese grew from 5,000 tonnes in 1881, to 300,000 tonnes in 1901.
The Co-operative Dairy Co. of Otago formed in Dunedin in 1922. At that time, 564 dairy companies operated around the country, 88% of them co-operatives within a highly regulated industry. The new company claimed it was owned entirely by those who supplied cream, with ‘absolutely no dry shareholders’. 284 individuals operating home separators took 68% of the initial share allocation, while eight small Otago factories (Momona, Mosgiel, Milton, Goodwood, Waikouaiti, Merton, Omimi, and Maungatua) took the remaining 32%. The new company purchased the business of the Dunedin Dairy Co., taking over their newly-built premises opposite the railway station in June 1923. In doing so, it acquired the Huia brand, under which Dunedin Dairy had marketed butter since 1920. By the 1927/28 season the new co-op produced 800 tonnes of butter, the second largest output by a South Island factory.
The original building served the company for thirty years, but by the 1940s it was cramped and behind the standard demanded by regulators. The company bought out the butter business of the Taieri & Peninsula Milk Supply Co. in 1942, taking on its Oamaru factory, but it still sought to expand its Dunedin operation on a larger and more accessible site.
An area of reclaimed Otago Harbour Board land included a vacant and appealing site near the railway line on the east side of Anzac Avenue. The avenue had been built in 1925, in time to link the railway station with the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition at the newly reclaimed Lake Logan. The idea of such a road been put forward by Harbour Board member John Loudon as early as 1922, before the exhibition was formally proposed. The development or reclamation of the lake had been anticipated for some years, and a new road would also improve connection with West Harbour. It was the exhibition, however, that brought the impetus needed to make what was then referred to as the ‘highway’ a reality. Exhibition architect Edmund Anscombe played a central role in the planning, proposing parks, reserves, and housing for the area to the east of the avenue, but it remained largely undeveloped through the depression years and up to the war.
A late 1920s photograph shows young trees lining the avenue, but by 1933 some had died and others were stunted. Most of the present elms were planted between 1934 and 1938, by school pupils participating in Arbour Day activities.
Detail from c.1902, from ‘Dunedin from Logans Point’ by Muir & Moodie. The future site of the co-op building is under water, next to the shoreline at the far left centre of the image. Ref: Te Papa PA.000184.
Anzac Avenue as it appeared about 1928, meeting Union Street and the southern edge of Logan Park. The future factory site is the furthest of the vacant land on the left. Ref: ‘Dunedin, New Zealand no. 872’, Alexander Turnbull Library Pan-0017-F.
An aerial view from April 1947, showing the vacant site at the centre of the image. Ref: Whites Aviation Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library WA-06920-F (cropped detail).
The new Dunedin North Intermediate School opened at the corner of Albany Street and Anzac Avenue in 1934. In 1944, a rehabilitation centre for disabled servicemen opened. Most of the other new land was put to industrial use. Dominion Industries built a linseed oil operation, Shaw Savill Albion a wool and grain store, J. Mill & Co. another wool store, and stationers Williamson Jeffery a factory and head office. On the north side of Leith, a new milk treatment station opened in 1948.
The dairy co-op secured a leasehold section from the Harbour Board in October 1945. Allan Cave, a North Island architect with extensive experience of dairy buildings, prepared preliminary sketch plans and a well was bored on the site in April 1946. Two months later, the district building commissioner deferred issuing a permit, due to the post-war building restrictions and a shortage of cement and labour.
In September 1946, Cave recommended switching to a local architect, and the company appointed L.W.S. Lowther in his place. Lowther immediately began work on plans and specifications, completed in February 1947.
Launcelot William Stratton (Lance) Lowther, architect. Image courtesy of Barbara Parry.
Born in Llanelli, Wales, to a New Zealand-born father, Lance Lowther had worked as assistant to Henry McDowell Smith before taking up private practice in 1945. He had at least a hand in many streamlined designs that came out of Smith’s office in the late 1930s, including the Law Court Hotel and two blocks of flats on View Street. In a more traditional aesthetic, he had a significant and it has been claimed leading design role (under Smith’s name) for the new St Peter’s Anglican Church at Queenstown. Early houses by Lowther include a Moderne/Art Deco design at the corner of Taieri Road and Wairoa Street. He later worked in private partnership with former Otago Education Board architect Clifford Muir.
Huia advertisement from the Otago Daily Times, 27 May 1949 p.7. Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand.
The construction history of the factory highlights the challenges faced in post-war building. Plans had to be approved by both the Department of Agriculture and the Harbour Board, both of which asked for changes. Finance also proved difficult, as although commercial banks were happy to lend, the Reserve Bank could exercise its power to stop advances of more than £60,000 for building work. Building firms were stretched and unenthusiastic to tender for the contract, but Love Construction gave a price from the quantities. They were given the go-ahead in August 1947, before the building controller again deferred issuing a permit. Despite repeated efforts it was not until February 1951 that a permit was finally issued. Drawings held in the Hocken are undated, but the work finally begun in March 1951 was probably mostly carried out according to the 1947 plans.
Michael Findlay has described the building as ‘constructed from steel reinforced concrete with steel roof trusses enabling wide spans and unobstructed floors. The wall and floor surfaces had rounded internal corners for hygiene and the design was efficient and modern, a great step up from their earlier Dunedin factory’. The Moderne exterior is characterised by clean lines and simplicity. It might also be described as Art Deco, as it fits some definitions of that style. Embellishment is minimal, consisting mostly of raised banding or string courses. Glass bricks are a feature of the west elevation, and allowed a filtered light into the factory.
The original plans show a large butter and smaller cheese manufacturing area, and a big garage space at the rear with access from Anzac Avenue. There was also stores, freezers, a box and pallet area opening to the cart dock on Parry Street, dressing rooms, and a dining room. Unusually, a bicycle parking area was placed internally in the south-west corner. Office activities took place upstairs, where there was a public counter, large general office, manager’s and secretary’s offices, strong room, another dining room, and a generously sized and wood-panelled board room.
Rosemarie Patterson’s excellent history of Naylor Love, A Bob Both Ways, provides some insight into experiences on the building site through the recollections of foreman Duncan McKenzie. He remembered laying the foundations on the swampy reclaimed site in the winter of 1951: ‘It was just an absolute bog. We were building a kind of floating foundation, big pads right across. 8 feet wide and 18 inches deep. Alex Ross, manager at the time, put an ad in the paper for labourers’. Because of the strike there were many men looking for work. ‘He started sending them to me, and they just kept on coming. But in those days we worked in the rain, and wharfies weren’t used to working in the rain, so most of them left on those wet days. A few stayed on, three or four who didn’t get their jobs back on the wharf.’
The project employed many new Dutch migrants. Conditions in Europe and a shortage of workers saw significant Dutch immigration after the Second World War, with over 10,000 arriving in the three years from July 1951 to June 1954. Most were single, non-English speaking men from a working class background, including carpenters and skilled labourers. McKenzie used one of his steelworkers, a good English speaker who had been a corporal in the Dutch Army in Indonesia, as an interpreter. McKenzie remembered they ‘had to learn to do things differently, especially the concrete work which all had to be boxed. They were not used to doing that.’
McKenzie also recalled Love’s purchasing their first skilsaw in time for the laying of the upstairs floor. ‘It was big 6 x ¼ inch flooring, and they brought it over for us to cut the flooring with. And everybody’s eyes nearly popped out. Len Griffin, the supervisor who used to go round the jobs, every so often for some particular job would come and borrow our skilsaw! The company’s only skilsaw! It was the same with dumpy levels. Being a big job, I always had one there, but there was always someone coming and borrowing it. We didn’t have one for a job, we had one for a lot of jobs.’
‘We didn’t have cranes. We had electric hoists. You’d fill the barrows, generally on the ground, and take them up on a hoist, and wheel the concrete round to wherever you wanted it, and pour it, and take it back down again. It got a bit more complicated later on. We’d take a skip on the hoist and put it in a hopper on the top. And you’d fill your barrow out of that. All the concrete was done by barrow. You had to have scaffold ramps up every lift. Every four feet you’d probably put a pour. So the scaffold had to be built at the right height to swing the barrow and tip the concrete in. We had pre-mix concrete there, but before that – while I worked on the Nurses’ Home in Cumberland Street – all the concrete was mixed on site.’
When construction began, co-op management optimistically hoped it would be able to its machinery in by April 1952, but there were more delays, including sourcing the roofing material and steel girders. In March 1953, the manager reported a shortage of carpenters. The building neared completion the following summer, but it was practically impossible to move in during the dairying season. In April 1954, building work was complete with the exception of some painting and plastering. Plant was moved from the old premises, and by the end of August all departments had moved in. The final build cost was £150,000.
The building officially opened some eight years after the first consent permit was sought. Keith Holyoake, minister of agriculture and future prime minister, performed the honours before a crowd of 450 people on 2 November 1954. Referring to the end of the bulk purchasing agreement with the United Kingdom, he said: ‘This is a new era and a really challenging time as far as the primary producer is concerned’. In a peculiar call to arms for securing market share he said ‘we now have to fight the battle with the British housewife’.
The company had 55 staff in its Dunedin and Oamaru factories in 1954. Its products over the years included butter, process cheese, savoury sandwich paste, and reconstituted cream. A subtle name rearrangement occurred in 1976, when the Co-operative Dairy Company of Otago became the Otago Co-operative Dairy Company. In the 1980s the Dunedin factory was producing over 3,500 tonnes of butter annually.
Cheese continued to be made on the site, with a specialty cheese unit established in 1985/86. The company had large shareholdings in the Otago Cheese Co., and in Mainland Products Ltd, which had some operations at Anzac Avenue. In 1989/90 butter reworking ceased after the Dairy Board decided it could satisfy the Otago and Southland markets with patted butter ex-churn from Westland. In the same year, Mainland’s processing plant moved to Eltham, reducing manufacturing operations at Anzac Avenue to creamery and whey butter, and specialty cheese. A Cheese Shop fronting Parry Street opened in 1990, with some products continuing to be marketed under Huia brand. Adjoining chicken and sausage shops also operated for a time but were less successful. The company performed well for its shareholders, but the Anzac Avenue site was becoming surplus to requirements.
Reconstituted cream point of sale advertisement. Ref: Otago Co-operative Dairy Company records, Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena 84-159/003.
The building as it appeared in 1997, when vacated by the dairy company. Ref: Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-4069/070.
The University of Otago purchased the building in 1996, for redevelopment as a new Hocken Library. The library had been established in 1910 to care for and provide access to Dr Thomas Morland Hocken’s public gift of his collection of books, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, paintings, and manuscripts relating to Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific. It opened in a purpose-built wing of the Otago Museum and was a much expanded collection by the time it left that site in 1979. By the 1990s the collections were split between the Hocken (now Richardson) Building and a former vehicle testing station in Leith Street. The dairy co-op site brought the library, archive, and gallery together in a secure, environmentally controlled facility, and allowed much improved public access. The architects for the redevelopment were Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in collaboration with Works Consultancy Services, and the project was managed by Octa Associates Ltd. The main contractor was Lund South.
The University took possession on 30 June 1997 and the work was carried out over most of 1998. The interior was more or less gutted, with the reorganised space including a large foyer, gallery, public reference area, reading rooms, public lunch room (now researcher lounge), staff areas, and stacks. Preserved internal features included steel trusses and exposed timber joists. Two doors with frosted-glass decoration (moved from the entrance) each feature a pair of huia, as used in the co-op’s branding. The building retains the sympathetic colour scheme given to it at this time, of yellow-creams and gold, with grey-green metal joinery. One of the more obvious external changes was the replacement of steel-framed windows with aluminium ones.
Officially opened by Governor General Sir Michael Hardie Boys on 2 December 1998, the refurbished building was the university’s major Otago sesquicentennial project. It is currently home to over 11 shelf kilometres of archives, 200,000 books, 17,000 pictures, and 2 million photographs, bringing it to very near capacity.
The Hocken Library, in case there is confusion, remains the official name for the building, while the institution within is the Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, a branch of the University of Otago Library.
The building during its transformation into the Hocken Library in 1998. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena MS-4069/070.
After selling its building, the Otago Co-operative Dairy Co. did not continue as an independent entity for long. The profitable business made a record payout to shareholders in 1996 but mergers across the industry meant there would only be four co-operatives nationwide by the end of the 1990s, and a further mega-merger would follow. In 1997, Otago merged into Kiwi Co-operative Dairies. One farmer who welcomed the news commented: ‘Otago is sitting as a small company doing well and wondering where it will end up’. In 2001, Kiwi in turn merged with the New Zealand Dairy Group and the New Zealand Dairy Board to form the country’s largest company, Fonterra. The Anzac Avenue building is now one of few tangible reminders of the old business.
The Hocken Library in 2019.
Newspaper references: Lyttelton Times 16 October 1873 p.3 (‘A Cheese Factory in Otago’, copied from Otago Guardian); Evening Star 29 April 1920 p.6 (advertisement for Huia butter), 8 September 1922 p.2 (formation of company), 25 November 1922 p.4 (Loudon’s proposal), 17 May 1923 p.9 (proposed highway), 7 July 1923 p.4 (housing proposal), 14 November 1924 p.2 (‘Highway proposal’), 11 May 1928 p.5 (trees and verges), 29 April 1933 p.23 (dead trees), 2 August 1934 p.12 (elms, with photograph), 5 August 1936 p.14 (elms), 9 August 1937 p.11 (elms) , 10 August 1938 p.15 (elms), 16 September 1938 p.7 (replacing damaged trees); Otago Daily Times 12 October 1922 p.5 (notice of establishment), 22 October 1923 p.9 (‘famous Huia butter’), 19 June 1928 p.18 (company history and purchase of Dunedin Dairy Co.), 9 March 1934 p.6 (dead and stunted trees), 30 September 1942 p.6 (‘Butter business purchased’), 5 August 1947 p.6 (‘New factory to be built’). 3 November 1954 p.10 (‘New £140,000 dairy facory opened by Mr K.J. Holyoake), 21 March 1996 p.1 (‘Dairy factory to become Hocken Library’), 31 July 1996 p.16 (‘Otago Dairy Co-op makes record pay-out to suppliers’), 30 October 1997 p.3 (‘Otago-Kiwi dairy merger nets suppliers a windfall’ and ‘Dairy merger welcomed by farmers’)
Books:
Ledgerwood, Norman. Southern Architects: A History of the Southern Branch, New Zealand Institute of Architects (Dunedin: Southern Branch, New Zealand Institute of Architects, 2009) p.126.
Patterson, Rosemarie. A Bob Both Ways: Celebrating 100 Years of Naylor Love (Dunedn: Advertising and Art, 2010), p.90.
Philpott, H.G. A History of the New Zealand Dairy Industry 1840-1935 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1937), pp.375-406 (statistics).
Built: 1900-1901 (incorporating 1875 fabric) Address: 167 High Street Architect/Designer: Charles Lomax Builders: Day labour (under Lomax)
An image from ‘Beautiful Dunedin’ (1906), taken when the building was relatively new.
My last post looked at Ross & Glendining’s 1866 warehouse on Stafford Street, and its later redevelopment as a hat factory. I briefly mentioned the adjoining factory buildings facing High Street, and this post expands on that part of the complex. Perhaps another time I’ll look at the company’s large warehouse further down High Street, demolished in 1970.
The High Street factory’s origins go back to 1875, when a warehouse and bonded store was built on the site. The building was on two levels, including the bluestone basement. The structure above was brick, with a cemented front. The architect was N.Y.A. Wales of Mason & Wales, and plans still held by the firm show a tramway connecting the building with the Stafford Street warehouse behind. James Hood was the contractor and the building cost £4,274.
Part of an original drawing for the 1875 building, reproduced courtesy of Mason & Wales Architects.
Between 1900 and 1901 two new floors, with extensions over the right-of-way, were made to create a new clothing factory. The designer was Charles Lomax, Ross & Glendining’s Building Inspector, who also supervised the construction work. According to an obituary, Lomax was originally from Blackburn, Lancashire, and as well as building the Roslyn Woollen Mills ‘carried out the erection of every warehouse belonging to the firm in New Zealand, also preparing the plans’. This description was not quite accurate, as others were also involved with building and design work for the company, but it would probably be true to say that no other person had a greater hand in the design and construction of the company’s buildings.
The rebuilt High Street factory was described in the Evening Star:
The factory operations are at present carried on in the two-storeyed building next the warehouse, but this is found to be inadequate for the trade. The new building will cover an area with a frontage of 66ft and 115ft deep. Including a spacious basement, of a uniform height of 12ft, there will be four storeys, the ground and first floors being 14ft high and the top one 12ft. The basement is to have a limer rock floor, the material for which has been imported from France. This makes a damp-proof floor, which is easier on the feet than one made of wood. It is used for the basement in the present warehouse, and has given every satisfaction. In the basement the engine for driving the machinery used throughout the factory will be located. The floors are to be supported by iron columns and steel joists, the building to be of brick with cement facings and slate roof. On a projection from each floor the lavatories and other conveniences are arranged for. The first floor is divided off into apartments for the office, finishing room, cutting room, pressing room, and dining room. The second and third floors are to be devoted to the operative departments of the factory, the different machines being driven by steam-power. A lift will travel from top to bottom of the building, connecting with all the floors. As was to be expected in a building of this description, ample provision has been made for lighting. There are six large windows to each floor in the front, and an equal number at the back, and these will ensure splendid light throughout the rooms. The front has been designed in no particular set style, but it will have an attractive appearance, although not being profusely ornamental, and will be in keeping with the effectiveness of the general run of large buildings in Dunedin.
Stephen Jones (whose history of Ross & Glendining I highly recommend) states that a nine horsepower Campbell oil engine replaced the old factory’s three horsepower Otto gas engine. This allowed the number of sewing machines to be increased, ‘there being over sixty Wilson & Wheeler and almost thirty Singer machines of various types installed in the factory by January 1902’.
The yard space and outbuildings separating the main Stafford and High Street buildings were eventually redeveloped. Additions in 1930 housed the company’s boot factory, relocated from Princes Street South, and a further two further storeys were added between 1937 and 1938. The architects for both stages of this work were Miller & White, with Thomas Ferguson the contractor.
The first stage of the boot factory additions, designed by Miller & White in 1930. Further floors were added 1937-1938.
Ross & Glendining was acquired by UEB Industries Ltd in 1966, and subsequently merged into Mosgiel Woollens Ltd, which retained a knitwear division in the building until it went into receivership in 1980. Later occupants included J. McGrath & Co, and in more recent years the building has been known as South Pacific House. Current occupants include NZ Fight & Fitness Academy.
The facade remains much as it did in 1901, although looking naked at the top where the balustrade and central pediment were removed in 1937. The fire escape likely dates from the 1940s, and 1941 work included the installation of louvre windows and the relocation of the main door from the centre to the side of the frontage. Sam Lind tells me that you can still identify the location in the basement where the engine running the belts would have been, and there is some evidence of the tramway that ran between the buildings. Some of the ironwork of the overhead shafts survives. Though most old fittings have been removed, the old stairs, floors, and brickwork all remain appealing interior features.
Newspaper references: Otago Daily Times 20 April 1875 p.2 (description), 24 September 1906 p.4 (Lomax obituary); Evening Star 15 December 1900 p.1 (description of rebuilt premises)
Other references
Fahey, W.H. Beautiful Dunedin: its environs and the cold lakes of Otago (Dunedin: Evening Star Co., 1906)
Jones, S.R.H. Doing Well and Doing Good : Ross & Glendining, Scottish Enterprise in New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2010)
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans
Thanks to Mason & Wales Architects for access to early plans, and to Sam Lind for more recent information about the building.
Built: 1866 / 1874 / 1919 Address: 8 Stafford Street Architects: John McGregor / Mason & Wales / W.H. Dunning Builders: McKay & Goodfellow / H.C. McCormack / Fletcher Bros
The building in the late 1930s. Ref: Hocken Collections AG-512/288.
Ross & Glendining Ltd was at one time the largest manufacturing company in New Zealand, and part of a thriving domestic industry in textiles and clothing.
John Ross was born at Caithness in the north of Scotland, and Robert Glendining came from Dumfries in the south. Ross managed a drapery in his native country before coming to Dunedin in 1861, bringing with him thousands of pounds worth of stock. He became a partner in Begg, Christie & Co. and within a year bought out the firm. He went into business with the recently arrived Glendining in August 1862, just as the discovery of the Dunstan goldfield brought a fresh ‘rush’ to Otago.
The company moved from retail to wholesale trade, and in 1866 built a brick and stone warehouse, some of which survives within the present 8 Stafford Street. The builders were McKay & Goodfellow and the architect was John McGregor (I’ll return to the intriguing Mr McGregor and his other designs of the 1860s and 70s in a later post). Elaborately decorated in the Venetian Gothic style, the Oamaru stone facade of the warehouse featured pairs of arched windows, and columns of Port Chalmers bluestone topped by carved capitals. Ornamental ironwork included an unusual parapet railing, and finials on the first-floor sills.
An illustration of the building from ‘Beautiful Dunedin’ (1906), taken not long after it was converted to a hat factory. The original portion is on the right (the entrance shown being at its centre).
Looking down Stafford Street towards Princes Street around the 1880s. Ref: Hocken Collections S09-529j.
Ross & Glendining established the Roslyn Woollen Mill in Kaikorai Valley in 1879, and soon after went into manufacturing, opening branches throughout the colony. Extensive additions to the Stafford Street buildings were built in 1874, with Mason & Wales the architects and H.C. McCormack the contractor. The facade was extended further up the street and McGregor’s original details were carefully replicated, an Otago Daily Times report remarking that ‘instead of the patchwork appearance which generally characterises additions to buildings, the building, as complete, is carried out on one plan, and looks accordingly’.
The basement level was used for packing and record entry. The ground floor was fitted with counters and shelving for trading manchester, and offices were put in the front of the addition. The upper floor was used for warehouse purposes, and housed fancy goods, hosiery, and haberdashery departments. A hydraulic lift made by Frazer, Wishart, & Buchanan was capable of lifting weights of up to one and a-half tonnes. ‘Clarke’s patent self-acting steel shutters’ were the latest in fire protection measures, and a brick wall two feet thick separated the warehouse from neighbouring wooden buildings.
The building at 8 Stafford Street is best understood in relation to some of Ross & Glendining’s adjoining and nearby buildings. In 1875 a new bonded warehouse was built facing High Street, back-to-back with the original premises. The two buildings were connected by a tramway across a large yard, where there were stables and other outbuildings. In 1893 the company moved its offices and warehouse to an entirely new site further down High Street, opposite the end of Manse Street (where Broadway now begins). The clothing factory moved into adjoining premises.
The old Stafford-High complex remained in company ownership but was leased to tenants until about 1900, when major redevelopment began and the entire site was turned to factory use. This work was designed and overseen by Charles Lomax, the company’s Inspector of Works. The High Street clothing factory was completed in 1901, its almost entirely rebuilt structure including a further two storeys, with an 18 metre high chimney behind (to save confusion I’m saving full description of this building for another post).
Work on the Stafford Street portion began in 1902, and in January 1904 it reopened as a hat factory, where fur, wool, felt, and straw hats were produced. Two years later, the top floor was converted to a mantle and costume factory, but the major rebuilding came in 1919 when a new four-storey block was built at the rear, and two additional storeys were added to the front portion. This was when the Stafford Street building took on its current outward appearance.
A 1918 drawing shows the addition of just one floor and retention of the old facade below, however, a plan deposited in March 1919 shows a total of five floors (including basement) and an entirely remodelled facade in a transitional style reminiscent of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The designer was William H. Dunning, a Tasmanian-born architect whose other work in Dunedin included the National Bank in Princes Street, Ross Home in North East Valley, the RSA Buildings in Moray Place, and Barton’s Buildings. Fletcher Bros were the builders.
Plan lodged August 1918, showing the original proposal for one additional floor. Dunedin City Council Archives.
Plan lodged March 1919, showing the final design with two additional floors and an entirely new facade. Dunedin City Council Archives.
Large windows are a striking feature of the design, and a report in the Evening Star noted: ‘An important principle, copied from America, is as to the lighting. The whole front is practically a window, and in daytime the workers are getting the greatest amount of sunlight that is possible under a roof.’
About 110 young women were employed in the building. The hat factory remained on the first floor, and shirts were made on the second. The third floor housed the costume and mantle departments, and the Evening Star gave a full description of it:
There are 100 Singer machines in this room, electrically driven. The only foot action for the worker is the use of the treadle for regulating speed. The harder she presses the faster the machine runs. The presser-foot on each machine is operated by the knee, leaving both hands free for guiding. The installation of the electric iron saves gas fumes, and two electric cutters are able to save a lot of heavy work. The pressers’ room on the same floor is supplied with a steam press of the very latest type, saving a lot of time and labour. The making of dress buttons being forced on us as a result of the war, six machines are provided for that purpose. The woven material used in making the costumes and other goods is from the firm’s own Roslyn mills, so that the finished articles as sent to the shops are to all intents and purposes produced from our own resources except for linings and thread. This being the case, it is very gratifying that Mr C. W. L. King, the manager, is able to show a variety of goods that for material, style, and make can be put alongside the best productions of Australia or Europe. Consideration of this phase of the subject leads one to the belief that the diversity of design in such a factory is not only good for business but food for the workers, inasmuch as it must be much more interesting to be engaged on varied work that touches the domain of art, and has some individuality about it, than to stick for days and weeks at one mechanical operation of the prosaic and unromantic order.
The fourth floor was an ‘up-to-date dining room on the restaurant model’, where morning tea was provided at 10 o’clock, and midday meals could be heated. Apparently it wouldn’t do for the male staff to eat with them, so the men had a separate dining room above. The flat roof was ‘available as a promenade for the girls’, and from it there were good views the harbour.
In 1924 a fire significantly damaged the top floor (32 firemen fought the blaze). In 1930 a new boot factory building of utilitarian design was erected on the middle of the site, between the two main buildings. Miller & White were the architects and Thomas Ferguson was the building contractor. The same architects and contractor were responsible for the addition of a further two storeys to this structure over the summer of 1937-1938.
Advertisement from the Northern Advocate, 22 June 1922 p.6 (Papers Past).
Ross & Glendining was acquired by UEB Industries Ltd in 1966, and subsequently merged into Mosgiel Woollens Ltd.Mosgiel vacated the Stafford Street building in 1973, and Sew Hoy & Sons occupied it until about 1980. Mosgiel retained a knitwear division in the High Street building until it went into receivership in 1980.
A variety of businesses operated from 8 Stafford Street over the next three decades, and between 2010 and 2011 it was partially converted to apartments. Current redevelopment plans by owners Jason and Kate Lindsey will create a start-up and tech business hub, ‘for creatives, consultants and entrepreneurs alike’. This seems a fitting turn for the site of one of the most successful commercial enterprises ever to have come out of Dunedin.
Newspaper references: Otago Daily Times, 3 May 1866 p.3 (tender notice), 18 June 1866 p.5 (new Stafford Street building description), 27 October 1866 p.1 (advertisement), 1 April 1874 p.2 (Stafford Street additions description); 20 April 1875 (new High Street building description) p.2; 15 April 1893 p.3 (new warehouse) , 1 April 1901 p.1 (plumbing tenders – High Street), 15 June 1903 p.3 (‘an important industry), 23 July 1918 p.7 (Stafford Street additions description); Evening Star, 8 July 1919 p.3 (description of additions); New Zealand Herald, 28 April 1924 p.6 (fire).
Other references:
Stone’s, Wise’s and telephone directories
Baré, Robert, City of Dunedin Block Plans Dunedin: Caxton Steam Printing Company, [1889].
Jones, F. Oliver, Structural Plans of the City of Dunedin NZ, ‘Ignis et Aqua’ series, [1892].
Fahey, W.H. Beautiful Dunedin : its environs and the cold lakes of Otago. Dunedin: Evening Star Co., 1906.
Jones, S.R.H. Doing Well and Doing Good : Ross & Glendining, Scottish Enterprise in New Zealand. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2010.
Council of Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations of New Zealand, block plans, 1927
Dalziel Architects records, Hocken Collections (MS-2750/143 and MS-2758/272)
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans (with thanks to Glen Hazelton)
Thanks to Peter Entwisle for pointing out the Mackintosh connection
Filleul Street appears on Charles Kettle’s street plan (National Archives, UK) as Albyn Place, one of many street names taken from Edinburgh. Its formation and development was slow, partly due to the swampy nature of the land, and it was ultimately given a different name. The earliest reference to Filleul Street in the Otago Witness dates from March 1859. Canon Edmund Nevill (1862-1933) was an historian of place names (a toponymist!), and the following extract is taken from one of his manuscripts held in the Hocken Collections. He refers to James Fulton, the prosperous Taieri farmer and parliamentarian, whose residence Lisburn House still stands at Caversham.
Here follow some place names embodying old stories. The late Dr Robert Fulton told me the first. He said ‘As the story of how Filleul St got its name has not so far appeared in print I detail it here, for I had it from my father James Fulton. In the fifties he and his brother Robert, who lived at Ravensbourne [sic] West Taieri used to walk into town at election times, record their votes, and return home – often with 50lb bags of flour on their backs. On one occasion they came to the Town Board office for some special reason and James Macandrew said “hullo, Jim, you are the very man we want” (Everyone was Jim and Bob and Harry in those days.) “We are naming some of the streets, you have chosen sections in this flag swamp, we’ll call them Fulton St.” “No you don’t Mac” said my father, laughing “here’s Dickey Filleul, call it after him”. The two Filleuls, William and Richard, were great friends of my father, nephews of the Valpys. They went to Oamaru and settled there but were very little in Dunedin. However, the name was given and has remained. The Filleuls were French Hugenots who came to England at the time of the massacre of St Bartholemew (1572).’
The FIlleul brothers , Richard Anthony Filleul and William Gabriel Filleul, were born in Jersey in the Channel Islands and came to Otago in 1849 when still in their teens. They went to the Victorian goldfields in 1852 and after their return were sheep farmers at Papakaio. They both went to England for a time, and Richard drowned when the Lord Raglan sank en route to New Zealand in 1863. William Gabriel Filleul gave up farming later in the 1860s and became Clerk of the Resident Magistrate’s Court in Oamaru. He retired to Nelson where he died in 1902. His wife, Louisa, was fond of riding and it was told in her obituary that she:
…covered great stretches of country on horseback. As a protection against bushrangers, who were haunting the country about Dunedin at the time, she and her cousin carried pots of pepper in their saddle-bags, and it was characteristic of Mrs Filleul that she expressed disappointment that the pepper never had to be used.
The Fulton story has a good provenance, but stories of origin are seldom straightforward and there is a bit more to this one too. Dr Hocken stated that William Filleul told him that he purchased a section at the corner of Moray Place and Filleul Street. Mr Abbott, the surveyor superintending the purchase, said ‘I see this street has got no name, we’ll call it Filleul Street’. Hocken’s information suggests that while the circumstances may have been approximately as Fulton described, the naming was not quite as haphazard as his story suggested. Further complicating things, Robin Mitchell (1954) wrote that the first landowner in the street was Philip Filleul. This would likely be Philip Valpy Mourant Filleul, the older brother of Richard and William, who settled in Tasmania but apparently spent very little time here. A search of land records held by Archives New Zealand would likely clarify which of the Filleuls bought the section.
Filleul Street looking north, c.1880. The intersection with St Andrew Street and York Place is in the foreground. Detail from Burton Bros photograph, Te Papa C.012114.
In the 1860s, numerous small houses and modest commercial and buildings were built. The occupations of the residents named in Stone’s directory for 1884 included labourer, plasterer, clerk, storekeeper, artist, waiter, cook, baker, charwoman, photographer, music teacher, stocking knitter, signwriter, sailmaker, accountant, auctioneer, ironworker, butcher, draper, fruiterer, jobmaster, expressman, dealer, carter, glass engraver, plasterer, crockery merchant, and brewer. Not all of the homes were on the streetfront, with many of the humbler dwellings down little lanes and alleys.
The Liverpool Arms Hotel opened on the upper side of the street, between Moray Place and York Place, in 1869. It was kept by Edmund O’Keeffe, and later by his son Alfred Henry O’Keefe, who went on to became one of New Zealand’s most celebrated early painters and art teachers. The Liverpool Arms lost its license in 1894 and in 1909 became the Anglican Men’s Mission House, run by the Rev. V.G. Bryan King. A newspaper feature published in the Otago Witness gives insight into the lives of some of Dunedin’s most disadvantaged people, though it leaves many questions as to how it was from their own perspective. King told a reporter:
‘Well, yes I am somewhat busy at times, but the work never becomes monotonous. On Thursday afternoon, for instance, I had a man in the “D.T.’s” in here, a destitute woman and her child in the hall, a mad woman creating a disturbance at the front door, and a young man, with something in his eye, asking attention. I simply did not know what to do first, so I commenced operations by evicting the mad woman, and while I was attending to her the “D.T.” patient escaped, and caused me a lot of trouble…’
Mr King had long advocated such a place, and when it was finally decided to establish the mission he was at some pains to discover a suitable site for it. Eventually he decided on Filleul street, near a quarter where there were houses of a bad reputation. The house he took, indeed, had been one of the most unsavoury in the neighbourhood. It had been tenanted by rogues, vagabonds, gamblers, and half-caste Chinese girls. It was filthily dirty; when it was being cleaned the accumulations of years had to be scraped off the floor with a spade. In an upstairs room some 12 or 14 ferrets had been kept, and long after their removal there remained in the vicinity an odour that very forcibly reminded one of the polecat tribe. But soap, water, paint and paper presently rendered the half-dozen rooms clean and habitable…
Now, Mr King is tall and pale and slightly built. The reporter was curious to know how he fared in […] unwished-for encounters, and he put the question. Mr King smiled, and pointed to a couple of books lying handily. ‘Ju-jitsu?’ said the reporter. ‘Precisely,’ said the clergyman. ‘My best friend. I learned it long since, and have used it frequently’ […] ‘I have had some of the biggest wharf labourers in Dunedin tackle me at different times,’ he said, complacently; ‘but I survived. No – no damage.’
The building reverted to residential use in the 1920s and was eventually demolished around 1970.
Detail from the above image showing the Liverpool Arms Hotel.
Four churches were built on corner sites. The old Brethren Hall (later the Beneficiaries Hall) on the Hanover Street corner was designed by J.L. Salmond in 1894. It was Maude’s Fabric Barn for a time and is now the restaurant Miga. The Evangelical Church of Christ stood near the Moray Place intersection from 1910 to 1976. This is not to be confused with the St Andrew Street Church of Christ, designed by David Mowat and opened in 1926. It replaced the Tabernacle in Great King Street, and remains a landmark building with its Wrenesque tower and a classical styling unusual in Dunedin’s ecclesiastical architecture. On the diagonally opposite corner remains another church building, the former York Place Gospel Hall. It was much modified for re-use by Warwick Grimmer Ltd in 1990.
The Church of Christ, on the St Andrew Street corner.
The Dunedin Brewery was established at the northern end of the street in 1861. It was taken over by Charles Keast in 1870 and he went into partnership with John McCarthy in 1871 to form Keast & McCarthy. The old wooden buildings were removed and a new brewery in brick and bluestone erected between 1873 and 1874. Later buildings included brick offices fronting Filleul Street designed by Louis Boldini (1878), a new malthouse and other buildings designed by T.B. Cameron (1880), and extensive additions fronting London Street designed by Drew & Lloyd (1882). The brewery closed in 1895 and the buildings were taken over by Irvine & Stevenson’s St George Co., which also had factory premises in St Andrew Street and Moray Place. This large company was known for its ranges of jams, soups, preserved meats, and other canned food products. It eventually operated factories throughout New Zealand and continued to be based on the Filleul Street site until it closed in 1977. The buildings were demolished, but a remnant wall can be seen from London Street. Smiths City later developed a store on the site fronting Filleul Street. This closed in 2008 and the building is now partly occupied by Lincraft.
Irvine and Stevenson’s St George Co., in buildings originally erected for Keast & McCarthy’s Dunedin Brewery.
Detail on the Irvine & Stevenson buildings. Photograph taken by Hardwicke Knight in the early 1960s.
An aerial photograph from March 1955 showing some of the housing still on the street at that time. George Street is in the foreground. Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs. Ref: WA-37713-F. Alexander Turnbull Library http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23527357
There were still many houses in the street in the 1960s but few remain today. The property became attractive to commercial developers and various new two-storey buildings were built in the 1970s. Three two-storey houses from around the turn of the century remain on the slope immediately below London Street, and a single-storey 1890s villa there was demolished only recently to make way for apartments.
The eastern side of Filleul Street is now dominated by multi-storey carparks. The first was built for Gardner Motors in 1969, together with a car sales yard on the corner of Moray Place. It was the first carpark of its type in Dunedin and the architects were Mason & Wales. The Golden Centre followed in 1979 and the Meridian mall in 1997. The mall carparks usefully service nearby shops and businesses, but their appearance and function dehumanise a large part of street. The Wall Street complex, opened in 2009, has a glass frontage at ground level.
The Gardner Motors building became Health Board House in 1989, when it was rebuilt with additional floors of office accommodation. It was transformed from a bland utilitarian structure into a striking example of postmodernism (‘pomo’), an architectural movement that peaked in Dunedin between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s (later than in some other cities). The architect was Ashley Muir of Mason & Wales, and the Otago Daily Times reported that he:
…believes buildings should not be fashionable and says the buildings people like in Dunedin have been there for 100 years […] He uses Greek and Roman influences because he believes they form part of people’s perceptions of what a public building should be. Public buildings must also have visual texture, like the Dunedin Railway Station, which is ‘full of visual texture’.
The continued role of revivalism in Dunedin architecture might be something good to follow up here another time. I had intended this post to be about a street name but have ended up writing about modern carparks! If nothing else, this shows how much one busy central city street can evolve in a relatively short space of time. No doubt Filleul Street will be further transformed in the future.
The intersection of Moray Place and Filleul Street. A photograph taken by Hardwicke Knight around 1960.
A view up Hanover Street to Filleul Street taken in December 1979, with demolition underway on Irvine & Stevenson’s St George Co. factory. Image courtesy of and copyright Gary Blackman.
A recent view of the intersection of Moray Place and Filleul Street. The large structure is the rebuilt Gardner Motors carpark building.
A view down Filleul Street from near the London Street intersection.
Newspaper references: Otago Witness, 19 March 1859 p.2 (early reference to Filleul Street), 17 March 1898 p.35 (biography of W.G. Filleul), 10 November 1909 p.89 (mission house); Otago Daily Times, 1 October 1878 p.1 (Boldini additions to brewery), 3 February 1880 p.4 (T.B. Cameron additions to brewery), 18 July 1882 p.4 (Drew & Lloyd additions to brewery); 2 August 1989 p.24 (rebuilding of Gardner Motors) North Otago Times, 7 August 1902 p.3 (obituary for W.G. Filleul); New Zealand Herald, 7 September 1927 p.12 (obituary for Louisa Filleul).
Other references:
Croot, Charles. Dunedin Churches: Past and Present (Dunedin: Otago Settlers Association, 1999).
Griffiths, George. Dunedin Street Names (Dunedin: the author, 1999).
Hocken, Thomas Morland: NZ Notes. Hocken Collections MS-0037.
Leckie, Frank G. Otago Breweries: Past and Present. (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1997).
Nevill, Edmund Robert : Papers relating to European placenames in New Zealand. Hocken Collections MS-0160A.
Stevenson, Geoffrey W., The House of St George: A Centennial History 1864-1964 (Dunedin: Irvine & Stevenson’s St George Co. Ltd, [1964]).
Built: 1873-1874 Address:21-27 Moray Place Architect: Robert Forrest Builder: James Gore
An early lithograph of the Temperance Hall (Toitū / Otago Settlers Museum)
This post continues the theme of public halls with the Oxford Buildings, known originally as the Temperance Hall and later as the Choral Hall. Completed in 1874, this venue was erected for the Dunedin Temperance Hall Company, a group formed chiefly by members of the Pioneer Lodge of the Temperance Order of Good Templars. The building was intended for the use of various local temperance groups, which were then part of a large, vigorous, and influential movement. They aimed to fight what one local clergyman described as ‘great evils arising from intoxicating drinks’. The hall was also available for general hire.
On the ground floor were offices and the ‘lower hall’ or meeting room, which measured 25 x 41 feet. On the first floor was the larger ‘upper hall’, which measured 72 x 43 feet and contained sitting room for 750 people. This hall had a stage and gallery and an ‘elliptical cove’ ceiling of varnished kauri with sunlights of stained glass. Kauri timber was used throughout the building. The facade was designed in a simple Renaissance Revival style, with rustication and round-headed windows on the ground floor, and curved and triangular pediments above the windows on the first floor. The building was described in the Otago Daily Times as being of a ‘plain but substantial character’.
The architect was Robert Forrest and the hall was one of his early works in his transition from the role of building contractor to the role of architect. The building has been mistaken for a William Mason design due to confusion with an unrealised theatre project that G.R. West put forward for a nearby site around the same time. The builder was James Gore, who submitted a tender of £2,778. The foundation stone was laid by the Mayor, Andrew Mercer, on 26 December 1873, following a procession in which 1,200 people took part. A bottle placed in the stone contained a scroll signed by officers of various lodges, newspapers, coins, and a company prospectus. The building officially opened with a soiree, concert, and dance, on 14 August 1874.
Otago Daily Times, 11 March 1878 p.1 (from Papers Past)
For decades, balls were held (the floors were designed with this in mind), dancing lessons given, and many concerts and other entertainments put on. The Kennedy Family were among the first to appear in the hall with their performances of popular Scottish ballads in 1874. The world billiards champion John Roberts played here in 1876, and the tight-rope walker Henry Morris (‘The New Zealand Blondin’) performed in 1878. A waxwork exhibition featured likenesses of the Kelly Gang and other famous people. One series of chamber music concerts was organised by Raphael Squarise and Arthur Barmeyer through their Otago Conservatorio of Music. A four-day Maori Carnival was held 1902.
Religious meetings were held in the building for nearly 40 years. The Salvation Army’s first New Zealand meetings were held at the hall on 1 April 1883, both preceding and following the better-known outdoor gathering commemorated by a brass plaque on Cargill’s Monument. The Army continued to use the hall for three years. From 1886 the Open Brethren hired it, and it was at this time that the name of the building was changed from the Temperance Hall to the Choral Hall. The Brethren were led by the evangelist Alfred Brunton, who had earlier preached at Farley’s Hall. He led Brunton’s Choir, a group of up to 100 singers that was known throughout Otago, favouring the new style of emotional (and sometimes sentimental) Moody and Sankey songs. This ministry through music may explain the adoption of the Choral Hall name. Brunton died in 1900 and the Brethren continued to hold their meetings in the hall until 1920, when they moved to a new building.
Many clubs and societies met in the Choral Hall. The Dunedin Burns Club held meetings and gave concerts, and from 1891 to 1906 the Otago Art Society held its annual exhibitions in the building. Frances Hodgkins, then just beginning her career, was among those who exhibited. There were also many political meetings and lectures, the latter including such topics as ‘Reincarnation as a Factor in Evolution’ (by a theosophist) and ‘Eighteen Months in the Canadian Far North’ (for the Otago Institute).
11 July 1889 was a significant day in the history of New Zealand. The inaugural meeting of the country’s first women’s union, the Tailoresses’ Union, was held at the Choral Hall and Rev. Rutherford Waddell gave a speech denouncing working conditions and ‘sweated labour’ in factories. This contributed to the breaking ‘sweating scandal’ that led to the Sweating Commission of 1890, which was in turn instrumental in the passing of the Factories Act and other legislation by a new Liberal Government.
Otago Daily Times, 14 July 1890 p.1 (from Papers Past)
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) met in the hall and the Women’s Franchise League of New Zealand grew out of this, holding its inaugural meeting at the Choral Hall on 28 April 1892. This group played a pivotal role in promoting women’s suffrage and widely circulated the petition that was so influential in the successful campaign for women to be given the vote.
In the early 1920s the first-floor hall was converted to a clothing factory for Butterworth Brothers, who employed about 40 staff on the premises, putting their robe department in the gallery and machinists on the main floor. A fire broke out on 16 March 1927, the same day that thousands of people gathered in the streets for the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. The blaze extensively damaged the first floor and roof, but the ground floor (where the auctioneer Spedding used the old lower hall) escaped with little more than water damage. The building was rebuilt, but the panelling that can be seen in the hall today suggests that the polished kauri ceiling was lost. The space was later used by Sharland & Co. (wholesale druggists) and the Dunedin Frock Manufacturing Company.
The Temperance Hall Company sold the building as early as 1882, due to debt and the difficulty of competing with newer halls. In the late nineteenth century it was owned by D.C. Cameron and in the early twentieth century it passed to the Taylor Trustees. In 1932 they employed the architects Miller & White to design extensive alterations to the building which were carried out by the Glue Construction Company at a cost of £2,500. This saw the removal of the lower hall and the building of three shops on the ground floor. A new verandah used Wunderlich pressed metal, while shop fronts featured Australian rose mahogany woodwork, decorative leadlights, and orange and black terrazzo slabs. This work was described in the Evening Star as being in ‘ultra-modern style’. The main staircase was rebuilt in a new location and a lift installed by Turnbull & Jones, for which a small penthouse was added to the roof. The first floor facade decoration seems to have been left unaltered at this time, but in 1944 it was stripped of its ornamentation and given a plainer style that was then fashionable. A new name, ‘Oxford Buildings’, was added to the parapet in relief lettering.
The auctioneers Spedding’s (succeeded by Scandrett’s) took one of the shops. Eliza Squire (a milliner and seamstress) occupied the middle one from 1939 and remained there for twenty years. The other shop, at 25 Moray Place, was occupied by Modern Books from 1943 to 1954. This was run by the Dunedin Co-Operative Book Society (one of just a few bookshop co-operatives in New Zealand), which had socialist ideals and aimed ‘to foster the reading and writing and production of books, pamphlets, circulars and other publications of a nature that will promote an active and intelligent interest in progressive ideas and activities’. The shop specialised in New Zealand books, history, music,and philosophy, as well as general literature. Landfall editor Charles Brasch was involved with the management and day-to-day running of the shop, which was frequented by the local literati. Janet Frame sometimes browsed there in its last year or so, hoping to ‘glimpse one of the literary figures of Dunedin or one visiting from up north’. From roughly 1956 to 1976 the same shop was occupied by Catholic Supplies.
The old upper hall became the Manhattan Lounge in 1960. The space remained essentially unchanged but the old gallery became a bar (originally a coffee bar) with a dance area on the floor below. The Lounge was a popular venue up to the 1980s, and later became the Manhattan Theatre. At the time of writing it is used by the Vertical Aerial Dance studio, which offers specialist pole dancing classes. The shops are now occupied by Modern Miss (vintage clothing), and Whiteroom (sellers of designware, furniture, lighting, and contemporary art). The building looks well kept but the grey exterior colour scheme is a little at odds with the warm colours of the terrazzo.
A lot more could be included in the story of this building. In pulling together various strands I’ve been impressed by the national significance of its social and cultural history. It’s a frequently overlooked treasure, easily worthy of registration as a category I historic place.
Newspaper references: Otago Daily Times, 25 March 1873 p.2 (meeting for proposed hall), 14 April 1873 p.2 (meeting – site put forward), 17 May 1873 p.2 (formation of company), 14 August 1873 p.3 (West’s proposed hall), 27 November 1873 p.4 (tender accepted), 17 January 1874 p.2 (Rev. James Clark on alcohol), 21 January 1874 p.6 (laying of foundation stone), 26 June 1874 p.2 (progress), 7 August 1874 p.3 (description – nearing completion), 15 August 1874 p.2 (opening and description), 21 August 1874 p.2 (finishing touches), 29 August 1874 p.8 (description), 18 September 1876 p.3 (John Roberts, billiards champion), 25 August 1882 p.3 (buildings to be sold), 28 September 1882 p.2 (sale), 27 June 1883 p.3 (lease to Salvation Army), 8 June 1889 p.2 (Sweating Scandal meeting), 29 April 1892 p.3 (Women’s Franchise League meeting), 5 July 1920 p.4 (Open Brethren move out), 17 March 1927 p.10 (fire), 18 March 1927 p.13 (fire); Evening Star, 17 March 1927 p.6 (fire), 20 September 1932 p.2 (alterations), 24 January 1933 p.1 (alterations).
Other references: Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory; Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory; telephone directories; Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans; Barrowman, Rachel, A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand (Wellington, 1991) pp.125-127; Frame, Janet, An Angel at My Table (New York, 1985) pp.126-129; Stacpoole, John, William Mason: The First New Zealand Architect (Auckland, 1971); Hocken Collections MS-2758/0288 (Miller & White plans)
Built: 1900 Address:249 Cumberland Street Architect: George William Gough (1863-1936) Builder: Not known
This building dates from the last year of the nineteenth century. It has one particularly striking feature: a sculpture of the Royal Standard in relief on its pediment. Why is it there? The answer to that question proved harder to pin down than I thought it would be…
In the late 1800s the site of the building was a vacant one next door to the Dunedin and Suburban Tramway Company (which had buildings on both sides of the street). Harry May, of the confectionery firm H. May & Co., erected it as a factory in 1900. It was completed around October that year at a cost of £4,000 to £5,000 for both the building and machinery. It was well appointed for its time and had electric lighting throughout.
At the age of 30, Harry May had confectionery shops in both Rattray and Princes streets, as well as his new factory. Sadly, his enterprise ended in tragedy. May quickly found himself in a financial quagmire and took to forging other men’s names to endorse his bills, to the extent that he was later described as a ‘wholesale forger’. On 4 June 1901 he was found drowned at the St Clair baths. He left a wife and three children.
Why the Royal Standard? Its presence is puzzling and it does appear to be an original feature of the building (it can be seen in a 1906 photograph). A likely explanation is that May used it in his branding, and that he chose the symbol for its patriotic appeal at the height of the Second Boer War. I haven’t been able to link May directly to the ‘Standard’ name, however, Dunedin architect G.W. Gough is named as the architect of the ‘Standard Confectionery Works’ in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand (1905)and it seems probable that this refers to May’s factory. I haven’t found any other Dunedin businesses from around this time named ‘Standard Confectionery’.
George William Gough (1863-1936) was both a civil and a naval architect, meaning he was often designing boats and ships rather than buildings. According to the Cyclopedia he was born at Manchester and educated at Rothesay in Scotland. He studied naval architecture under the shipbuilders Napier & Sons and Henderson & Co. in Glasgow, and civil architecture with George Melrose in Rothesay. After working in Canada and the United States Gough took charge of an architect and surveyor’s office in Falkirk. He arrived at Dunedin in 1886 where he worked for the engineers and ironfounders Begg & Wilkinson before establishing his own business. Among his ship designs was the steamer ‘Tarawera’, which catered to tourist traffic on Lake Te Anau. His buildings in Dunedin included the Denton Hat Mills, the superintendent’s house in the Botanical Gardens, the North End Boating Club pavilion, and brickworks at Andersons Bay. Some of his drawings survive in the Hocken Collections.
The Cumberland Street building is a nicely proportioned if fairly basic example of Renaissance revival design. The use of unrendered brick with contrasting cement facings on the façade is characteristic of the period, although this effect is currently lost as the facade is painted a single shade of blue. Decoration includes a simple cornice, and the pediment with its sculpture is flanked by volute consoles, while two finials have been removed.
When I took a look into the alley next to the building (where the factory once had an enormous chimney stack), I noticed a faded sign on the wall: ‘Stand….Ware…’. My first thought was ‘ah-ha!’, this is a reference to the elusive ‘Standard’ brand and its ‘Warehouse’. This seemed to be confirmed when I found an early photograph that tantalisingly showed part of the sign. The plot, however, thickened.
R. Wilson & Co. took occupancy of the building (under lease) from 1901, as an extension to their Moray Place factory which was used as a ‘complete grinding, sifting, cleaning and mixing plant for treating coffees, spices, teas, etc’. The name of their leading brand of tea? ‘Stand Out’!
Here’s an advertisement from 1906:
So the sign is for tea rather than lollies, and for ‘Stand Out’ rather than ‘Standard’. Wilson’s emphasised that their tea was ‘hill grown’ in Ceylon, and that their factory processing was a great advance, as ‘no germs or dirt can get into air-tight tins’. They also ran a coupon competition for many years.
Many other firms have occupied the building since then. From about 1919 to 1930 it was owned and occupied by the timber merchants G. Howes & Co. and named Howes’ Buildings. They let part of it to the motor and electrical engineers James J. Niven & Co. A hanging verandah was added in the 1920s, along with new shop fronts. Later occupiers included the Otago Electricity Board and the engineering suppliers Myles Walker Ltd (c.1935-1976). Sun & Snow, adventure equipment specialists, have been in the building since about 1985. Perhaps readers will share memories from these more recent years in the building’s colourful history.
The building as it appeared in the 1920s. Note the chimney stack at the right rear. Photo (detail): S.C. Smith. Alexander Turnbull Library. Ref: 1/2-046491-G.
Newspaper references: Otago Witness, 12 June 1901 p.40 (‘Sad Death of Mr H. May’); 6 June 1906 p.39 (illustration); Evening Post (Wellington), 26 July 1901 p.8 (sale of buildings); Taranaki Herald, 26 March 1906 p.6 (advertisement); Poverty Bay Herald, 5 September 1906 p.4 (advertisement).
Other references: Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol.4 (Otago and Southland Provincial Districts), 1905; Telephone directories; Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory ;Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory ;Dunedin City Council rates, permit, and cemetery records.
Hallenstein Brothers opened New Zealand’s first clothing factory in 1873 on a site off Custom House Square (the Exchange). Just ten years later they put up this fine pile, which company historians later described as their ‘quietly imposing headquarters’. Excavation work began in October 1882. To celebrate the opening of the building, a ball attended by 500-600 staff and friends was held a few doors down the street at the Garrison Hall on 23 July 1883. Contractors Meikle & Campbell received the final payment of their £8,500 bill in October.
The building is larger than it might first appear as its depth (67 metres) is four times greater than the street frontage. The top two floors originally housed the clothing factory, with a showroom and the company’s head office on the first floor, and a warehouse and leased-out premises on the ground floor. As many as 300 employees worked in the factory at one time and I like to imagine the busy traffic up and down the stairs, the activity of the (mostly female) workers on the factory floor, and the ‘pleasant hum of voices’ not overpowered by the rattling away of 80-odd sewing machines (most of them Singers). An ‘amusing stampede’ to the dining room, where free tea was served, took place daily at exactly 1pm when everyone had to leave the workroom, where windows were opened to ventilate the space. In 1900 the output of the factory was estimated at 3,000 garments a week.
Alice Woodward started at HB’s as a 14-year-old in 1914, earning 5 shillings a week making coats at a time when much of the sewing was still done by hand. She found it run strictly, with the front door shut at precisely 8am and latecomers having to wait outside for fifteen minutes before being let in. Alice stayed for 57 years, retiring as a machinist in 1971, at which time there were about 75 working in the sewing room.
A separate business, Michaelis, Hallenstein and Farquhar, had their offices and a warehouse in the lower part of the building from 1883 to 1957. Renamed Glendermid Ltd in 1918, they were leather merchants and established the large tannery at Sawyers Bay.
Inside the clothing factory (Hocken Collections AG-295-036/003)
Architect David Ross was a Scotsman who worked in Dunedin from 1862 and the factory was one of his last projects here before he moved to Auckland. Ross designed some of Dunedin’s most familiar buildings, including the Congregational Church in Moray Place and the older part of the Otago Museum. Although he sits a little in the shadow of the famous Mr Lawson, he remains the only Dunedin architect to have become a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Ross had travelled extensively in Europe and the USA and his entrepreneurial client, Bendix Hallenstein, had looked at factory design and equipment in England. I wonder how much their observations influenced the Dunedin design, which was enlightened in terms of health and comfort in a decade when conditions in other local factories led to the infamous sweated labour scandal.
This is a renaissance revival building: ‘of the ordinary Italian street description’ according to an advance newspaper report. It draws strongly from the palazzo, which is seen in such features as the loggia-like arches at the ground floor and small windows on the upper floors. The bold cornices give horizontal emphasis. It’s strong and unfussy, but there’s also much richness in its detail. Some of its features recur in Ross’s work, including the pairs of round-headed windows and the banded rustication. The windows on the top floor of the facade repeat the treatment he used on the ground floor of the museum. The row-of-circles motif he frequently used elsewhere only appears on an alleyway gate.
The ground floor walls of the building are stone, with finely carved Port Chalmers breccia used for the facade and Leith Valley andesite for the other elevations. The upper floors are constructed in triple brick and plastered on the street front. The alleys on either side are among the most delightful in Dunedin and a large boiler survives at the back where the building abuts the stone of Bell Hill. Inside the factory chamber, which was originally ‘delicately adorned in tints of blue and white’, an innovative lantern-like roof structure with many windows and skylights keeps the space well lit.
The facade is little altered. The bridge over the alleyway is an early addition said to have been built to accommodate a board room, the ground floor doorways have been relocated more than once, and a few windows have been replaced unsympathetically. A pleasant but slightly busy paint scheme highlights some of the architectural details. It’s a bit of a shame that signage covers the old clothing factory name with its period lettering but this could be removed in the future.
In 1968 Ted McCoy and Gary Blackman identified the building as the best of Dunedin’s early warehouses. It was registered as a Catergory I Historic Place in 1988, the same year that Hallensteins’ head office left Dunedin. The building has been the home to Milford Galleries since 1989 and is now named ‘Milford House’. The Dowling Street Studios are also to be found here, while another tenant is the Christian Outreach Centre. The building was bought by Feldspar in 2010 and their involvement in heritage re-use projects such as Arrow House and Diesoline Espresso suggests it’s in good hands.
Newspaper references: Otago Daily Times, 19 September 1882 p.1 (call for tenders), 5 October 1882 p.4 (description – ‘shortly to be proceeded with’),12 October 1882 p.1 (contractors’ notice – excavation), 27 September 1883 p.3 (description following completion), 9 January 1900, p.2 (description); 4 May 1970, p.14 (changes), 21 December 1971, p.12 (Alice Woodward); Otago Witness, 28 July 1883 p.10 (ball to mark opening), 18 August 1883 p.8 (floor area); 7 June 1894, p.35 (description).
Other references: [Bathgate, John] (‘A Citizen’), An Illustrated Guide to Dunedin, and its Industries (Fergusson and Mitchell, 1883), p.102; Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol. iv, Otago and Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905), pp.306-7; Brasch, Charles and C.R. Nicolson: Hallensteins: The First Century 1873-1973 (Dunedin: Hallenstein Bros, 1972) pp.25-27; McCoy, E.J. and J.G. Blackman, Victorian City of New Zealand (Dunedin: McIndoe, 1968), plt 20; New Zealand Historic Places Trust registration no. 2159; Bendix Hallenstein letterbooks (Hocken AG-296/005); Hallenstein Brothers general ledger (Hocken AG-295-015/028).
Built in Dunedin 