Tag Archives: Fletcher Bros

Craigie House

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Built: 1918
Address: 22 Manse Street
Architects: Mason & Wales
Builders: Fletcher Bros

Craigie_Nov2014

Building work in Dunedin continued through World War I, despite the wide-ranging ramifications of the conflict. Labour and materials were more difficult and expensive to source, but the government did not impose restrictions and, at the end of 1916, one Dunedin architect estimated costs for house construction had increased only 7 or 8 per cent. This figure was thought too conservative by one local builder, who claimed that the price of timber alone added more than 30 per cent. He said the cost of bricks had increased by about 20 per cent, while steel had risen between 200 and 300 per cent.

One of the more imposing new structures built during the war was for Rutherfords Ltd, on the corner of Manse and High streets. The manufacture and importation of clothing and textiles was big business at this time. Companies based in Dunedin included Ross & Glendining, Hallenstein’s, Sargood Son & Ewen, and Butterworth Bros. These firms all had large factories and warehouses, each a hive of activity in the heart of city.

In 1914 one of Butterworths’ former departmental managers, Alfred James Rutherford, led the formation of Rutherfords Ltd, a company set up to carry on the business of ‘wholesale and retail drapers and furnishers and general warehousemen in all its branches’. The founding shareholders were all from the Rutherford, Walker, and Ritchie families.

By 1915 Rutherfords was operating from Manse Street. Old wooden buildings on the site dated back to 1860-1861, when they had been built for the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institution to the designs of William Langlands. They were used as the City Council Chambers in the 1870s, and later as offices by the Railways Department, before being put to commercial use. Additions were made to the original structure.

Craigie_Athenaeum

Detail from a Burton Bros photograph showing the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institution in 1869. Ref: Te Papa C.012523

Architects Mason & Wales called for tenders for a new Rutherfords warehouse in January 1918. What is now New Zealand’s oldest architectural firm was then under the control of Patrick Young Wales, the son of co-founder N.Y.A. Wales. P.Y. Wales was described a man ‘who did not countenance any suspicion of shoddy work and, as many a builder knew, he would use a knife to check on the mortar between brickwork. If it did not measure up then he was known, on occasions, to kick a wall down’. The firm designed a wide variety of buildings, its biggest contracts in the first half of the twentieth century being for hospital buildings in Dunedin and wider Otago.

Fletcher Bros (forerunner of the Fletcher Construction Co.) was the building company for Rutherfords. Demolition work was carried out in February 1918 and the estimated completion date was June. The building cost nearly £5,000, at a time when modest but well-constructed houses could be built for less than £400.

The First World War was in its final year and the writer of an Otago Daily Times report hoped the new building signalled better times ahead and the end of Dunedin’s longer-term commercial decline:

‘The spirit of enterprise that has marked the career of many present day firms of long standing in Dunedin is also manifest in firms of recent formation. It was largely owing to that spirit that Dunedin was placed in the commercial forefront in New Zealand years ago, and its manifestation in more than one direction at present, even during war conditions, is an evidence that the position the city held in that respect in former times may yet return to it.’

Rutherfords’ building was described as an up-to-date warehouse of imposing appearance and commanding position. It has three levels (a basement and two storeys above) and was designed to carry an additional two storeys if required. The foundations are concrete and the outer walls are constructed of steel-reinforced concrete and brick. Most of the internal construction is timber. The ground floor originally housed a large warehouse space, public and private offices, a strong-room, and a lift-well. The upper storey was divided into a millinery showroom, workroom, dining room, and cloakroom.

The facade architecture is of the transitional type favoured at the time. Elements of Renaissance Revival, Queen Anne, Stripped Classical and industrial influences are all discernible. Exposed brickwork uses varied patterns and shows a high standard of execution. Other features include rustication at the basement level, pilasters rising to a height of two storeys, and mullioned steel-framed windows with shallow-arched heads. The glazing was generously proportioned to let in plenty of natural light, and it was reported that the quantity of glass needed made very serious inroads into the short supplies available in wartime conditions.

Rutherfords did not get much use out of their building as the company was wound up in 1920. A sale notice described the building as a ‘modern up-to-date warehouse substantially built in brick, with two storeys and lofty concrete basement; well lighted and ventilated, and dry as a board. The warehouse is of stylish design, and the provision made for lighting makes it perfect in this respect’.

In 1921 the building was sold to the Wellington Woollen Manufacturing Co., owners of the well-known ‘Petone’ brand and northern rivals to Dunedin’s Ross & Glendining (‘Roslyn’) and Mosgiel woollen mills.

Craigie_PetoneKnittingPattern

Kaiapoi Petone Group Textiles Ltd: Petone knitting design no.5003. Man’s lumber jacket, by and copyright to M.W. Jarvis Productions Ltd., Dunedin print Ltd, c.1965. Ref: Alexander Turnbull Library Eph-A-KNIT-1965-01-front.

Few changes were made to the building over the next forty years, although a new entrance from High Street was added in 1934 and some modest internal alterations made. In 1962 the Wellington Woollen Manufacturing Co. merged with the Kaiapoi Woollen Co. to become Kaiapoi Petone Group Textiles Ltd (KPG) and the Dunedin branch office consolidated on the Manse Street site. This company was in turn taken over by the Mosgiel Woollen Co. in 1972, and KPG finally vacated the building in 1975.

The building had always been larger than the textile business required, with early tenants including John McDonald Ltd (furriers, costumiers, tailors) and W.J. Watson (tailor). Through the 1960s part of the building was leased to the signwriters Tyrrell & Holmes, and from 1972 to 1986 the principal occupant was Rank Xerox. The canvas department of J. McGrath & Co. also occupied part of the premises in the 1970s and 80s.

In 1986, Craigie House Ltd was established as the company owning the building, taking its new name from one of the directors. Office and other spaces have been let to various commercial tenants since this time, and within the building’s walls might still be found the ‘spirit of enterprise’ with which it was first associated.

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times 4 May 1914 p.4 (registration of Rutherfords), 18 October 1916 p.5 (Mandeno on cost increases), 26 January 1918 p.1 (call for tenders), 9 February 1918 p.6 (new building), 25 August 1921 p.4 (purchase by Wellington Woollen Manufacturing Co.), 19 March 1986 p.31 (Rank Xerox move); Evening Star 25 October 1916 p.6 (dispute of Mandeno’s figures), 8 February 1918 p.6 (demolition and new building), 12 Jun 1920 p.9 (for sale, description)

Other sources:
Directories (Harnett’s, Stone’s, Wises, and telephone)
Dunedin City Council building records
Secker, T.M. Riding Upon the Sheep’s Back: A Business and Social History of the Kaiapoi Woollen Manufacturing Company Limited 1878-1978 (MA Thesis, University of Canterbury, 2001).
Sullivan, Jim. Reading Matters: A History of the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institute (Dunedin: the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institute, 2013).

Special thanks to Mason & Wales Architects for access to their historic records.

Ross & Glendining, Stafford Street

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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).

HockenCollections_S09_529j

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

Whitcombe & Tombs Building

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Built: 1915
Address: 168-174 Princes Street
Architect: Edward Walter Walden (after Collins & Harman)
Builders: Fletcher Bros

An artist’s impression of the building. Originally published in the Otago Witness, 21 April 1915, and reproduced here courtesy of the Otago Daily Times.

The old Whitcombe & Tombs Building turns one hundred years old this year. Together with the larger complex of buildings behind, it had a long association with the printing, stationery, and bookselling trades.

In the late 1870s, an L-shaped site with frontages to both Princes and Dowling streets was taken over by Fergusson & Mitchell. This firm of printers had operated in Dunedin since 1862, when Glasgow-born John McNairn Mitchell arrived to start the New Zealand arm of a business he had co-founded in Melbourne. The premises included a printery, bindery, warehouse, and one of the best-stocked stationery shops in the colony. Some very fine examples of typography can be found among their nineteenth-century print productions.

The buildings they acquired included wooden shops dating from the 1860s, as well as brick structures built in 1869 and 1877 to the designs of R.A. Lawson. A serious fire in 1901 was followed by a phase of rebuilding, which included the erection of Clyde Chambers on Dowling Street (this building was demolished in 1990).

Mitchell died in 1914, and in the same year his company was bought out by Christchurch-based competitor Whitcombe & Tombs, which had run a Dunedin branch since 1890. Despite war conditions, business was booming, and George Whitcombe remarked that ‘There is hardly a single novel this season that is worth reading and those we have not got, but we are selling the old ones like hot chips’.

Determined to build one of Australasia’s best book shops on the new site, Whitcombe & Tombs announced that ‘new premises are to be erected almost immediately, and will be in keeping with those occupied by the firm at Christchurch and Wellington’. The architect for the Dunedin work, Edward Walter Walden, closely modelled the façade on the central portion of the larger warehouse in Cashel Street, Christchurch, designed by Collins & Harman in 1906. Classically influenced, in the free Revived Renaissance style, it was an imposing and elaborate three-storey composition with a massive tympanum and square pediment at the centre of the parapet. Despite the entirely fresh street appearance, many of the old buildings remained at the rear.

The Christchurch warehouse of Whitcombe & Tombs designed by Collins & Harman, completed in 1907. Steffano Webb Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/1-005652-G.

The contractors were Fletcher Bros, led by 29-year-old James Fletcher, and the new building was ready for occupation in November 1915, nine months after the construction contract was signed. The cost was nearly £9,000. The book shop was the biggest in Dunedin, and at one time there were about thirty shop staff. The annual sale was a keenly anticipated event. Adjoining the firm’s shop was a smaller one that was leased out, as were some of the offices upstairs.

The buildings were seriously damaged by a fire in May 1955. This originated in the neighbouring Beau Monde Café and took hold in the printing department at the rear. 1,700 metres of hose from fifteen hose deliveries was run out to fight the blaze, and four firemen were injured. Losses exceeded £100,000, and the fire sale that followed attracted huge crowds eager for bargains.

The scene of the fire in May 1955. Photograph originally published in the Evening Star and reproduced here courtesy of the Otago Daily Times.

Plans for the reinstatement the buildings were designed by L.W.S. Lowther and built by Mitchell Bros between 1956 and 1957 at a cost of £36,000. Even allowing for inflation this was more than the cost of the 1915 building. Some structures at the rear were replaced and a hangar-like extension referred to as the ‘cathedral’ was created. The Princes Street frontage was retained but some of the ornamental features were removed (mostly at the parapet level). In later years printing operations centred on separate premises in Castle Street.

In 1971, Whitcombe & Tombs merged with Coulls Somerville Wilkie, and the new name Whitcoulls was introduced in 1973. Whitcoulls joined Dunedin’s retail drift north, away from Princes Street and the Exchange. The firm was one of the founding tenants in the Golden Centre when it opened in 1979, and in 1984 opened a large store on the former Andrew Lees site in George Street. The Princes Street shop continued for a few years before closing its doors for the last time on 30 April 1986. At the time Excelsior Holdings intended to demolish both the old Whitcombe & Tombs building and the Excelsior Hotel next door, and it was thought that Whitcoulls might open an outlet in a new mall on the site. A plan subsequently emerged for a large office tower but this was one of a number of local schemes abandoned around the time of the 1987 share market crash.

A clue to building’s old identity can still be seen by pedestrians. In the late 1990s, when Diggers Bar and Saloon occupied the old shop space, 1950s tile were lifted from the entrance to reveal a beautiful mosaic tile floor. At the centre can be seen the monogram ‘W&T Ltd’.

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times, 12 June 1869 p.1 (tender notice for G. & T. Young premises), 20 December 1876 p.2 (Beissel fire), 5 February 1877 p.1 (tender notice for Beissel premises), 30 July 1877 p.7 (description of Beissel premises), 1 March 1879 p.1 (Fergusson & Mitchell additions), 20 January 1915 p.1 (tender notice for removal of buildings), 8 October 1979 pp.23-40 (Golden Centre), 6 March 1984 p.24 (George Street store), 30 April 1986 p.3 (closure of Whitcoulls), 9 May 1955 p.1 (fire); Otago Witness, 14 August 1869 p.17 (description of G. & T. Young premises); New Zealand Tablet, 13 June 1879 p.18 (Fergusson & Mitchell occupy Beissel premises); Evening Star, 9 May 1955 p.1 (fire).

Other references: 
Waite, Noel. Books for a Nation: The Whitcoulls Story (Auckland: Whitcoulls, 2008)
Ingram, John and Paul Clements. Ready Aye Ready: 150 Years of Dunedin Fire Brigades 1861-2011 (Dunedin: Dunedin Fire Brigade Restoration Society, 2010)
Block plans (1869, 1889, 1892, 1927)
Permit records and deposited plans, Dunedin City Council
Stone’s, Wise’s and telephone directories
Entwisle, Peter. R.A. Lawson’s Architectural Works (unpublished list, 2013)
Whitcoulls records, Auckland War Memorial Museum MS-99-95 (with thanks to Philippa Robinson for her help)