Tag Archives: Moray Place

Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Building

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Rebuilt: 1934-1935
Address: 362 Moray Place
Architect: Cecil Gardner Dunning
Builders: Love Construction Co.

One of Dunedin’s more jazzy and original expressions of the Art Deco style has been home to the Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association for 75 years.

In the nineteenth century its Moray Place site was part of a large coal and firewood yard. In 1909 a single-storey structure was built for the consulting engineer William James as an office, together with a shop he rented out. An extension followed in 1913.

362Moray_Site1874

The site as it appeared in 1874, with Stuart Street in the foreground. Detail from Burton Bros panorama. Te Papa O.025698.

Elevation and section plans of the original building, erected for William James in 1909.

The building gained an additional storey and its distinctive style in 1934 and 1935, through work carried out for new owners S.R. Burns & Co. by the Love Construction Co. Stanley Burns was a decorated returned soldier, who served in France in the First World War. He ran a tailoring business in Dunedin before setting up a company dealing in shares and the promotion of subsidiary companies with diverse interests in property, printing, caravans and camping equipment, cosmetics, and other areas.

The architect for the work, Cecil Gardner Dunning, was the South-African-born son and former practice partner of another local architect, William Henry Dunning. The younger Dunning’s other Dunedin designs include the former customhouse (now Harbourside Grill) and numerous private residences.

The facade as it appeared c.1935.

Bold and contrasting colours originally emphasised the angular design of the facade, likely including a warm red like the one recently revealed on the former Victoria Insurance Building in Crawford Street. The interior continued the theme, with its modern fittings, bevelled glass doors, and fashionable terrazzo flooring in the foyer and on the stairs.

The top floor was fitted out as a beauty salon for the subsidiary Roxana Ltd, ‘in accordance with modern trend and tastefully furnished to provide the maximum comfort to clients’. Much of this fit-out remains. Decorative elements included wood panelling in Pacific maple and Australian walnut ply, carnival glass windows, and black Vitrolite (an opaque pigmented glass) at the cosmetic counter and pay desk.

Sandford Sinclaire, a graduate of the Wilfred Academy of New York, managed the skincare and make-up side of the business. From a six by four foot cubicle, described as his cosmetical laboratory, came Roxana Beauty Preparations, with their ‘special exotic properties anticipated to appeal to women of fashion throughout New Zealand’. Equipment included what promoters claimed to be the country’s first Dermascope complexion analysis machine. The ‘coiffure section’ under the direction of Miss MacDonald, previously of Melbourne and Sydney, boasted the latest in hair-waving machines.

An advertising feature in the Otago Daily Times gave an evocative description:

‘The Roxana Salon, recently opened in Burns’ Buildings, Moray place, has an air of up-to-date efficiency about it. Its lounge, approached by marble stairs and furnished with a brown patterned carpet, tawny hangings, and comfortable couches, has modern lights and modern furniture, particularly in its chromium and black glass table, and its reception desk with its black glass background, chromium fittings, and blazoned glass walls. Beyond are the cubicles, ivory walled and grey floored, with a glitter of chromium and glass about them, and an atmosphere of cleanliness and brightness. All the implements are kept in perpetually sterile cupboards, and tidiness is a watchword of the place. The salon has its own dispensary and boasts that it uses the best obtainable ingredients for its cosmetics. Features of the salon are its telephone in every cubicle; its personal records of the work done for every customer; its dermascope – said to be the only one in New Zealand, used to diagnose skin diseases and analyse the skin; its special hair-dressing, realistic waving, and washing apparatuses; its unobtrusive ivory-coloured heaters; and its home service. This last is perhaps most important of all, for it includes the free use of cars to take clients to the salon, and the treatment of clients in their own homes – before dances, weddings, theatres, and so on – or in hotels. The salon is in capable hands. Mr S.B. Sinclaire, cosmetician and dermatologist, is a graduate of the Wilfred Academy of New York and a specialist in colour harmony; Mrs Farrell, who assists him recently worked for Coty in Paris; and Miss R.M. McDonald, who is in charge of the coiffure section, has had extensive experience in Sydney and Melbourne and owns a Mayer Diploma as a qualified expert in permanent waving.’

Sinclaire was dismissed for incompetence after less than a year and the salon closed in August 1937. Cosmetics continued to be produced for a short period under a new Eudora brand. By 1941 Burns’s small empire was crumbling amid financial losses and fraud (he was imprisoned in 1943) and his building was sold to the newly-formed Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association.

Dr Emily Siedeberg-McKinnon, the founding president of the association, was New Zealand’s first woman medical graduate. She worked as a general practitioner in Dunedin from 1897, and among her many other roles was Medical Superintendent of St Helen’s Maternity Hospital. Her house in York Place features in a previous post on this blog.

In 1928 she visited the Women’s Building in Vancouver, Canada. Over one hundred women’s groups used this new and central facility, which inspired her to promote something similar for Dunedin. She did not find an opportunity until 1936, when the recently-elected Labour Government announced extensive plans and regional funding for the upcoming New Zealand Centennial celebrations. Provincial committees were established, and on 31 July 1936 Siedeberg-McKinnon chaired a meeting to explore the idea of a memorial to Otago’s pioneer women. Proposals included a memorial arch, the cleaning up of slum areas, and a quaintly-described ‘home for gentlewomen of slender means’, but the delegates representing thirty-nine women’s organisations agreed they should pursue the idea of a women’s community building. The Otago Women’s Centennial Council was formed to further the project.

Dr Emily Siedeberg-McKinnon (1873-1968)

The new group had the support of Dunedin’s Labour mayor, Edwin Cox, and in February 1938 its proposal gained formal approval from the Provincial Centennial Council. It agreed that a women’s building should be one two major memorials for Otago, with the other being a cancer block at the public hospital.

In the following months Siedeberg-McKinnon outlined a proposal for a two-storey building with five committee rooms, a conference and concert room, a public lounge, two smaller lounges, a kitchen, and caretaker’s quarters. It would be available to both women and men and be similar in size to the Order of St John building in York Place. An obelisk dedicated to Otago pioneer women might be placed outside the entrance. The cost was estimated at between £7,500 and £10,000.

Cox was defeated at the local body elections in May, and while fundraising plans progressed, opposition to the scheme was finding traction. Earlier opposition had included some saying that women had no business wanting to go to meetings, and that their place was the home and the care of children. Sexism was a constant obstacle, and so were competing interests for the available funding. In September the new committee of the Provincial Centennial Council rescinded the original decision in favour of other schemes, cutting off access to the expected government subsidy. Siedeberg-McKinnon pointed to political and class bias, and to businessmen who favoured putting more money towards the national exhibition in Wellington, furthering their own commercial interests.

Perspective drawing of proposed community building on the Garrison Hall site, between Dowling and Burlington Streets. H. McDowell Smith architect.

Siedeberg-McKinnon encouraged supporters not to ‘crumple up at the first set back’ and plans continued to be developed for a general Memorial Community Building on the Garrison Hall site, between Dowling and Burlington street. The Provincial Committee again rejected the plans, and by this stage it was obvious it would not support funding any women’s or community building.

Dispirited, Siedeberg-McKinnon had a vivid dream in which she climbed from a walled enclosure, found her way through marshy ground, and looked up to see a large unfinished building with scaffolding around it. Encouraged, she found support to renew her efforts and led the formation of the Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association at an ‘indignation meeting’ on 14 March 1939. The new name was necessary as legislation reserved the word ‘centennial’ for official projects and the group had been threatened with legal action.

Successful fundraising and a mortgage allowed the purchase of the Burns & Co. building and the refurbished property opened on 23 February 1942. Intended as temporary accommodation, the association remains there three-quarters of a century later.

The largest room was the hall. Other spaces included a boardroom and a lounge. A small chapel on the first floor named the Shrine of Remembrance was dedicated on Otago Anniversary Day 1946. Designed by architect Frank Sturmer, it was furnished with an oak chair made by Dunedin’s first cabinetmaker, John Hill, and a new oak refectory table by local Swedish-born cabinetmaker Alfred Gustafson.

Robert Fraser designed a memorial stained-glass window set within three gothic arches, but due to his failing health the work was taken on and executed by John Brock. The central panel shows Christ walking on water and his disciples in a rowing boat. The left-hand panel illustrates a migrant family departing Britain, and the right-hand panel depicts arrival in Otago. The arrival panel includes mother and daughter figures, the ship Philip Laing, a whare, and native flora including ferns and cabbage trees. The shrine was later decommissioned and the window was moved to the foyer. The inscription beneath the window reads:

This window commemorates the safe arrival in Otago of all those Pioneer Women who braved the dangers of the long sea voyage to assist in the settlement of the Province of Otago and is a tribute to their sterling qualities of character, their foresight, their self sacrifice and their powers of endurance through many hardships. A recognition by those who have reaped the benefit, spiritual or material.

The hall and rooms were made available to a wide range of community groups, and not exclusively women’s organisations. Those using the building in the 1940s and 50s included the Dunedin Kindergarten Association, Lancashire and Yorkshire Society, Rialto Bridge Club, Dunedin Burns Club, Federation of University Women, Practical Psychology Club, Sutcliffe School of Radiant Living, Musicians’ Union, Radio DX League, Otago Women’s Hockey Association, Registered Nurses’ Association, and many more. In 1960 over fifty organisations were using the hall and rooms. The Dunedin Spiritualist Church met in the building for nearly 50 years, from 1945 to 1994.

In 1958, the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association purchased a new property in York Place and again entered a period of active fundraising. It appeared to be close to realising Siedeberg-McKinnon’s vision for a purpose-built building, but again fell short of its ambitious target. Instead, the unique venue they had developed was maintained and continues to provide a valuable community asset today.

With this post I mark five years of blogging on this website. Thanks all for reading.

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times, 17 September 1935 p.17 (Roxana advertising feature), 2 April 1936 p.16 (dismissal of Sinclaire), 8 March 1937 p.27 (outline of aims), 3 August 1937 (community building proposed), 9 February 1938 p.6 (approval by Provincial Centennial Council), 4 October 1938 p.5 (attitude of committee opposed), 15 March 1939 p.10 (OPWMA formed), 24 April 1940 p.6 (annual meeting, history), 30 April 1941 p9 (need for headquarters), 23 October 1941 p.9 (building purchased), 24 February 1942 pp.3-6 (opening), 28 May 1942 p.6 (‘aims partly realised’), 25 March 1946 p.6 (memorial window), 30 May 1960 pp.4 and 10 (fundraising), 6 June 1960 pp.4 and 14 (usage); Evening Star 18 October 1938 p.1 (description of proposed building), 25 October 1938 p.7 (illustration of proposed building); 30 October 1958 (‘new building nearer realisation’), 14 May 1960 p.2 (fundraising), 24 May 1960 p.2 (fundraising); Weekly News (Auckland), 29 October 1941 p.14 (‘Headquarters as Pioneer Memorial’); The Press (Christchurch), 2 April 1936 p.11 (Sinclaire, wrongful dismissal case), 16 September 1943 p.6 (charges of fraud against Burns), 30 November 1943 p.7 (sentencing of Burns).

Other references:
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory, various editions 1884-1954.
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].
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans (with thanks to Chris Scott, Archivist)
Booking diaries from Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association Inc. records, Hocken Collections MS-3156.
Newspaper clippings from Dr Emily Hancock Siedeberg-Mckinnon papers, Hocken Collections MS-0665/046 and 047.
McKinnon, Emily H. and Irene L. Starr. Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial. (Dunedin: Otago Daily Times, 1959).
‘Eudora Limited, formerly Roxana Limited’. Defunct Company and Incorporated Society files, Archives New Zealand Regional Office, R43267.
‘Eudora Limited [Previously Roxana Limited] – Director’s Minute Book’. Archives New Zealand Dunedin Regional Office, R9071585.
‘S.R. Burns & Company Limited’. Defunct Company and Incorporated Society files, Archives New Zealand Regional Office, R43322.

Hewitt’s Building

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Built: 1929 (rebuilding)
Address: 45-51 Moray Place
Architect: Leslie D. Coombs (1885-1952)
Builder: Ian George Wallace

Many of Dunedin’s commercial buildings are older than they appear, and many others are younger. Sometimes new fronts were put on old buildings to give them a modern appearance, and sometimes new has been built behind old. This building in Moray Place was erected as a two-storey structure in the 1880s, given a third storey in the 1890s, and then extensively rebuilt and remodelled in the 1920s.

A photograph taken no earlier than 1876 shows a vacant site where the present building now stands. The back part of the section was occupied by the distinctive timber house that was moved by Dr G.M. Emery to Haywood Street, Mornington. By early 1882 a two-storey brick structure had been erected. This was owned by Dr Isaiah de Zouche and occupied by him as a private residence and surgery from 1882 to 1893. De Zouche, a Swiss graduate, was Lecturer in Diseases of Children at the University of Otago and served as President of the Otago Institute. He left Dunedin in 1893 and died in New York in 1895. W.E. Taylor, a prominent organist and music teacher, leased the residence from 1893 to 1900. In 1896 the building was purchased by Ambrose Chiaroni, an art dealer, and in September that year tenders were called for additions to the building. These additions probably included the third storey, which can be seen in a 1904 photograph. The architect of the work was Henton Davey, who occupied the house at the rear.

The building as it appeared in 1904

The building as it appeared in 1904

In the 1920s the building was owned by John George Lewis Hewitt, a lawyer and magistrate who had served as Resident Commissioner to the Cook Islands. Known as ‘Hewitt’s Building’, it was extensively remodelled in 1929 to the designs of Leslie D. Coombs, giving it the appearance of a new building. Floor plans show that internal walls/partitions were also greatly altered, with the second floor divided into two residential flats, the first floor used for offices, and the ground floor for shops. The builder was W.G. Wallace and the painter/decorator Allan Campbell.

The facade was given a restrained Stripped Classical style, with large but shallow pilasters and capitals, an understated cornice, and mullioned steel-framed windows. The last are central to the design, and without the slender profiles of the joinery the character of the building would be very different, and the spare decoration of masonry would not be as effective as it is. The tiled shop fronts and entrance porch are from the same date and are delightful examples of their type that rank among the best still surviving in the city. The interior features a terrazzo stairway and lead-lighted feature window. An unusual feature of the building is a central alleyway that gives access to a rear courtyard.

The completed building was described in the Evening Star:

To the plans for Mr Leslie D. Coombs, a plain yet attractive building has been added to Moray place, opposite the Y.M.C.A., for Mr J. G.L. Hewitt, S.M. The building shows a white plaster cement finish, and has been specially designed for the admittance of the maximum amount of light. In the main entrance way the floors and walls of the two shop fronts have been finished in a distinctly novel style. For the most part, tiles, of an unusual hue, have been used in the finishings, while Australian maple appears around the shop windows. The stairway to the first floor has been finished in terrazzo, with a wrought-iron handrail and balustrade, and at the head of the stair has been inserted a simply-designed leadlight showing a touch of blue amid white glasses. On this floor five rooms suitable for offices, with strong room accommodation and conveniences, have been constructed. On the top floor, a suite of two small flats have been constructed on modern lines. Each flat shows two nicely finished room[s], with a kitchenette and bathroom. All the modern conveniences have been installed and the rooms receive their full share of the morning sun while a good view adds to the charm of the premises as residential quarters. Admittance to the flats is gained by a separate entrance from the main building. The whole work was carried out under the supervision of Mr I.G. Wallace, with the assistance of the following sub-contractors: – Messrs H.S. Bingham and Co. (terrazzo work), Messrs Andrew Lees and Co. (glazing), Messrs Arnold and Raffils (leadlights), and Mr Allan Campbell (painting and decorating).

The southern shop was occupied by the manufacturing jeweller A.J. Holloway for twenty years from 1937, and by the real estate agents G.R. Henderson & Co (later Henderson-Hunter & Co.) from 1958 to 1973. In 1980 Mike Guthrie opened the pioneering Ma Cuisine, a ‘travel agency of food’ which offered local gourmet products, imported cheeses, French bread and patisseries sent from La Boulangerie Francaise in Christchurch , and a ‘wide range of processed delicacies from all over the world (chiefly European and Asian countries). At the rear was a sandwich and soup bar. Ma Cuisine remained in this shop until 1989. Twang Town, selling musical instruments, accessories, and sound equipment, has occupied it since 1994.

The northern shop was occupied by cake shops from 1939 to 1963 (for a time the High Class Cake Shop), hair salons from 1963 to 1988 (Golden Touch and later Cut-n-Curl), and has been Collectibles second-hand clothing since 1989.

Newspaper references:
Otago Witness, 25 February 1882 p.16 (Dr de Zouche’s removal to Moray Place); Otago Daily Times, 6 April 1895 p.8 (brief description), 25 February 1896 p.4 (sale of property), 2 September 1896 p.3 (additions – H.M. Davey), 11 June 1980 p.16 (Ma Cuisine); Otago Witness, 19 October 1904 p.43 (illustration); Evening Star, 27 August 1929 p.2 (rebuilding – L.D. Coombs), 19 November 1929 p.13 (description).

Other references:
Baré, Robert, City of Dunedin Block Plans Dunedin: Caxton Steam Printing Company, [1889].
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory
Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory
Telephone directories
Dunedin City Council rates books, permit records and deposited plans
Dunedin City Council rates books

Thanks to Chris Scott and Glen Hazelton for their help with Dunedin City Council records.

The Haywood Street house – just how old is it?

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The story of this house is well known: it was built in or about 1858 and saved from demolition by Dr George Emery (1923-2005), who had it removed from its original location above Moray Place (off View Street) and reconstructed on the lower part of his property in Haywood Street, Mornington. A fine house for such an early date, it really is a marvel of settler craftsmanship. It also has an interesting history of occupation, with those who lived in it including the medical superintendents Edward Hulme and Isaiah De Zouche, and the art dealer Ambrose Chiaroni. It has a Category II registration with Heritage New Zealand.

A question has been niggling me though: was it really built in 1858? I recently attended a very interesting and well-researched talk by Peter Entwisle at the Otago Museum: All Shapes and Sizes – Domestic Architecture in Victorian Dunedin – The Colonial Bay Villa. I won’t summarise the talk here, but the Haywood Street house proved an intriguing and difficult example to place in the development of Dunedin’s domestic architecture, as the pre-gold rush date seemed at odds with a number of its features and influences on local design at the time. Rather than trying to reconcile the style of house to the year 1858, I’ve been wondering if the building has been misdated.

Dr Emery did much good research himself, as did Lois Galer, and early rates records suggest improvements on the site around 1858. The new information I am throwing into the mix is photographic evidence, which suggests that the house as we know it was in fact built a few years later. The image below is dated 1862, and this is confirmed by the presence of the Theatre Royal in Princes Street and the original Otago Boys’ High School under construction. It has been used to illustrate the history of the house before, but through the digital technology of Te Papa’s Collections Online it is possible to zoom in on the detail and discover more. The detail shows the verandah to be only partially constructed, an incomplete chimney, window openings without joinery or glazing, and the general appearance of a building site. An earlier cottage may well have been incorporated into the structure, but it seems that the house in its final form was under construction in the middle part of 1862. This is only four years different from the established date, but they are a significant four years in terms of Dunedin’s history, as they place the house in the thick of the gold rush period rather than ahead of it. It would be interesting to re-investigate the history of the house in the light of this knowledge, taking another look at the land records. This may be of niche interest, but because of the house’s established status as a ‘forerunner’, from an historian’s point of view it’s well worth the trouble of putting it in accurate context.

This little detective exercise is also a good example of the value of institutions making high-resolution copies of images available to researchers. Thank you Te Papa!

1862_FullImage

‘Princes Street, Dunedin in 1862’. Te Papa O.000858/01.

Detail, Te Papa O.000858/01

References:
Galer, Lois. Houses of Dunedin: An Illustrated Collection of the City’s Historic Homes (Dunedin: Hyndman, 1995)

RSA Building (Arrow House)

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Built: 1920-1921 (additions completed 1938, 1946)
Address: 469 Moray Place
Architect: William Henry Dunning (additions by Miller & White)
Builders: Fletcher Construction Co.

Living in extended peacetime and the relative indulgence of the modern middle class, I find it difficult to imagine how the soldiers who returned from the First World War adjusted to life back in Dunedin, let alone what they had been through on active service. It was only natural that many, though not all, wanted to preserve social bonds they had formed and build new ones based on common experiences. The need for a soldiers’ club was recognised early in the war, and in 1915 a group from the Otago Boys’ High School Old Boys’ Association purchased Atahapara, the two-storeyed former residence of the historian and long-serving local coroner Dr Thomas Morland Hocken (1836-1910).  Here on the corner of Moray Place and Burlington (formerly Macandrew) Street, they began the Anzac Soldiers’ Club, and Hocken’s old residence became known as Anzac House.

The cover of the sheet music for ‘When the Boys Come Home’, a song written and composed in Dunedin about the return of soldiers from the First World War.

A larger national organisation, the New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association, formed in 1916 and quickly grew a large membership. In January 1918 a local committee was put together for the purpose of procuring a site and erecting a memorial club building. The architect W.H. Dunning prepared plans for a site on the corner of Moray Place and View Street, and a drive to raise funds was begun. The Anzac Club then bowed out, going into voluntary liquidation and offering its property to the RSA. Dunning’s plans for new buildings on the Anzac House site were approved in April 1919, and in March 1920 a description was published in the Otago Daily Times:

The club will be-a two-storeyed edifice in the modern renaissance style, and will be carried out in brick, finished with concrete. The frontage to Moray place will be 34ft,  to Burlington street 87ft. The entrance will be at the corner of these streets, and will give access to a wide vestibule, on the right of which will be the reading room, with the offices on the left. The hall leading from the vestibule will give access to the canteen and tea lounge on the ground floor, and to the billiard, board, and common rooms, by means of a wide staircase, on the upper floor. The canteen is to be lighted by a dome roof, and will have a cosy inglenook round the wide tiled fireplace. This may also be used later as a supper room in connection with the social hall, which will be built subsequently, or when funds permit. The spacious tea lounge will be 40ft by 24ft in area, and this will give access by French doors to a covered verandah, occupying nearly the whole length of the Burlington street frontage. A very complete kitchen and servery will be attached to the lounge, and also to the canteen. The billiard room upstairs will be sufficiently large to accommodate four full-sized tables. Hot and cold showers will also be provided upstairs; in fact, the sanitary arrangements throughout the building are to be of the most complete and up-to-date character. The hall, which it is intended to annex to the building at a later date, will be provided with a stage and eating accommodation, up and down stairs, for about 400 people. The exterior decoration of the building, without being of a very elaborate order, will be most imposing, and, with the advantage of a wide street frontage, the clubhouse will have a most imposing and monumental appearance, of which our soldiers and the city generally may well be proud.

General Sir William Riddell Birdwood laid the foundation stone on 12 June 1920, and J.H. Walker (chairman of the fundraising committee) officially opened the completed building on 24 June 1921. The Fletcher Construction Co. were the builders and the cost was £8,500.

The building covered a site essentially triangular in shape. The style of architecture was transitional, and reminiscent of other Dunning designs including Barton’s Buildings (Stafford House) and the Albany Street flats. Columns, pilasters, cornices, rustication, and decorative mouldings suggest a stylised take on the Renaissance Revival manner, and the term ‘Renaissance’ is found in reports about both this building and Barton’s Buildings.

The Burlington Street elevation as it originally appeared, prior to additions and alterations.

The original ground floor plan.

Additions were made 1938, when the ground floor social hall was extended down Burlington Street. The steepness of the street and the rock beneath the additions gave a striking effect to the enlarged structure. The architects were Miller & White, who effectively worked in the existing style, possibly based on drawings left by Dunning, who had died some years earlier. The same firm designed more extensive additions in 1944, but these were not completed for another two years. They extended the first floor to the same extent as the earlier addition, making space for another billiard room. At the same time a miniature rifle range and assembly room were built beneath a new roof structure, increasing the height to three storeys, though the top floor was set back and obscured from the street. Existing internal spaces were also rearranged making room for a lounge, women members’ room, committee room, and recreation and games room. The work was carried out by Mitchell Bros and the redeveloped building was opened by Sir Donald Cameron (Mayor of Dunedin) on 18 December 1946. The redevelopment cost a little over £20,000.

A large fire broke out in the early morning of 17 April 1962. The building was so extensively damaged that the Otago Daily Times initially described it as being destroyed. The following day it was reported that ‘apart from repair work, little structural rebuilding will be necessary on the first floor…but the second floor and roof will have to be rebuilt’. The cost of the damage was estimated at £60,000. Extensive reinstatement work was designed by N.Y.A. Wales (of Mason & Wales). A  small corner tower and other masonry and detail at parapet level were removed, and the reinstated rifle range or indoor bowling space on the second floor featured sloping glazed walls. The building was officially reopened on 6 April 1963. Around the same time the RSA acquired the freehold of the land (previously held leasehold from the Presbyterian Church Board of Property).

The next major renovations were carried out between 1971 and 1972 at a cost of approximately $70,000 to $80,000. It was reported that the work ‘will modernise the clubrooms, turning the second floor into an area for social activities and extending the charter activities throughout the first floor, except for the offices and reading room’.  A permit for glassing in the balcony was issued in 1978. After facing a financial crisis, the Dunedin RSA sold and vacated the building in 1996. In 2009 it was extensively refitted as commercial office space for owners Beach Road Limited (Grant McLauchlan). It was subsequently renamed Arrow House after its anchor tenant, Arrow International.

It is many years since the RSA occupied the building, but although it is not an official memorial like the nearby cenotaph in Queens Gardens, it remains a significant built connection to the soldiers who served in conflicts overseas.RSA_MorayPlaceRSA_MorayPlace3Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times, 23 October 1915 p.5 (Soldiers’ Club House), 14 January 1916 p.8 (Anzac Soldiers’ Club), 29 December 1917 p.8 (sketch plans by Dunning), 24 September 1917 p.4 (liquidation of Anzac Soldiers’ Club), 21 January 1918 p.2 (plans for Moray Place and View Street site), 24 April 1919 p.8 (plans approved), 27 March 1920 p.6 (description), 14 June 1920 p.6 (laying of foundation stone), 19 December 1946 p.8 (opening of new wing), 17 April 1962 p.1 (fire), 18 April 1962 p.1 (fire), 19 April 1962 p.5 (fire), 6 April 1963 p.10 (opening of reinstated and redeveloped buildings), 8 May 1963 p.1 (purchase of land), 28 March 1995 p.1 (future of building to be debated), 13 August 1996 p.4 (RSA vote to sell buildings), 18 February 2009 p.22 (Beach Road Ltd redevelopment); Evening Star, 24 May 1921 p.7 (opening)

Other references:
Council of Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations of New Zealand, block plans, 1927
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans (with thanks to Glen Hazelton)

 

Roberts Building

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Built: 1903-1904
Address: 99-101 Stuart Street
Architects: John Arthur Burnside (1856-1920)
Builders: McKinnon & Hamilton

Some buildings offer instant clues to their origins and the identities of the people who once occupied them. The Roberts Building prominently displays its name and the year 1903 above some wonderfully florid entranceway decoration. Although most people don’t look up, a few must find their eyes drawn to this feature and wonder: ‘Who was Roberts?’

Edward Roberts said he was ‘in a sense the Pioneer of the Street’. An earlier post here described the rapid development of Lower Stuart Street in the Edwardian era. In the goldrush years a young married couple had lived in a tent on the site of the Roberts Buildings, and as late as 1900 there were still many vacant sections and simple wooden structures in the street. Only five of the buildings now standing in the street date from the nineteenth century, but there are twelve from the period 1900-1914. The Law Courts were built between 1900 and 1902, and the Railway Station between 1904 and 1906. The station spurred new construction as it caused a new flow of foot traffic, which had previously gone up Dowling Street from the old station at Queens Gardens.  Not long after the site for the new station was decided, enterprising businesses and developers were putting up substantial buildings. Roberts later claimed to be the first in this wave.

Edward Roberts (1851-1925). Photographic portrait by W.R. Frost (Hocken Collections MS-0484/006).

A consulting engineer, Roberts had been paying high rent for offices and decided it would make more sense to build his own premises with shops and rooms he could lease out. The architect, John Arthur Burnside, called for tenders from contractors in September 1903 and the building was completed by June 1904, the same month that the foundation stone for the Railway Station was laid. Roberts’ first floor office faced Stuart Street, in the easternmost room. His first tenant was a dentist, Miss Marion Donald, and within three or four years he found he had a good paying proposition.

Edward Roberts was born in Cornwall in 1851 and grew up in Bendigo where his father established an ironworks. A qualified mechanical engineer, he arrived in Dunedin with his wife Elizabeth in 1881, to take up a job at Robert Sparrow’s Dunedin Iron Works. His projects included bridges, viaducts, ship boilers, harbour works, and road construction. He gained an international reputation for dredge construction, and one of his innovations was a dredge with a stacker, able to work the ground away from the river. This was built for the Otago Gold Dredging Company. Roberts was one of the original promoters, and the designing engineer, for the Dunedin and Kaikorai Cable Tramway Company, which operated the Stuart Street cable car from 1900.

The Roberts Building was given a facade of unpainted brickwork with contrasting cement plaster facings. The parapet was originally plain above a strong cornice. The first-floor windows were surmounted by bold pediments and flanked by volutes, a feature Burnside repeated in a later building he designed at the nearby corner of Stuart and Bath streets. A panel facing Stuart Street featured the name of the building and the date of construction in relief. Above the ground floor office entrance was placed a relief sculpture (‘pargetting’) of an organic fleur-de-lis design beneath an arch surmounted by a ball finial.

There were originally no verandahs, but by 1906 one of the bullnose type had been added, and this was extended in 1909. A hanging verandah was added in 1930 and the original projecting cornice removed around the 1940s, somewhat spoiling the original design. In 1910 a second, smaller building was erected in Moray Place. The existing facade was extended in the same style, connecting the buildings over a lane used to access a yard at the rear of the property. Another name panel was added but this is now illegible.

The seed and plant merchants Skene & Fleming (later Skene’s Ltd) were early ground floor tenants who later moved a few doors towards the railway station before closing in 1943. The longest tenancy in the building was that of the tailors W.S. Reddell & Co. (later Reddell’s Ltd), who had the corner shop from 1909 to 1972. Reddell’s had a reputation for ‘reliable tailoring’ using tweeds produced by the Rosyln mills and other New Zealand manufacturers, although shortages in 1919 led them to buy expensive Russian material that had been intended for the Russian aristocracy.

Advertisement from ‘Roslyn Review’, March 1910 (Hocken Collections S13-555b)

Postcard (private collection)

Postcard (private collection)

Postcard reverse

Postcard reverse

Edward Roberts occupied his offices until his death in 1925, and his son, Edward Fletcher Roberts, kept them on. The area was something of a hub for engineering firms, with A. & T. Burt, John Chambers & Son, Niven & Co., and James Mann, all being close neighbours. The younger Roberts was a civil engineer and surveyor. He trained in England and served in France, Mesopotamia, and India during the First World War. He eventually took over his father’s firm, and his work included water supply projects, mechanical engineering, road construction, and the design of bridges (notably the one at Luggate). Ian Pairman described him as a legendary figure in the engineering and surveying world of Otago. He wrote:

‘His reputation survives as a formidable but fair disciplinarian, a true professional with a keen sense of responsibility. An 8am start meant just that. Staff were lined up – not a very big line – shoes and clothing inspected, hair neat, faces scrubbed. Anything amiss, and you were sent out to rectify the matter. Pay started when all was well. He, of course, was ‘Mr Roberts’; you were plain Smith or Jones. Christian names might as well have not been invented. He was tall, lean, and very deaf, which made him a trifle suspicious of what young cadets might be doing or saying behind his back, but he trusted them as he himself would be trusted.’

A brief partnership with Walter Duffill and Eddie King didn’t work out well. It ended in 1949 after Duffill was locked out and had to break into his own office through the first floor window using an electrician’s ladder! Fletcher Roberts retained offices in the building until his death in 1951, and these days Webb Farry Lawyers occupy his old rooms.

Gallery De Novo, art and framing, opened in the corner shop on 8 July 2005. Owned by Richelle Byers and Liz Fraser, this is one of Dunedin’s leading galleries representing an eclectic mix of New Zealand contemporary artists. The space gets good natural light and a mezzanine level has been incorporated to good effect. Original floorboards and plaster ceilings are attractive interior features, in a building which has seen many changes, but still retains much of its charm and appeal.

The building in the early 1960s, photographed by Hardwicke Knight.

A similar view in 2013.

Newspaper references:
Otago Daily Times, 29 September 1903 p.6 (call for tenders), 14 May 1904 p.2 (description), 15 November 1915 p.7 (tent on site in the 1860s), 4 June 1919 p.12 (Reddell & Co.), 4 August 2005 p.9 (Gallery De Novo).

Other references:
Garden, Eoin R., ‘Roberts, Edward (1851-1925)’ in Southern People: A Dictionary of Otago Southland Biography (Dunedin: Longacre Press, 1998), p.424.
Pairman, Ian R. An Engineer Told Me: The Story of the First 50 Years pf Duffill Watts & King Ltd, Consulting Engneers (Dunedin: Duffill Watts King, 1997), pp.15-32.
Edward Roberts papers, Hocken Collections MS-0484/002.
Edward Fletcher Roberts papers, Hocken Collections ARC-0006.
Stone’s Otago and Southland Directory
Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory
Council of Fire and Accident Underwriters’ Associations of New Zealand, block plans, 1927
Telephone directories
Dunedin City Council permit records and deposited plans

Moray Terrace

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Built: 1880-1881
Address: 57-65 Moray Place
Architect: T.B. Cameron (c.1837-1894)
Builders: Not known

This terrace draws attention to its history with the date ‘1880’ conspicuously displayed below a chimney stack. It was in August 1880 that architect T.B. Cameron called for tenders to build ‘three three-storey residences, in Brick, in Moray place and View street, for Mrs Muir’. The buildings were finished in 1881 and named Moray Terrace. By 1884 the corner residence was known as Gladstone House, presumably because Mrs Muir was an admirer of the British (Liberal) Prime Minister, W.E. Gladstone. The building cost was £4,000.

Who was Mrs Muir? Amelia Muir (1814-1893) was one of Dunedin’s pioneering business women. She was the daughter of Thomas Allen, land steward (or senior gardener) to William IV and a prominent horticulturalist in South Australia from his arrival there in 1836. It is recorded that Mrs Muir’s godmother was King William’s youngest daughter, Amelia FitzClarence, and Dr Hocken noted that it was ‘said’ that she was the natural daughter of George IV. Although this last claim is very unreliable, it’s interesting to think of it as the subject of local gossip! Mrs Muir arrived in Dunedin in 1861 and soon opened Bedford House, a boarding house on Bell Hill. She was later compensated when the house was removed and the land excavated. She was active in the St Paul’s Guild, the Benevolent Institution, the Servants’ Home, and the Female Refuge. She was also a zealous supporter of Otago Girls’ High School where her daughter was the first dux. Her son was a photographer and the senior partner in the firm Muir & Moodie. Her property included houses further up View Street and some family connection remained over forty years after her death, when ‘Muir Court’ and ‘Allen Court’ were built at the top of the street.

MorayTerrace_1883

The architect, Thomas Bedford Cameron (c.1837-1894), had worked in the United Kingdom, Ballarat and Auckland before coming to Dunedin in 1878. He is best known in Dunedin for designing Caversham Presbyterian Church and for winning the competition for the design of the town hall (though R.A. Lawson’s design was eventually used). He also designed a building similar in style to Moray Terrace at 83 Moray Place, which was replaced by the Stuart (now Kirkland) Chambers in 1947. Just a few years younger than Lawson, Cameron was a very accomplished architect to whom I’ll return in the next month.

Moray Terrace is an elegant, pretty, and well-preserved example of Cameron’s work, and another Dunedin example of the revival of the renaissance Italian palazzo. It’s unusual for a terrace – do any others in New Zealand have three-storey street fronts? The many interesting details include pilasters (some with Corinthian capitals and others with rosettes) that distinguish the separate houses. Lost detailing at the ground foor obscures that distinction to some degree, and ball finials above the parapet are also missing. Remarkably, the chimney stacks have  survived more or less unaltered and the one facing View Street remains a focal point of the overall design. Few original features survive inside, at least in the apartments recently advertised for sale. In recent decades the exterior has had a variety of colour schemes: one predominantly blue, another brown, and now one in the ubiquitous fashionable grey.

Moray Terrace has had many interesting occupants. Braemar House girls’ school, run by Jessie Dick, was briefly housed here (before moving further up the street) and the pupils of this ‘Ladies’ Seminary’ included a young Frances Hodgkins. From the mid 1880s Caroline Wells ran a higher-class boarding house in the terrace. Residents in early years included a sharebroker, an artist, a gaol warder, a tobacconist, an  engineer, and a bank clerk. In 1885 a con artist in the building posed as a theatrical agent and persuaded many to part with their money with the promise of getting them work on the stage in Australia. By the time his scheme was rumbled he had disappeared.

Shops were put in the ground floor at some point, their fronts projecting from the facade. The building was home to the Gladstone Milk Bar from about 1952 to 1965. In the 1980s a ghostly apparition, dressed in 1950s denim jeans and jacket, was rumoured to haunt the buildings.

Gladstone House was extensively renovated in 1987 when it became known as Shand House. In recent years the original name, Moray Terrace, has been reinstated.

Newspaper references: Otago Daily Times 31 August 1880 p.4 (call for tenders), 13 April 1881 p.2 (accident to contractor), 18 July 1881 p.1 (to let notice – Moray Terrace), 20 January 1882 p.1 (Braemar House advertisement), 25 July 1883 p.2 (cost), 1 October 1884 p.1 (to let notice – Gladstone House), 17 June 1885 p.3 (‘An Ingenious Swindle’), 28 November 1893 p.6 (Mrs Muir’s obituary), 16 December 1893 p.5 (corrections to obituary), 13 July 1985 p.29 (Lois Galer’s history).

Other references: Stone’s and Wise’s directories; F&J 11/27 (Hocken Collections); Jones, David and Ian Westergaard. ‘Whither the First ‘Botanical Garden’ for Adelaide: The Role and Contribution of Thomas Allen’ in Past Matters: Heritage, History and the Built Environment (Palmerston North: Massey University, 2006).