"The raging fury of Edwardian ornamentation" meets "a virtual frenzy of stylism": New Zealand architecture in 1900s

Abstract

Lew Martin's poetic turn, writing that: "[t]he raging fury of Edwardian ornamentation and enrichment fairly flickers in the sun," is a rare moment in New Zealand's too frequently prosaic architectural historical lexicon, but there is perhaps something in the stylistic frenzy of the early 1900s that results in the pleasure of architectural description, and adjectives of transition and movement. In their description of "Gingerbread" George Troup's 1906 Dunedin Railway Station, Stacpoole and Beaven asserted that the rich, boldness of the architecture and its physical illusion of grandness "is a case where the motor car, as a means of approach, is a poor substitute for horse and carriage." As McLean muses: "Even today it still exudes Edwardian pride in the iron horse." The decade's progression in rail - with the completion of the North Island's main trunk line in 1908, and Richard Pearce patenting his design for a flying machine in 1906,4 additionally were harbingers of a century of new geospatial possibilities. The century's end amidst the euphoria of virtual reality which continues to excite (some) seems to have provided the evidence that this is a legitimate characterisation of its nascent decade.