Architectural History Aotearoa

"redolent of the soil": New Zealand Interior and Landscape Architecture of the 1890s

Christine McCarthy — 2023-12-04

The 1890s was a period when Pākehā began to strongly identify with New Zealand. There were several reasons for this. By the 1890s a majority of Pākehā had been born in New Zealand, the first generation of Pākehā settlers was passing, the Māori population had dropped, in 1891, to 44,177, and there was a perception by many Pākehā that Māori were a dying race. It was thus considered by many Pākehā that Māori "no longer posed the same threat" as they did during the civil wars, reframing Māori "as a brave and noble race." Smith also writes that "elevating Māori to honorary whites was a further way to render Pākehā superior to white Australians, as well as affirming the long-held belief in a hierarchy of races in which Māori were superior to Aboriginal Australians.

"Slum Clearance" in 1890s Wellington

Elizabeth Cox — 2023-12-04

In 1892, a remarkable map of Wellington was completed. Stretching from Thorndon in the north to Berhampore to the south, and taking in the teeming inner-city areas of Te Aro and Newtown, the remnants of Māori kāinga, the town belt, the Basin Reserve, the prison, "lunatic asylum" and hospital, reclamations and every street in between. The map, drawn by engineer and surveyor Thomas Ward, is actually 103 maps, drawn on A1 sheets. On the map, the exact footprint of every single building in Wellington is recorded every commercial building and house, every garden shed and outdoor toilets. Bay windows and verandahs are carefully drawn. Data is recorded for every building, including how many rooms it contains, what the roof and walls are made of and how many storeys it has. Legal titles are exactly mapped, as are the city's streams and even the street lights. Once complete, one full pristine set of the maps was set aside and preserved intact. Another set of the maps was updated regularly, for approximately the next ten years. For that decade, we can follow every change in the city, down to the smallest detail such as the replacement of slate rooves with corrugated iron, but also bigger-scale work such as the reconfiguration of whole streets.

The Thomas Ward map is a touchstone for the history of our city. It is used every day by Wellington's archaeologists and historians. Wellington City Council provides the map online as an digital overlay over modern satellite images of the city, allowing us to compare the city of 1892 to the city of today. A well-known feature of the history of Wellington in the 1890s was the outbreak of typhoid and other diseases in the inner-city, a result of overcrowding and lack of clean water. To combat this, a number of "slum clearances" were ordered by the city council, resulting in whole streets of working-class houses being demolished. This paper, a part of a much larger project, will examine some of the stories shown in the two sets of maps, with a particular focus of the changed landscape of the inner-city brought about by this "slum clearance" work of the 1890s.

"Style that leaves nothing to be desired": Whanganui's Ladies Club of 1897

Scott Flutey — 2023-12-04

In 1897, a new, purpose-built institution made national headlines when it opened in the colony's fifth-largest centre. The Wanganui Ladies' Club was marketed as the first and only club of its kind, and was based on a Gentlemen's Club model catering to the upper classes of town and country. Designed by local architect William Pinches, a public tea room allowed non-members access to part of the building and much was made of its points of difference. In the immediate wake of women's suffrage being granted, proprietor Harriet Cameron was riding the crest of a wave of local women leading new, public-oriented lives. Described as artistic and luxurious, the interior was perhaps the most lavishly decorated in town. Photographs of it were widely published and the Ladies' Club seemed poised to become a fashionable social and political hub of the district. Yet within five years the club had dissolved, and the building would be lost only twenty-five years later. Its demolition reflected a wider shift in values and aesthetics, and the declining influence of the British-modelled established gentry over the region's cultural life.

This paper will visit the interior of the lost Ladies' Club through sharing recent research on the building. It will examine a few contemporary local 1890s interiors which have survived, and look at high society club culture which has survived in the town against the odds.

Drawn from Nature: Wallpaper patterns in New Zealand's Schools of Art and Design

Eva Forster-Garbutt — 2023-12-04

Schools of art and design were established in New Zealand from 1870 to foster the development of technical skills in the trades and the creative and decorative arts. These schools flourished throughout the latter two decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. Informed by the teachings of the South Kensington School in England, students in New Zealand were instructed in the design of patterns for interior finishes, such as wallpapers, tiles, linoleum and textiles. The blossoming Arts and Crafts movement not only guided the teaching models of these schools, but encouraged students to explore the graphic possibilities of flora and fauna, which in the New Zealand context resulted in original decorative patterns with native motifs.

This paper will explore the design of wallpaper patterns by students at the New Zealand schools of art, focusing on those produced between the mid-1880s and the late 1890s. The influence and inspiration for these patterns will be traced, from the Arts and Crafts movement, the teaching methods at schools of art and design, to the natural New Zealand environment.

"Lions and wyvens and dolphins, oh my!": Jessie Mitchell Elmslie's Arts and Crafts furniture

Marguerite Hill — 2023-12-04

Jessie Mitchell Elmslie was in her early twenties when she carved an intricate and highly decorative oak and kauri sideboard. The 2.5 metre high sideboard is dripping with Arts and Crafts iconography, including wyverns, lions and a Green Man with a flowing beard. Elmslie also incorporated copper tooling into her design, with beaten copper handles and repousse heraldic dolphins. Elmslie's father, Dr Rev John Elmslie, was the minister at St Paul's Presbyterian Church in Christchurch and one of his parishioners taught Elmslie to carve. She produced at least two large pieces of furniture during the 1890s: the sideboard now in the collection of Canterbury Museum and a walnut settle in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.
Woodcarving became popular with New Zealand women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Arts and Crafts movement, along with the establishment of art and design schools from the 1870s, meant that women were able to engage in practices formerly reserved for men. This paper will look at Elmslie and her work in the context of Arts and Crafts practice in New Zealand and consider the work of another talented carver, Evelyn Vaile.

"Money makes the rooms go round": effects of affluence on room size and functions in 1890s houses

Adrian Humphris — 2023-12-04

The 1890s was a decade in which a number of very large houses were either built or added to throughout the country. Their owners were commonly wealthy landowners or skilled businessmen. Room numbers and functions reflected the Victorian lifestyles of such people and tended to reflect similar trends in England although on a somewhat lesser scale. Room numbers of between 20 and 50 contrasted sharply with the four to eight rooms in an average family home of the time. In the latter the rooms were largely functional with the main family life centred around the kitchen and bedrooms. The big houses by contrast had extra rooms such as servants' quarters, ballrooms, billiard rooms, libraries, and dressing rooms and were often designed for entertaining and catering for visiting parties. The economic problems of the late 1880s and early '90s seem to have had little effect on those who might have been regarded as being on "The Rich List" whereas those on low incomes would not have been able to add more rooms such as parlours and bathrooms which became more common as conditions improved.

Inside-Out, or Outside-in?: Woman in a glasshouse at the residence of Louis P Christeson at 213 Willis Street, Wellington (ca 1890s)

Peter Wood — 2023-12-04

This research draws its subject, and its sub-title, from a photograph taken by Louis P Christeson, in which a female figure is depicted tending to the potted inhabitants of a small conservatory. Using this image as a reference point, this paper discusses the conservatory as a transgressive space that is neither properly inside, nor properly outside, the houses and gardens they are associated to. Specifically, a conservatory enables the creation of fertile artificial climates to support flora specimens that would otherwise not find a horticulturally receptive environment. As an architectural technology, its history well precedes the 1890s, but it is in this decade that the conservatory's role expanded from its agricultural origins to affect representations of social and cultural transaction. Or, in simple terms, though the 1890s a conservatory was increasingly just as likely to feature people as it was plants.

With conservatories, simple divisions of interiority and exteriority, and normative expectations of public and private distinctions, become far more mobile in their spatial classifications. In this regard, the 1890s are a particularly important decade for the conservatory as it shifted from being a tool of horticultural propagation to become a new expression of social and cultural production that conflated the distinctions between interior and exterior, and linking this to individual economic progress. Bringing this argument back to my reference photograph, I suggest that for Louis P Christeson, the conservatory was profoundly important symbol of middle-class arrival as exemplified by home ownership and leisure interests, both of which utilised the conservatory as a "third-space." It cannot be claimed that the conservatory led societal evolution, but it does provide a useful architectural touchstone for registering how the relationship between interior and landscape changed as a consequence.

Building Paper arrives in New Zealand

Nigel Isaacs — 2023-12-04

Building paper, invented in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1869, arrived in New Zealand in the late 1880s. In 1891 it was used under the corrugated iron roof and walls in the four-bed Tasman Glacier Hut where it would have provided relief from condensation on the inside of the corrugated iron as well as reducing the ability of the wind to blow through the hut. Building paper quickly became common place, with advertising from English and American manufacturers appearing daily newspapers as well as trade journals. The paper traces the first decades of building paper use in New Zealand as it evolved from a novelty to a common building product – hidden under the cladding but improving on the comfort of the occupants. It ends with a brief foray into the twentieth century, with examples of its use and eventual inclusion in building controls starting with NZSS 95 Part IX: Light Timber Construction:1944.

"Sanitation and Ventilation as required in a Modern House": a review of by-laws in the 1890s relating to toilets in New Zealand Housing

Nigel Isaacs — 2023-12-04

Good public sanitation has a long history in New Zealand, with Joseph Banks recording on 21 October 1769: "Every House or small knot of 3 or 4 has a regular necessary house where every one repairs and consequently the neighbourhood is kept clean." Although piped water was in main city centres (e.g. Dunedin, Wellington) by the 1860s, it was not until the 1880s that it became common in houses. By the 1890s "earth" or "water" closets were built onto laundry outhouse or at the farthest corner of the garden. As the population of cities increased, public health issues became more important, requiring the introduction of by-laws. As well as issues of sanitation, the by-laws were concerned with fire and public decency. The paper will review the evolution of council by-laws dealing with privies and toilets in Wellington in the 1890s.

New Zealand prison interior architecture in the 1890s

Christine McCarthy — 2023-12-04

Two large New Zealand prisons opened in the 1890s: Dunedin Gaol (1895-98), designed by John Campbell, and Mount Cook Gaol (1882-97, dem 1925), designed by Pierre Finch Martineau Burrows. While Burrows had designed Mount Cook (and its sibling at Mount Eden, which was reputedly modelled on a Malta prison and colonial Blue Books) it would be Dunedin Gaol's architect, John Campbell, who would supervise the building through to completion. The two designs are very different - Dunedin having a courtyard, with echoes of Scotland Yard in London, and Mount Cook being a radial plan, the antecedent of which Newbold states to be Pentonville (London 1840-42). This paper considers the interiors of these prisons and the reasons for their differences.

Architectural design in 1890s Wellington cityscapes

Adrian Humphris — 2023-12-04

In the absence of landscape architecture as a profession the aggregation and location of architects (and local authority engineers) directly impacted cityscapes where they practiced. As well as the built environment other factors were significant in shaping the cityscape, such as the distribution of population growth, regulation of subdivision and road construction, and land sale practices of the time. The late nineteenth century was a period over which the architectural profession was beginning to consolidate. While still lacking formal structure and regulation, meaning the individuals involved possessed a range of experience, knowledge and ability, architects increasingly became professional office workers with well-staffed offices capitalising on the demand for construction. Using Wellington as a case study, this paper uses local authority building permit records and other sources to determine the location and patterns of architecturally-designed dwellings in the city's streetscapes. Findings suggest that architect's impact on the urban form varied considerably across the city.

Green Expectations: Hamilton in the 1890s

Matthew Grant — 2023-12-04

In August 1889, Hamilton celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary of European settlement. A public holiday was declared, flags flew from several flagstaff, and the old Fourth Waikato veterans paraded. Despite the fanfare, expectations were low for the decade ahead. Prosperity in Hamilton was hampered by its inland isolation, the lack of profitable natural resources, and poor returns from land investment. The town's establishment was as a military outpost and its strategic advantage offered little to settlers who struggled to make a living. Hamilton's main street had the unflattering appearance of an American Frontier Town. Waikato soil was naturally unproductive. Farming in the Waikato had originally been a mixture of grain and other crops, cattle for its meat, and sheep for wool. Waikato's reputation for abundant and profitable dairy was some years away. The fortunes of Hamilton would change for the better in the late 1890s. Scientific breakthroughs in soil research, new farming techniques, the introduction of refrigerated freight, and improved global prices for meat and dairy products, would all lead to prosperity in the region.

This paper will examine the context and circumstances that shaped Hamilton's difficult years leading up to the 1890s, influenced for better or worse by its landscape, and the prosperity that would eventually arrive by the end of the decade.