From Villa to Bungalow to Jazz Modern: New Zealand Houses between the Two World Wars

Bill Toomath has been a practising architect for more than 35 years. He designed the medal winning Teachers' College at Karori and many other educational buildings and hillside houses around Wellington. He also directed the School of Design at Wellington Polytechnic for ten years until l989. He spent several years in the US in the 1950s, studying at Harvard and working with I.M. Pei in New York. Third generation Wellingtonian, he yet recalls an American flavour in his 1930s'childhood-Longfellow's 'Hiawatha' readings, Chatauqua easel board, Life and Saturday Evening Post magazines, Tom Sawyer role models, Pontiac and Chevrolet family cars, and so on.