Hastings, Phoenix From the Ashes – Michael Fowler

Peggy van Asch: I’d like to introduce Michael Fowler, and Michael’s going to talk about the Hastings Art Deco buildings. So it’s really super to talk about Hastings’ Art Deco buildings for a change rather than Napier’s Art Deco. And I’d like to thank Michael; at short notice Michael has stepped in, so thank you very much indeed, Michael.

Michael Fowler: Thank you.

And Michael has some super books here, so if you’re thinking of Christmas presents …

Yep, I’ll do my cheap advertising blurb at the end. [Chuckles]

Thank you, Peggy, it’s a joy to be here. I’ve spoken here a few times; I always enjoy coming to Duart House to speak. And as Peggy said, I’m talking on Hastings’ Art Deco. So I’ve been kind of like the lone Hastings Art Deco guide for probably six or seven years. There was another group, but it kind of … I think through age … it sort of faded out. So I kind of just learnt new things every year and studied to kind of add to Hastings’ Art Deco, so I’m going to give you kind of a story of the Hastings CBD, [Central Business District] so right up to and just a bit beyond the earthquake. And where I got the ‘Phoenix Arising from the Ashes’, on the front page of the book that I wrote about the earthquake in Hastings, there’s a lovely little flow which says ‘Hastings – she shall arise like the phoenix from the ashes’. And you’ll probably be aware of the saying anyway.

[Shows slides of buildings throughout]

So early Hastings CBD was wooden, so that is Roach’s … G F Roach. You may not be able to see it … your left-hand side, G F Roach. And that is now where the new Farmers’ building is in Hastings; that was burnt eventually.

The Railway Restaurant – that was in what was called [door closing] Station Street, but now Russell Street. So wood was obviously plentiful so that’s why they used it.

Early buildings – and in fact, one of the early styles of building that was attributed to early New Zealand towns was in the wild west American spirit of early Klondike style. So the architectural style I’m just going to call it ‘early Klondike’, as in Klondike River, gold mining etcetera, so it didn’t often look out of place in that regard.

‘Town of Blazes’ – Now the problem with wood, and you’ll all be aware of this, probably aware of homesteads that have burned down in the past. Hastings used to burn down a little bit more often than everybody else, so it was nicknamed ‘Town of Blazes’. There were some reasonably unkind descriptions of Hastings by other provincial centres about their fire record. Now if you know the corner of Russell and Heretaunga Streets on the railway line – I think on the corner there’s the Noodle Canteen – if you’re familiar with Hastings there, that’s basically taken from that angle looking down there. So that’s 1907, and the fire that occurred there was a bit of a tragedy. The Poverty [Bay] Herald in Gisborne sort of reported that they knocked over some kerosene when they were trying to fight the fire which all started at Roach’s, the picture I showed you before on the corner … knocked over some kerosene and it set basically the rest of the place alight. So the interesting thing about this is you can see right at the bottom of the picture the train, and you can just see two gentlemen there. That’s the station master and the train driver. Now they are kind of in discussion, and that discussion led to the fire hoses which were over the railway line being pulled up so the mail train could go through, which of course then caused the fire to spread further, which the Poverty Bay Herald kind of smirkingly reported. Yeah, so the [cough] mail train had [was] obviously sacrosanct; it was the most important thing and it didn’t matter that your town was burning, the train had to get through. There were hoses over the railway lines and they had to be lifted, and … yeah, so it mentions it here. It says, ‘Much time was lost in shifting the engine from the water tanks and uncoupling the hose to allow the train to pass the crossing’, it is reported. So that was Hastings’ early … kind of the early history. [With] all these fires the Hastings Borough Council passed a brick by-law, which as you’ll gather, [means] you can only build in brick.

These gentlemen are building the Grand Hotel in 1906, opened in 1907; it was Hawke’s Bay’s tallest building but completely insecure in terms of reinforcing. So this brick by-law was supposed to stop the fires, or restrict the fires.

So here’s some of the early brick buildings. The photo I just showed you before with the people doing the bricklaying, they were building that Grand Hotel there in 1907. So it doesn’t look that big but it’s actually five storeys high; it kind of looks like one, two, three, but at the back of it it goes up another couple of levels. That’s facing Heretaunga Street where the Rotten Apple Backpackers is now. You can actually see the words ‘Grand Hotel’ still up there, near the Noodle Canteen or the Bollywood Star; it extended almost right over to Queen Street. Yeah, so I think it had a few hundred rooms – it was absolutely huge.

And that’s the old Post Office; the Hastings Health Centre is there now. Once again, a largely unreinforced building. They literally got bricks and didn’t … so reinforcing,, obviously it means that they’ve got some kind of steel brace so that when the earth moves the bricks are sort of kept in check. What they did was they used limestone mortar from Havelock North here. Limestone as you’ll know, is porous, so over time the mortar actually disintegrated so by the time of the earthquake that Grand Hotel there, literally [it] was just the weight of the bricks keeping it together. And in my book you can see various stages of it falling apart. The Post Office was designed – they had a big earthquake the year after it was opened in 1911, and the bell kept ringing, the chimes – so it was designed to fall out onto the road, which it did during the earthquake.

Dominion Building, 1908. Now a bit of a mystery to me is those buildings are actually – do you know the ones I’m talking about? Down Queen Street or Sharks Alley, as it used to [be called]. My grandmother told me when I started as a young accounting clerk down there, “You’re going to work in Sharks Alley, ‘cause they’re lawyers and accountants down there.” Sir Andrew Russell, the General who Russell Street is named for, his wife commissioned that building, and you can actually see his initials; they’re part of the monogram on that street if you look, he’s got his initials in there. That was a reinforced concrete building, so why they did that and then decided to build these kind[s] of monsters that I just showed you [coughing] before that were unreinforced, is a bit of a mystery. World War 1 when there were shortages of steel – that can explain a lot of the unreinforcing that occurred around about 1914 to 1920, because they needed steel obviously for battle ships and tanks and other things.

And the other one that was steel reinforced, built at the same time, was the Colonian [Caledonian] Hotel in Napier; they had a bit of a time trying to demolish that because it was so reinforced despite being apparently an earthquake risk. And you can see the Public Trust building down in the distance.

Hastings Municipal Theatre, 1915 – again unreinforced, pretty much. [Coughing] I’ll show you some photos of it afterwards where it actually looks like it’s intact, but it wasn’t. It had a massive amount of damage that occurred to it. It was unreinforced; so that was during World War 1 period. I think perhaps in that case that it wasn’t steel reinforced because of the money, ‘cause that was a huge undertaking for their Council to do in those days with the amount of money that they would’ve had. So steel perhaps could’ve been left out because of cost considerations in that regard.

Roach’s, 1915, another World War One building. That was designed by a man called S A Luttrell, a Christchurch architect, and after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake occurred, I kind of looked back on the records to see what buildings that he had built and were in Christchurch, and of course none of them survived. It’s always very easy to be wise in hindsight of course, but I do know, talking to relatives of the Stanley Brothers who built that, that they did cable him when they were building it – and I’ll show you a picture of the inside of it afterwards – they said it was structurally unsound. And Luttrell telexed them back apparently, and said, “If you don’t build it, I’ll get somebody else to build it.” So they built it the best they could, but I’ll show you what happened to that one. That was just a time bomb and that fell apart only sixteen years after it was built.

Municipal Theatre Buildings, 1916. Apparently, there was some steel reinforcing in that one because the builders were also the Stanley Brothers. According to one of the relatives, [they] went into liquidation or bankruptcy because of the cost of steel, because they’d tendered for it before World War 1. And then when of course they had to pay for the steel it became very expensive, which may have led to some shortcuts perhaps, in reinforcing it. This is just me surmising … I don’t know, but that’s possibly what might’ve happened with that building. It survived the earthquake with some damage, but not as bad as the Municipal Theatre.

So, what happened was in the 1920s we start all of a sudden seeing ferro-concrete buildings. Now ferro-concrete is just reinforced; it’s just steel reinforcing the concrete or the bricks. Those two are taken after the earthquake. You will know Fitzpatrick’s building, there 1924, or you would know it as Poppelwell’s building more commonly. So the architect, Garnett – that was one of the only buildings that he actually designed that survived. He had a terrible track record so he wasn’t all that used after the earthquake.

Webber’s building – so you can just see the Adams Bruce on the corner there, burnt out. That was 1926. That building too was steel reinforced, so that obviously survived. It’s pretty hard to see but, if you see the 1925 building – it still exists today – you can just make out 1925 right up [in] the corner … haven’t got my pointer. Another ferro-concrete building that was built in 1925.

Commerce Buildings, round about 1928, 1929. Still there [background noise is teacups] and still surviving today. So the question is, why did the architects, which were principally Phillips and Harold Davies, start building ferro-concrete buildings at that time in the 1920s, all of a sudden?”. My only theory that I can come up with is, there was I think [in] Kyoto, the Japanese earthquake which occurred I think round about the early 1920s. Ten thousand lives were lost. That may have kind of given them a wake up. San Francisco was 1906; it was a long way away, and they were still building these unreinforced buildings after 1906, so I think perhaps it was Kyoto. It’s a pity that nobody actually asked them … well, no one would’ve needed to I suppose, but it would be a really interesting question to ask them now, why they all of a sudden started doing that. Every single one of those buildings that were built in the 1920s, and there’s a number of them including the old Public Trust building, still survive today. Whether they meet the new code is another matter, but they’re all still standing.

So we come to the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. This is what I talked about before, the Roach’s building. That is hours afterwards; exactly what the Stanley Brothers said it would do, it would just collapse in upon itself. Seventeen lives lost. And I’ve kind of seen a few diaries written about that building … kind of murmurings in the community, but it’s interesting; they didn’t confront people in those days. There were kind of some bad errors obviously made, but I’ve seen no evidence of people confronting people in terms of … oh, you know, “So and so died in here because you constructed a building that wasn’t safe.” And complicating too, that Roach was the actual Mayor of Hastings, who owned that business.

Grand Hotel, there it is; that’s it the next day. So absolutely nothing left of it.

Buildings that did survive – that’s no longer there but when I started as a young accounting clerk it certainly was still there. It was demolished in 1984. That’s the old ANZ bank opposite Breakers, corner of Karamu [Road] and Heretaunga Street East. Those buildings there which were principally law firms, they were all built also in the early 1900s, probably round about 1908 to ‘10; round about that era, nobody knows for sure. They were very badly damaged, and I think George Ebbett whose law practice was there, they took that whole façade off and changed it but you can see kind of the markings; if you’re familiar with Queen Street that building’s still there. As you can see, there’s kind of porthole designs there.

So they put temporary buildings up; that’s the Grand Hotel. [Chuckles] I kind of put that in ‘cause I’ve got a lot of the Art Deco ladies walking past. And I’ve got another photo which is in the book of people searching for bodies, and people going in to have a beer. You know? Because you imagine seven hundred thousand bricks and everything; they were looking for bodies for kind of like, a long time, so people just going in there, having a beer. And you can see temporary premises, and the Art Deco ladies going past.

And poor old Rogers was a pharmacist; he was an Australian. He’d just come to New Zealand in the last couple of years; made the mistake of I think marrying a Kiwi lady, coming across here, [chuckles] and she bought into this land. [Coughing] He probably muttered a few things about that. That’s in Heretaunga Street East. That is in the second block from where the Opera House is, so it’s towards the block in the middle of the one back from the railway line. So that’s what they kind of did and they put those all over the place.

The rebuilding – so that’s G F Roach, ‘the old grey mare’. That’s from a publication; ‘R’ was his branding symbol. His racehorse was called ‘The Grey Mare’, so his nickname was the Old Grey Mare.

That’s Eric [Phillips] from his passport photo, as you can probably tell as there’s a stamp there. It’s the only photo actually; not a lot of photos of them. There’s none that I can see of Davies. So the rebuilding … Roach approved every single plan, so he worked long hours. He actually died two years after the earthquake, probably from the stress and just the overwork ‘cause he wasn’t really a young man at that point, so he passed away. And Eric Phillips and Harold Davies and to some extent Albert Garnett, that [who] I mentioned before, they were the architects that designed most of what we call Art Deco buildings in Hastings today.

So what are the styles? We’ve got Spanish Mission; that’s distinguishable by obviously the curved windows, the twisted poles, the balcony with the wrought iron, and the tiles on the top, so that’s kind of the classic Spanish Mission style; it originated in America.

The Stripped Classical; that borrows elements of Greek and Roman architecture. Now when they were building those ferro-concrete buildings in the 1920s which I talked about, that style was the main style then that they were building – Stripped Classical.

And Art Deco, as you can see there, with the geometric symbols, and they actually look better now than they ever did, because they‘re painted up. They were originally just tinted, and over time of course they got muddy. And I remember … some of you may remember it too … at one point in the 1970s and 1980s everybody used to say, “My goodness – Hastings CBD buildings look like a dump. We should just demolish them all.” But thankfully they didn’t, and it really does look stunning. When I do my Art Deco tours, even if you’ve lived in Hastings and I say. “I encourage you to look up” – it’s amazing what you can see, which we’re kind of immune too. And of course people that come into Hastings that have never ever been to the city before, just think it’s beautiful. And we kind of just take it for granted, or just think, ‘Oh, it’s just Hastings.’ But they really do admire what the Hastings District Council’s done in terms of encouraging this, and the building owners as well.

So there’s Westerman’s. That was the original 1921 building, I think that was an Albert Garnett design. That is the top storey; you can just see ‘Westerman’ up there. That is their new building, designed by Edmund Anscombe. He was also one of the prominent architects; he got all the big jobs. But you can see from that there’s elements of Spanish Mission in it, the curved windows, [coughing] tiles, the single tiles at the top there, the wrought iron balconies. But if you look at this he’s gone and done some really quite fancy detailing in there; there’s actually three styles in there.

The architects never got away from the Stripped Classical influence, so what we see or look at as being predominantly Spanish Mission or Art Deco, actually contains lots of Stripped Classical. So on the façade of Westerman’s, can you see … I’m sounding like a lecturer now, [chuckles] which is one of my past lives … can you see any Stripped Classical influence on that? The columns, yep. You can also see in there some Art Nouveau. See all the flowers in the little design? Yep, but then, see the little circle? Those circles there? So Art Nouveau there; and then the Greek/Roman shield symbol that he’s popped in there. So you’ll see when you go round Hastings lots of shields, that’s the Roman and Greek influence. Also he’s got the Spanish Mission influence with what we call the … I don’t know why they call it this, but they call it the barley twist poles … in there, so he’s incorporated three styles. So when you look at a specific building in Hastings you’ll see at least two styles in there.

My own theory is that they either liked the Stripped Classical style, or it kind of represents … you know when you see the old banks and they’ve got the big pillars, and … it kind of represents strength and solidity, doesn’t it? So I’m kind of thinking that that’s in there to represent that the phoenix has arisen from the ashes; that they are strong, and they are well equipped to cope with the future. You could almost class that as Art Deco as well – see the bit at the top there? So he’s incorporated quite a few different styles into that as his signature.

So Roach’s I talked about before, [I’ll] just do a little bit of a history of it. So that’s Roach’s 1915 building; that’s the inside of it. That there is like a skylight. I talked to the last surviving lady who worked in Roach’s – she’s now passed, Frances Eves – but she was working round about there and luckily she did because everything fell around her. And there’s the stairs going up, so that’s what Stanley Brothers talked about – that mezzanine floor was not properly attached or strong enough. The other thing that they did too – it is actually genuine [chuckles] – and I’ve seen a few diaries relating to this, is that the Roach’s took away some of those beams apparently, to make more room for counters. Yeah … so that can [coughing] never ever be totally substantiated, but I have seen references to that – people have given me information regarding that; the talk of the town and as I say, writing in diaries. What they did was they built a temporary building; they’re doing the fist of defiance, it’s the opening day of Rope, the new temporary building. So that’s where the new Farmers’ building is now on [the] corner of King and Heretaunga Streets, and you’ll note that there was where the old building came to.

So dear old Roach, who was the mayor and the owner of the business wanted Hastings’ streets to be shifted back six feet either side, not for vehicle traffic, for window shopping. They never anticipated the motor car would be as widespread as what it was, so it was for window shopping. George Ebbett who was a very strong minded past mayor, led a revolt ‘cause he owned lots of properties and he wasn’t happy about giving up the six feet, and so Roach lost. Napier did widen their streets but Napier streets were already narrow, so it’s kind of a different thing; Napier kind of had to, but Hastings didn‘t; but looking now it probably would’ve been a good thing with all the motor cars and cafes etcetera, etcetera. So that’s Roach’s before Farmers did its thing. It’s a Moderne style; Art Deco had another style called Moderne, and that’s what I call kind of the turret feature, but as you can see there’s also kind of like Stripped Classical design going right around there as well. And that was Harold Davies.

We talked about some of the examples – the Spanish Mission style – Harvey’s, which were [was] furniture … if you’ve been in Hawke’s Bay a long time [you] will know.

Question: What’s the [?] of china? [Audience talking]

Michael: China, china … Christie’s was the furniture, Harvey’s was the china.

Comment: You had to be careful your children didn’t knock any over.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

So that’s the Medical Chambers; that is a late, what we call Moderne style Art Deco represented by streamlines, what they call speed lines indicating speed. You can see, before Craig Foss kind of altered the front of it, it was completely symmetrical so you could chop it in half and both sides of the building would be the same. You can see that it’s got really sharp lines, and also they’ve put little tiny bits of Stripped Classical in there as well. As I say, they couldn’t resist doing that as decorative features. If you go inside it, there’s [sneeze] some decoration on the roof … a circular roof’d be just popped in there.

The R & R Building … the R & R stands not for Rest & Recreation but for Robjohns and Robjoy [Rogers] – they were the landlords of that building, and that is Art Deco as you can see by the symmetrical shapes and designs but with a little bit of Stripped Classical thrown in there as well. That was originally tinted green.

The CML [Colonial Mutual Life] Building – this was the last kind of Art Deco style building to be built, and it has got three styles; it’s got the Spanish Mission, as you can see from the roof, the tiles; and it’s got the Art Deco represented by tukutuku design which is the zig zag; and it’s also got this Stripped Classical up there, at the frieze at the top, represented by those signs there, so quite an unusual kind of building. It was a Wellington architect that designed that one for the insurance company CML.

The Clock Tower, 1935 – also a late style Art Deco with kind of the same turret as the Roach’s building, that circular feature there; so that was the competition. The chimes that were in the old Post Office, 1910, were put in the new one, so the chimes you hear today were [are] the same as that they were hearing over a hundred years ago.

The Hastings Municipal Theatre – that was just after it was done up last time, and you can see of course, the Methodist Church in the front there, which is also Spanish Mission style; it’s a [an] Eric Phillips’ design. With the Municipal Theatre, that’s it on the day of the earthquake. It kind of looks okay, but from this angle here, if you zoom that up – and it’s a high res [resolution] photo – you can actually see that there’s nothing there. There’s nothing on that south facing wall, and all the bricks have all gone. And you can see them starting to put steel in there ‘cause there was no steel. A lot of people think that the Municipal Theatre actually was unscathed during the earthquake and you’ll hear from time to time that it was used as a morgue. It wasn’t. I’ve got a picture of the stage where the morgue was supposed to be, and there’s just ruins. And I interviewed a fellow … he’s since passed but he was six years old, seven years old at the time of the earthquake … and they ran around the back there on the day of the earthquake and he said there was definitely no morgue there. They had a lot of work to be done on that. You’ll notice too, the original had these large overhangings on the top … or the hats as I call them … pagodas. Can you see there that they’ve changed them? I read the Council minutes, and they couldn’t decide whether to get rid of them or not and Roach said, “They’re going. That’s it, closed.” So they went. And I suspect too that that’s been shortened as well, see that [cough] overhanging there? It’s been reduced, so that’s not the original; because of the earthquake they changed them.

Some of the detailing, on the E & K building – these were the landlords, Ebbett and Kibblewhite. And that thing there which I can’t pronounce – anybody do Greek at school? Anyway, that’s a good luck symbol, so if you go around Hastings, you’ll see a few of those. There’s one in Russell Street, and that one’s in Heretaunga Street East. It’s a good luck symbol.

Fitzpatrick’s’ Building, which is Poppelwell’s building – I should really call it Poppelwell’s building because that’s what most of you know it as. That is a Spanish Mission style building but you can see a Stripped Classical influence there with the pillar. Now, Fitzpatrick was an Irishman and obviously had Celtic roots, so that is a Celtic knot design that’s put in there. And I’d love to know who did that ‘cause they’ve even put the green, so whether they actually knew that that was a Celtic knot design … ‘cause the original wouldn’t have had that, I wouldn’t have thought … just tinted.

So as I talked about before, there’s quite a mixture of styles and you can see there Stripped Classical is blended with Art Deco. You can see the Stripped Classical false palisades – those things, and you can see the Art Deco geometrical designs. Incidentally, Art Deco was not called that originally; there was an English academic who coined the phrase in the 1960s. [At] the exposition [International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts] which was held in France, it was called Art Décoratifs; she just used the Art Deco and called it the Art Deco movement.

Right, I’ve gone five minutes over. Any questions or comments?

Question: What’s the current situation with the Municipal Theatre, is it closed for repairs?

Michael: Yep, I think it’s probably for a couple of years.

Eileen von Dadelszen: What sort of response has there been in terms of the Council, in encouraging people to redo their buildings in an Art Deco style? Not redo them, I’m thinking in terms of existing buildings being retained; I mean are the community happy? The people who own those buildings – it’s a bit of work required to get that …

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, and I think, Eileen, a lot of them look at it as owning an expensive sports car in terms of some of the buildings, ‘cause certainly some of them cost a lot of money. That’s kind of the attitude that I’ve come across with quite a few of them, yeah. But obviously the strengthening required for the earthquake – I mean, if you saw kind of what was going on in the Hastings Methodist Church when they were fixing it up; the amount of steel that went in there. So you can imagine what might be happening in the Municipal Theatre. Yeah, but no, it’s good … lots of pride.

Question: Whereabouts is that building with the tall spire on it? CML Building?

Michael: Oh, that’s on the corner of Eastbourne and Russell Streets. You know where Shattky Optometrists is?

Dennis [?]: Michael, you mentioned the sort of ill-advised use of brick construction in the early part of the twentieth century – 1931 wasn’t the first earthquake in New Zealand, and I just wondered sort of how much awareness there was of earthquake risk at that time. ‘Cause I have heard comments about the Napier Cathedral; that people were aware that they were perhaps heading for a little bit of trouble with the brickwork there. I just sort of wondered how aware people really were of earthquake risk, knowing that there were other earthquakes in New Zealand around that time?

Michael: Yeah – no, that’s a good question, Dennis. You’re right, I’ve come across murmurings of people, even the Grand Hotel, some engineer came and said that should never’ve been built. And the Stanley Brothers, they kind of murmured, but they kind of got overridden. And I’m kind of wondering whether it’s the Kiwi ‘she’ll be right attitude’ that kind of created that situation – like, “It won’t happen”, or “It’ll be right.”

Eileen: Can I just make the point that there was a bit of – at least in planning terms, it was very laissez faire. People just did what they thought was appropriate and control wasn’t there. 1926 was the first Planning Act, so until then there was less regulation, and a lot of it was just common sense, a bit of number eight wire, and so on, so I think people tended to go for the cheapest option. And rather than having someone come along … and I know everybody complains nowadays because there’s too much regulation, but that does have its good side, too. 1926 to me is a very important year because it was the first New Zealand Planning Act.

Michael: In terms of 1908 when they had the first ferro-concrete building they obviously at that point was [were] reinforcing it in the Colonian [Caledonian] Hotel. But then they kind of lost that, and I suspect that … yeah, as I mentioned before cost would’ve played quite a big part, and it is right, no planning regulations. I talked to a lady who was ninety-seven or ninety-eight at one of the earthquake survivor dinners, and she just told me that she watched them building a building once and just the guys didn’t lay the bricks properly – [they’re] supposed to be frog in; you know, the frogs kind of snap together a little bit like Lego. And they []were kind of upside down and not … so it was sloppy workmanship, as well as the limestone, so yeah.

Eileen: And I guess the big disaster they saw was fire?

Michael: They did.

Eileen: So it was in order to stop the fire; it was unintended consequence was they were actually making them less able to sustain in the earthquake.

Michael: [Speaking together] Absolutely, yeah.

Question: Would some of that incompetence have been when they tried to put into work a lot of the returned people from the First World War? You know, they were taking on labourers so would that’ve exacerbated that incompetence without knowing?

Michael: Yeah, without putting a slight on returned service men, yeah – there were always problems with getting good skilled labour, and I know for the Grand Hotel they actually got some from Australia at one point. Yeah, Gleeson who was the chief bricklayer got people from Australia ‘cause he just couldn’t find anybody in Hastings that would do the work properly. And even after the ‘31 earthquake, a lot of local labour was rejected in favour of labour from Auckland, Wellington, that people viewed as being more competent. And I have come across some instances of that.

Comment: And I would reinforce the lack of regulations in the building industry in general ‘cause my father was one of those returned servicemen who trained as a carpenter after the war, and he built in Wellington. And when we moved here sort of late 1950s, 1960s, he was appalled at what they could get away with in building. He said, “You wouldn’t get away with that in Wellington.” He couldn’t believe the sloppy things that were going on.

Michael: I think it was kind of people wanting jobs, and people just said, “Well what are you doing – do you want to lay some bricks?” And I think that was how it kind of worked. Yeah, and I know that after the earthquake the Hastings Borough Council really wanted regulations tightened up and the Government kind of said, “No, it’s the Depression, people can’t afford to be doing that.” Even in 1962, I found a newspaper clipping where an architects’ conference said to Nash, who was the Prime Minister at the time, that New Zealand was a time bomb for future earthquakes. So they were kind of aware of it in the 1960s; there started to be real awareness places like Christchurch and other areas … Wellington … were not safe. But what do you do in terms of the responses? Do we knock everything down and build it again? And that’s the problem now essentially, isn’t it?

Comment: I was going to say that when Harvey’s shop was built in Heretaunga Street it was actually meant to be earthquake proof, and when the front fell off it they sued the architect. I’m not sure what happened after that, but then they built around the corner in Russell Street and afterwards moved back into Heretaunga Street; but it was meant to be earthquake proof.

Michael: They were next to Westerman’s, weren’t they?

Question: Just before I forget, it was Christie’s that was next door to Harvey’s – that was the furnishing place?

Michael: Yep, that’s right. It’s got 1914 on the façade of Christie’s and people often get confused and think that it was built in 1914, but there was nothing there ‘til after the earthquake; Christie’s I think was in Queen Street, yeah.

Question: So the business started in 1914?

Michael: The business started but not the building, yeah. When you see letters on the façade – and it’s caught me out, like, the Post Office has got 1931 … you know, the Health Centre’s got 1931. It was actually finished in 1932. Holden’s building which is the Kipper’s has got 1934 on it; that was finished in 1935, so it could mean that’s when they started to build.

Comment: Michael, I know that there’s a lot to do with the foundations of a building, and the old Farmers’ building has got a [cough] sort of a roller system. And I know the McLean State building in Napier had the same, and it makes a difference when there’s an earthquake.

Michael: Yeah, that’s right, the so-called floating foundation. Anscombe’s design … that’s the IMS building now. And Anscombe designed Westerman’s on the same principle as well.

Comment: I know the McLean State building … I was in it when there was a fairly large earthquake, and I felt as if I was in a palm tree.

Michael: Yeah, EIT’s [Eastern Institute of Technology] the same. It’s on rollers too, and it kind of rocks around. Better than falling out.

Question: Regarding the Roach’s building, did you ever hear that Roach thought that eventually Heretaunga Street would be widened, and that is why he put those glass boxes in front of his Heretaunga side of the building so that he could easily take them out, and he’d be further back? My father told me that.

Michael: I think Roach was very upset that it wasn’t widened and he never kind of let go of it, but once they started building there was just no way it was going to be widened, ‘cause as you appreciate, it was just a done deal. But he was almost heartbroken over it though, but he might’ve done that in a faint hope, but it was never going to happen.

Question: It was the Post Office tower with the clock in it? Didn’t that fall and kill one of the Herald Tribune workers?

Michael: Yes, Arthur Ryan Darby. [Arthur ‘Darby’ Ryan] Yeah, he was waiting underneath there for Tom Devoy of the Pacific Hotel, and unfortunately Tom was late, so he got killed, yeah. And a relative of Lily was killed there too … Lily Baker, who’s here today; would’ve been her aunty.

Question: Do you take the tours all year round, or in summer or when a cruise ship comes in?

Michael: Just Art Deco weekend. It’s kind of tragic in a way because Hastings has got actually more Art Deco than what Napier has ‘cause it was a bigger shopping centre and that’s why it’s got more. But there’s just no demand for it … absolutely no demand for it, which is kind of crazy when you think Napier has like, thirty thousand people doing the walk, and you just can’t get anybody to come to Hastings. And that’s not the fault of the Art Deco Trust, it’s just how it is.

Comment: Well can I make a point? Some years ago when I was in the Regional Council I had the opportunity of joining you on one of your walks and it was tremendously interesting; and it wasn’t just the Art Deco buildings, it was the history that you were able to give about the various buildings and how Hastings developed. And I think it’s a pity people think of it simply as an Art Deco thing – I think that you know, your historical knowledge was very useful on that walk, so I’d like to thank you again for that; I’d like to do it again one day.

Michael: Thank you, thank you, yeah. With that, I think if I do Art Deco too much, once you’ve gone and seen one building and pointed it out, it’s kind of … yeah, all right. So I kind of just do a lot of stories as well, a bit of scandal. [Chuckles] Yes. Did I go through the back blocks on your ..? Yeah, yeah …

Comment: And it’s fascinating what’s behind the buildings; you don’t realise.

Michael: Yeah, there’s lots of kind of hidden stuff.

Comment: I’d recommend, you know … worth looking at.

Jim Watt: Thank you very much, and I ask you all to join me …

[Applause]

One thought I had, would there be any chance of you taking a group like this on a special tour, walking tour?

Michael: Yep, if you wanted to.

I mean, instead of meeting here one day we could meet you in town as the Duart History Group, and you just take us around.

Michael: That’s no problem. The Art Deco Trust have taken me under their wing and they’re putting me on a First Aid course and I have to get Public Liability Insurance, so I’ll just get Hastings City Marketing to put me under their Public Liability Insurance; then I can do it.

Jim: Well, thank you again, Michael.

Michael: Thanks, Jim. See you again.