Built: 1874-1875, 1908 (addition), 1938-1939 (remodelling)
Address: 471-473 Princes Street
Architects: Unknown (1874), James Annand (1908), Stone & Sturmer (1938)
Builders: Key & Ashton (1874-1875), James Annand (1908), R. Mitchell & Sons (1938)
Fire raged in Princes Street South on the morning of 22 August 1874. The blaze began on the premises of Guthrie & Larnach, a firm of timber merchants that employed two hundred men in its timber yard, sawmill, and woodwork factory. A watchman discovered flames near the main boiler at about 3.30 a.m and raised the alarm, but the fire spread quickly.
The Guthrie & Lanarch buildings were destroyed. So too was the adjoining iron and spouting store of brothers Robert and Thomas Haworth, and a three-storey wooden building to the north of it – a boarding house named the Spanish Restaurant. Its fifty-four occupants were lucky to get out alive. They scrambled through narrow passages, some lowering themselves from the upper storeys with escape ropes. A youth had dashed off on a horse to Larnach Castle, to inform factory owner William Larnach. Several mothers were in a half-dressed state with children in their arms, and an observer noticed a man frantically rushing up the street with a cruet stand. By 5.00 a.m. an estimated 2,000 people were gathered near the site. A ‘magnificent climax was reached when the roof, front, and gables collapsed with a terrible crash, followed by the tottering fall of a high brick chimney. The crowd shrunk back some yards at the intense heat that shot out from the roaring, hissing, and flaring ruin’.
The Spanish Restaurant had been established in 1864 by Joseph Fort and Olegario Guardiola, a Catalan born in Barcelona. Unsuccessful in their application for a liquor licence, they operated a ‘dry’ hotel and offered cheap accommodation for single men. Within a year Guardiola was sole proprietor. One of his advertisements promised ‘every delicacy that art and genius can devise’, with cuisine arrangements under the supervision of a ‘first class artiste’. Another stated: ‘No Beer! No Ale! No Spirits! No Rubbish! Dinner for 1 shilling, with cup of coffee’.
The Haworth brothers owned both their own store and the restaurant building, on land leased from the Dunedin City Corporation. The site had earlier been a steep section of the foreshore and was part of an area set aside in 1853 as native reserve. Subsequent legal disputes over its status are part of the history of failure by colonial governments (regional and national) to honour promises for reserves made to mana whenua. This can be read about in detail in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ngāi Tahu Report 1991 (pages 347-385).
After the fire, the Haworths wasted no time in employing the builders Key & Hewitt to construct a new Spanish Restaurant, begun about September 1874 and completed six months later. The three-storey building was of substantial brick construction. If it lacked distinction, its plastered front with decorative mouldings was at least dignified, and three ball finials added a touch of pretention. The finials matched those on the new Guthrie & Larnach buildings next door, rebuilt on an imposing scale to the designs of David Ross.
The Spanish Restaurant (left) in late 1881 or early 1882. To its right are seen the rebuilt Guthrie & Larnach buildings, designed by David Ross and destroyed by a second fire in 1887. Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum; 1919/134/1180.
Guardiola’s rebuilt Spanish Restaurant occupied the top two floors and was described as ‘fitted up in the best manner for saving labour and securing comfort’. It included a large dining room and nearly fifty bedrooms. One resident was the journalist and poet Thomas Bracken. He had been a regular in the old restaurant since at least 1872 or 1873, possibly earlier. One person recalled ‘many a friendly chat’ with Bracken at a table there around that time. Patrick Galvin first met him in 1875 and wrote: ‘I stayed with him for some time at the Spanish Restaurant, Dunedin, and in his bedroom – pillow on knee – I saw him compose some of the poems which are included in the large editions of his works. It was always a hard struggle to make ends meet and pay the printers (Messrs Coulls and Culling), but the idealist was never totally lost in the practical man, though in some respects Bracken was a keen man of business in those days.’ It is possible this is where Bracken wrote words for what became the national anthem, ‘God Defend New Zealand’. The verses first appeared in his Saturday Advertiser newspaper in 1876.
The ground floor was divided into two parts, one originally occupied by the Haworths as a showroom and workshop. Their business wound up in 1878 but Robert Howarth retained the leasehold up to 1893, with his ground floor tenants including the seed merchants Nimmo & Blair, and the plumbers Short & Pearce.
In 1877 Bonfacio Zurbano, a native of Bilbao in northern Spain, succeeded Guardiola as proprietor of the Spanish Restaurant. By the time he sold the business to Robert Easton in 1880 he boasted of having the largest restaurant trade in the city. Easton was followed by Albert Leung Chung, who worked at first in partnership with Sue Kum Cheun and Leung Voy, then from 1883 and for the following thirteen years in his own name. Leung Chung was a native of Nam-hoy, Canton. A leader within the local Chinese community, he often gave his services as a court translator. His wife Jane (formerly Mrs Whitman) was originally from London and had run the Bath Street School for some years.
In 1887 another fire destroyed the next-door factory, now operated by the Dunedin Iron and Woodware Company. Some of the firefighters battled the blaze from the roof of Spanish Restaurant. Tragically, four men lost their lives.
Herbert Neville took over the hotel in 1896. He was followed by Margaret Clyma who in 1899 renamed it the Federal Coffee Palace, likely after the massive Melbourne edifice of that name. Following renovations in 1903, including new fire escapes, it became the Federal Private Hotel. Clyma leased the hotel to others from 1904, before selling to Norman Harper Bell, the founder and owner of the established Bell Tea Company.
Bell built a new tea warehouse on the north side of the property. Deeper than the old building, it increased the street frontage by one third and replicated the treatment of the original facade. James Annand both designed and built the additions. Construction began in June 1908 and an advertisement in December advised of the Bell Tea Company’s removal to ‘commodious three-storey building, which we have had specially erected in conformity with the very latest scientific sanitary ideas of handling, blending, and mixing Tea.’ Electric mixing and blending machines were located on the top floor, the first floor was used for packing and labelling, and on the ground floor were offices, reception, sample, and tasting rooms. Bulk cases and finished product occupied the basement, which was equipped with tramways and equipment for moving heavy goods.
Bell’s tenant, hotel proprietor Isabella Mackechnie, objected to the addition blocking her windows and described the hotel as leaking and uninhabitable at the time of her departure, although she was motivated to get out of her lease as cheaply as possible. Bell had the Federal refurbished as the Masonic Private Hotel in 1910, after identifying a demand for a place where ‘young men not earning large wages could get a maximum of comfort for about 18 shillings a week’. It was leased and managed by Allen and Essie Bedford, and described as a working man’s palace.
At the bottom of the hotel (the basement from Princes Street) was the kitchen, with a ten-foot Shacklock range and steam-heated racks and warmers. The outbuildings included a storehouse, larder, and butcher’s shop. Also at this level, a ‘light’ and ‘airy’ dining room decorated with wallpaper and hung pictures seated up to 140 people at about 20 tables. On the ground floor, a smoking room included tables for writing and playing cards. Further along was a billiard room with comfortable sofas around the walls. The top two floors contained 52 bedrooms, lit by electricity. On each of these floors were separate lavatories, and a suite of bathrooms where a ‘man who works at a “black” trade can get a splendid sluice-down either at the basins, under the showers, or in a Doulton bath, without having to wait, and he may splash about as much as he likes without making a mess’.
William and Eliza Knight became the hotels last managers in 1914, remaining until its closure in September 1936.
Bell Tea remained on the site until 1924, when it moved to a new factory in Hope Street. The old premises were occupied by the Colombo Tea Co. for a few years, and later by businesses in the motor trade. Motorcycle specialists Mewhinney & Geddes (later Mewhinney & Anderson) opened for business in 1929 and were followed by a company called Motor Sales in 1935.
The site was redeveloped on an expanded footprint in 1938 for Todd Motors. Established by Charles Todd, this business had begun as a stock and station company. Based in Dunedin from 1915, it had the agency for Ford Cars, with branches throughout Otago. The Princes Street redevelopment involved gutting the existing buildings, adding an additional storey to adjoining buildings in Bond Street, remodelling the exterior, and complete interior refurbishment. The architects and structural engineers were Stone & Sturmer (Gorton R. Stone and Frank Sturmer) and the builders R. Mitchell & Sons. During the work they discovered charred timbers, evidence of the 1887 fire.
The Masonic Hotel building during reconstruction. Evening Star 13 September 1938 p.3. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.
The Todd Motors service department, with its large workshop, occupied the connected building fronting Bond Street. Its additional storey was a continuation of the ground floor level from Princes Street. It housed a used car showroom under a single-span steel roof. The showroom for new cars faced Princes Street, with plate glass windows beneath a suspended verandah. It featured Queensland maple panelling and polished stainless steel mouldings, with white plaster walls above and heavily moulded ceilings. Glass bricks set into strips in the floor allowed light to filter through to the basement workshop, accessed from Bond Street. ‘Executive offices’ described as ‘American plan’ featured clear glass partitions and mirrors on the walls to help create an illusion of space.
The facade was almost completely remodelled. Only the retention of the original sash windows continued to give away its Victorian origins. A new amber and green plaster finish, with orange bands, must have turned heads. The Otago Daily Times described it as an ‘attractive splash of colour and modernity’.
Architects’ perspective drawing. Otago Daily Times 2 August 1938 p.3. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.
The newly completed Todd Motors premises. Otago Daily Times 28 January 1939 p.11. Reproduced courtesy of Allied Press.
Cross section (north side) from the 1938 drawings of Stone & Sturmer, architects.
Mayor A.H. Allen opened the premises on 30 January 1939. Some of his comments give insight into the fashion for stripping old buildings of their original ornamentation and facelifting them. The Otago Daily Times reported him as saying:
Many shops erected from 70 to 80 years ago were still doing duty. During the passing of those years the only improvement to some of them had been an occasional reconditioning and modernising of their frontages only, whereas others still retained their original and very unattractive architectural features. Todd Motors Ltd that day were showing them how to modernise and brighten the city and incidentally give better financial return to property owners.
Just months later, world war broke out. Petrol rationing was soon introduced and the assembly of sale of private vehicles greatly declined. Bill Angus, who had been manager, purchased the Dunedin business from Todd Brothers, and registered Angus Motors Ltd in June 1941. Angus had served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, and during the Second World War the Princes Street building housed the headquarters of the Air Training Corps and the recruiting office of the RNZAF. Angus Motors had the agency for Hillman and Humber cars, British marques from the Rootes Group. It also had agencies for American Chrysler and Plymouth cars, and later for Valiant.
In the 1960s, office accommodation was leased to government departments, including the Geological Survey Section.
The building in 1965. S.E. Kershaw papers, Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena, MS-5401/001/001.
Gardner Motors bought out Angus Motors in 1971. Surplus to requirements, the building was sold to W.L. Cameron, a director of Andrews & Beaven Ltd, a Christchurch engineering firm established in 1878. It employed over 100 people from its Dunedin branch premises, extensively refurbished and opened in 1972. The complex included a warehouse and showrooms for general and industrial engineering supplies, equipment, machinery, and car accessories. Hodge & McKenzie were the main contractors for the alterations. Andrews & Beaven was taken over by Repco in 1983 and the Princes Street operation closed not long after. The motor division continued on Bond Street until about 1987, as Motor Specialties.
Over the summer of 1987-1988 the building underwent a major redevelopment by City Motors, which changed the name of its vehicle trading arm to European City Ltd. It retailed Jaguar, Volkswagen, Audi and Fiat cars. Mason & Wales were the architects and Mitchell Almet the main contractors. The most significant external change was the installation of a curtain wall of tinted and mirrored glass over (but not destroying) the old facade. M.C. Fraser was the engineer. The pavement in front of the entrance was cobblestoned, and flanked with two evergreen trees, which it was suggested added a ‘little touch of European influence’. Through new automatic doors, trendy 1980s décor included charcoal grey carpet, powder grey walls, and smoky-pink vertical blinds. Improvements included the installation of underfloor central heating.
The building in February 2015. David Murray photo.
Mayor Sir Clifford Skeggs opened European City on 3 March 1988. It closed in 1992 after one of the directors was charged with, and subsequently convicted of, fraud and dishonesty offences, in his attempts to keep the business trading through economic downturn.
Later occupants of the Princes Street retail space have included the bed and bedding retailer Bedpost from 1995 to 2003. Then a similar business, Back to Bed, up to about 2009. Upstairs office spaces were converted to flats
In 2015 came another major refurbishment. The glass curtain wall was removed from the Princes Street frontage and the facade regained most of its 1930s appearance, surprising many who had only ever known its 1980s look. It was repainted in warm colours, sympathetic to the style, and refreshingly bucking staid trends. Important earthquake strengthening and maintenance work was undertaken and the upstairs apartments refurbished. The end result is a credit to the owner, Bill Brown.
From 2012 to 2021 the ground floor was occupied by Toffs Recycled Clothing. After a period as Proctors Auctions it is about to begin a new chapter as an SPCA op shop.
Newspaper references:
Otago Witness 18 June 1864 p.18 (Spanish Restaurant advt); 8 April 1876 p.8 (description of 1874 fire by David Kennedy); 26 January 1893 p.23 (Haworth auction notice); Otago Daily Times 6 January 1864 p.4 (Spanish Restaurant advertisement); 22 March 1864 p.4 (SR advt); 14 April 1864 p.2 (SR advt); 1 November 1865 p.3 (SR advt); 3 November 1865 p.3 (SR advt); 24 August 1874 p.3 (description of fire); 30 September 1874 p.2 (description of rebuilding); 6 February 1875 p.2 (description of rebuilding); 24 January 1887 p.2 (fire); 18 September 1899 p.2 (Federal Coffee Palace); 3 October 1903 p.6 (Federal Private Hotel); 4 July 1908 p.12 (Bell Tea warehouse); 26 December 1908 p.13 (Bell Tea warehouse); 12 February 1909 p.7 (Mackechnie v. Bell); 7 January 1911 p.9 (Masonic Hotel description); 30 July 1938 p.5 (Todd Motors perspective drawing); 28 January 1939 p.11 (Todd Motors feature); 31 January 1939 p.4 (Todd Motors opening); 5 March 1971 p.1 (sale of Andrews & Beaven); 9 March 1971 p.1 (sale of building); 13 May 1972 p.13 (refurbishment); 16 December 1987 p.26 (European City perspective drawing); 3 March 1988 p.16 (European City opening); 5 November 1993 p.21 (European City closure); 23 August 1995 p.5 (Bedpost); 23 October 2003 p.8 (Bedpost); 6 October 2009 (Back to Bed); 2 February 2015 (facade restoration); 13 November 2021 (Toffs closure); Evening Star 3 September 1870 p.2 (SR advt), 22 August 1874 p.3 (description of fire); 13 June 1908 p.5 (Bell Tea warehouse); 22 December 1910 p.2 (Masonic Hotel); 11 July 1914 p.6 (Thomas Bracken); 12 September 1936 p.17 (closure of Masonic Private Hotel); 14 June 1941 p.13 (Angus Motors announcement); Bruce Herald 26 July 1895 p.3 (Nimmo & Blair); New Zealand Tablet 12 January 1877 p.17 (SR advt); Evening Post (Wellington) 16 February 1907 p.13 (Thomas Bracken).
Other sources:
Dunedin City Council building registers and deposited plans
Stone’s, Wise’s, and telephone directories
Clements, John Ingram Paul. Ready Aye Ready: 150 Years of Dunedin Fire Brigades, 1861-2011 (Dunedin: Dunedin Fire Brigade Restoration Society, 2010)
Kung, Melanie (with additional comments from Helen Edwards), ‘Jane Leung Chung’, retrieved from https://nzhistory.govt.nz/suffragist/jane-leung-chung
Sidney Kershaw papers. Hocken Collections – Uare Taoka o Hākena. MS-5401/001.
This post is based on research I prepared for the Dunedin City Council in February 2015.