Bertie Fleming Kelly

Bertie Fleming Kelly was a well-regarded Wellington architect who, late in life, joined the Marist Brothers at their Futuna Retreat House in Karori. Kelly designed a traditional timbered chapel for the retreat, although this was never built. On Kelly’s recommendation John Scott was employed to design Futuna Chapel, now widely recognized as a modernist architectural masterpiece.

Kelly was born in Christchurch and joined the Public Works Department in 1906. He entered as an architectural cadet and rose to the position of assistant architect before starting his own practice in 1932. Over the next two decades Kelly designed around 70 buildings, including houses, apartments, schools, shops, churches, convents and the  British Medical Association Building (now NZMA) at 26 The Terrace. As architect to the Education Board, he was responsible for The Education Board Building in Able Smith Street. Kelly also designed several buildings for the Wellington Catholic community including the Hospital Section Home of Compassion in Island Bay, a Convent in Johnsonville for the Brigadine Nuns, and a presbytery in Kilbirne.

In the late 1940s and 50s Kelly joined with J Lindsay Mair and together they practised as Kelly and Mair. The Bulleyment Fortune collection, held by the National Library, includes several architectural plans produced by Kelly and Mair, mostly for houses, dating from 1947-1954. Kelly and Mair were also responsible for the Lisieux wing (1947) at Erskine College.

Kelly had married Mary Ellen Geaney (1889-1953) in 1912, and the couple raised a family of three daughters and a son. When Mary died in 1952, Kelly became a “lay-brother” with the Marist Order. During this time he designed timber Catholic churches and chapels at Carterton, Greenmeadows in Napier, Eastbourne, and Highden Novitiate in Palmerston North.

Kelly died in 1962, and is buried in the Marist section of the Karori Cemetery.

 

 

Sources:

“Erskine College,” Historic Places Trust registration report, 17 July 2009
Evening Post, 8 Jan. 1962
Mew, Geoff & Adrian Humphris. “Raupo to Deco: Wellington Styles and Architects 1840 – 1940” (Wellington: Steel Roberts Aotearoa, 2014) 
Mt Victoria Historical Society, 7 Patterson Street: [Supporting information for Mt Victoria Historical Society’s Nomination for Registration of 7 Paterson Street with New Zealand Historic Places Trust] (2010).
“NEW QUARTERS,” Evening Post, 17 July 1940
“NEW CONVENT,” Evening Post, 2 August 1937
 “WOMEN IN PRINT,” Evening Post, 11 September 1912
Walden, Russell. “Voices of Silence: New Zealand’s Chapel of Futuna” (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1987)