The Former Chest Hospital Heritage Area is located on land that was originally reserved for the Wellington Town Belt. The Town Belt was provided for during the process of surveying and laying out the city in 1839. These wooded areas that would become the Town Belt had already been in use for many years by Maori prior to this. Ngai Tara had built a series of pa throughout the woods, with the largest being the Akatarewa Pa near to Wellington College and extending up the ridgeline. The Basin Reserve, then a great swamp, was known as Hauwai and was a mahinga kai for the pa.
In 1839, New Zealand Company surveyor Captain William Mein Smith was instructed to lay out the settlement of Wellington. Part of his brief included the instruction that ‘…the whole of the town inland should be separated by a broad belt of land […] to be public property on condition that no building ever erected on it’. By August 1840, the plans for the city in its final position were completed with the belt of land denoted ‘…land reserved for the enjoyment of the public’. This plan is the first formal record of the Town Belt.
In 1841 the Port Nicholson Deed of Purchase, under which land for Wellington had been obtained from Maori, was made invalid and became the subject of a later inquiry and redress. The Crown assumed ownership of the Town Belt areas (approximately 625 hectares at this time) and proclaimed the land as public reserve, without compensation. Governor Hobson published a notice in the New Zealand Gazette that required anyone occupying the public or native reserves to vacate those areas.
From the late 1840s until the 1870s one third of the originally-surveyed Town Belt was taken for various purposes including; native reserves, which were awarded to Maori in partial compensation for land taken by the Crown, for social welfare and education purposes, and for public works. Some land was also sold for residential development or was claimed for roads. In 1873 the remaining land that was designated as the Town Belt was transferred from the Crown to the City of Wellington by the Wellington City Reserves Act 1871 and Basin Reserve Deed 1873.
The 1873 Town Belt Deed set the terms by which the city (as Trustee) was to administer the land. As the city continued to grow, parts of the Town Belt were developed and managed for recreation and public amenity purposes, including for public health.
In 1872 part of the town belt land near Riddiford Street was appropriated for the construction of a lunatic asylum and a general hospital and in 1877, under the Wellington City Reserves Act Amendment, a further eight hectares of the land was conveyed to the trustees of Wellington Hospital. In 1908 the Mental Health Reserves Act transferred further land to the hospital.
Early development of Wellington Hospital
The first hospital in Wellington was the Colonial Hospital, built in 1847 at Pipitea Street on land gifted by Maori for that use. This was a two-storey masonry structure that stood on the present site of Wellington Girls’ College. The building was significantly damaged in the 1848 earthquake, although it was soon repaired and kept in service for a few more years.
Planning started for a replacement hospital in 1851, a single-storey timber structure holding 40 beds, which was eventually opened in 1855 on the same site. By 1870 this building was beginning to run out of capacity to meet the requirements of the growing settlement and sanitary conditions had deteriorated.
Planning began for a new, much larger hospital, designed around the new understandings about hygiene derived from Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister’s landmark work in antiseptic surgery in the late 19th century. Some four hectares of land was set aside in Newtown, with room for expansion on a largely flat site. Further land was appropriated from the Town Belt in the following years. The hospital was finally opened in 1881. It was repeatedly added to over time, with major new wards opened in 1888 and 1894, and a new operating theatre in 1901.
A standalone Nurses’ Home was built in 1904. An enormous four-storey brick Victorian Gothic structure, it was located on the side of the hill just to the north of the main hospital. In 1905 the Victoria Hospital for the Chronically Incurable, a large two-storey brick building, was opened on the hill to the south-east.
Infectious diseases, isolation wards and the Fever Hospital
In 1892, the ‘Hill Ward ‘was quickly built near the main hospital to help deal with an outbreak of typhoid fever. The concept of isolation was well understood by medical professionals by this time and the building of separate hospitals evidences growing understanding of the ways in which the spread of infectious diseases could be combated and of the most effective ways to treat the victims.
In 1903 the Government placed the responsibility for dealing with infectious diseases, such as scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox and influenza, directly with local hospital boards; this soon led to the construction of purpose-built isolation facilities throughout New Zealand. In Wellington, the first response was to build new isolation wards. In 1906 the Seddon Ward and shelters, for tuberculosis patients, were opened. These sat on the hillside to the east of the main hospital.
The Hospital Board then set out to build a new Fever Hospital, to augment these isolation wards and provide treatment separate from the main hospital. This first Fever Hospital, later renamed the Ewart Hospital, was opened in 1910, on a site at the end of Coromandel Street. This was a large two-storied complex, with two wings canted symmetrically about a central entrance, and had its own Nurses Home and administration block. This building was later added to 1919, as a response to the inadequacies of the older Seddon Ward and shelters.
The Ewart Hospital was not able to cope with any sharp rises in cases of infectious disease. It was proposed that a dedicated scarlet fever ward be constructed so that the cases could be more effectively and efficiently monitored, and that Ewart be converted to a dedicated diphtheria ward.
The site for the dedicated scarlet fever building was on land taken from the Town Belt, and described as the Board property at the ‘top of the hill’. Council documents of the time give the location as Constable Street, but the site was a significant distance from Constable Street and there was no road access from there to the proposed site. As with the Ewart Hospital, the new Fever Hospital had its own Nurse’s Home and offices on site.
The new buildings were designed by prominent local architects Crichton and McKay, who had by this time already won several commissions from the Wellington Hospital Board. The chosen site was away from the main hospital and the city in order to prevent the spread of diseases. The concept of isolation was well understood by this time and the building of separate hospitals is evidence for the growing understanding of the ways in which diseases could be fought.
[Insert plan of various hospitals – Seddon ward and isolation units, Ewart Hospital and Fever Hospital]
The construction of the Chest Hospital
In August 1917 engineers Seaton, Sladden & Patrick began constructing access and levels for the new hospital site. The building permit was issued in February 1918, and tenders for the building were called. The tender of E. S. Knight for £25,500 was accepted and construction began. The foundation stone was laid in August 1918. Progress was slow, probably due to the difficult access to the site; there was no formed road to the hospital until the 1930s. Access was presumably gained from Ewart Hospital below. In February 1919 tenders opened for ‘a track from old to new Fever Hospital’ and the cheapest tender, of Lynch & Burke, was accepted. The hospital was occupied in January 1920 although it appears to have had no formal opening ceremony.
A note made in 1917 on the recommended procedures for treating scarlet fever gives a clue as to the reasons for the character of the hospital design, with its large open spaces and open verandahs; ‘A top floor excellent, large, airy, well lighted and with a fireplace, ready access to bathroom and to room set apart for attendant…prepared by being stripped of all pictures, hangings, ornaments, rugs, carpets, and surplus furniture’.
The new Fever Hospital provided additional capacity to the Ewart Hospital and does not appear to have been exclusively used for the treatment of scarlet fever. It was first used to house ill servicemen returning from World War I. At the same time the hospital housed patients suffering from scarlet fever, measles, influenza, and chicken pox; it later housed patients suffering from other epidemics including polio.A report dated 25 May 1922 on ‘Infection in Hospital’ gives a good indication of how the hospital ran the day to day isolation of infectious disease: ‘Scarlet Fever, Influenza, Measles, and Chicken Pox cases in the Fever Hospital are held in separate wards and their linen and food utensils kept separate’.
Use and change
In 1933 the Fever Hospital was forced to temporarily close for repairs. A report by local architects and engineers, King & Dawson, identified leaks caused by problems with the asbestos roofing (presumed to be diamond-pattern ‘slates’), and recommended re-roofing the buildings with felt and heavily galvanised corrugated steel. The corridor and verandah roofs were repaired with ‘patent fabric roofing – Malthoid’ and new gutters.The repairs were completed by 1935.
The 1940s saw a new epidemic – tuberculosis – quickly become the principal threat to community health. Large numbers of tuberculosis cases on top of other infectious diseases began to stretch the hospital. One measure undertaken to accommodate all the cases that were starting to accumulate was to house the tuberculosis patients out on the verandahs. Tuberculosis was seen as a ‘grave threat to the community’ but according to hospital staff from the time the stringent isolation procedures that had been previously put in place for other fever patients, with great success, were not adhered to. Sonia Davies worked at the hospital as a nurse during World War II, and like many in her class (11 of 36) contracted tuberculosis. It would appear that precautions for nurses at the time were minimal; the superintendent is reported to have said that if he were to invalid all nurses who presented with a shadow on the lung he would have no staff.
With the advent of antibiotics and effective vaccinations giving rise to great improvements in public health after the World War II, demand for isolation facilities for infectious diseases quickly began to fall off.
Following World War II the Fever Hospital began to fall into disrepair, presumably through a lack of maintenance given the otherwise good quality of the buildings. Alternative accommodation for the patients was investigated and quotes for repair work and alterations were received. No work was actually carried out. In the same period, treatments for several infectious diseases greatly improved, and the demand for the facility slowly decreased. By 1953 the hospital only had four patients, each isolated in their own rooms. The following year it was closed. Some minor renovations were carried out at this time to the lighting and new linoleum was laid. In 1957 the hospital was temporarily re-opened to house tuberculosis patients sent up from Ewart Hospital.
A new Seddon Wing, a modern seven-storey reinforced concrete structure, was opened in 1966 on the main hospital site, replacing the old Seddon Hospital building. However, by the time it opened, tuberculosis rates had significantly decreased, and the new building was instead put to general use, housing medical wards.
In 1969, proposals were floated to reuse the Fever Hospital as an isolation unit, and a full inspection was carried out, followed by considerable upgrading of the hospital building and facilities and in February of 1971 patients from the Ewart hospital were transferred to this ‘Temporary Fever Hospital’. With the anticipated closure and demolition of the Ewart Hospital, both further upgrading and the construction of an additional new ward was required, the latter being built between the two wings of the existing building. The extra ward was completed in 1973. By the late 1970s one ward was separated for the continuing care of elderly patients.
Closure and an uncertain future
In 1977, a site and facilities analysis was carried out that indicated that the building’s functions had to move to a new site. In 1981 the poor condition of the hospital and the low number of patients led to it closing again. Upon the closure of the hospital the Wellington City Council carried out investigations into the status of the title and the land. However, it was still some time before the land was returned to the Council.
In 1987 the hospital buildings were taken over by the Wellington Polytechnic as the new home of the School of Music. The buildings were by this time in quite poor condition and some internal refurbishment and adaptation was carried out to make them fit for occupation. The grounds were used to support horticulture and landscape design courses. The Wellington Polytechnic School of Music stayed in the building until 1998.
Assessments carried out in 1998 identified the buildings’ high heritage values, and WCC made a decision to find a new purpose for the buildings to keep them in use. However, by the early 2000s the buildings had yet to find a permanent occupant and were empty for the majority of the time. In the meantime, because the hospital use had ended, the land – including the buildings – was returned to the Wellington City Council in 2002.
In 2004 Wellington City Council issued a request for proposals for the future use of the buildings as, in their unused state, they were falling into disrepair and attracting vandalism. The preferred proposal was submitted by the Wellington SPCA and in 2005 the Council and SPCA entered into a lease agreement. The SPCA by this time had been looking for new premises for over a decade, as its Newtown facility, near Wellington Zoo, was too small to meet its requirements and the site had no room for expansion. WCC considered that the reuse of the building as an animal hospital and shelter fitted well with the previous use of the building. However, the SPCA project soon stalled due to concern over the magnitude of the works that were needed and internal disagreements. Over the next few years, as they stood unoccupied, the buildings continued to deteriorate and be vandalised.
A change of management at the SPCA in 2011 led to a reconfirmation of the partnership between the Wellington SPCA and Wellington City Council in 2012. The Council worked to structurally upgrade the buildings and repair the exteriors (the buildings had in the meantime been assessed as earthquake prone in 2009), while the SPCA was responsible for the interior restoration and refurbishment of the Hospital. The SPCA also modified access to, and greatly expanded parking at, the Fever Hospital and constructed several new buildings including an ambulance bay and new animal wings. After the substantial works to the exterior and interior of the building were completed, the building reopened as new home of the Wellington SPCA on 6 February 2014.
At the time of writing, the Nurses Home was scheduled for upgrading work – with some repair work completed – and intended to be occupied by the SPCA in 2015 or later.
