Berhampore Rintoul Street Shopping Centre

Berhampore occupies a large area of land between Newtown and Island Bay. It is a predominantly residential suburb with a small commercial area divided into two main sections; the commercial area lies centrally in the suburb and is set in a low-lying bowl of land. The  heritage area is towards at the eastern end of this bowl, at the corner of Luxford and Rintoul Streets and is separated from the primary commercial area at the western end of Luxford Street by a long and fairly desolate strip of low-rise buildings.

The local topography gently slopes around the heritage area. The ground rises up to the north on Rintoul Street, and falls slightly to the west along Luxford Street. Along the south side of Luxford Street, the land rises, placing many of the houses there above street level, and it also rises to the east. The landform provides extensive views connecting the heritage area to the surrounding suburban area and hills beyond, and gives an open aspect to the area. The town belt is an important contributor in these views and enhances the suburb’s sense of age and establishment.

Berhampore remains an almost entirely low-rise residential suburb, populated in the main by modest houses built around the end of the 19^th century. These houses, together with the characteristics of the wider setting, confer a distinctive old and established character to the suburb. This character is prominent in views to and through the  heritage area and makes a strong contribution to the values of the heritage area.

The wider Berhampore area is populated with a steadily increasing number of modern infill developments, many of which stand out inappropriately from the old buildings and affect the character of the area.

The streetscape of the wider Berhampore area is distinguished by the prevalence of small one- and two-storey houses, many of which are old and interesting, set closely on relatively tight sections. The majority of the houses are either a single room wide or two rooms wide, depending on the available section width. This gives a consistent pattern and rhythm to the streetscape, which further contributes to the area’s historic character. Nearly all the houses are set back from the footpath with a front yard, and nearly all the commercial buildings are set hard to the footpath; this relative positioning creates an important visual consistency between the building types.

The group of commercial buildings in the heritage area follows this pattern; all, bar the church, are built hard to the street edge, the majority with verandahs sheltering the footpath. The group has a particularly interesting and distinctive visual quirk in the interleaved sequence of heights of the buildings, alternating between one and two storeys. The buildings have a strong consistency of use and character – they are all mixed use, are all the first buildings on their respective sites, were all built in a short period between 1896 and 1904, are all constructed in similar materials to a similar quality and style, and all have a similar patina of age. These qualities firmly establish the visual and historic character of the heritage area and clearly link it to the surrounding residential areas.

The buildings are still in reasonably authentic condition and illustrate a distinctive and rare late Victorian streetscape; the historic qualities of this area are further enhanced by the connections to the surrounding residential areas.

The Berhampore (Rintoul Street) Heritage Area is set around the corner of Luxford and Rintoul Streets, with the majority of buildings located on the east side of Rintoul Street. The heritage area encompasses the small group of commercial buildings on this side, which are bounded to the north by the substantial timber church of the Wellington Samoan Assembly of God and to the south by the corner of Milton Street. No 216 – 218 Rintoul Street, across the road and set around the convex corner intersection of Luxford and Rintoul Streets, completes the group and the area.

216-218 Rintoul Street

216-218 Rintoul Street is one of the two most prominent buildings in the heritage area. It is the first of the buildings constructed within the area, and the only building on the western side of the road.

Built in 1896 for James Foster, a grain merchant, the property began life as a shop and dwelling, but was quickly expanded. A two-storey addition, including another shop, was added early in 1897.The building was at that stage L-shaped and occupied both faces of the then orthogonal Luxford/Rintoul corner. The shape of this corner, and the position of the buildings, made that turn ‘difficult’ for trams according to the Wellington City Council. Shortly after the electric tram service commenced, the Council began negotiations to have the building moved back, or at least some of it removed, to ease the corner and help improve the tram service.

Space on the property was limited and the existing arrangement of buildings was complex, so moving the building back was not considered to be a viable option. When approached to sell his property, Mr Foster offered it at a price considered excessive by the council. Not even a fire in 1910 could persuade him to part with his property at a price agreeable to the WCC. Eventually, in 1917, and presumably out of options – or at least out of enthusiasm for further negotiation, the WCC took Foster’s land by proclamation. In 1923, major changes were made to the building and it assumed the overall form it has today. Once work was completed the building and remaining land were handed back to Foster minus the corner. No permit for these changes has been located, possibly because it was done by the Tramways Department, who may have conducted such work without a permit.

Ultimately, in 1964, the tram gave way to the trolley bus (and later the diesel bus); drivers are probably still grateful for the sweeping curve provided by the intervention of the council.

The building has an extensive history of change both in fabric and ownership. An addition was made to the north of the building in 1926, when a two-storey stand-alone structure was completed for Foster. He died in 1933 and the property was inherited by Lewis Foster. He kept the property until 1949 and then sold it to a butcher. In 1987 it was bought by Victoria University student radio station Radio Active, who sold it in 1990 to private owners.

Prior to the changes of 1923, 216-218 Rintoul Street was occupied by a grocery and tobacconist. Post-1923 the building was used primarily as a fishmonger’s, although there was a butchery in the shop for a period during the early 1970s. By the 1990s, what had been a fish and chip outlet, turned into a pizza parlour. The building is presently in residential use.

The building as it stands today is mainly two storeys tall with a parapeted façade, and its plan wraps around the swept intersection. It is conspicuous in the area due to both its unusual plan shape and the nature of its site. Behind the street frontage the building has a particularly complex form composed of several different building volumes and roof elements. It is not clear which parts of the building, if any, are entirely original, although seems likely that the windows and other façade elements, given their quality, are at least recycled from the first building.

The main part of the façade faces south to Luxford Street; as the building turns north up Rintoul Street, the parapet falls in two steps to a single storey at the last bay of the building. The main architectural feature is the distinctive array of segmental-arched double-hung windows which are placed somewhat irregularly on the façade, separated into bays by shallow decorative pilasters; the two segmental-arched parapets on the southern side reflect the form of these windows. Strong cornice lines divide the parapet from the upper wall and the two floors. Although the composition of the elevations is balanced, it is not symmetrical and few elements line up between the storeys. This is an interesting quirk and sets the building apart from the others in the group, all of which are much more orderly in a geometrical sense.

Wellington Samoan Assembly of God, 193 Rintoul Street

The second particularly prominent building in the  heritage area is the Berhampore Baptist Church, now the Wellington Samoan Assembly of God. Built in 1900, under the aegis of the Vivian Street Baptist Church Trust Board, the building reached its present form and appearance in 1906, when major additions were made to the front of the building. The architect of the original building is not known, but the 1906 additions were the work of E.W. Petherick, a successful Wellington architect.

The Baptist Church occupied the building until the mid-1970s, building a classroom at the rear of the property, presumably for their Sunday School, in 1961-62. Falling congregations saw the building acquired by the Wellington Samoan Assembly of God in 1975. The church maintains strong support from the Samoan community.

As the largest building in the group, the church is an imposing structure with a strong symmetrical composition. It has a distinctive double-bay entry porch, of a Gothic Revival flavour, set up above the street level, a substantial gable-roofed nave with evenly-spaced arched double-hung windows (with lead-light glazing) along the sides, and is enlivened with a modest amount of architectural trim and detail, including dentilling at the tops of the barge boards.

The main volume of the building is set back a little from the street edge, and although this makes it less dominant in the streetscape than it might otherwise be, it does little to diminish its overall presence in the area. The buildign has ample space to either side as well, facilitating good three-quarter views from the street. The exterior of the church appears to be little altered over time and has a corresponding high level of authenticity in its architecture and materials.

The large outbuilding at the rear of the property is presumed to be the former school room; its current use is not known.

195 Rintoul Street

A small, single-storey commercial building, this store was built in 1898-99 for Richard Keene, a speculative builder, who had constructed 199 and 201 Rintoul Street a year earlier. The first owner was Charles Ridding, a blacksmith; this ownership doesn’t appear to have lasted long and there was a flurry of transactions before it was acquired by Mary Rennie, wife of John Rennie, storekeeper, in 1904. [12] John Rennie, a grocer, inherited the property after this wife’s death in 1911 and he remained the building’s owner until his death in 1967. The property was sold to Walter McPike, a storekeeper and then to private owners.

Early users are not known but by 1915 it was occupied by a Chinese laundry. The most consistent and long-standing use of this building was as a fruiterers, with tenants Norman and Doris Campbell fixtures from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was then temporarily an estate agency before becoming The Friendly Shop in the mid-1960s. Walter McPike had a store in the building and also had a business in the adjacent shop. The shop has been little used since the 1980s.

This long and narrow building retains its general original form with a small shop at the street front and accommodation behind. The shop has a 1980s-era frontage, with a shallow lean-to verandah on metal posts, a horizontal weatherboard rectangular parapet above the verandah and a vertical-boarded shopfront with plain timber doors and windows below the verandah.

Behind the shop, a step in the roof line delineates a change between shop and accommodation; some double hung windows are evident towards the eastern end of the building and old weatherboards can be seen on the southern wall. Little else of the house can be seen from the street. A long driveway separates this from 199 adjacent.

199 Rintoul Street

This two-storey building containing shops and flats was constructed in 1898 for Richard Keene. Keene also commissioned 195 and 201 Rintoul Street.

The Ward Map of 1900 shows the building set back from the road, along with 199 Rintoul Street, but there is no other evidence that the building was not constructed as it presently stands. Keene sold the building to James Freyberg.

At one time in the 1920s the building was owned by Ernest Rochester, who had his boot-making premises next door in 201 Rintoul Street and made changes to the building in 1920. The building had a variety of occupants both commercial and residential, with a confectioner’s occupying the shop for periods in the 1910s and again in the 1930s. In 1957, the building was converted into a single shop and dwelling for owner Walter McPike, who had a dairy in the building from the early 1950s until the late 1970s. It remained in use as a dairy into the 1980s but has been rarely tenanted since.

199 Rintoul Street is outwardly quite authentic and has a lot of visible original building fabric. Symmetrically composed, it has a plain horizontal parapet with a mono-slope roof behind, separated from the upper façade with a heavy profiled timber cornice, ornamented with corbels at either end. Two pairs of double-hung windows sit in the weather-boarded wall above the verandah. It has timber shop-fronts below the verandah, of which the northern one is quite old and possibly original. The verandah is a bullnose style with one (very rare) surviving cast-iron verandah post. A modern telephone pole is projected carelessly through the southern end of the verandah; the northern end of the verandah is extended to join to that of No. 195.

201 Rintoul Street

This single storey commercial building was constructed in 1898-99 for Richard Keene, a speculative builder from Island Bay. Keene also built 195 and 199 Rintoul Street. A map from 1900 shows the building set back from the road, along with 199 Rintoul Street, but there is no other evidence that the building was not constructed as it presently stands.

At this time the building was owned by ironmonger William Dawson, but it is not certain if he also had premises in the building. Ernest Rochester, a boot-maker who ran his business from the building from the 1910s onwards, owned the building from 1926 and possibly earlier. Rochester retained ownership until his death in 1935, when the building was sold to the Self-Help Co-op which established a grocery in the building. Self-Help sold the building in 1950 but stayed on as occupants until at least the late 1950s. A series of investors owned the building from 1950; it was later occupied by bookshops. The present owners have had the property since 1985, during which time the building has been occupied by a dairy.

201 is the only building in the heritage area that has consistently remained commercial use over its life. It is a long and narrow mixed-use building, with a shop in front and accommodation behind. At the street front, the building has a modern shop frontage with bricks, aluminium joinery, a shallow pitched verandah supported on steel posts, and a simple gabled parapet clad in a sheet material (it is possible the parapet is the original, covered over). Despite these alterations, the compatible overall form and scale of the building relates well to its surroundings.

The building joins hard to No. 199 and is set apart from 205-207 by an accessway. The visible side walls are clad in old rusticated weatherboard.

205-207 Rintoul Street

This two-storey semi-detached building was constructed for William Journax, a baker, in 1897.

The application for the building’s construction was for a bake-house and stable, but street directories do not make clear who was occupying the building. Journax was bankrupted in 1900 and in 1906 the property was purchased by Archibald Hinds, who added stables on the Milton Street side of the property (these still stand). This was the only recorded change to the building until 2002. The property was acquired by the Public Trustee in 1929 and it remained the owner until 1954, when it was purchased by private owners.

Occupation is marked by the lengthy occupation of fruiterers. By 1915, 205 was occupied by fruiterers and 207 by a bakery. A confectioner replaced the latter in the early 1920s and that arrangement remained until at least the 1940s. A long-standing occupant was Ching Hing and Co., fruiterers, who were occupants from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. Meanwhile, 207 was occupied from the 1950s by a succession of grocers and dairies.The building was vacant for part of the 1970s, and commercial activity appears to have ended in the early 1980s. Throughout the building’s history, various tenants have occupied the upstairs flats.

205-207 has frontages to both Rintoul/ Luxford Street and Milton Street and can be seen largely in the round. It has a relatively authentic appearance and a large amount of original building fabric remains visible, including the majority of the double-hung window joinery, parts of the shopfronts and wall cladding.

The Luxford Street façade is symmetrically composed about the party wall, which projects slightly out from the main wall line. The verandah, most likely modern, is a simple lean-to style on steel posts.The upper wall has a plain horizontal parapet divided from the main wall face with a profiled timber cornice that extends beyond the corner boards and returns on itself. A pair of double-hung windows on the northern part of the upper wall is counterbalanced by a 1950s-era casement window assembly on the southern part. Below the verandah, the northern shop front and door appears largely original; the southern shopfront and door date from more recent times.

209 Rintoul Street

James Collins built 209 together with 211 in 1898. Collins was a speculative builder who soon sold the property, to butcher Henry Parker in 1901. The building has changed hands an extraordinary number of times over its life; perhaps as many as 20 times. However, it kept its principal ground floor use as a butchery through much of the period. Likewise, the upstairs flat was let throughout this period.

The store closed about 1980. The following year alterations were made, one of which may have been the removal and replacement of the shop windows, as by this time the house was divided into two flats.

Not much outward evidence remains of the original commercial use or fabric of this building. Its age can be gauged to some extent from its long, tall and narrow proportions, shallow-pitched hipped roof, and rusticated weatherboard cladding, all of which relate it to its assumed pair at 211, adjacent to the south.

It is otherwise quite different to 211. The original shop-front and double-hung windows are all missing and while the walls indicate the building may have had a verandah, there is now no remaining trace of one.

211 Rintoul Street

Wellington City Archives records show that James Collins built 211 together with 209 in 1898. However, although Collins was a speculative builder, land information records show that he sold the land later occupied by 211 to another speculative builder Richard Keene (who built buildings on the other side of Milton Street, see above) in 1895.

In 1896, Herbert Felthan bought the property and if he was the owner in 1898, Keene's role remains a mystery. Feltham sold the building in 1902 to Charles Reeves but thereafter the history of the building becomes less certain. Reeves sold the building to Herbert Baxter the following year, but complications over Baxter's mortgage (he may have defaulted), left the building in the hands of the Buller family. Eventually, in 1927, the building was sold to Matilda Hutchinson in 1927, There followed a series of transactions before the building was bought by Stanley Moore, a clerk, in 1937. He owned the building for over forty years, until 1979.

In more recent years the building was owned firstly by Babu and Urmila Hari in 1979, who sold it to Jayanti and Jyotsana Deva in 1963. In 1986 Richard and Terence Wilkinson bought the property. They sold it to Blair Rutherford and Fiona Hatton in 1995. The building was sold to the present owner in 1995.

The building was used as a fruiterers for the first couple of decades, but from the late 1920s onwards was a general grocery and later a dairy. Its run at commercial life ended in the 1980s. It has recently been re-occupied by a commercial tenant – Berhampore Locks.

This building is sufficiently similar in age, form, proportion, material and detail to 209 to have been a pair with that building. Although in rather more authentic condition than its neighbour, it has nevertheless undergone notable change over its life – the most visible changes are the stayed horizontal verandah and the plain shop-front below, both most likely of 1950s vintage. The shopfront is symmetrically arranged with simple timber windows in four lights each flanking a glazed central door.

Remaining original features include the shallow-pitched hipped roof, with a front eave detail exactly matching 209, the upper façade, which has a pair of large double-hung windows set in a rusticated weatherboard-clad wall, and the side walls clad in horizontal corrugated iron.

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Berhampore (Rintoul Street) Shopping Centre Heritage Area has representative value as a rare example of a late 19th century suburban centre surviving in a relatively unmodified form. The group of buildings contained in the area forms a distinctive landmark and offers a rare vista of an early and important period in Wellington’s history. The area has a strong sense of place arising from its architectural and streetscape character and will be familiar to many Wellingtonians. The buildings have high group value; the group has a strong sense of cohesiveness related to the similarities of the buildings, including age, architectural style and materials, as well as by the use of verandahs and the alignment of the buildings to the street edge to create a consistent and relatively authentic streetscape, and the area has concordantly high streetscape value. The many houses in the surrounding areas from the same period enhance this value.

The individual buildings are, except the church, examples of typical mixed-use buildings of the late 19th century with histories typical for their time and location. This gives them some historic value.

The area has educational value as a good example of a small satellite suburban centre that remains descriptive of the time it was established. It reflects the early settlement and growth of Wellington’s first ring of suburbs at the turn of the 20th century, and also illustrates the impact of mass public transport (the tram) on the development of these suburbs. 216-218 Rintoul Street, altered to suit tramway curves, provides graphic evidence of the significance and importance of the tram and is of technical interest for that alteration. The area may have archaeological value as there is known pre-1900 human activity in this part of Berhampore. The individual buildings are of some technical interest for their materials and methods of construction, although equivalent materials and methods from the same period of time will also be found in many other buildings in the wider area.

The buildings have social value for the 100 plus years they have been a part of Berhampore’s commercial, religious and residential life, particularly the church, which has remained in continuous use as a religious venue and retains strong ties with the wider community. As one of two commercial hubs in the suburb, this intersection has played an important part in the suburb’s history, although less so in recent years as commercial activity has waned. The area’s buildings had a spectrum of typical suburban commercial uses, such as butchers, fishmongers, fruiterers, bookshops, general stores etc., together with residential tenants and a church. Today, only a dairy and a locksmith’s shop remains as a reminder of the area’s former activity, although most of the properties remain in use, or partial use, as residences.

Berhampore (Rintoul Street) Shopping Centre Heritage Area has value as a rare example of a late 19th century suburban centre surviving in a relatively unmodified form. The heritage area is a long-established feature of Berhampore’s streetscape and a very important element in the broader historic and architectural landscape of the suburb.

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