Waitoa Street
22 Waitoa Road (Hataitai Methodist church)
Methodism first made an appearance in Hataitai in 1886 with services given in private homes and later at the school in Moxham Avenue. In 1895 the Methodist community bought land next to the school and the construction of the first church, a small timber building seating 100, began. The church was opened on 21 October 1896. In 1908 a more centrally-located site was bought on Waitoa Road, presumably with the intent of building a larger church, and in 1913 the timber church building was moved to this site.
As the congregation grew, keeping pace with the suburb’s rapid development, the first church’s limited capacity soon became a problem. Fundraising began in earnest but it took some years before construction could begin on a larger building. The foundation stone of the new church was eventually laid on 30th June 1928 by Governor General Sir Charles Fergusson.
The new church was designed by the well-known architect, and local resident, William Fielding, and cost £5,300 including furnishings. The old wooden church at the rear of the site continued to be used for Sunday school and as a hall. In 1946 a booklet printed for the church’s Jubilee celebrations noted ‘…present-day Hataitai is a model suburb with many beautiful homes and a fine community spirit’. During 1971 the Samoan Methodist Church was granted use of the church and hall on Sunday afternoons. Then in 1977 both buildings were sold to the Samoan church for $62,000. Hataitai Methodist Church joined with the Anglican All Saints in Moxham Avenue to form the Hataitai-Kilbirnie Co-operating Parish.
The church is very prominent in the streetscape and is notable in the heritage area for its distinctive materials, architecture and scale. Set back slightly from the street, by the depth of the entry porch, the church is a substantial and imposing structure executed in contrasting red brick and white-painted plaster.
Although simply arranged and spare and restrained in its ornament, the building is very carefully considered and detailed – the brickwork is laid in many different planes, creating a rich play of shadows and the structure is further enriched by the judicious use of plaster mouldings and relief work that further contrasts with the brick, all of which gives a strong architectural character and creates a high level of visual interest.
The style of the building is difficult to categorise. Fielding’s design illustrates many of the characteristics of the Stripped Classical style that became prevalent in public buildings in through the inter-war period, but has a strong Romanesque influence married with cues from contemporary northern European church buildings.
The main elevation has a powerful and striking central symmetry – its key architectural features include the massive segmental-arched nave window above the solid-plastered entry porch, the high steeped parapet masking the roof beyond, the circular windows to the aisles beyond, the porch itself, with doors and steps placed symmetrically on either side – all neatly counterbalanced by the carefully-scaled octagonal bell tower placed on the right corner.
The side elevations are treated more simply than the street elevation – the main features aside from a few windows are buttresses and a prominent eave in stepped brick. The north elevation takes the form of a blind gable end wall, with two projecting buttresses; the roof line steps down to the altar end of the building. The balance of the north wall is largely masked by the hall (and former old church). This is a large single-storey timber building covered with two main gable roofs, connected to the church with a modern lean-to roof.
Belying the impression created by its imposing street frontage, the church is actually a comparatively small building, only slightly more than longer in plan than it is wide. Although the church is understood to be complete as originally intended, it looks rather like a completed nave, awaiting transepts and a chancel to be built on the north end.
24 Waitoa Road
The building permit was issued for this building in 1912. The owner was J.A. Martin, a coal merchant, and the builder W.B. Hutchings. There is some suggestion that it was built in 1916 for Nelson Young, who bought the property two years earlier from the Hataitai Land Co. If the building was completed in 1912, the property was still in the hands of the Company. Martin (or rather his wife Eleanor) was the owner by 1916 and there is little reason to think that they were not the original owners of the building. Eleanor Martin remained the owner until her death in 1953, and the property was sold to a private buyer.
The building is comprised of two shops, one of which (24a) has been a fruiterers or greengrocers for much of its history. During the 1920s the Hwong family operated a laundry in one shop and a fruiterers in the other. Nelson Young occupied the building as a greengrocer in the late 1960s. It is presently unoccupied.
There are two distinct buildings on this property – the two shops at the street front and a house at the back. The shops are contained in a simple single-storey timber building in a plain Edwardian commercial style, clad in rusticated weatherboards and covered with a modern Decramastic tile roof. The two shops are symmetrical about the centreline, with entrances either side of the centre recessed back from the shopfronts. A shallow bullnosed verandah shelters the shopfronts and is supported on steel posts. Above this, a simple stepped parapet with a gabled central section conceals the roof beyond.
26 Waitoa Road
This house was designed by William Fielding for William Boyd, a storekeeper and the permit issued in 1918. The builder was S. Harris. It has been a domestic residence since its construction.
Boyd built the house as part of a speculative venture, which was originally intended to include four other houses on adjoining lots. He sold this house almost immediately and it changed hands regularly over the next decade. The house was bought by George Miles, a butcher, in 1930 but he did not occupy it.
The house is a small single storey Californian bungalow, designed in a typical style of the day, one that became a prevalent building style in Hataitai. While there is little in the outward appearance to illustrate the hand of Fielding, the building has been carefully designed and proportioned. Symmetrically composed with a rectangular plan, the street elevation of the house has a large open gabled porch facing the street on the centreline – the porch roof is supported on short timber columns atop roughcast masonry piers – casement windows and bevel-back weatherboard cladding; the shallow-pitched gabled roof roof is clad in modern Decramastic tiles, and the gable end in shingles. There is a small lean-to at the rear.
28 Waitoa Road
As with 26 Waitoa Road this house was designed by William Fielding for William Boyd, a storekeeper, and the permit issued in 1918. The builder was S. Harris. Boyd built the house as part of a speculative venture, which was intended to include four other houses on adjoining lots.
The house was sold almost immediately to schoolmaster Charles Bary and his wife Margaret. Following Charles Bary's death in 1935, two of Margaret Bary's relatives (Doris Calder and Thelma Bary) joined her as tenants-in-common. Upon Margaret Bary's death in 1939, the house was inherited by the others. Although the history of the property ownership is somewhat convoluted, it appears to have remained in the same extended family ever since.
This house is more outwardly substantial than 26 and has a much more severe and conservative late Edwardian style that gives it a strong presence in the streetscape. Although its plan area is compact, and in fact smaller than 26, it is a tall two storeys with a prominent high gabled roof and an interesting pair of bracketed oriel windows at the first floor. The house is set back a short distance from the street; a modern garage is dominant in the front yard.
30 Waitoa Road
The prominent corner site now occupied by Waitoa Buildings was initially intended to have a house built on it, and like those to its immediate east, it was to have been designed by William Fielding for William Boyd.
However, the house was never built and instead the land was acquired by the WCC. The purpose of this acquisition is not known but it may have been for roading purposes; in 1924 the land was sold to William Nesbitt, a taxi proprietor, who in 1927 sold some of the land to the council for ‘the purposes of building a road’. Just which road this refers to is not known as both Waitoa Road and Hataitai Road were formed by this time. The CT refers to the corner itself so it may have been an issue over that part of the site. Nesbitt gave the council more land in February 1928 for road widening and then embarked on constructing Waitoa Buildings. No architect is listed with the permit but the builder was R O’Brien.
Nesbitt sold the property to Konini Buildings Ltd in 1936. This company retained ownership until 1971. That year it was sold to private owners.
Since construction, the building has had numerous uses in its three shops and many different tenants in its upstairs flats. However, all three shops had at least one long-term occupant. For 30a it was a stationers and book shop, 30b was a general store and 30c was a confectioners, later ‘sweet shop’. Other uses of note include a bank, hardware store, and shoe repairers. Burger Wisconsin is a high-profile current tenant.
One of the characteristic buildings of the Hataitai commercial area, due partly to its prominent corer location and partly to its design, Waitoa Buildings is a handsome structure that reflects Hataitai’s key period of growth in the inter-war period. It is two storeys high in masonry construction; the tall parapet conceals a shallow flat roof beyond (and a party wall dividing the building roughly 1/3 to 2/3rds). The building has a formal but quite unusual style, a half-blend of a simple stripped Classical form mixed with subtle motifs of early Moderne details. It makes an excellent use of its corner site; the bevelled corner and entrance and the shopfronts and verandah stepping back around the corner up Waitoa Road both take advantage of the location and topography.
The shop fronts still have original glazed tile columns and spandrels and some original timber joinery; the verandah is a simple horizontal construction with prominent stays. Above the verandah, the windows are relieved into the masonry wall – the joinery is a mixture of modern aluminium and original thin and elegant steel. The façade is enlivened with broad but shallow “pilasters” at each corner of the main façade and trimmed with a dado running along at window sill height and a large but shallow moulded cornice dividing the parapet from the upper walls.
32-34 Waitoa Road (Hataitai Telephone Exchange and Post Office)
Hataitai’s first Post Office may have occupied the building that was previously located on this site at the north-west corner of Hataitai and Waitoa Roads. The previous building had a variety of purposes, including a drapery. The Post Office certainly spent some time in rented premises in front of The Realm Ballroom at 7 Moxham Avenue. After World War II, growing demand for telecommunications services in particular, along with the general growth of the eastern suburbs generated sufficient pressure for a new bespoke building.
The new building was constructed in 1950-51 to a design by the Ministry of Works and included a modern telephone exchange.
It remained in use by the Post Office until 1988, when, following the extensive deregulation and state asset sales of the 1980s, and the splitting of the Post Office in to its component functions, the building was made redundant and was sold into private hands. It was immediately turned to commercial use and has been occupied by Loder Interiors since 1998.
The building is a simple, plain and four-square late 1940s-style Modernist structure and is an interesting example of some of the post-war Modern architectural work being carried out within the Ministry of Works at the time.
Rectilinear in plan, section, and elevation and built in reinforced concrete with a smooth plaster render, it has three main volumes – a single-storey element fronting Waitoa Road, originally housing the public areas of the post office, a high double-storey section in the middle, presumably housing the original automatic telephone exchange, and a lower two-storey element at the back. Windows in the front section are in early aluminium but are timber in the other parts of the building; the windows have regular geometric proportions, are symmetrically arranged and are recessed in to each façade. A flat roof is concealed behind low parapets. The Waitoa Road elevation of the exchange block has four quite distinctive antenna mounts spaced evenly along the top of the façade, which are an interesting architectural feature.
23 Waitoa Road
This row of shops – originally six in all – was constructed for leather manufacturer Bernard Osborne in two stages from 1922. It was the subject of two permits – one a year after the other. The second permit is marked by a nearly 100% jump in the value of the application, but the reason for this is not known. The builder listed on first permit was Cudley and Barrbrown, while that on the second was B A Robertson. There is some suggestion from prior CTs that other buildings were on the site prior to the present one as land was purchased from the Hataitai Land Co. in 1905 and various mortgages taken out by the prior owners. However, construction of the building came only after subdivision of the land, a square, two-lot section on the corner of Waitoa Road and William Street, to form the present legal boundaries in 1923. Lot 1 of the new subdivision was utilised for the new shops. Curiously, land records show that the owner of the property in 1922 was John Symonds, a butcher, and that he did not sell the property to Osborne until 1924.
Osborne kept the building until his death in 1953. He leased the shops to a variety of businesses. During the Depression, the stores were occupied by, among other things, a butcher, draper and confectioner. By 1971, a bootmaker, cake shop and a dairy were occupants. In more recent years, restaurants and cafés and a laundrette have been long-standing occupants. Two shops have been amalgamated into one space. There has been a laundrette in the building since the mid-1970s. The present owners bought the building in 1994.
23 Waitoa Road today is arranged as two groups of three shop-fronts, although some shops are amalgamated as noted above. The overall form of this terrace of single-storey shops clearly reflects the two distinct phases of construction. The group of three shops on the left is composed symmetrically about the centre, reflected in the simple triangular pediment atop the central part of the parapet over the middle shop and the central location of doors and shop windows within each of the three shop fronts.
Individual flat roofs are concealed behind the parapet. The middle two shops, fused into one tenancy, have weatherboard cladding between the verandah and the display windows (and to the parapet, hidden behind sheet metal on the restaurant), and this cladding also extends to the right-most shop.
The latter is the odd shop out of the group – it has a different parapet and verandah line from the other five which may suggest it was either built at a different time, or simply modified without regard to the other shops; it nevertheless remains in keeping with the general form and scale of the rest of the terrace and adds visual interest. The two right-hand shops, although modified over time, still retain original glazed tile spandrel panels under the shop windows and the two left-hand shops (laundrette) appear to have some original shopfront material.
25-27 Waitoa Road
This is a property containing two separate buildings, both of which were built for William Young, a salesman. Young bought the property in 1922 when it was occupied by at least one house, probably constructed in 1905 when the land was purchased for the Hataitai Land Co. The present building at 25 was built first, although there is some confusion over exactly when; the permit was issued in 1926, but the date of 1929 is shown in relief on the building’s street façade. The architect is not known but the builder was H Watt. No. 27 was constructed as a shopfront addition (to the house) by Fields and Co. in 1929. Young kept the property (and the buildings) it remained in ownership by the Young family until 1983.
The street numbering of these buildings (and of the adjacent buildings) is quite confusing. No. 25 was constructed as a two-storey shop and apartment (currently numbered 27 and 27b), while 27 was a single storey two-shop addition to the front of an existing house (these shops are currently numbered as 27c and 27d).
From the 1920s the two buildings were often, but not always and not consistently, numbered 25 (and 25a) and variations on 27. No. 25 was, for a lengthy period, a fruiterers and laundry, run by Wah Ngan, and then a butchers (although confusingly they are shown in street directories to have been in the building at these same time).
No. 27 housed a Self Help Store, then later a drycleaners, cake shop and a laundrette. Permit records indicate that changes were made to the shops of 27 during the 1990s. Today, 25 is occupied by Top Style Hair Design (numbered as 27b), and 27 is occupied by Willow Shoes (27c) and Zintas (27d).
No. 25 is an elegant late 1920s building in a simple Stripped Classical idiom in two-storey masonry construction, capped with a hipped Marseille tile roof concealed behind parapets on three sides. The building has a distinctive vertical proportion. While the lower façade beneath the stayed horizontal veranda has been “modernised”, the upper façade remains as originally built. This is symmetrically composed in a quite quirky fashion as a large-scale picture frame. Central in the façade is a three-bay double-hung window assembly, trimmed with moulded facings and a heavy moulded horizontal entablature. Stepping out from this, a larger and heavier version of the same detail is used against a blind wall to frame the windows, all to interesting architectural effect.
No. 27 is on the same title as 25 and has similar origins but could hardly be more visibly different. The driveway to the rear of the property allows views of the east side of the building.
This shows that the two shops, built with a common monolithic frontage, are quite shallow in plan and are directly appended to the street front of an old villa, where a verandah, or small front yard, would once have fitted. The shops have a harmony of scale and elevation line with the other shops on this side of the street, enhanced by the prominent stayed verandah. There is a large garage/workshop at the rear of the property. The present use of the house is unknown.
31-33 Waitoa Road
Constructed in 1919-20 for Frank Wander and John Roberts by contractors Davison and Roberts, this single-storey terraced building occupies the bend of the Moxham Avenue/Waitoa Road corner. The building clearly post-dates the arrival of the tram because the sweeping curve of the corner was designed to suit the tram and the building is shaped accordingly. There were (and are) three retail spaces in all, which Wander and Roberts leased out. They remained the joint owners until Wander sold his share to his partner in 1946. The buildings have remained in private ownership ever since.
The early uses of this building are only intermittently known. Street directories listed the occupants of the buildings as part of Moxham Avenue, despite not attributing numbers to the shops. For instance, in 1940, two of the premises were occupied by a stationers/booksellers (a long standing occupant in various guises) and a confectioners. By 1950, grocers occupied one shop, and a similar sort of business survived until at least the early 1970s. The turnover of shops has been regular but recent occupants have included a café, beauty parlour and hairdressers. Again, the street numbers are confusing, with two of the shops numbered 31 and one 33.
31 – 33 Waitoa Road is a terrace of small single-storey Edwardian-style shops, all long and narrow in plan and oriented perpendicular to Moxham Avenue. Considerable visual and architectural interest is added by the shop-fronts following the curve around into Waitoa Road, and stepping up the hill as they come around. This presents the shops as three visually distinct but interconnected buildings. Each shop has a prominent horizontal parapet with a large recessed panel, projecting “horns” formed by the vertical extension of each party wall and a large horizontal stayed verandah that steps up with the rise in the street, and it is the rhythm of these simple forms that creates the building’s streetscape interest. The parapets conceal monoslope roofs – the southernmost two shops have lean-to’s at the rear.
The first shop in the group – highest in elevation and closest to the intersection – is 33. This is the most modified of the three and has a modern shop-front. The other two shops have a considerable amount of original shop-front material, including timber window and door joinery with distinctive slender profiles; the window joinery curves gracefully in to the recessed door position at the right side of each shop to add further visual, architectural and technical interest.
Moxham Avenue
1 Moxham Avenue
William Moorhouse acquired Lot 1 DP 1621, on the eastern corner of Waitoa Road and Moxham Avenue in October 1912, but by August that year he had already received a permit for a shop and dwelling on the site.
Designed by J T Mair (later Government Architect) and constructed by Meyer and Illingworth the two-storey building contained flats and shops, as it still does. Moorhouse sold Lot 1 in 1919 to William Boyd, who very quickly sold it to John Turnbull. Turnbull and his store became synonymous with the building. Turnbull’s was run by him and then his wife Annie until at least the 1960s, and remained in the Turnbull family’s ownership until 1972. The building has had the same owner since 1987. The present Four Square store is the successor to Turnbull's; this continuous use is matched by only a handful of other buildings in Hataitai. Other occupants over the life of the building have included a fishmonger’s, butchers and fruiterers.
This mixed-use building is set prominently on the street corner and is distinctive for its large size and forthright Edwardian domestic-style architecture. Constructed in rendered masonry it is, roughly, L-shaped in plan, with a large unequal-pitch gabled roof covered in Decramastic tiles (the back of the L is filled with building).
Nothing of the original shop frontages remains visible at the ground floor bar the form of the original corner bay (which is still a window and which is reflected at the first floor balcony above) – the two lower facades are now almost entirely blind and devoid of architectural feature. Despite this loss of detail, the building retains a strong presence on the street. Parts of the horizontal verandah are original, including some cast-iron posts, but this element is largely obscured by the present hoarding at the street edge.
The most visually interesting part of the building is the first floor above the verandah. This is balanced around the distinctive corner balcony and door assembly, with the two street facades made nearly identical and roughly symmetrical. The walls are covered in heavy rough-cast render, with intermittent pilasters adding depth and shadow lines to the wall; the joinery is classic Edwardian timber work in assemblies of multiple casement windows with multi-panel top lights, and with distinctive segmental-arched window heads to each assembly. The eaves are patterned with closely-spaced projecting rafter ends; this typically domestic detail adds further visual interest.
3 Moxham Avenue
Constructed in 1916, this was the second building erected on Lot 1 DP 1621 for William Moorhouse, following the construction of 1 Moxham Avenue four years earlier. This building was designed by John T Mair, later Government Architect and a figure of considerable importance in the history of 20th century New Zealand architecture. Mair designed a single storey terrace of three retail spaces. Three years later, Moorhouse sold the property, along with 1 Moxham Avenue, to William Boyd. Boyd immediately sold the property to storekeeper John Campbell and thereafter the ownership history is the same as No.1 Moxham Avenue.
Historically, it is difficult to assign users to specific spaces, which were divided into 3, 3a and 3b. Butchers were frequent occupants of 3. One long standing occupant of 3a was Poy Young, a fruiterer, from the 1930s to the 1980s. Prior to World War II, 3b seems to have been occupied by a fishmongers. After that, with the exception of a period as a bootmakers, the shop was occupied by the TAB.Today restaurants occupy two of the premises, while a herbal dispensary occupies the third shop.
In many ways similar to the terrace of shops on the opposite corner (31 – 33 Waitoa), this building has a rather more conservative and more typical Edwardian design approach than its opposite number. It is arranged as a symmetrical group, balanced on the central shop; this is given prominence by the segmental-arched parapet. The party walls project as horns above each part of the parapet and add some visual interest to the upper wall (the party walls themselves take the form of gable end walls, showing the shape of the roofs behind the parapets). The parapet and verandah create strong horizontal datum lines; the shops are built to the slope of the street, increasing in height as the street slopes. Although little is left of the original shop fronts bar the door positions, the building has a strong presence in the streetscape and makes an interesting pair with 31-33 Waitoa.
5 Moxham Avenue
Realm Flats was designed by noted Wellington architect Bernard Johns (and Meldrum?) and built in 1947 for Frank Hilton. However the property was actually owned by Hilton’s wife Mary, who had bought the land in 1915; remarkably, the land she purchased has remained undivided since it was bought in 1889 by John Hutcheson. An existing building was removed to construct the flats, which have remained rental accommodation ever since.
A double garage was built alongside the building in 1949. The property, along with 7 Moxham Avenue, was sold to private owners. Street directories provide few details on who has lived in the building.
This small block of flats is designed in a conservative post-war Moderne style with clear Modern underpinnings. Carefully scaled to the street, the building is a long rectilinear rendered concrete construction with a flat roof; it is given visual breathing space by access strips along both sides, enabling it to been seen partly in the round. The flat façades are primarily given interest by the fenestration; the windows are arranged in balanced but asymmetric groups and trimmed with heavy square moulded surrounds that create strong shadow lines and clearly delineate each of the openings, which are trimmed with timber joinery.
7 Moxham Avenue
This building is composed of two main parts – the portion at the rear, the former Realm Ballroom (now The Realm bar and restaurant) and the two shops directly in front, now incorporated into the bar. The date of the construction of the ballroom is not known but the shops were built in 1923 for Frank Hilton, whose wife owned the land that this and a number of adjacent buildings occupy. The builder was A W Paterson and the estimated cost was £1,066. The illustration shows the construction of the shops in 1923 with the ballroom behind. The ownership details of the land the building occupies are the same as 5 Moxham Avenue.
The property occupied by The Realm Ballroom and shops was purchased by Mary Hilton in 1915. Remarkably, the land she purchased has remained undivided since it was bought in 1889 by John Hutcheson. The property, together with 5 Moxham Avenue, was sold to private owners in 1966.
The ballroom remained a popular place for some decades before changing fortunes led to it being used as a warehouse. It was at one point the home of the Hataitai Kindergarten before its later conversion into Giovanni’s Restaurant. The two new shops housed a variety of lessees over the decades. Perhaps the most noteworthy of its occupants was the Hataitai Post Office, which occupied the building for a period before purpose-built premises were constructed on the corner of Hataitai and Waitoa Roads.
The post office was replaced by a hardware store, while other occupants have included a hair salon and a chemist. The use of the ballroom as a restaurant began with Giovanni’s Pizza Parlour in the early 1970s. More recently The Realm Tavern has been a fixture of Hataitai’s shopping centre; this business has taken over the shops and converted them into a front bar.
The Realm is clearly of heritage importance, however, there is today little original fabric evident in either the hall or the two shops, although the general form and bulk of the buildings remain much as they were in the 1920s and a great deal of original structure and the like must still remain. The now-conjoined shops are single-storey with a flat roof hidden behind a plain parapet and abut directly to the hall; the hall is a large and tall single-storey gable-ended structure with a corrugated iron roof.
9-11 Moxham Avenue
This property has not been subdivided since it was bought by Samuel Williams in 1883, a remarkable period of time in Wellington terms. This row of shops was built in 1923-24 for Fred Holloway. The builder was A Paterson. Holloway was an engineer in Masterton and he owned the land with Kate Holloway, a musician living in Wellington. The property was transferred to the Public Trustee in 1949 who sold it to the Radio Doctor Ltd. in 1958. The Radio Doctor was a long standing owner and occupant, finally selling the building in 1988 to two companies. The property has been in the hands of the present owners since 1995.
In its early years the shops were occupied by pastry cooks (the Misses Prankerd) and a fruiterer (Raymond Lowe being the longest occupier, in the 1940s and 50s). Later, there was bakery, a wine merchant and, the above mentioned Radio Doctor. At present, the shops are occupied by a beauty salon and a TAB agency. Changes to the front façade were undertaken in 1997 under the auspices of The Realm Tavern.
This pair of small single-storey shops occupies the street frontage of a large piece of land, the rear part of which is presently a car-park for The Realm Tavern. There is little original building fabric visible today; the main features of the façade are a pastiche Santa Fe-style parapet and a prominent horizontal verandah. The building sits relatively well in the streetscape due to its compatible scale and general form.
2 Moxham Avenue
Builder (also described as a butcher) Frederick Amstey acquired a section on the western side of the Moxham Avenue, just before the Waitoa Street intersection, in 1914 and built two-semi detached shops. The builder was A. Thompson and the application value was £1,150. Amstey retained ownership until 1922 when he sold it to Reginald Coad, a civil servant, who kept the building until his death in 1955. The building was acquired by a restaurateur in 1960 who sold it to private owners in 1965. The new owners also acquired 31-33 Waitoa Road (the adjacent building) in 1972. This period of ownership is marked by numerous leases that were bought and sold as well.
The most noteworthy aspect of the shops’ history is that a dairy has occupied the building from at least 1940 onwards. At 2a, a fish supply or fish and chip shop has been an occupant since at least the 1960s. The shops’ earliest occupants included a baker, stationer and bootmaker. The flats upstairs have been occupied in the same fashion since the building’s construction.
Originally a standard sort of late-Victorian commercial building, this pair of shops has been greatly altered over time but the building nevertheless retains a strong presence in the streetscape of the heritage area.
The street façade, although in two shops , is interestingly divided into three principal parts, presumably for compositional reasons, and this adds architectural interest in the way the building rolls around the street corner to meet in to the adjacent building at 31-33 Waitoa.
Although the building has modern aluminium joinery on display at the upper floor, in lieu of original timber windows, and other obvious changes such as the verandah hoardings, there is a great deal of original fabric remaining, including the strong horizontal cornice on brackets at the top of the wall and the visible weatherboard cladding, and some of the changes are quite interesting. Below the verandah, the chip shop with its raking window assembly is a classic piece of 1960s design that adds interest to the story of the building. Much of the verandah structure appears original, although it is largely concealed behind hoardings and supported on modern steel posts.
4 Moxham Avenue
A shop with an upstairs dwelling, this building was built by J Odlin and Son, builders, for James Burbery, a soldier, in 1912. The designer was the well-known Wellington architect Fred Chinn, who did a considerable amount of work for the Odlins family and business. Burbery died in 1919 and the property was inherited by his son James, a chemist. However, initially, he did not keep his business in the building. It was not until the late 1930s that Burbery (as Burbery and Blinkhorn) began appearing as an occupant. This may be linked to changes made by the practice to the building in 1938.[45] Prior to that, the occupants included a hairdresser and a tobacconist.
During the 1960s and 70s, a beauty salon and then a women’s hair stylist occupied the building, the chemist having moved elsewhere. Only one historical occupant of the upstairs flat is known – Alma Lowden, who lived there in the 1940s and 50s. Ross Howarth Pharmacy was a long standing occupant. The ground floor is currently occupied by the Hataitai Pharmacy.
Built in a simple Edwardian townhouse style, this two-storey building retains much of its original outward form, and is notable for the corbelled gable end, double-hung window joinery in carefully-designed but simple surrounds. The gap to the north enables views of the north elevation that records several eras of change to the building. The shop-front is modern. The access to the flat above is via a door at the left side of the façade.
6-8 Moxham Avenue
William Moorhouse, who bought a considerable amount of land in Hataitai, acquired Lots 67 and 68, DP 168 in 1904. He then transferred part of it to the WCC, possibly to extend Moxham Avenue to what became Waitoa Street; some of this land (Pt Lot 68) was also later taken to form Taurima Street.
In 1906 his wife applied to build a shop and bulk store. The builder was Page and Anderson. In 1910, another application was made for a shop, but it is not certain if this is a new permit or replaced the existing one. Although numbers 6 and 8 were both listed in street directories only one (8) was listed as a shop. Confusing the matter is that firstly there was (and is) a dwelling behind the shops. Secondly, in 1966, another shop was added to the property, suggesting that there was only one shop throughout the period since 1906.
The property was sold by Moorhouse to Henry Shepherd in 1921. Following his death in 1941 the Public Trust kept the property until they sold it to Alfred and Hilda Kellett in 1953.
No. 8 was occupied by a fruiterer – Chang Ngan – for several decades from the 1910s onwards. He was followed by a hairdresser and then a beauty salon. With the addition of the second shop the first food outlet – Gill’s Deli – appeared, to be followed by caterers. From the early 1980s a bakery occupied no.8 and then took over both shops.The Hataitai Hot Bread Shop has been a fixture in the suburb since the 1980s.
This pair of small single-storey shop buildings is unified by high parapets and awnings. There is little visible trace of old fabric in either of the present façades. However the plan forms reveal the outlines of the old buildings that lie behind them. The two façades are scaled appropriately to the buildings and the streetscape and do not detract from the streetscape of the area. The site has a wedge shape, and the right-hand building is made to fit the wedge, built hard up to No. 4. The left-hand building appears to be the oldest on the site for this reason, and has a long gabled roof behind the parapet.
10 Moxham Avenue
This property came in to the hands of William Moorhouse, also owner of the adjacent Lot 67, by 1904. Two years later he built a shop and removed a cottage that had previously occupied the land. The builder for the shop was Page and Anderson. At this stage, Taurima Street did not exist and the property had only one street elevation.
In 1920 the property was sold to the WCC, which formed Taurima Street on part of Lot 68. It took over the shop and used the premises as a waiting shelter for tram passengers. In 1936 the council shifted the shop back on its site, possibly to make room for the greater volume of traffic coming to and from the soon-to-be-completed Mt Victoria Tunnel. The WCC used the building for a shelter until the 1930s but then leased the premises to Young Leong, who eventually bought it off the WCC in 1954. He was a fruiterer and ran his business from there until the late 1950s. His business was followed by the Park Milk Bar and, from the 1970s onwards, by a series of takeaway shops.These continue to this day. The property was purchased by the present owners in 1993.
This commercial building is today in three parts. At Moxham Avenue, it is a single-storey shop with little discernible historic fabric. Along Taurima Street, the second part is a double-storeyed gabled box; the third part is a further two-storey gabled box. Both of the two-storey sections are old buildings; the eastern-most one is the original shop and still retains traces of its alteration to a tram shelter. This part has a symmetric façade, with a pair of double-hung windows top centre, flanked by single double-hungs on either side; at ground level, there are two single doors, one to either side of the façade and an off-centre garage door. The walls are clad in rusticated weatherboards and meet neatly in to the single-storey part of the building, suggesting that the building has been re-clad at some point.
The western two-storey box does not quite align with this, particularly at the roof and may be a later (or earlier) building that the original shop has been butted up to when relocated in 1936. This part has more modern shopfront joinery; the wall planes at the first floor are suggestive of a verandah that has been built in, perhaps supported by the presence of casement window joinery in this area.
