Tramway Hotel (Former)

Tramway Hotel, Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Adelaide Hotel, The Spud and Duchess, The Adelaide, Cats Bar, 114 Adelaide Road, 19 Drummond Street, 21 Drummond Street, 23 Drummond Street, 114-116 Adelaide Road.

114 Adelaide Road, cnr Adelaide Road and Drummond Street, Newtown, Wellington
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Image: WCC - Charles Collins, 2015
Image: WCC - Charles Collins, 2015
Cityview GIS 2012
Cityview GIS 2012
Outside the Wellington Corporation Tramways shed, Drummond Street, and Horse drawn tram, bound for Cuba Street 1900. Image: Wellington City Archives: 00138:0:3129.

1900 - Outside the Wellington Corporation Tramways shed, Drummond Street, and Horse drawn tram, bound for Cuba Street. Image: Wellington City Archives: 00138:0:3129.

WCC Archives reference 00053:50:3223
WCC Archives reference 00053:50:3223
1905 - Garage. WCC Archives reference 00053:122:6766
1905 - Garage. WCC Archives reference 00053:122:6766
Reinstatement after the 1942 Wairarapa Earthquake. WCC Archives reference 00056:278:B22430

1942 - Reinstatement after the Wairarapa Earthquake. WCC Archives reference 00056:278:B22430

Map

  • Constructed

    1899 - 1899

  • Architect(s)

    James O'Dea

  • Builder(s)

    J. Hunter

  • The building is a rare surviving example of typical late Victorian Hotel

    The building occupies a prominent corner site and the scale, form and visual interest of the building’s exterior detail contrast with the commercial and industrial buildings on Adelaide Road. The building provides a transition between the commercial development in Adelaide Road and the period housing in Drummond Street. 

    The building has a long history as a local hotel and has some historic value for its association with liquor licensing laws, and with the recent gentrification of Newtown.

    The building exterior retains much of the original building fabric (with the exception of the original parapet & the removal of paint/render/plaster/ceramic tiles from the external brickwork).

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  • close History
    • The Tramway Hotel was built in 1899 on the site of a timber hotel of the same name which was destroyed by fire on the 30th December 1898.   The timber predecessor was named for the nearby tramway stables and workshop, but was planned in 1877 , in advance of the launch of the steam tram service from the railway station to the southern end of Adelaide Road.  Later that year a liquor license was refused on the grounds that no new public houses were needed in the neighbourhood,   but the license was granted 4 June 1878.  

      The old timber hotel had been insured and plans (prepared by architect James O’Dea) were submitted to the council to build a masonry hotel on the site within weeks of the fire. The hotel building work was tendered in January 1899, tenders were returned in February, and the hotel re-opened in August 1899.  There were eight bids which ranged from £2420 to £2869 and the lowest tender by J Hunter was accepted. The speed of reconstruction may have been partly due to plans to widen Adelaide Road. Newspaper reports of the time suggest that the fire could have simplified ‘to some extent the widening of Adelaide-road as arrangements, will doubtless be come to whereby it will be in re-erection placed back on the new frontage of the street.’  But in mid-February 1899 a decision was made to widen Adelaide Road on the eastern (opposite) side. This allowed for the reconstruction of the Tramway Hotel on the west side of Adelaide Road in line with the existing street-edge. 

      The building was owned by Mr Charles Plimmer (1848 – 1930), the fourth son of Mr John Plimmer ‘the father of Wellington’. Charles Plimmer owned the Tramway Hotel and half-owned Barrett’s Hotel on Lambton Quay.  The first proprietors were John and Kate or Catherine Beauchamp, Catherine became sole licensee in 1903 or 1908 after her husband’s death. 

      John Beauchamp’s death was said to have been hastened by the various decisions on the prohibition of the sale of liquor in Newtown. When Newtown declared for Prohibition in November 1907 Mr Beauchamp was said to have been offered £4000 for the sale/transfer of his liquor license. The Tramway Hotel was sited just outside the Newtown licensing area and would have been the last hotel on the tram-route from the city to Newtown. Beauchamp is said to have declined the offer, perhaps because he thought that the hotel would yield a greater profit than the £4000. He then held a party to celebrate, became drunk, and received an endorsement on his license. The Newtown Prohibition verdict was later overturned and Newtown did not become a ‘dry’ or ‘no-licence’ area.  The story that was reported in The Free Lance newspaper noted that Beauchamp was left out of pocket, and with an endorsement on his licence, and died from disappointment and shame shortly thereafter.

      Beauchamp, however, appears to have died in 1903 rather than 1908 and this report of his death having been due to disappointment is likely to have been apocryphal. But the liquor licensing laws did change the physical appearance of the Tramway Hotel, as the ongoing issue of Prohibition in the neighbouring suburbs was cited as a catalyst for the extension of the hotel bar in c.1909. 

      Other significant publicans associated with the Tramway Hotel are the McParland (also listed as McPharland) family. Frank McParland (circa 1870 – 1930) was born in Charleston on the West Coast, worked with his father as a baker, and was the licensee of the Tramway hotel from 1912 to 1929. He held a collection of sporting memorabilia at the hotel, particularly racing and boxing. His son Charles J McParland held the license of the Tramway Hotel from 1929 until the early 1940s.  

      The hotel exterior was altered by the 1960s, when the ground floor elevations were clad with blue ceramic tiles, and the first floor elevations were painted, (and possibly rendered or plastered).  The building was also enlarged in 1969 with an extension to the bar that was estimated to cost £160,000. This extension is likely to have been the additional building at 19 to 23 Drummond Street that was demolished in 2000 to make way for the new apartment buildings to the west of the hotel.  The hotel was taken over by New Zealand Breweries in the 1970s, in an era of aggressive expansion by the company. And it is in this era when the Tramway Hotel was rumoured to have been the short-term residence of parliamentarian Prime Minister Norman Kirk during the tenure of hotel proprietor Des Armstrong, but again, this may be apocryphal.  The hotel acquired a dubious reputation as a trouble spot from the 1970s onwards  and in 1981 was linked to the murder of Mongrel Mob leader Lester Epps after a brawl between rival gangs. 

      ‘The hotel was later purchased by Brian le Gros, a major figure in Wellington’s adult entertainment industry, and he refurbished the hotel in the early 1990s as the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.’  The exterior of the building was much modified at this time when the existing render and ceramic tile finish was removed to reveal the brickwork beneath. This was possibly the original intent of architect O’Dea as an 1899 article in the Evening Post newspaper stated that the ‘front elevation of the building will be neatly finished in pressed redbrick, picked out with cement.’   

      In 2011, the building was served a Section 128 notice by the WCC to denote that the building was earthquake prone and would have to be strengthened or demolished.
    • Modifications close
      • 1877 - 1878
      • Construction of the first Tramway Hotel
      • 1898 - 1898
      • Fire destroyed the existing timber hotel
      • 1899 - 1899
      • The new Tramway hotel opened
      • 1905 - 1905
      • Single storey garage added
      • c.1909 - c.1909
      • Hotel bar extension was added in anticipation of prohibition of sale of alcohol in Wellington South and Wellington Suburbs
      • 1942 - 1942
      • Parapet removed after 1942 Earthquake and masonry replaced with lightweight timber frame.
      • 1969 - 1969
      • Hotel enlarged to extend the bar in the sum of £160,000. Hotel enlarged to extend the bar in the sum of £160,000. (This appears to have been the extension at 19 to 23 Drummond Street).
      • c.1990 - c.1990
      • Alterations to the external appearance of the hotel with the removal of the ceramic tile and rendered finish.
      • 2000 - 2000
      • Demolition of a building on the Tramways Hotel site Demolition of a building on the Tramways Hotel site (this appears to have been the 1969 extension and construction of a new fire wall, presumably between the hotel and 19 Drummond Street.
      • 2001 - 2001
      • Construction of multi-unit student housing Construction of multi-unit student housing (presumably on the site of the 1969 extension).
    • Occupation History close
      • c.1905 - c.1910
      • Kate Beauchamp, proprietress
      • 1915
      • Francis Eugene McParland prpr.
      • 1935
      • Chas. John McParland prpr.
      • 1955
      • Armstrong prpr
      • 1966
      • NZ Breweries
      • 1971 - 1985
      • Tramway Hotel
  • close Architectural Information
    • Building Classification(s) close

      Not assessed

    • Architecture close

      The former Tramway Hotel, is a two-storey masonry building (possibly with a cellar) that was designed to an L-shape plan, with street elevations to both Adelaide Road / Drummond Street. The original drawings show a bar in the corner room, several parlours, a dining room and kitchen on the ground floor. The first floor had a sitting room, thirteen bedrooms and one bathroom. The exterior is typical hotel architecture of the turn of the century; semi-circular headed windows to the ground floor; square headed windows above; and pilasters and cornices well embellished with corbels and mouldings, divided the elevations into six bays one each street frontage. These bays were originally marked by finials, now removed to leave a plain parapet. In a recent modification, plaster was removed from the exterior walls between the pilasters to expose the brickwork that is the main structural material.

    • Materials close

      1899 detailed specification from City Archives: -

      Concrete: foundations, floors and yard, steps cornices “&c”.

      Brick: “Elevations to have picked pressed bricks all remaining exterior face work to have best picked stock bricks, chimneys, arches “turned in cement”. All piers, projections, &c. and where coloured yellow on elevations to be finished in cement as described.

      Timber/joinery: Totara (sleeper plates on edge, wall plates, ground floor joists, door and window frames), Rimu and Matai (rafters, struts, hangers, ceiling joists, first floor joists, partition studs and plates, valleys, trimmers, sarking –rough saw, skirting – moulded, window and door architraves, fascias for spouting), Matai flooring T&G.Vestibule swing doors heart red pine. Note:

      Allow in tender the sum of forty pounds sterling for laying on electric light installation and providing fittings &c. complete.’

    • Setting close

      Adelaide Road is predominated by late 20thC commercial buildings. The former Tramway Hotel is one of the surviving 19thC buildings on the road and as such is a landmark on the prominent Drummond corner.  Drummond Street has a number of period houses, and the hotel neatly marks the transition from commercial to residential areas.

  • close Cultural Value
    The building is a rare surviving example of typical late Victorian Hotel

    The building occupies a prominent corner site and the scale, form and visual interest of the building’s exterior detail contrast with the commercial and industrial buildings on Adelaide Road. The building provides a transition between the commercial development in Adelaide Road and the period housing in Drummond Street. 

    The building has a long history as a local hotel and has some historic value for its association with liquor licensing laws, and with the recent gentrification of Newtown.

    The building exterior retains much of the original building fabric (with the exception of the original parapet & the removal of paint/render/plaster/ceramic tiles from the external brickwork).
    • Aesthetic Value close

      • Architectural

        Does the item have architectural or artistic value for characteristics that may include its design, style, era, form, scale, materials, colour, texture, patina of age, quality of space, craftsmanship, smells, and sounds?

        The building is a good representative example of a late Victorian hotel

        The building’s principal facades form a well articulated composition in a commercial Classical style.

        The building retains much of the original Classical detailing including external rendered mouldings around the windows and doors, sash windows and panelled doors, and rendered pilasters.  

      • Townscape

        Does the item have townscape value for the part it plays in defining a space or street; providing visual interest; its role as a landmark; or the contribution it makes to the character and sense of place of Wellington?

        The scale, form and visual interest of the building’s exterior detail contrast with the commercial and industrial buildings on Adelaide Road

        The building provides a transition between the commercial development in Adelaide Road and the period housing in Drummond Street

        The building occupies a prominent corner site

    • Historic Value close

      • Association

        Is the item associated with an important historic event, theme, pattern, phase, or activity?

        The building has a long history as a local hotel and has some historic value for its association with liquor licensing laws, and with the recent gentrification of Newtown.

      • Association

        Is the item associated with an important person, group, or organisation?

        The building has some historical value for its association with Charles Plimmer, a member of an early Wellington settler family, and with the McParland’s (McPharland’s), a local family of bakers / publicans. 

    • Scientific Value close

      • Archaeological

        Does the item have archaeological value for its ability to provide scientific information about past human activity?

        The site has archaeological value for the pre- 1900 human activity on site

      • Educational

        Does the item have educational value for what it can demonstrate about aspects of the past?

        The building is a rare surviving example of typical late Victorian Hotel, and the original plans, sections and elevations survive.

    • Social Value close

      • Identity - Sense Of Place - Continuity

        Is the item a focus of community, regional, or national identity? Does the item contribute to sense of place or continuity?

        The building has remained (relatively) unchanged on the site for over 100 years and contributes to the sense of place and continuity for the changing townscape of Adelaide Road, Newtown

      • Public Esteem

        Is the item held in high public esteem?

        The building was a local hostelry for Newtown and Mt Cook until the 1970s although in later years it gained a reputation as a ‘trouble spot’.

    • Level of Cultural Heritage Significance close

      • Authentic

        Does the item have authenticity or integrity because it retains significant fabric from the time of its construction or from later periods when important additions or modifications were carried out?

        The building is a good representative example of a late Victorian hotel, two storied and located on a prominent corner site. Although altered externally by the removal of plaster and parapet features, it otherwise retains and authenticity of form, allowing hotel design of the time to be understood, particularly since the original drawings survive.

      • Rare

        Is the item rare, unique, unusual, seminal, influential, or outstanding?

        The building is a rare surviving example of typical late Victorian Hotel

      • Representative

        Is the item a good example of the class it represents?

        The building is a good representative example of a late Victorian hotel

      • Local - Regional - National - International

        Is the item important for any of the above characteristics at a local, regional, national, or international level?

        Local – association with Plimmer & McParland families.

        Local/Regional – surviving example of late Victorian Hotel.

    • Local / Regional / National / International Importance close

      Not assessed

  • close Site Detail

    • District Plan Number

      6/397

    • Legal Description

      LOT 1 DP 21496

    • Heritage New Zealand Listed

      Not listed

    • Archaeological Site

      Pre – 1900 building

    • Current Uses

      unknown

    • Former Uses

      unknown

    • Has building been funded

      No

    • Funding Amount

      Not applicable

    • Earthquake Prone Status

      124 Notice

  • close Additional Information

Last updated: 7/25/2017 4:19:51 AM