Francis Holmes Limited was a cement and general builders' merchant, and this building was constructed in 1929 by the Fletcher Trust and Investment Company and leased to Francis Holmes Limited for some 16 years. It was then sold to Frances Holmes Ltd in 1946.
The involvement of the Fletcher Trust company in providing a building for Francis Holmes Limited was undoubtedly bound up in the considerable changes underway in the brick and concrete industries at the end of the 1920s. For the origins of this it is necessary to go back further, to when Fletcher Construction’s founder and managing director James Fletcher began to realise that, to ensure the ready supply of building materials of sufficient quality, the company would have to make its own.
Fletchers took an early interest in brick making and bought a plant in Silverstream in the late 1910s. They also bought a plant in Glenburn, Auckland. During the following decade brick became a common construction material, but nevertheless, by the middle of the decade there was an oversupply. Other brick manufacturers considered that if Fletchers’ Glenburn works in Auckland,although profitable, could be prevented from producing bricks it would alleviate the difficulties faced by other brick companies. Fletchers agreed, for a substantial sum, not to make bricks for five years, with the proviso that they could make hollow tiles and small facing bricks, of a type James Fletcher had seen in the United States in 1925.
James Fletcher returned to the United States in 1927 and bought two plants to make the new brick products. The plants were shipped from Dayton, Ohio to New Zealand and were inproduction in Glenburn and Silverstream by 1928. The new products were an instant success and very quickly Fletchers found themselves, in a sense, being paid for the privilege of making a hugely successful product.
This situation could not have been allowed to last and, in a agreement that mirrored an earlier merger of New Zealand’s three major cement companies, the Auckland brick manufacturers, including Fletchers, agreed to form a conglomerate. The Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Co., as it became known, was established. Similar arrangements were made in Wellington. The A.B. & P. Co.’s office in Wellington was in Hamilton Chambers.
Francis Holmes, as a supplier of cement products, was part of the wider Fletchers 'operation' in Wellington and may even have been a subsidiary of the company. The building constructed for them was made of the narrow-faced Silverstream brick, the 'Silverstream Mastertile', made by Fletchers. The building was erected by Fletcher Construction, so it can be reasonably concluded that their involvement was part of the general deal made with Francis Holmes. The design of the building's front façade, although not extravagantly decorated, appears to have been used to promote Fletcher's new brick products, just as it was in the case of the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company's Hamilton Chambers (another Fletcher design and build, also completed in 1929). The architect was E.R. Wells, who worked for Fletchers during the early part of his career but was working on his own account by 1929. The estimated cost was £4,500.
When the land was acquired by the Fletcher Trust and Investment Company it was subject to the Wellington City Council's plan to widen Taranaki Street. The property was set back from the existing street boundary approximately 15 metres.
The building was originally one open warehouse space, with offices on the first floor of a narrow brick adjunct to the main space. Francis Holmes remained in the building until at least the early 1970s. At some point the building was divided in half, probably about the time they were first recorded as sharing the building with another occupier. The first instance of this was in 1971 when O'Brien and Co., footwear manufacturers, was listed as an occupier. No permit record has been located indicating when this happened and who was responsible. Francis Holmes remained the owner of the building until the property was compulsorily purchased in 1974 under the Public Works Act for the proposed extension of the Ngauranga-Basin Reserve motorway. The land was gazetted by the Government and has remained in the hands of the National Roads Board and its successor Transit New Zealand ever since.
In the meantime, the building was occupied by a range of different businesses. In 1978, C & F Distributors and Safety Tread were the occupiers. By 1983, Odlin Agencies and Electrical Ltd briefly had possession alongside C & F Distributors. The Bike Clinic was an occupant during the 1980s, while Autobodies occupied the building for much of the 1990s, along with Seddon Motors (a sign on the rear of the building for the latter is still in place). It is presently used by Williams and Adams, car dealers, for storage and car maintenance.
Current works (2013) to create Memorial Park along Buckle Street between the Basin Reserve and Taranaki Streets should substantially enhance the setting of the Francis Holmes Building in the near future.
