Point Chevalier Times No.5

cÉ|Çà V{xätÄ|xÜ Newsletter for the Point Chevalier History Group

Times

No. 5 June 2009

The Sutherland Estate (Part 2): “Gone to the Motorway”

1980-1981— State Highway 16, otherwise known as the North-Western Motorway, is a graded swathe through the southern part of Sutherland’s Estate, behind the Pt Chevalier Shopping Centre (the brick building at the left is the rear of the Ambassador Theatre). Gone are houses built on the estate from 1905 through to the 1950s, and in the distance was once where golfers strode out across the greens between the Chamberlain Park holes. Photograph courtesy Jean Jones.

I was asked the other day about old boundaries between Pt Chevalier and Mt Albert. Today, boundaries have been simplified with the coming of the motorway, SH16, through part of Pt Chevalier: north of the motorway is still Pt Chevalier, south is Mt Albert. Before then, though, the boundary ran through the grounds of Pt Chevalier (Gladstone) School, between Monaghan Ave and Seaview Terrace off Carrington Road. The whole of the old Sutherland Estate (see previous issue) was Pt Chevalier. This is about the southern part of that estate; Sutherland and Parr Roads, and the Great North Road properties from Carrington Road to what was once Chamberlain golf course. (continued next page)

Next meeting of the Pt Chevalier History Group This is to be held at the Walsh Memorial Library, MOTAT, 10.30 am, Thursday 25 June 2009 Next issue due out June 2009 Contact Lisa Truttman (editor) : 19 Methuen Road, Avondale, Auckland 0600,phone (09) 828-8494 or email [email protected]

Great North Road In 1925, Hellabys transferred Lots 1-8 and 27 (see plan below), formerly used by their company as grazing land, to Colin Woollam Anderson. Now, Anderson had no direct association with the district, other than he owned the land and sold it off for development and profit. But he was a notorious character in his own right. He arrived in Auckland, via Africa, accompanied by a wealthy Englishwoman bearing a title but to whom he was not married. They set up home in Tamaki House, said to have been one of the largest and most luxurious houses in New Zealand. Anderson became director and manager of the Civic Theatre, where his lover died after a fall down some stairs. After a series of losses in social standing, the manic depressive Anderson committed suicide in the same mansion. His Pt Chevalier property was sold off during the mid to late 1920s. At 1040 Great North Road, a wooden house named “Gonzeaucourt” was built.

DP 2300, copyright Land Information NZ.

At 1048 Great North Road, Anderson sold the property to Harold Frederick Lowndes, a contractor, who built a bungalow in 1929. This was sold to a carpenter named Percy Sawyer. From around 1938, Nurse Annie Sophia Gillender Pohlen set up the St Catherine’s Maternity Home, purchasing the property outright from Sawyer in 1943. From 1944, she was joined by Mary Elizabeth Pohlen, and the maternity home operated until c.1973, according to file references in the Archives NZ database. Annie Pohlen died in 1976, while Mary Pohlen died in 1989. Folks still know the home best as “Nurse Pohlen’s”. (My thanks to L. E. Elliott for sending me two early birth notices showing births at Nurse Pohlen’s, as well as photos.) At around No. 1104, a factory was built c.1953 by McClymont Confectionery Ltd. This was developed in the 1990s into the shopping complex there today (Mad Butcher, etc.) 1136-1138 Great North Road was just an empty section until Henry John Lyon built a workshop

there in 1926. The site was purchased in 1943 by the Pt Chevalier Returned Ex-Serviceman’s Assn., with their own developments between 1944-1972, and further in 1992. Between there and Parr Road, wood houses and sheds predominated. The Church of Church owned the corner at 1170-1172 Great North Road, but never built on it. Instead, it was sold, and the buyer built a wood and brick house there. At 1186 Great North Road, an iron shop and sheds was owned by Mrs. Ada Taylor from c.1935. According to NZ Map 1294 at Special Collections, for the Liverpool Estate, Pt Chevalier’s early post and telegraph office (c.1915) was a building around 1196 Great North Road. At No. 1200, a brick shop and lockup served as Arthur Sydney Watkin’s butcher shop in 1921, purchased by Hellabys in 1924, and then served as a general store owned by Jens Peter Paulson from 1937. At 1208, a wooden house owned by Hallyburton Johnstone in 1920 was shifted once the ASB bought the site, making way for the ASB Bank building in the 1930s. Hallyburton also owned land on which the Ambassador Theatre came to be built c. 1929. Nos. 1224-1234 were empty allotments until c. 1926 when William Paget built a brick grocer’s shop at 1232, then W.H. and Amy De Luen built two wooden shops at 1224-1228 in 1930, and finally a brick shop was built at 1234. Finally, at 1238 Great North, Lawrence Cyril Moore Wilson operated a grocers store on the site as at 1920. This may have been a building used as refreshment rooms back when the Liverpool Estate across the road (see last issue) was being subdivided and sold from 1915 onward. This would make the small corner store one of Pt Chevalier’s early buildings, and a survivor from the first shops here. In 1922, Ernest James Bright bought the business, while Wilson remained as owner of the building, and in 1952 concrete additions were added along the Carrington Road frontage. Carrington Road Heading down from the grocer’s store, at No. 14 there was a villa dating from c.1905. This was demolished when the motorway construction went through from the 1960s. Then came a swathe of land, to the corner with Sutherland Street, and on down towards Parr Road, owned by T. J. McIvor until his death in 1937. His

Nurse A. Pohlen outside her private maternity hospital, Great North Road. B. R. Elliott Photo, courtesy L. E. Elliott.

house, another c.1905 villa, was at 26 Carrington Road. Thomas James McIvor was born in 1857 in Auckland. He learnt the upholstering trade from the firm of T. & H. Cook, and then struck out on his own. In the nineteenth century, upholsterers were among the number of trades which evolved into the business of funeral undertaking — others were carriers (carrying the coffins), furnishers (building the coffins — Battersby’s of Avondale is an example), and florists. McIvor’s funeral parlour was on Karangahape Road. He was a member of the Grey Lynn Bowling Club from 1908, and owned land at Blockhouse Bay possibly for holidays from 1894-1901, but he was a Pt Chevalier resident. Parr and Sutherland Roads were dedicated c.1907 by Alexander Sutherland. Auckland City Library’s website has the suggestion that Parr Road is named for C. J. Parr — but he wasn’t Mayor of Auckland until 1911, and an MP later still. Perhaps Parr simply had some personal meaning for the Sutherland family. The southern corner with Carrington Road was purchased in 1906 by the Colonial Ammunition Company (famous for the shot tower still existing at Mt Eden). In 1907, however, they sold their

The new motorway, c.1981. Carrington Road Bridge, looking east. Photograph courtesy Jean Jones.

site to the Crown for mental hospital purposes, and the Wolfe Bequest Home was built there (and on additional land purchased by the Crown direct from Sutherland in 1907). In 1899, a gentleman of means named Arthur E. Wolfe, living in Whangarei, died and left £2300 to both the Auckland general hospital and the mental hospital. Cabinet accepted a tender of over £6000 in 1909 to build the Wolfe Bequest Reception Hospital. The original building was completed by October 1911. During World War I, the home was used to accommodate returned soldiers, but returned to being part of the mental hospital in the 1920s. From 21 Sutherland through to No. 39, a series of villas were built from c.1905-c.1910. These, along with a sole survivor along Parr Road close to the motorway, are all that remain of the pre1920s development of the southern part of the Sutherland Estate. Most affected by the motorway was Parr Road. Viewing the valuation field sheets at Auckland City Archives was somewhat saddening. No. 7 Parr Road had a wood house built in 1945, and converted to two flats in 1949. It was taken in 1979 by the Public Works Department and demolished. 11 Parr Road, a 1927 wood house. Demolished June 1970. 13 Parr Road, 1923 wood house. Gone to the

motorway. 15 Parr Road, 1909 wood house. Gone to the motorway. 17 Parr Road, a brick house built in 1950. Gone to the motorway. 19 Parr Road, a 1925 wood house. Gone to the motorway. 21 Parr Road, 1925 wood house. Gone to the motorway. 23 Parr Road, 1924 wood house, converted to 2 flats 1963. Gone to the motorway. 30 Parr Road, c.1915 villa. Gone to the motorway, 1980. 20 Parr Road, concrete amd wood house built 1948. Gone to the motorway. 18 Parr Road, c.1910 villa. Gone to the motorway. 16 Parr Road, 1955 wood house. Gone to the motorway. 14 Parr Road, 1925 wood house. Gone to the motorway. Lisa J. Truttman

Sources: Auckland City Archives, valuation field sheets. Land Information New Zealand Archway, Archives NZ database Papers Past, National Library of NZ Auckland City Libraries