Q1: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and now Dunedin. This series of architecture walking guides has built up a real head of steam and is working hard to acquaint us with the buildings we walk by every day as we go about our lives. Dunedin is the biggest yet. How so?
Perhaps I’ve become better at writing these guides? It helps that the publisher is willing to allow them more pages. The real reason is that Dunedin’s particular history has bequeathed the city an extraordinary collection of Victorian, Edwardian and Modern-era buildings. For a small city, Dunedin has an impressive trove of architectural stories.
Q2: You were living in Dunedin when this project began. That must have been a big help.
The books are designed as walking guides, so it was enormously helpful to be living in Dunedin and walking its streets every day. You can only really make sense of a city by walking around it, noting the details of buildings, and seeing how they fit in to their streetscapes.
Q3: You were still writing and researching after you moved back to Auckland. Did you rather feel that your life was still in the south?
A little bit, and not just in the south, but in Dunedin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – the decades of the city’s Golden Age, when many of its most significant buildings were constructed. It’s easy to fall down the historical rabbit holes of that proud and purposeful little colonial city.
Q4: The city’s rich resource of architecture is the work of relatively small group of architects. Can you tell us about some of them, and their standout buildings?
There’s that eminent Victorian, Robert Lawson, who designed the Gothic Revival First Church, Knox Church, Otago Boys High School and, probably, Larnach’s Castle. Francis Petre designed St Joseph’s Cathedral and other churches, also in the Gothic style, and Classical commercial buildings. On either side of the First World War, Edmund Anscombe designed many of the buildings that make the University of Otago campus such a coherent architectural site. Ted McCoy was the outstanding architect of the second half of the twentieth century, when he designed concrete Modernist buildings such as the graceful Hocken (Richarson) Building at the university.
Then there are the architects who were one-hit wonders, in Dunedin, at least – Maxwell Bury, who designed the university Clock Tower building; George Troup, architect of the ornate Railway Station; and Sir Ernest George, an eminent English architect who designed Olveston, the grand Edwardian family home that’s now a house museum.
Q5: You’ve included quite number of churches. Favourites?
First Church and the cathedrals are, intentionally, impressive, but at a homelier level I like All Saints, with its warm, weathered-brick face, and St Mary Star of the Sea, Francis Petre’s small Gothic church in Port Chalmers. It has wonderful stations of the cross painted by Joanna Margaret Paul.
Q6: The old warehouse district has been revitalised. What are the key buildings in that precinct?
The warehouse district is a clear case of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The buildings all have their own stories, but it’s taken together that they make an impact. That said, two warehouse buildings that stand out are the Stavely Building (1879) with its giant clamshell roof ornament, on Jetty Street, and, further down the same street, the Donald Reid Building (1885), which has been excellently restored.
Q6: And it’s not all Victorian and Edwardian piles. There’s some great work from the mid-twentieth century. What are stand outs for you?
Two buildings by Mandeno & Fraser – the Dunedin Fire Station (1931) and Speight’s Brewery (1939), both workaday buildings, but very considered. Ted McCoy’s Hocken (later Richardson) Building (1979) on the University of Otago campus is one of the great works of New Zealand Brutalism. Holy Name Church (1974) on Great King Street has a surprisingly graceful interior.
Q7: Although there’s perhaps less new building activity than in the other main centres, there have been new buildings. What’s one of the most interesting?
The University of Otago’s Te Rangihīroa (2024), which is named for distinguished alumnus Sir Peter Buck, is the university’s first purpose-built residential college in 50 years. The Jasmax building’s design, most obviously the tukutuku façade panels, testifies to the involvement of Sir Peter Buck’s iwi, Ngāti Mutunga, and Kāi Tahu.
Q8: Dunedin does a streetscape so well, doesn’t it. Where’s a place to stand and look that delivers a lot to an admirer of its buildings?
Facing the green at Queens Garden there’s a strong group of ornate 1880s commercial buildings – The Terminus Hotel, and the former Equitable Insurance Association Building and New Zealand Insurance Company. Now that George Street has received a makeover the architecture of the Victorian and Edwardian shops on the block between Hanover and Frederick Streets can be better appreciated. The quad at the rear of the University Clock Tower Building is a great space. And George Street in Port Chalmers is one long, diverting streetscape.
Q9: Favourite building overall?
The South City Substation (1972), designed by Allingham, Harrison & Partners. It’s such a gem – an elegant little Modernist insertion in a block of heritage buildings. It’s so much better than it might have been and shows what’s possible if good architecture is not just dismissed as a ‘nice to have’.
Q10: ‘Readers: Get thee to Dunedin, with this book in your back pocket’?
Dunedin is a wonderful city with a strong built character. It’s fortunate that so many buildings were made of local stone and, from an architectural point of view, that there haven’t been compelling reasons to pull them down.
