Building Name

Date: May 2013

Disabled Servicemen's Training Centre (former) 21 Hania Street

Image: Charles Collins, 2015

Summary of heritage significance • The building is a good example of the work of the architect Edmund Anscombe, and was designed two years after his major buildings for the Centennial Exhibition of 1940. Despite its stark and unadorned appearance it is an interesting and important early example of the Modernist style of architecture in New Zealand and has high architectural value. • The former Disabled Servicemen's Training Centre is historically and socially significant for a number of reasons. It provided essential care and help for injured servicemen and women following World War II and subsequent wars. It shows how the government was required to construct not only defence buildings but a range of other buildings and facilities to provide for the full effects of war on its fighting force. • The building is an example of the social-programme that was an important component in early Modernist architecture. The austere exterior reflects both a Modernist obsession with unadorned form and an austere wartime economy where materials, labour and money were in short supply.

1 Date: May 2013

District Plan: Map 16, reference 141 Legal Description: Lot 1 DP 77128 Heritage Area: No HPT Listed: No Archaeological Site: Central City NZAA R27/270 Vocational Centre for Disabled Servicemen Other Names: Disabled Servicemen's Training Centre Key physical dates: 1942/3 Architect / Builder: Edmund Anscombe / Arthur Lemmon Former uses: Rehabilitation Centre Current uses: Residential / Commercial Earthquake Prone Status: Not EQP (SR 189392)

Extent: Cityview GIS 2013

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1.0 Outline History

1.1 History 1

The Disabled Servicemen's Training Centre was set up by the government under the Rehabilitation Act 1941. It was designed to aid returned servicemen and women in their reintroduction to civilian life and to reconstruct “war-time industries on a peace-time basis”.2 The first Minister of Rehabilitation was Bob Semple and a bureaucracy was established to administer matters. The Rehabilitation Board was established in February 19423 and a National Rehabilitation Council, an advisory body, was also formed. The Board bought property for disposal to servicemen, gave them financial assistance, vocational training or arranged employment. As part of this work the Board built a vocational centre for disabled servicemen, including a limb factory in Mt Victoria, in what was formerly Lloyd St. The building was placed under the control of the Board’s “agent”4, the Disabled Servicemen’s Re- establishment League, a private, part Government-funded organisation that had been established to help servicemen in previous wars. The centre had room for 150 people, and included an orthopaedic and limb fitting section, vocational re-education section and recreational facilities. Similar buildings were planned in the three other main centres.

Designed by Edmund Anscombe and built by Arthur Lemmon, the foundation stone was laid by the Governor-General, Sir Cyril Newall, on 16 November 1942.5 The building was officially opened by the Prime Minister Peter Fraser on 18 September 1943. At the opening it was noted by Mr M Moohan, chairman of the Rehabilitation Board, “that the building cost about £50,000, about £10,000 less than a good bombing plane.”6

The building was designed in a Modernist style that is quite suitable for its social/welfare role. Julia Gatley writes that early texts on the architectural style “emphasised the relationship between modern architecture and progressive political and social ideals. Many modern architects believed that architecture could, and should, be used to help make the world a better place.”7 The Government Architect was an early proponent of the style and Wellington’s first true Modernist building designed in the ‘International Style’ was the 50-unit Centennial Flats social housing development at Berhampore (otherwise known as the Berhampore Flats- WCC ref 6/398). This was followed in 1942-47 by the similarly superb Dixon Street Flats (WCC ref 17/101). The Rehabilitation Centre at Hania Street has some stylistic similarities to these two buildings as well as Anscombe’s other famous work – the 1939 Centennial Exhibition (see WCC ref 7/446). As such it is a relatively early example of the ‘International Style’ of Modernist architecture in New Zealand.

1 Wellington City Council, “21 Hania Street,” Wellington Heritage Building Inventory 2001: Non- Residential Buildings. (Wellington City Council, 2001), HANI 1. 2 Rehabilitation Board Annual Report 1943 (up to March 1943) p.2. 3 Ibid 4 Ibid. pp10-11 5 “Disabled Men,” Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 120, 17 November 1942, Page 4 6 “New Building,” Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 70, 20 September 1943, Page 7 7 Julia Gatley (ed), Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture 1904 – 1984, (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008) 2

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The Hania Street building kept its specific use as rehabilitation centre long after the war ended. A description of the building in 1964 revealed that it included a ladies and men’s walking ‘race’, fitting room, plaster room, limb fitters workshop, leather shop and main workshop.8 By then some of the goods described as being produced there were paua jewellery, printing and book binding, and school materials.

The rehabilitation centre remained in use until the mid-1980s. Capital & Coast District Health Board presently occupy the ground floor, with apartments on the first floor. The Rehabilitation League itself, and its functions, were eventually absorbed into the Social Welfare Department (now Ministry of Social Development).

The Disabled Servicemen’s Training Centre in 1944, with the newly laid bowling green (Evening Post, 23 November 1944, Alexander Turnbull Library)9

1.2 Timeline of modifications

1942-3 Building constructed (Original plans not found at WCC Archives – Requires Archives NZ search.) 1996 Office fit-out (for child adolescent and family service, Capital Coast Health) (00061:284:16216) 2008 Remove a 5 unit block building and seal off services (00078:2944:185048) 2009 Alterations to ground floor for fire safety improvements (00078:2992:195978) 2009 Landscaped car park constructed at front of property (00078:3305:197194) 2011 New membrane roof over existing roof cladding and new skylights (00078:3873:222671)

Date unknown: - ground floor entrance has been closed in with windows

8 AATE W3405 Box 22, Vol. 1 Govt. Bldg. Disabled Servicemen’s Building, Lloyd St, 1962-79, National Archives. 9 Good progress is being made with the laying down of a new bowling green at the Disabled Servicemen's... [truncated] Evening Post, 23 November 1944, Page 5

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1.3 Architect

Edmund Anscombe

Edmund Anscombe (1874-1948) was a prominent architect in inter-war New Zealand. His embrace of new styles was remarkable in a man approaching retirement and his greatest work, of which his own apartment building is an example, took place later in his life. Anscombe was born in Sussex and came to New Zealand as a child. He began work as a builder's apprentice in Dunedin and in 1901 went to America to study architecture. He returned to Dunedin in 1907 and designed the School of Mines building for the University of Otago. The success of this design gained him the position of architect to the University. Five of the main University buildings were designed by Anscombe, as well as Otago Girls' High School and several of Dunedin's finest commercial buildings including the Lindo Ferguson Building (1927) and the Haynes building.

Anscombe moved to Wellington about 1928 and was known for his work as the designer of the Centennial Exhibition (1939-1940). Anscombe had travelled extensively and had visited major exhibitions in Australia, Germany and America. The practice of Edmund Anscombe and Associates, Architects, had offices in the Dunedin, Wellington and Hawkes Bay districts, and Anscombe's buildings include the Vocational Centre for Disabled Servicemen, Wellington (1943), Sargent Art Gallery, Wanganui, and several blocks of flats including Anscombe Flats, 212 Oriental Parade (1937) and Franconia, 136 The Terrace (1938), both in Wellington. As well as being interested in the housing problem, Anscombe held strong views concerning the industrial advancement of New Zealand. 10

2.0 Physical description

2.1 Architecture

The former Disabled Servicemen's Training Centre is a stark, cubic building, devoid of all decoration but for a band of incised plaster trim near the top of the parapet. The austerity of the design is perhaps due to its function and time of construction during the Second World War. In any event, it marks the building as belonging to the early period of Modernism in New Zealand. It is two storied and symmetrically planned, with the entrance in the centre, marked by two flag poles above, and a wing on either side with the first floor set back. A modern broad portico over the entrance obscures the architectural form, but otherwise the exterior has a high level of authenticity.11

The building’s aesthetic value and setting has been somewhat diminished by the conversion of its original bowling green into a car-park.

10 New Zealand Historic Places Trust Professional Biographies, ‘Edmund Anscombe,’ accessed 4 September 2012 http://www.historic.org.nz/corporate/registersearch/ProfessionalBio/Professional.aspx?CPName=Ansc ombe,+Edmund. 11 Wellington City Council, “21 Hania Street,” Wellington Heritage Building Inventory 2001: Non- Residential Buildings. (Wellington City Council, 2001), HANI 1.

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2.2 Materials

Construction is in-situ reinforced concrete throughout, while the windows are steel framed. 12

2.3 Setting

The building is set well back from Hania Street, with car parking, trees and new buildings in front, on land which was originally set aside as a bowling green for the recreational use of the servicemen and women. 13 This setting gives the building no chance of making a contribution to the street which, in any event, is an undistinguished area of workshops.

3.0 Sources

Wellington City Council, “21 Hania Street,” Wellington Heritage Building Inventory 2001: Non-Residential Buildings. (Wellington City Council, 2001), HANI 1.

New Zealand Historic Places Trust Professional Biographies, ‘Edmund Anscombe,’ accessed 4 September 2012 http://www.historic.org.nz/corporate/registersearch/ProfessionalBio/Professional.a spx?CPName=Anscombe,+Edmund.

Newspapers

“Disabled Men,” Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 120, 17 November 1942, p4

“New Building,” Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 70, 20 September 1943, p7