UL TURNB
Issue I We Visit Wellington
E L HOUS
Antrim House Fever Hospital Third Government House John Campbell Turnbull House And More
Sketch Heritage New Zealand Wellington
Contents Antrim House II-III
John Campbell VIII-XI
Saint Mary of The Angels XIV-XV
Dominion Museum Wellington National War Memorial IV-V
Third Government House XII-XIII
Turnbull House XVII-XIX
Fever Hospital XIV-XV
Turnbull, Alexander Horsburgh XX-XXIII
The Parliament Building and The Parliament Library VI-VII
Antrim House
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page II
A historic building on Boulcott Street in Wellington, New Zealand.
Sources: Peter Attwell, Antrim House and its occupants, New Zealand Historic Places Trust/Pouhere Taonga, Wellington, 1992. Evening Post,14 June 1990
The house was built for Robert Hannah, an Irish immigrant from County Antrim, in 1905. Constructed mainly of kauri and heart totara on concrete foundations, Antrim House remains as a fine example of an Edwardian Italianate house. The two-storey building with tower, topped with a mansard roof, was an impressive residence situated on a large section with garden and out-buildings. Antrim House (named after the county of Hannah’s birth) was his last home, had all the latest conveniences including gas, electric light and bathrooms. It was designed in Italianate style by the firm of Thomas Turnbull & Son, which designed many other notable Wellington buildings. It has kauri paneling and staircase, stained glass windows (all different) and ornate ceilings by Wunderlich of Sydney. In the grounds are a stable block and conservatory.
Though surrounded by high rise buildings, Antrim House still has its lawns and trees, an oasis of green in the city. The Hannah Room is available for hire for business meetings. Right in the heart of Wellington is Antrim House, a prominent landmark in what was once a predominantly residential central city street. Its historic significance arises from its origins as the home of successful businessman and founder of R Hannah & Co Ltd, Robert Hannah, his wife Hannah and their family. Since Robert’s death in 1930, Antrim House has been home to many people - as private hotel, public service hostel for young men. In 1979 Antrim House was given to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, who use it as their headquarters. The building was designed by Thomas Turnbull and Sons.
Promote the identification, protection, preservation and conservation of the historical and cultural heritage of New Zealand since 1954.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page III
Dominion Museum National War Memorial
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page IV
Located on Buckle Street, in Wellington New Zealand
Sources: History of the Memorial. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 2006-07-21 Heritage Trail- Wellington’s 1930s Buildings” (PDF). Wellington City Council. 2004. Retrieved 2006-2007
The New Zealand Dominion Museum building was completed in 1936, and is located on Buckle Street in Wellington next to the National War Memorial. The building originally housed the National Museum, the National Art Gallery of New Zealand and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. It currently houses part of the Massey University Wellington Campus. Prior to 1913, the Dominion Museum was known as the Colonial Museum. The Colonial Museum was originally housed in a small wooden building behind what is now the New Zealand Parliament Buildings. In 1930, the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum Act 1930 established a board of trustees, leading to the building on Buckle street. The building housed the Dominion Museum, the National Art Gallery of New Zealand and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. In 1972, an act of Parliament updated the Dominion Museum’s name to the National Museum. In 1992 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Act 1992 combined the National Museum and the National Art Gallery to form the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.The Dominion Museum building was featured in Peter Jackson’s 1996 film the Frighteners. The New Zealand National War Memorial is located next to the New Zealand Dominion Museum building on Buckle Street, in Wellington, the nation’s capital. It was dedicated in 1932 on Anzac Day in commemoration of the First World War.
The memorial also officially remembers the New Zealanders who gave their lives in the South African War, World War II and the wars in Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.The National War Memorial Carillon was designed as a sister instrument to the 53-bell carillon at the Peace Tower in Ottawa, Canada. The carillon bells were made in Croydon, England, by Messrs Gillett and Johnston Ltd, and arrived in New Zealand in January 1931. At the time of dedication the 49 bells ranged from one weighing a shade more than 4 kg with a diameter of 170 mm and 140 mm high, up to one weighing 5 tonnes and measuring 2 m by 1.6 m. Their total weight was more than 30 tonnes and they cost £11,000. The complex made considerable use of New Zealand stone. The carillon was clad with pinkish-brown Putaruru stone. Unfortunately the material was variable and weathered badly in places. It was removed from the carillon and replaced by Tākaka marble in 1982. Since 1984 the Carillon has been substantially rebuilt and enlarged. Twenty mid-range bells have been replaced with 21 smaller treble bells and 4 large bass bells, extending the total range to 6 octaves. The Carillon currently has 74 bells, including the “Peace” bell, which, at 12.5 tonnes, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The Carillon ranks as the third largest in the world by total weight.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page V
The Parliament Building
And Library
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page VI
Located on northern end of Lambton Quay, in Wellington New Zealand
Sources: “The halfway house - Parliament buildings”. New Zealand History Online. 12 February 2012. ”New Parliament Buildings”. Thames Star: p. 1. Volume XLVII, Issue 10273, 28 September 1911
The main building of the complex is Parliament House, containing the Debating Chamber, Speaker's Office, Visitors' Centre and committee rooms. An earlier wooden Parliament House was destroyed by fire in 1907 along with all other parliament buildings except the library. A competition to find a replacement design was announced by Prime Minister Joseph Ward in February 1911 and 33 designs were entered. The winning design, by Government Architect John Campbell, was selected by Colonel Vernon, former Government Architect for New South Wales. As another of Campbell's entries won fourth place, the actual design is a combination of both entries. The design was divided into two stages. The first half, a Neoclassical building, contained both chambers and the second half Bellamy's and a new Gothic Revival library to replace the existing one. Despite cost concerns, Prime Minister William Massey let construction of the first stage begin in 1914, but without much of the roof ornamentation or the roof domes. The outbreak of World War I created labour and material shortages that made construction difficult.
Although the building was unfinished, MPs moved into it in 1918 to avoid having to use the old, cramped Government House (which housed the Governor). In 1922, the first stage was completed (the second stage was never built). The building was finally officially opened in 1995 by Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of New Zealand, after its comprehensive strengthening and refurbishment. Completed in 1899, the Parliamentary Library is the oldest of the buildings. It stands to the north of Parliament House (to its right, looking from the front). The library was designed in Gothic revival style and was fire resistant, being constructed of masonry. The third story of the design was not built to save money. It had an iron fire-door separating the library from the main entrance section. This saved the library from the fire of 1907 which destroyed the rest of the (wooden) parliament buildings. Coincidentally, exactly the same thing happened in Ottawa in 1916—with fire doors wsaving the Library when the Centre Block of the Canadian Parliament burned. Like Parliament House the library was strengthened and refurbished in the 1990s. It still houses Parliament’s library.
Had enough of high taxes? We have too!
Vote Labour Sketch Heritage New Zealand page VII
Campbell,John Campbell travelled extensively after his retirement in 1922. He had been a keen yachtsman, and was active in the Presbyterian church. He was also an amateur landscape painter. On 18 April 1889 in Dunedin Campbell had married Mary Jane Marchbanks. It appears that they had no children. He died in Wellington on 4 August 1942, survived by his wife. Sketch Heritage New Zealand page VIII
John Campbell was born on 4 July 1857 in Glasgow, Scotland, to Janet McKechnie and her husband, Donald Campbell, a ship’s chandler. He embarked on a career as an architect, serving his apprenticeship under John Gordon between 1872 and 1876 and working for him as an assistant draughtsman for a further three years. Gordon generally designed in an eclectic Greek Revival style, which was fashionable in Scotland. Campbell received a sound training but the buildings he designed in New Zealand reveal little of Gordon’s influence. Campbell arrived in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1882 where he worked briefly for the firm of Mason and Wales. On 7 February the following year he was appointed to a temporary position in the Public Works Department in Dunedin. On 30 November 1888 Campbell was transferred to Wellington, where on 1 April 1889 he became draughtsman for the Public Buildings Department. That department merged with the Public Works Department in 1890, and Campbell’s title became ‘architect’ in 1899. He remained in charge of the architectural design of government buildings in New Zealand until his retirement in 1922, holding the newly created title of government architect from 1909.
This elevation of the Molesworth Street frontage is John Campbell’s redesign with two storeys. Older wooden three-storey offices (lighter shade) are to the left.
Campbell’s first known work, an unbuilt design from the mid 1880s for the Dunedin railway station, reveals an interest in Baroque architectural elements which was to become his hallmark. However, the earliest buildings constructed to his design, such as the Porirua Lunatic Asylum (1891–94, now demolished) and the Dunedin police station (1895–98, modelled on New Scotland Yard, London), are predominantly Queen Anne in style.
this watercolour of John Campbell’s design for Parliament Buildings is by Harold Matthewman. The cupolas, central dome and the second half (left) were never built.
Despite the completion of the Dunedin Law Courts in a Gothic style with a Scottish baronial inflection in 1902, Campbell successfully established Edwardian Baroque as the official architectural style for government buildings in New Zealand in the early twentieth century. In buildings as diverse in function as the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington (1901–3), the Napier Government Buildings (1902–7, destroyed in the 1931 earthquake) and the Public Trust Office, Wellington (1905–9), Campbell used a limited range of Baroque design elements. His standardisation of the architecture of government buildings is nowhere more evident than in the design of post offices. During a post office building boom between about 1900 and 1914 he was largely responsible for two major post office buildings of similar design (the Auckland and Wellington chief post offices), and many smaller post office buildings.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page IX
Campbell developed two models for smaller post offices which, with some variation, were built throughout New Zealand. One consists of a two-storeyed block, with a hipped roof and a central gable with a porch on the front. The other consists of a block with a clock tower, situated on a corner site. Most of the towers of the extant buildings of this design no longer exist. However, the buildings with their rich Baroque decoration were the focal point of many towns and for many New Zealanders still represent the archetypal New Zealand post office building. The destruction by fire of the timber portions of Parliament Buildings in 1907 provided Campbell with two ofhis largest commissions: the design of a new Government House (following appropriation of the existing Government House by Parliament) and new Parliament Buildings. Government House was built in timber in 1910 on Mt View, Wellington.
This shows Parliament Buildings under construction, about 1920. The old Government House is on the left.
In 1911 a competition was held for the design of the new Parliament Buildings. Believing, perhaps, that the commission should have fallen to him as government architect, Campbell decided to compete, although some architects in private practice submitted that government employees should not be allowed to enter a competition organised by their employer. An attempt by the New Zealand Institute of Architects to boycott the competition in protest at this and other perceived irregularities was of only limited success. Thirty-three entries were received, two of which were prepared by Campbell, each in collaboration with one of his staff. A design by Campbell and Claude Ernest Paton won first prize, and a design by Campbell and Charles Lawrence fourth. A few months after the announcement, six members of the New Zealand Institute of Architects resigned their membership in protest. Campbell, an inaugural member of the Wellington branch of the institute and a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects since 1905, allowed his membership of the New Zealand institute to lapse following the competition.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page X
The first stage of a revised design for Parliament Buildings, in the Edwardian Baroque style, incorporating elements of both the first and fourth prize plans, was under construction between 1912 and 1922. To Campbell’s regret only the first stage of his design was built. The style established for government buildings by Campbell was not adopted by his successors. However, he played an important role in establishing the office of government architect as a respected architectural practice in New Zealand. He was a quiet and unassuming man; his buildings are by contrast so ostentatious that they command attention. Although many have now been demolished, probably more examples of his work are known to New Zealanders, although anonymously, than buildings designed by any other architect.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XI
Located in Newtown, Wellington, New Zealand
Sources: “Conservation Project Rationale”. Governor-General of New Zealand. Retrieved 1 April 2010 “Government House Centenary”. Government House. 2 October 2010.
Third Government House in Wellington is a large, two-storey house, built mostly of wood, with attics, a grand staircase, a ballroom, dozens of other large and small rooms, very long corridors and a flag tower. Designed in the office of the Government Architect, John Campbell, the designer of Parliament Buildings, principally by his assistant, Claude Paton, it was built between 1908 and 1910. The first vice-regal resident was Lord Islington who was Governor from 1910 to 1912. In late 2008, the House closed for a major strengthening and refurbishment project and was officially reopened on 24 March 2011.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XII
The jarrah weatherboards and architraves on the lower half of the House were originally treated with creosote but all the timber was then painted out in the 1920s. As a part of the Conservation Project, the weatherboards were returned to their original dark colour using a timber stain to create similar contrast as is represented in historic photographs. Government House Wellington has eight guest suites, a self-contained apartment for the Governor-General and his/her spouse and family, as well as a ballroom, conservatory, sitting rooms, service rooms and kitchens and a wing of offices. The House has a floor area of about 4,200 square metres.
Third Gover
More than 10,000 people visit the House every year, invited to one or more of the many functions held there. These in-House events ranged from investitures and diplomatic receptions, to conferences, concerts, exhibitions and community morning teas. In addition, members of the Royal Family, Heads of State and other distinguished guests often stayed at the House when visiting New Zealand. As well as the Gatehouse at the main gate, other buildings and facilities include a tennis court and pavilion, a small swimming pool, a World War II-era bomb shelter, a squash court, and garages.
The grounds cover about 12 hectares, some of which is flat lawn or garden, with much of the rest being steep hillside. Exotic species of trees are increasingly being complemented by trees and shrubs native to New Zealand. The grounds, which are maintained by contract gardeners, were extensively redeveloped and re-landscaped in the late 1990s. The grounds have many heritage features and several plaques mark trees planted by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the late Māori Queen, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, and former GovernorsGeneral and their spouses. It has also significance as a named Maori site known as Kaipapa and was the former site of the Mt View Lunatic Asylum, and a remnant from that era, known as “Convict’s Wall” which still exists.
rnment House
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XIII
Fever Hosptial (Chest Hospital)
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XIV
Located on Alexandra Street, Mount Victoria in Wellington New Zealand
Sources: Wellington City Council 2007.
The Fever Hospital, built by the Wellington Hospital Board has historic value for the insight it gives into the treatment of infectious diseases in the 1920s, since its planning, and architectural features such as sun porches and verandahs attached to wards, are indicative of medical requirements that were current at the time but do not apply today. Several other hospital-related uses and, in recent times, its upgrading for use by the School of Music of the Wellington Polytechnic, have added to its historic interest. There is technical value in the original fabric of the building, significant parts of which remain intact. Although originally a building of some aesthetic value, and the work of important Wellington architects Crichton and McKay, today the building has an air of neglect. It has suffered from ill-sited additions and its setting, while pleasant enough with the open space of the Town Belt on one side, is degraded by the ruinous condition of the former Nurses Home on the main entrance side. These aspects will no doubt change in time, while its significant heritage value persists through the historical/medical interest attached to this example of a now redundant building type. This building was built as a fever hospital, by the Wellington Hospital Board, and it was completed in 1920. It replaced the first fever hospital (1911) which had been converted to a diphtheria ward. The treatment of infectious diseases steadily improved during the latter part of the 19th century. The concept of isolation was well understood by this time and the building of fever hospitals was evidence of a gathering understanding of the need to fight disease. Crichton and McKay, who had gained many commissions from the Hospital Board, were asked to prepare designs for the new hospital in 1917. It was to be built on land appropriated from the Town Belt in 1872, on the flanks of Mt Victoria. It was sited above the hospital near the top of the hill, a relatively remote site that would have aided the isolation of fever victims. Access was difficult, with no formed road to the hospital until the 1930s.
The tender of E.S. Knight, for £25,500, was accepted and the permit issued in February 1918.1 Construction seems to have taken a very long time, as did the fitting out: the foundation stone was laid on 1 August 1918 and the building was occupied on 17 January 1920, although it appears not to have had a formal opening. The building was closed for repairs in 1934 or 1935 when the leaking asbestos roof was replaced with corrugated iron. In the 1940s tuberculosis replaced infectious diseases as the principal threat to community health. Large numbers of cases absorbed much of the hospital’s capacity. Sonja Davies, who later contracted TB herself, worked there during World War II. After the War, consideration was given to upgrading the hospital but, by 1949, it was thought unnecessary to have the fever hospital so far from the main hospital. By 1953 just four patients were accommodated there. The hospital briefly reopened in 1957 for patients from Ewart, the chest (former infectious diseases) hospital After an inspection in 1969 it was decided to repair the building and reopen it as a “Temporary Chest Hospital”. A new ward was added in 1973, with the hospital finally closing in 1981. In 1987, after considerable refurbishment, the building was reopened as the School of Music for the overcrowded Wellington Polytechnic. Today the building is empty. This is being prepared for the Wellington SPCA to take over in 2013 or 2014 when the building is fully up to strach.
He needs your help adopt him today! Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XV
Saint Mary of The Angels
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XVI
Located on Boulcott Street, in Wellington New Zealand
Sources: NZHPT Board 1980
This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1980. The present church and the third on the site, opened 1922, is the parish church of Wellington Central. The history of the long association of the Catholic Church with this site began when Fr O’Reily, a Capuchin, arrived in Wellington on the Thomas Sparks in January 1843. The first small church was erected on this site, then called Hinau Hill, and blessed by Bishop Pompallier in 1844. In 1873 a larger timber church was built. The name St Mary of the Angels is a reference to the mother church at Assisi, Santa Maria degli Angeli. In 1883 Bishop Redwood granted in perpetuity the parish of Te Aro to the Society of Mary (Marist Fathers). In 1918 the second church was so badly damaged by fire that rebuilding was necessary. In 1919 architect F. de J. Clere prepared plans. The church is of particular interest architecturally. Its design appears traditional Gothic of French influence but it is in reality highly innovative; contemporary opinion states ‘the first occasion ferroconcrete was used for a church of Gothic design’.
It is built of reinforced concrete and brick with a timber roof supported by concrete arches with steel tie rods. The concrete internal framing is of great slenderness. Running round the nave is a splendid clerestory of stained glass. The west end is characterised by twin towers. Its unique character comes from the elevated entrance and the novel fenestration. A large rose window within a semicircular arch dominates the clerestory. The screen above the portal repeats the verticality of the towers. F. de J. Clere, son of a clergyman and trained under two ecclesiastical architects, was one of the most prominent architects of his day and his contribution to New Zealand architecture is significant and extensive. This building enlarges our understanding of the diversity of Clere’s work. It maintains its integrity and is in itself a history of the development of the Catholic Church in the area and a lasting monument to the skill and originality of the architect. The church is a prominent landmark and its townscape value is unique as it stands almost on the intersection of major streets of the city. It must rank as one of the finest churches in New Zealand.
Fine ale? Some good healthy socialising? Come see us today!
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XVII
LL HO TURNBU
USE
Turnbull House
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XVIII
Is located on Bowen Street, in Wellington New Zealand
Sources: Barrowman, R. (1995) Turnbull, a library and its world. Department of Conservation. (1991) Turnbull House, Wellington – Conservation Plan (Unpublished). McCormick, E. H. (1974) Alexander Turnbull: his life, his circle, his collections (Alexander Turnbull Library).
Built in 1918 for the private residence of Alexander Turnbull and to house his extensive collection of maps, pictures, documents and over 55,000 volumes. Described as a mixed Scottish baronial style the building was completed at a cost of £6000. Unfortunately Alexander Turnbull died later that year and bequeathed his entire collection to the Crown. The history of Alexander Turnbull and Turnbull House and has been well documented.
The library inevitably outgrew its home in Turnbull House as bequests, donations and purchases continued to expand Turnbull’s collection beyond his death. In 1973 the library was moved temporarily to a site on the Terrace while awaiting the establishment of its new home in the National Library of New Zealand in 1987. The library remains intact today and is regarded as the most important collection of material relating to New Zealand culture and history.
The Alexander Turnbull Library was officially opened in 1920 and remained there until 1973 when it was moved to its current location in the National Library of New Zealand building located on Molesworth Street. Today the Alexander Turnbull Library collection is regarded as New Zealand’s largest collection of early printed books and fine printing with a collection policy to cover every period and aspect of our history.
Turnbull House was built in 1916, not just as a residence but also specifically to house Turnbull’s extensive library. Three large rooms were designed for this purpose. In 1920 these rooms were opened to the public to display Turnbull’s library and remained so until 1973 when the library was moved. The rooms have been accessible to the public since Turnbull’s death in 1918 with only a period of closure in 1955-57 for the strengthening and refurbishment of the building.
Turnbull House now has a number of roles. It is used extensively by community groups as a popular place to meet within the Wellington CBD and is also a popular location for wedding receptions. It can also cater for corporate groups by providing rooms for training, conferences and seminars. Business man Alexander Turnbull became well known as an avid collector of books, paintings, historical letters, maps and artefacts. He began his collection at the age of 17. During his 30s a family inheritance enabled him to expand his collection, which grew to become New Zealand’s largest private library with over 55,000 items. His Milton, New Zealand and Pacific collections in particular were considered to be of international standing. Turnbull died in 1918 and bequeathed his library to the nation in the hope that it would become the ‘nucleus of a New Zealand National Collection’. Turnbull House Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XIX
Turnbull, Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull was a typical member of his generation, a pragmatist not greatly given to theorising, with a tireless persistence in pursuing his aims. His one direct statement of his aspirations, made in 1912, was that ‘My books & MSS. I hope will assist future Searchers after the truth.’ His memorial is the great library he bequeathed to the people of New Zealand. Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XX
Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull, F.L.S., F.R.G.S. (1868-1918) might be considered the perfect exemplar of an atypical New Zealander. Born in Wellington of Scottish parents, at six this younger son was taken to England and there educated at a public school. In London he was a carefree young man-about-town, indulged by wealthy parents; on the fringe of the literary and artistic world, frequenting the Cafe Royal with his brother; fishing for salmon in Scotland, shooting game-birds on the moors; cruising the Mediterranean, where he ventured as far as Turkey one year, Algeria another. Returning to New Zealand, he might have passed as an authentic Englishman-exile, with his cigarettes suits and shirts hand-made in London. Yet how fortunate we are that young Mr Turnbull did not remain a New Zealand expatriate, joining the stillgrowing stream of individualists who seek to escape our insular parochialism. For Alexander Turnbull, even in his twenties, was blessed with a fortunate vision beyond his years; and beyond his time. Despite his English foibles he was truly concerned with this place. At a time when ‘King Dick’ Seddon dreamed of the Pacific as being a New Zealand sea, Turnbull, perhaps alone, foresaw the day still distant even now - when New Zealand could attain true nationhood: a South Pacific nation, yet deriving its heritage in large part from Western European culture.
Alexander’s parents, Walter and Alexandrina, came to New Zealand in 1857. Walter was soon established as one of the merchant princes of Wellington. At the peak of its prosperity the family possessed a small shipping line of their own, tea plantations in Fiji (marketing their own ‘Empire’ brand here), a sheep station and a couple of farms. They scarcely needed a bequest from an uncle in 1886, when Walter shared a quarter of a million pounds with his two brothers. As a small boy Alexander lived at Elibank, reputedly ‘the finest house in Wellington’ when purchased in .’1869 for £1 ,500. Of two storeys and ten rooms with rather more than ‘the usual offices’ it stood on an historic three-quarters of an acre, to be enlarged by further purchases, on the corner of Wellington Terrace and Bowen Street. While the Turnbulls lived in London, from 1875 to 1892, Elibank was leased to the Government and for some years was the Premier’s residence.
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XXI
Alexander achieved no academic distinction in his four years at Dulwich College: but like a good New Zealander he attained the First Fifteen. Leaving school he made lengthy visits here in both 1885 and 1886. For a boy of seventeen it would have been a heady welcome to find his father’s return greeted by ships in the harbour ‘profusely decorated with flags in compliment to the return of a good citizen and a leading merchant.’ Back in London Alexander began work in the business: but this in no way curtailed his very active life in Society. And already, in 1887, aged nineteen he was setting the pattern for the development of a great library. When his parents left their two houses in London in 1892, coming home to Elibank with their furniture and their servants, among his concerns was the dispatch of his books by Bernard Quaritch, the great bookseller with whom he was already closely associated.
Early Turnbill house
Alexander’s mother died in 1896, Walter the following year. For various reasons his empire was to crumble slowly but inevitably about his son. It wasn’t, however, that Alexander dissipated his fortune in collecting (although he spent freely building up what would have proved an extremely sound investment, the library today being worth a hundred times the firm’s value at its height): his only personal extravagance was his favorite recreation, yachting. But when the young partner entered the business he had no forebodings. In 1891 he was photographed in London and Eric McCormick aptly describes his appearance: ‘sunny self-assurance combined with opulent good taste’. Bowen Street was a far cry from Regent Street. Unlike Robert, Alexander shrank from accompanying his parents to vice-regal receptions and social occasions of like nature. As he sensibly wrote to his uncle in London, the locals ‘give themselves such airs and they expect us to do the same, but forget that we have lived in London for long years where we were “nobodies” so they cannot expect us to don that aristocratic mien that betoken “somebodies”.’ He was by no means a recluse. Over the years, along with personal friends like Percy Turnbull, Alexander Horsburgh
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XXII
Buller and Grafton Bothamley, he was intimate with some of New Zealand’s finest minds, such as Dr Hocken, Stephenson Percy Smith, Hon. William Downie Stewart, Professor Macmillan Brown, Hon. Robert McNab, Sir John Logan Campbell, Elsdon Best, Augustus Hamilton and Archdeacon Herbert Williams. These and others were made free of his growing collections, which also attracted a stream of overseas scholars of note. His housekeeper recollected that at small dinner parties of close friends he entertained frequently and lavishly until ill health curtailed such hospitality in the last few months of his life.
CHARLES HEAPHY, (1820-1881), Kauri Forest, Wairoa River, Kaipara (Northland) 1839, watercolour, 470 x 375 mm. Heaphy arrived in New Zealand in August 1839 with Colonel William Wakefield in the Tory, as artist and draughtsman to the New Zealand Company. At the end of that year they visited Hokianga and Kaipara. In the last sixty years the library has added seventeen more Heaphy watercolours, by gift and purchase, to the fifty works that Mr Turnbull bought in 1916. The first paintings bought by the library were three Heaphy watercolours of’Rangitoto Island, which cost £50 in 1922.
It was as early as 1893 that Turnbull began his comprehensive Milton collection. All the other elements of his collecting were already established to create a library of a dual nature. He has been criticized for too diverse a spread of interests: but a knowledge of the collections reveals how all aspects neatly dovetail into a logical development. The heart of the collections resides in the original bequest. Although one of the smallest, the Turnbull is ranked among the great research libraries of the world. In 1913 Turnbull presented to the Dominion (now the National) Museum his fine collection of over 500 Maori and Pacific artefacts. In 1916 he built his new brick house, half residence, half library, on the last remnant of the Elibank gardens: but he had little time to enjoy his new home. On June 28, 1918, after a long and painful illness, Alexander Turnbull died in the newly-opened hospital next door.
Alexander Turnbull had set out to collect everything he could that related to New Zealand in printed, manuscript or pictorial form. Dr McCormick notes: ‘A student by temperament if not by profession, Turnbull was disinterestedly serving the needs of New Zealand scholarship. And at the age of twenty-five, whether consciously or not, he had committed energies and resources to establishing a national collection.’ Already in 1893 Turnbull must have been experiencing the disquiet he later expressed in 1910 in a letter to S. Percy Smith, where, McCormick comments, ‘Without hope or wish for reward, he asserted, such private collectors as Dr Hocken of New Zealand and Mr Mitchell of New South Wales had made considerable personal sacrifices to do the work that should have been done by their respective governments; only those who came after them would know and acknowledge the extent of the services rendered by these two gentlemen. . . .In New Zealand, he complained, there was no National library, no National Museum, and no National Art Gallery. . .’ Today we must add the name of Turnbull to those of Hocken and Mitchell.
Bowen Hospital which no longer exists
Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XXIII
Next Issue
We Visit New Plymouth Sketch Heritage New Zealand page XXIV
The National Library of New Zealand is here to help you access and use the collective knowledge of the nation. We develop and maintain extensive collections relating to New Zealand and the Pacific, and New Zealanders overseas. We treat this material as the documentary heritage and taonga it is, while making sure it can continue to be used in the cultural, educational, and economic life of us all. It’s our job to collect, connect, and co-create knowledge to power New Zealand. Te Ahumairangi: 8.30am – 5pm Reading Rooms: 10am – 5pm Monday to Saturday Corner Molesworth & Aitken St 0800 474 300