Art Deco on Edgecumbe Road: Dorothy Willis, an Enterprising Woman

George H.A. Wills
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Library, Pae Korokī Ref. 04-563

While Mr George Wills and his wife Mary were living in Pendarves Street, New Plymouth they had their only child Dorothy Mary on 27 February 1911. George taught at the New Plymouth Boys’ High School at the time. The family moved to Tauranga and he taught at the District High School, then at Greerton Primary School.  George Wills became Head Teacher there from 1921 to 1944. [i]

The first show of enterprise by the seven-year-old Dorothy Wills, later to become a successful architect, was a fundraising effort with her friend Barbara Griffiths in aid of the Patriotic Fund in 1918. The two little girls put on a concert for their mother’s Bridge Club. [ii] During her school days she performed in plays and concerts, encouraged by her father who was himself active in amateur theatre in Tauranga.

Dorothy Willis, from The Free Lance, 30 Mar 1949

Dorothy was educated locally at Tauranga District High School where she successfully obtained the Junior and Senior National Scholarships. After two years at Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland she received a bursary, yet was still too young to enrol as a university student.

House at Edgecumbe Road, Tauranga designed by Dorothy for her father George Wills, c. 1936
Photograph by Shirley Arabin, 2023

After a year at home in Tauranga, Dorothy Wills was at last permitted to enrol in the degree of Bachelor of Architecture in 1929, and by 1933 had graduated and taken a position with Mr H L D West, a Tauranga architect. [iii] She was the second woman to graduate with this degree in New Zealand. Her thesis dealt with a modern private hospital of 120 beds. The degree also carried with it the Associate Membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects, [iv] and she became the second woman to register with that professional body.

It was during this period she designed an Art Deco-style house in Edgecumbe Road for her father. It is believed that the house has to date only had three owners, the second being the Mountfort family. Dorothy later worked for the Health Department on hospital projects. [v] In 1936 she left New Zealand to work in Britain, remaining there until 1949. [vi]

Dorothy Wills presented at court
Image from DigitalNZ

Dorothy led a busy social life in London, including being presented at Court in 1937. During the Second World War she worked for the War Office. She evaluated stately homes to assess their suitability to house scientists and other government employees, as they were generally stationed in the country, away from the dangers of the blitz. She also assessed bomb-damaged buildings for the Ministry of Works. She returned to New Zealand in 1949 to care for her aging father. [vii]
 
She moved to the Head Office of the Public Works Department in Wellington. While seconded to the Health Department, she helped Lady Freyberg, wife of the Governor General, to prepare Government House for the proposed visit of King George VI. They started a countrywide project to embroider thirty-eight tapestries of coats of arms of towns for the dining chairs to be used during the event at Government House.

Dorothy Wills married James (Jerry) Coulthard in 1957 and, promoted to Senior Architect, continued to work for the Public Works Department until 1969, after which she moved with her husband to Marlborough. In 1990 she was invited with the architect Michael Fowler to work on the restoration of Saint Mary’s Church, Blenheim. She died in 2007 and bequeathed a large sum to purchase public works of art for Marlborough. [viii]

References

[i] Kennedy, W J. (compiler) Greerton School Centennial Jubilee; souvenir history 1876 -1976.
[ii] Bay of Plenty Times, 23 Apr 1918
[iii] BOPT, 22 Oct 1933
[iv] BOPT, 13 Oct 1934
[v] Cox, Elizabeth (editor) Making Space; a history of New Zealand women in Architecture, 2022, p.50
[vi] Cox, p.60
[vii] Cox, p.103
[viii] Cox, p.104

Life at the East End of Elizabeth Street

Aerial view of downtown Tauranga, date unknown
Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. 03-225

When this photo[1] was taken, possibly from one of the aeroplanes that sheltered in the large hangar built on the edge of the Tauranga Moana foreshore[2], and certainly earlier than the date suggested by Pae Koroki, Elizabeth Street had been “bitumenised” and – judging by the large structures to the south – thoroughly integrated into the urban life of Tauranga.

But Elizabeth Street[3] was once one of the fringier parts of town. In 1921 it was a useful boundary marker for rating purposes[4], bisected, as today, only by Devonport and Cameron Roads.  Elizabeth still terminates the ambitions of Grey, Durham and Selwyn Streets in “T” intersections.  (Elizabeth Street itself ran from harbourside cliffs at the eastern end to the town dump near the Waikaraeo estuary.  The dump has now gone and the street connects with Takitimu Drive.)  

Occasional small businesses would be located there – dressmakers (Miss Jessie Smith, Miss Munro), a builder, a fibrous plaster works (H S Riggir), even some music teachers (E. Florence Whitlock, Miss Pearl Moffat).  By 1936 it was included in the Borough’s “Business Area” for rubbish collection[5] - just as well, since the “Mt Pleasant Hospital” had been established at 4 Elizabeth St in 1933.  This did not garner much attention as a clinical facility[6] but it certainly served as a maternity home until mid-way through World War Two[7].  After that, the Mount Pleasant boarding house did duty for the passers-through and respectably low-waged until it vanishes from the records, although not living memory[8].

“Dilston”, the substantial house on the left of the zig-zag path to the beach, was under construction in 1882[9].  This was to be the long-term residence of some notable Tauranga families:  William McKenzie Commons, who served for a single one-year term as Mayor of Tauranga, and the Norrises, whose story is told elsewhere[10].  In due course it became “Mount Pleasant”.  Before that happened, a (nearly) anonymous 1925 advertisement of accommodation available on Elizabeth Street offers “five bedrooms, two sleeping porches, every possible modern convenience, suit two or more small families, adults preferred. £2 per week - Colinoris”[11].

Properties were substantial in those days.  In the oral history recorded by Jinty Rorke for Pae Korokī, Nan Garrity (née Norris) recalls that the house was “Right on the waterfront where the big flats are now… [it] went right down to the high tide mark.”  When Commons offered the place to let in 1907, it was described as consisting of “house, gardens, orchard and paddock”[12].

And it took a lot of upkeep.  By 1909[13], a “certificated cookery teacher” was offering, at Dilston, a “high and healthy situation” under new management  - a “Comfortable home for Permanent Boarders or Visitors” with a good table, bath and piano, all at “moderate” terms.  Mrs Commons, in February 1907[14], had already had a clearance sale[15].  Presumably the table, bath and piano were passed in at auction.

Clearance Sale [Advertisement], Bay of Plenty Times, 15 February 1907
Courtesy of Papers Past

It is a large thing to reflect, as a recent arrival[16] at the site now known as Elizabeth Heights - 8 (originally, number 4) Elizabeth Street - on the vast quantities of furniture that must have come and gone from this small part of town over the 140 years of its pākeha occupation.  The area itself, once so high, wide and expansive, has become more and more urbanized, concentrated and, well, lived in.

View from Elizabeth Street, 7 March 2023
Photograph by Beth Bowden

This March 2023 snapshot offers a tiny viewshaft through to the railway bridge, a glimpse on the extreme right of the 1960’s structure known as Elizabeth Heights, and a view over the more recent infill housing built along the Dilston cliff and down to where the aero club’s hangar used to be.  The Tauranga Yacht Club, visible at foreground right in the first image, remains in place, repurposed as the Harbourside Restaurant; everything else, except the streets themselves, perhaps the concrete boat ramps and of course the bridge, has been replaced.  Your writer is now dedicated to closer examination of, and research into, surviving elements of Elizabeth Street life in the Tauranga of the twenty-first century.

A note of correction (posted 20 Jun 2023)

The last paragraph of this blog makes an erroneous reference to the “infill housing built ... down to where the aero club’s hangar used to be.”  I misinterpreted the 1932 Bay of Plenty Times article’s reference to the “[aero] club section at the foot of Elizabeth Street” as meaning the foot of the eastern cliff.  As is reasonably well-known, the aero club’s headquarters was at the western end of the street, conveniently adjacent to the low-tide sandflats of the Waikareao estuary.

So a little more thought, and a consultation with fellow THS member John Green, would have told me that the large building on the eastern foreshore was not a hangar at all. In fact it was Alf Wallings’ workshop.  Alf initially used it as a depot for his business as a roading and logging contractor. At the time this photo was taken – John Green suggests, the very early 1960s – its lower level was a garage for Alf’s truck and cars. The Walling house can be seen directly above the workshop, on the site now occupied by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council building. The top floor of Alf’s commodious structure was being used by Moller Industries Ltd to manufacture their still-famous Power Pony garden tractors. The outside ramp between the street and Moller’s factory is visible in the photograph.

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[1] https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/14113

[2] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19321115.2.28

[3] This arterial crossway was formed in 1883 by Mr Hamilton and his plough https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18830222.2.6.1 , and named after the wife of the first native-born Taurangian to be elected Mayor, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19360922.2.17 .

[4]  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19210117.2.14

[5] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19360905.2.35.3

[6] See Dr Paul Mountfort’s account of the development of Norfolk Hospital in Tauranga (1953-2007) https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/6739

[7] Advertisements for “Mount Pleasant” vanish from the Bay of Plenty Times after April 1934, but see https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19431124.2.3.1 .

[8] Personal conversation, 24 January 2023, between the writer and one of the staff of NZ Movers, who recalled moving the boarding house furniture out of the property before demolition to make way for Elizabeth Heights’ construction.

[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18821117.2.7

[10] Julie Green, Tauranga Historical Society, Norris family blogs published10 June 2022 and 15 July 2022  and https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/66044 .  I am indebted to Fiona Kean of the TCC Heritage Collection for the Pae Koroki links cited here.

[11] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19250910.2.2.6

[12] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19070222.2.50.2

[13] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19090702.2.44.2

[14] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19070215.2.46.2

[15] Another such took place as the Norrises vacated: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19190813.2.4

[16] The writer helped move her husband’s household in over 24-25 January 2023