Changing Tauranga Part 5: 108 Devonport Road

Buildings which have been part of our cityscape for many years continue to disappear without fanfare. A prime example is 108 Devonport Road, an unremarkable structure without any architectural merit that most Tauranga residents are likely to have forgotten already.[i] Regardless, its departure in January-February of this year (2024) is worth noting and, at the eleventh hour, perhaps it has an interesting story or two left to tell?

108 Devonport Road in the process of being demolished, late January 2024
Image courtesy of Fiona Kean, private collection

While 108 Devonport Road is listed in the 2008 Central Tauranga Heritage Study, frustratingly the document gives no further details. In the hopes of narrowing down the building’s age, I consulted G. Duncan’s CBD plan completed in April 1934 and immediately found a candidate – circled below.[ii] However, on closer inspection, these two shops with dwellings upstairs appear too far from the corner of Devonport Road and Elizabeth Street and too close to the Tauranga Club.[iii]

Plan of Tauranga CBD completed by G. Duncan, April 1934
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. tcl-map-21-002

A photograph taken of roadworks at the corner of Elizabeth Street and Devonport Road, published in the Bay of Plenty Times in November 1963, offers a glimpse of 108. At the time, the building was occupied by Camerons Appliances who, according to their sign, sold ‘Electrical’, ‘Prams’, ‘Toys’ and ‘TV’. A second image reveals that the property was auctioned by Dalgety Real Estate in 1969. The owner, Charles Cameron, was a qualified electrician operating in Tauranga in the early 1940s.[iv] On his return from the war, Charles established Camerons Appliances and in the early 1950s, as his business grew, the building was extended.[v]

Road works – Eastern corner Elizabeth Street & Devonport Road. Published BOPT 20 November 1963
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. gcc-5114

Premises to be auctioned by Dalgety Real Estate. Published BOPT 8 December 1969
Image courtesy of Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. gca-18838

Happily, this information narrows the building’s construction date to between April 1934 and 1946. A search of the Bay of Plenty Times was now manageable. Using the terms ‘Devonport Road’ and ‘Lot 244’ approximately two thousand results were generated in PapersPast.[vi] In June 1936 the subdivision of Lot 244, Section 1 was debated by Borough Councillors, the issue being what, if anything, should be built on the ‘nice corner section’.[vii] The owner of the section was Miss Ruby Norris - a member of the well-known Tauranga family who were in the land trade. In June 1938 Norris & Bell advertised they had a corner section in Devonport Road available for sale which was ‘ideal for shops or flats.’[viii] Sadly, having scrolled through the results, this was the only information possibly relating to 108 Devonport Road that I could find. Perhaps a future researcher will have better luck, or this blog will inspire a knowledgeable resident to come forward and share that hoped-for story.

Lot 244 (circled) was subdivided, and 106-108 Devonport Road is identified with a star
Image courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection

References

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[i] The address is 106-108 Devonport Road. For simplicity I will refer to it as 108 in this article.

[ii] Tauranga City Libraries Map 21-002. https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/58684?keywords=Duncan+plan

[iii] Currently the site of Devonport Towers – January 2024.

[iv] His war record states his enlistment address as Devonport Road, Tauranga. https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/search?n=charles+cameron&plc=tauranga

[v] Bay of Plenty Times, 11 July 1946, p.5.

[vi] PapersPast https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

[vii] Bay of Plenty Times, 12 June 1936, p.3.

[viii] Bay of Plenty Times, 25 June 1938, p.2.

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