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

Reo Moana

Mount Maunganui main beach. R.J.Rendell photographer
Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection

It was not only in Napier that Art Deco and the various styles of Spanish Mission architecture appeared in New Zealand in the 1930s.  Most towns still have some flat roofed, stucco dwellings sometimes with decorative motifs and some quite plain. Originating in the south west states of North America the Spanish Mission style was popular in new world countries especially where the climate is similar to California. It first arrived in New Zealand with the construction of the Auckland Grammar School building in 1913 and the style became popular in the following years in domestic architecture. The characteristic pastel coloured walls, clay tiled parapets, arched windows, balconies, tiles and wrought iron appear in various levels of detail.

Reo Moana. Limmer family collection

There are few of the original bachs and holiday homes left in Mount Maunganui that were built prior to the Second World War. They suddenly disappear and a new building appears on the section. A way of life has gone; the casual holiday life style of recycled furniture and furnishings from home, walked in sand on the floor, beach cricket, board games and no computers.

Reo Moana in 2020. Photos: Lee Switzer

Barbeque on back lawn. Limmer family collection

One such relict is “Reo Moana” which translates as “language of the sea” situated in Marine Parade, once part of a street scape that included the Oceanside Hotel. The dwelling appears to be the last of the old Mount in the block. Taller buildings dominate the east end of Marine Parade and Reo Moana lost its rear view to Pilot Bay.

Family holiday. Limmer family collection

In April 1937 a Tauranga architect, Thomas S Gray, called for tenders for the erection of flats at Mount Maunganui for G H Streiff a dairy farmer of Te Aroha. [1] Streiff had bought 22 perches of land at Mount Maunganui from Tauranga County Council in 1935. [2] Gray designed a Spanish Mission style building of two flats, side by side, standing on the sand dune with the lower floor dug back into the dune and a second storey above. A parapet hides the flat roof and the stucco walls are painted white. There is a narrow balcony in front of each flat with steps at each end of a curved wall. The front door and windows of both flats are symmetrical and three bands of plain plaster on the stucco below the roof line are the only reference to the “speed lines” inspired by aerodynamic design and typical of the period.

Max Sing & Vic Limmer with Vic's kingfish. Limmer family collection

Originally the flats were mirror images of each other but changes to internal walls have left the east flat with four bedrooms while the west has only two but a larger living area. Terracotta coping tiles provide a contrast in material and colour in the centre section of the parapet.  Coping tiles originally protected the top of walls from rain water but in this case the effect is purely decorative. In more recent years a concrete front fence topped with terracotta pipes repeats this effect.

Streiff used the west flat for himself and his family and let the other to holiday makers. He was born in Milan, Italy the son of Abraham Streiff a Swiss who immigrated to New Zealand. [3] The son was appointed Swiss consul in Auckland. [4] His wife Florence was the sister of Lord Ernest Rutherford and she died in 1944. [5] Streiff continued to use his beach house and swam every day. At midday he took the ferry to have his dinner at one of the Tauranga hotels. The Limmer family from Hamilton rented the east flat for their holidays and eventually they purchased it. They changed the front window to ranch sliders then later to French doors. The flats were on a cross-lease title. The Sing and Barnes families were later owners of the west flat after Streiff’s death. The whole building is now owned by the Limmers and has provided many holidays for five generations of the family.

Reo Moana in 2020. Photos: Lee Switzer

References

Informant – Mrs. Beverley Limmer
[1]  Bay of Plenty Times, 3 April 1937
[2]  Bay of Plenty Times, 25 April 1935
[3]  My Heritage family tree.
[4]  Thames Standard, 7 July 1913
[5]  Birth, death & marriage indexes Dept of Internal Affairs.