Art Deco Christchurch: West Avon 1930

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The West Avon apartments on the south-west corner of Hereford and Montreal Streets in what was then the inner city suburb of West End.

Built in 1930, but now sporting a 1980s penthouse, the Grade 3 protected building is currently painted in shades of blue and orange.

West Avon was designed by the Christchurch architect Wilford Melville Lawry (1894-1980). A long time resident of Mount Pleasant, Lawry subsequently designed the now demolished 1934 Methodist Orphanage and Children's Home in Harewood Road, Papanui (below). The site is now occupied by an old people’s home.

Among Lawry's other surviving designs are the 1935 Regent Theatre at Hokitika (below top) and the 1940 Century Theatre in Edgeware Road, St. Albans (below bottom), which was converted into a supermarket in 1969.

The Majestic Theatre

The Site

Originally the southwest corner of "Cabbage" Wilson's market garden, the Majestic Theatre site was designated in 1874 for an hotel as part of Wilson's Newmarket commercial development. William Wilson had become the city's first Mayor in 1868, but failed to attract an hotelier prepared to pay £117 per annum for a 21 year lease, so by the later 1870s a large two storey wooden building was erected on the corner as the premises of the grocers Hubbard, Hall & Company, with the offices of the Commercial Union Assurance Company above.

The Architects

The Australian Luttrell brothers: Alfred Edgar (1865-1924) and Edward Sidney (1872-1932) established one of New Zealand's foremost architectural practices when they arrived in Christchurch in 1902 after winning a competition for the design of the third White Hart Hotel in High St (demolished in 1984).

Alfred acted as the principal designer and engineer, while the smooth-talking Sidney co-ordinated building programmes and dealt with clients. Their skills and versatility made an impact on the architecture of Christchurch that remains an important and visible contribution to our architectural heritage.

Also building contractors, among their surviving projects are the 1902 Lyttelton Times Building (now the X-base Backpacker's Hostel) and the 1905 Royal Exchange building (now the Regent Theatre), both in Cathedral Square, the 1906 New Zealand Express Company building on the southeast corner of Hereford and Manchester Streets and the 1908 Theatre Royal in Gloucester Street.

After Alfred's death in 1924 the design work of the firm was undertaken by Jack Hollis and Allan Manson. Manson took over the practice when Sidney Luttrell died in 1932 (renamed as Manson, Seward & Stanton in 1936). In 1929 Allan Manson and Jack Hollis designed two major buildings, with similar facades, for the city.

Beath's Department Store at the corner of Colombo and Cashel Streets was originally intended to be six storeys, but the Great Depression put the project on hold and the store, which is now The Crossing transit centre, was completed at three levels in 1935.

The other project was the five level Majestic Theatre building for John Fuller & Sons Ltd at the corner of Manchester and Lichfield Streets. The original design proposal was for a three-tiered auditorium, with seating for 4,000, but this was later modified to two tiers with seating for 1,650.


The Theatre

Unlike Beath and Co, Sir Benjamin Fuller’s (1875-1952) cash rich Australian company, backed by their sixty-four New Zealand theatres, with unmortgaged freeholds, survived the Great Depression better than most.

The new theatre was the city’s first with a steel frame (of 380 tons), and the brick clad exterior was rendered with stucco to create an effect of two-tone Buff Limestone blocks, separated by white pointing.

The Fuller’s new building was completed in early 1930, with the western third of the upper three floors as offices. Known as Majestic House, with a separate entrance on Manchester Street, the offices were occupied by the Department of Labour (now Work and Income New Zealand).

Promoted as "The Show Place of Christchurch," the city's largest theatre was leased to Christchurch Cinemas Limited, which was made up of a partnership of Hayward Pictures Ltd, Waters and Spence Ltd, Fuller Pictures Ltd and Edward Joseph Righton of Christchurch. Fitted with sound apparatus for the "talkies," and seat plugs for hearing aids, it opened on the 1st of March, 1930.


Good though the restrained Art Deco exterior is, it is the theatre's auditorium that is probably the more significant. For more than three decades the discreet luxury of an interior in the Hispano-Moorish architectural tradition would ensure that the Majestic remained preëminent among the thirteen theatres within the central city.

The Fuller-Hayward organisation was also the original promoters of the Miss New Zealand contest, which was billed as a “Quest for a Screen Type.” Ten provincial finalists were chosen from the more than two thousand hopefuls who entered the contest. The finalists toured the country appearing in a spectacular show at the new Majestic Theatre, after which the patrons voted for the contestant of their choice.

In 1946 Christchurch Cinemas Limited was sold to locally born Sir Robert Kerridge (1901-1979) and in that same year the Majestic was badly damaged by fire. The building was subsequently renovated under the supervision of the Architect Harry Francis Willis (1893-1972), who had designed the 1932 New Regent Street development and the now concealed 1934 Art Deco facade of the State Cinema at the northeast corner of Gloucester and Colombo Streets.

By the 1950s there were fashion parades during the interval before the main feature and even three-dimensional films (requiring patrons to wear spectacles, with red and green lenses). In 1960 New Zealand cinema ticket sales peaked at forty million, but within three years television was beginning to take its toll on Christchurch cinemas. However, the large theatre, with its excellent stage facilities, enjoyed a revival with the Startime Spectacular live music shows. There were also performances by some of the legendary Rock 'n Roll groups of that era, these included the Beatles, The Kinks, The Dave Clark Five and Manfred Mann.

The theatre closed on the 28th of August, 1970, becoming Moby Dick's Nite Spot. The club is probably best remembered as the salubrious venue where the legendary Christchurch glam rock band Odyssey performed regularly. Six years later it was again badly damaged by fire and the night club closed.

Renaissance

The Christchurch Revival Fellowship, which had originally met in the old Horticultural Hall on Cambridge Terrace after being established in 1962, owned a building opposite the Majestic by 1976. On that fateful Sunday morning the churchgoers looked on as the old theatre burned. A member of the congregation purchased the gutted night club and two years later the Christchurch Revival Fellowship became the City New Life Centre, but it would still be another year before restoration was complete. With seating reduced to eleven hundred the former theatre is now known as the Majestic Church.


It is understood that there is a proposal to restore the Art Deco Theatre and it is to be hoped that the facade will be returned to its former glory.

A Lost Institution

Like the renowned philanthropist Thomas Edmonds (1858-1932), George Robert Fail (1866-1937) was a native of suburban Poplar in London's East End. By the age of fifteen he was the cook aboard the Suffolk, a steam tug that towed sailing vessels from Dungeness at the mouth of the Thames river to the docks to the east of the city.

Twenty-two year-old George arrived in Christchurch in 1884 and in 1897 married Akaroa born Annie Ethel Cashmere (1882-1935). Annie's father was French labourer and her mother was Irish. Annie bore four sons and five daughter, of whom seven survived into adulthood. By 1906 they were living in William Street (now part of the Christchurch Polytechnic site), moving to Salisbury Street by the following year.

Listed as the keeper of a fish shop in 1894, by 1898 George had opened a Fish, Game and Poultry restaurant on the ground floor of the Colonial Mutual Life building on the eastern side of High Street near the Cashel Street corner (the old building is still there).

Business was good and in 1907 they moved to larger premises on the south side of Cashel Street near the Durham Street corner. Originally known as the Rio Grande, the flourishing restaurant's premises were substantially enlarged and the bespoke dinner ware was made by W H Grindley & Co of Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent in England.

George and Annie occupied the upper floor as an apartment. It's understood that at some time they also had a house in the same street where George had an astronomical observatory, apparently the telescope was commandeered by the Army in World War II.

"Pop" Fail died in 1937 and his eldest surviving son Robert Mather Fail (Bob) took over the management of the restaurant. Renamed Fail's Café, the ground floor facade and interior of the early 1870s building was remodelled to the Art Deco style.

Famous for its fish and unique chairs, New Zealand's oldest Seafood restaurant was a much loved Christchurch institution. However, by the late 1980s tastes in restaurant dining had undergone significant change and the business closed. The distinctive furnishings and dinner ware fell to the Auctioneer's hammer.

82 Cashel Street has subsequently undergone a number of morphoses. Now sporting an inappropriate paint job and much structural alteration, the historic building is currently the premises of The Bog.

Credits

Gordon Collingwood, for historical information.

The Auckland War Memorial Museum for Robin Morrison's 1979 interior of the restaurant (top Right).

Derrick F Donovan of Albany, Auckland for his illustration from New Zealand Odyssey by Euan Sarginson (top Left).

Christchurch Public Library, Heritage Photograph Collection for the circa 1955 photograph of a waitress serving expresso coffee (bottom Right).

See where these pictures were taken.

Christchurch's State Cinema

The third building on the North-east corner of Colombo and Gloucester Streets is an unfortunate example of recycling defacing rather than preserving a building's character.

When the State Cinema opened in 1935 the city gained a fine example of Art Deco decoration. It was the work of a local architect, Francis Willis, who was the readiest in the Christchurch of the late 1920s and 1930s to experiment with decorative building design.

His experiments were not always entirely successful, but in the case of the State Cinema he attractively embellished a simple box of a building with curves, chevrons and lettering, all in slight relief. The effect was stylised, but the cinema was one of the best examples in Christchurch of decorative work of the 1930s.

When the cinema's lease expired in 1977, the building was converted to accommodate the growth of a duty free shop which had long occupied the ground floor. The exterior of the building was sheathed in white fibre glass panels intended to create a modern look compatible with the new Rural Bank building on the opposite corner. The result has reduced what had been a notable building to a boring white box.

The Queen's Theatre

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Opened on the 31st of October 1912 by the Mayor of Christchurch, the city's first purpose built cinema occupies the Hereford Street site of the 1853 home of William Sefton Moorhouse.

Owned by the Melburnian theatrical impresario James F MacMahon, a competition to a name the cinema was held by The Press newspaper, with a first prize of five Guineas. Seating 934 patrons, films were shown continuously from 11 am to 11 pm.

McMahon had exhibited the first projected motion picture shown to a paying Christchurch audience in November 1896. His Salon Cinématographe in High Street near the Cashel Street intersection almost certainly screened the 1896 Melbourne Cup race on that occasion.

In 1929 the twenty-five year-old Royal Exchange building in Cathedral Square was refurbished as the Regent Theatre, thereby obliging McKenzie & Willis Ltd to find new premises. The furniture retailers acquired the Queen's Theatre, which closed on the 5th of January 1929.

In 1935 the former cinema underwent significant redevelopment. Although the original ceiling and the stairway to the Dress Circle were left intact, a fourth floor was added and the Neo-classic Hereford Street frontage (to the Right in the top Left image) was replaced with the surviving Art Deco facade.

The long, narrow building was subsequently refurbished and linked to the Colombo Street Kincaid building in the 1950s as the McKenzie & Willis Arcade. More recently acquired by the Auckland Savings Bank, the ground floor is partially occupied by a 24/7 convenience store.

In 2003 the Theatre and Film Department of the University of Canterbury took the vacant upper floors as teaching, rehearsal and performance space. Residential facilities for post-graduate students are also provided.


See the Queen's Theatre location