From issue: February 2001

Antrim House Looks to the Future

by Vivien Rickard

The notable Wellington house which serves the Historic Places Trust as its headquarters has seen many changes in nearly one hundred years.

Imagine yourself in 1906 being received by Mrs Hannah Hannah in the main drawing room of Antrim House on Boulcott Street, in the inner suburbs of Wellington. Your view out the windows would have been on either side into the neighbours' gardens, and from the front windows across the commercial centre of Wellington to the wooded slopes of Mount Victoria and the beach at Oriental Parade.

The freshly repainted exterior of Antrim House today. Photo: Grant Sheehan

Today Antrim House stills stands in its original gardens and grounds, with its original stables and conservatory buildings, and is now used for meetings and as offices. However, the view is very different. The neighbours are high rise apartment and office buildings and the views to Mount Victoria and the sea are blocked by the buildings of the city's commercial centre. The interior of the house is also very different. Since 1981, Antrim House has been the headquarters of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. The over-furnished (to today's taste) drawing room in which Mrs Hannah might have received you is now the Trust's Board room and the other rooms of the house are the offices of Trust staff.

When you are next in Wellington, make a point of visiting Antrim House. The house is undergoing its first major interior and exterior refurbishment since it was redecorated in 1980 prior to the Trust taking up residence. The public reception parts of the interior, the hallway and Board room, have been returned to some of their former Edwardian grace and elegance. The exterior has been repainted in colours selected from a Victorian/Edwardian colour chart specially brought from England from where, of course, the original paint would have come.

In its nearly one hundred years of life, Antrim House has undergone a number of changes of use. The house was originally built in 1904-05 as one of several merchants' houses lining Boulcott Street. Antrim House and nearby Plimmer House are the only two remaining wooden residences from this period, although a number still exist on The Terrace on the hill behind Boulcott Street.

The drawing room of Antrim House about 1908, when it was the home of the Hannah jamily. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library*

The house was built by Robert Hannah for his family. At the end of the nineteenth century Robert Hannah was one of the country's most successful businessmen. His company, Hannah Shoes, has provided footwear for many generations of New Zealanders. The house was designed by Wellington architects Thomas Turnbull and his son William. Thomas Turnbull designed a number of other fine buildings in Wellington, including the wooden churches of St Peter and St John on Willis Street, and the General Assembly Library. His son William was probably the main architect of Antrim House as by the early twentieth century Thomas was in his eighties. William's other designs included the Wellington Free Ambulance building and Turnbull House in Bowen Street. The overall design of Antrim is Italianate, with some influence from the French Second Empire style.

When the Hannah family moved in in1904, Antrim housed ten members of the family, and a number of live-in servants. For twenty-five years it remained the Hannah family home, until in 1931 it was leased by the family for use as a residential hotel. For the following eighteen years it served as a high-class residential hotel, at a time when many well-to-do people lived in superior rental accommodation rather than buying their own homes. In 1938, the house was sold by the Hannah estate to private buyers who continued its use as a hotel.

During this era a major disaster befell the house. On 18 July 1940 one of the guests in the hotel cleaned out the ashes from the fireplace in her room and, thinking them cold, placed then in a wooden box in a storage cupboard. Fire broke out and spread quickly through the upper floor. Fortunately the fire brigade responded rapidly. With thirty-four firemen and five fire engines in attendance the fire was brought under control.

But the upper floor had been badly damaged. As it was wartime, many materials used in the original building were unavailable, so restoration of this area of the house could not be done in the original style.

A much simpler Art Deco style has replaced the ornate Edwardian decoration on the upper floor, and much of the grand staircase had to be replaced. The original decorative ironwork on the roof was removed and not replaced and the tower was rebuilt to a simpler design.

Boulcott Street in 1951, when the area was still mainly residential and Antrim House had not yet been "built out" by modem high-rises. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library*. Reproduced by courtesy of the Evening Post, Wellington.

In 1949 the New Zealand Government purchased the house from Marion and Keith Hickson on the understanding that it would be used as accommodation for visiting VIPs. However, this was not the role the Government had in mind for Antrim House. In March 1949 the Evening Post reported that the Government had purchased "one of Wellington's well known residential landmarks" and that it was understood the property would be used to provide hostel accommodation for public servants.

For the next twenty-eight years Antrim served as hostel for young men coming to Wellington to join the public service. Through this era it was considered necessary to provide accommodation for cadets and junior public servants coming to Wellington for training courses. Men and women could certainly not be accommodated in the same building.

The newly refurbished Board room in Antrim House. Originally the drawing room of the Hannah family's home, the elegant room is now available for receptions and other functions. Photo: Grant Sheehan

Early in the 1970s the Historic Places Trust discussed the future of Antrim House with the Department of Labour which ran the hostel, expressing the hope that the building would be preserved as an historic place. After years of discussion between the Trust and various government departments, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Alan Highet, announced that the Government would make a gift of Antrim House to the Historic Places Trust.

The house was restored and adapted in 1980-81 and the Trust moved in during March 1981. The grounds have always been open to the public and it is intended to encourage more people to enjoy this open space. At present the out-buildings, the former conservatory and stables, are used for storage. The next phase of redecoration of the Antrim property will be to upgrade these two buildings for use as office space by the growing number of staff employed by the Trust.

With the recent refurbishment of the Board room and hallway, and the repainting of the exterior, Antrim House is entering a new phase of its long life. Besides housing the National and Central Region offices of the Historic Places Trust, it will now be able to earn some income to contribute to its own maintenance. It is intended that in the near future it will become a lively venue for functions of all types. It is important that as many of the public as possible have the opportunity to come into the heritage buildings, which the Trust administers to enjoy their ambience, charm and history, and to appreciate how, they contribute to the heritage of New Zealand. With parts of Antrim House now available for public functions, it will become more than just the Trust's head office.

Antrim was built by a family, which represented the expectation of many newcomers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of greater opportunities in a new country. The Hannah family and their footwear stores shod most New Zealand schoolchildren during the twentieth century and have had a place in the lives of most New Zealanders. The Historic Places Trust strives to remember the history of families and commercial enterprises such as Hannahs in its work in the properties, which it administers, and in its advocacy work.

The New Zealand Historic Places Trust wishes to thank Coopers Restoration Systems for their assistance in the successful treatment of woodwork at Antrim House.

Vivien Rickard is the Central Region Manager of the Historic Places Trust.