From Heritage New Zealand, Autumn 2010

by Ruth Le Pla

Look beyond the glitz in its store windows and discover the heritage buildings that made Newmarket a commercial and industrial hub in Auckland's early years.

What would its former inhabitants think of Newmarket now? The full-frontage shop displayof Bendon bras and knickers... the pink-sunglassed poodle on the Rialto billboard... would these people ever have dreamed of getting their eyebrows threaded or scoring an itsy-bitsy gold-sequinned dress? Buying a pecan pie or a pair of purple pants on special for $7.99? Booking a trip to the Serengeti or Route 66? All without walking more than 100 steps.

Today, Auckland’s Newmarket is retail nirvana; it’s one of New Zealand’s busiest suburban centres. The Broadway shopping straight rocks out of town, determined to link the Waitemata Harbour with Waikato. Nudging against Grafton and posher Parnell, Remuera, Epsom and Mt Eden, Newmarket’s heart lies where Broadway and Khyber Pass Road collide at a right angle. Further north, Davis Crescent kinks around the back of what used to be a much larger Lumsden Green. Narrow back streets grid the land west of Broadway.

Once it was all swamp. When French explorer Dumont d’Urville checked out its demanding terrain in 1827, he wrote of taking half an hour to cover just 200 paces. “… we found ourselves in a spot that was so swampy, so entangled with bracken, dry brushwood and shrubs that it was impossible to put one foot in front of the other.” Dinah Holman, author of Newmarket Lost and Found, says Dumont’s swampy spot was almost certainly Newmarket.

To Maori, the area was Te Ti Tutahi or “sacred cabbage tree standing alone”, named after the tree that, until 1908, stood where today’s Mortimer Pass hits Broadway. In her book, Dinah attributes the story of Newmarket to location, topography and water: three main threads woven into the landscape right from the get-go. In varying degrees, they still underpin Newmarket’s success. “Eventually, water became unimportant and topography (the pleasantly flat land) less important,” she writes, “but location will always be the mainstay of Newmarket’s existence.”

Over the years, travellers have been replenished here, horses fed, watered and stabled, vehicles repaired or maintained, tolls levied. Newmarket flexed its muscles as a road and rail gateway. It refreshed soldiers and their prisoners. The plentiful supply of fresh water begat a brewing industry; Lion Brewery still dominates the upper reaches of Khyber Pass Road.

Known earlier as Hobson’s Bridge, Newmarket is thought to have received its name in 1850 when its  new cattle market replaced the old market in central Auckland. Dinah says it’s still easy to discover the fabric of Newmarket’s past but anyone wanting to learn must be prepared to look skywards and to explore the back streets. “Newmarket has promoted itself as a retail and fashion centre,” she says, “so it’s not surprising that most people don’t see beyond its appeal as a place for shopping. People walk along Broadway under the verandas and look at the shop windows. They need consciously to look for the old buildings.”

It’s all too easy, for instance, to stroll past the Olympic Pool, oblivious to the aqua-tinted 1930s’ art deco façade beside the modern cinema complex. It’s tempting to focus on the clothing stores or sushi/sake bar below the original Rialto cinema building further along Broadway and miss the 1920s’ art deco decorations sitting above.

It’s vital to stand opposite the trio of old buildings at the lower end of Khyber Pass Road to get any inkling of their difference. The Arnold & Abbott-designed George Kent & Sons brick building closest to the heart of Newmarket was built in the early 1920s. The same architects designed the Auckland Grammar School around the corner and the brick-built Excelsior Buildings two doors further up Khyber Pass Road.

Khyber House sits sandwiched between the two brick structures. Today, the Victorian wooden commercial building gleams white and pillar-box red. One of the few survivors of its kind in the area, it is thought to date from some time between 1880 and 1890. Yet from below the verandas it’s impossible to gain much more than a healthy appetite for global food. The street-level restaurants now inhabiting these historic buildings serve up nosh from the Mediterranean, Vietnam, North Africa and India.

Even when shoppers do glance skywards in Newmarket, giant billboards sometimes part-obliterate the old façades. Chanel No 5 helps to shield a section of the 1880s’ Smith & Caughey’s Building. Somewhat incongruously, details on engraving an iPod decorate the curving late-1920s’ Corner Building where Broadway meets Remuera Road. Even the fence around the primary school’s fields and Depression-built terraces yells commerce. The children act out their schoolyard games behind ads for furnishing fabrics, eyecare, the Rotary Club of Newmarket and The Aussie Butcher.

NZHPT Heritage Advisor – Architecture Robin Byron agrees that Newmarket is about more than retail. But she adds that shopping is also part of the area’s original heritage. “Rather than just developing as a dormitory suburb, Newmarket always had both shopping and light industry as part of its foundation,” she says.  “I personally think it’s quite lovely the way that in the whole area to the west of Broadway you’ve still got a feeling for those light-industrial activities that were really important in Newmarket. They were industries that serviced the rest of the city. There’s something about the scale and the workaday, functional nature of those buildings that still evokes their original use.”

In her book, Dinah Holman sketches the development of both commerce and light industry. She cites a 1957 report that claims Newmarket, with an area of less than 81 hectares and a resident population of about 2200, was not only the smallest borough in New Zealand but also the wealthiest because of its “phenomenal development”. “It was then the home of almost 100 industries, producing items as diversified as margarine, milking machines, sporting goods, plastic toys, butchers’ knives, cardboard containers, farm implements and thermometers for industrial use,” she writes. “A host of minor products such as canned crayfish tails, coconut oil, lipstick, bubble gum and fly spray was also being produced in Newmarket at that time. Newmarket products were to be found around the world.”

For the past 30 years Peter Croad has retained an oasis of practicality among the Broadway retail therapists. His Shoe Sheriff repair shop  opposite the 277 shopping mall smells of leather and glue. The high-stud ceiling fan circles cool air down to a comfortably wide wooden counter. Shelves are lined with waxes, polishes, laces and a clutter of boots and shoes. The building dates to the early 1930s. “A shoe repair shop has been on the site since 1938,” he says. “Before that it was used for car repairs and you can still see the old ramps and where a former entrance has been blocked up.”

More traces of Newmarket’s practical and industrial past linger in the narrow back streets west of the main Broadway strip. The Cashmore Bros Ltd building on Kent Street still stands, although the timber merchant activity, first established in Newmarket in 1924, has given way to an auto-body repair shop. Opposite it, the Lone Star Café and Bar now occupies the site of one of Newmarket’s many former iron and brass foundries. Dinah says the current 1940s’ building replaces an earlier iteration. In a favourable light it’s still just possible to make out the words Charles Lees & Company on the parapet. Around the corner in Teed Street, the Hayes Building stands testament to the former Hayes Metal Refineries company. It now hosts the East Asia Travel Company, an upmarket clothing shop and a shrine to sunglasses.

For Robin Byron, Newmarket’s heritage highlights include the former Auckland Electric Power Board (AEPB) building on the corner of  Remuera Road and Nuffield Street. “The AEPB building is remarkable,” she says. “The thinking behind it was really quite progressive.” Built in 1946 just after the end of World War II and during a surge in confidence, it adopted the moderne style. The building became the flagship for the power board’s operations. “It was quite a complex building with huge staff facilities including indoor bowls, billiards, a rooftop tennis court, a reading room and a social hall,” says Robin. “It was all about the idea of taking care of your employees. It’s a huge complex and quite striking in its design. All credit to Westfield for retaining the building and upgrading it. NZHPT staff worked closely with Westfield and are pleased with the result. They’ve done a good and sensitive job.”

She also pinpoints NZHPT property Highwic. Property manager Cheryl Laurie describes Highwic as a last bastion of green: a 0.8-hectare property with significant trees and open spaces in an urban area. “When Highwic was built in 1862,” she says, “all that was down where Broadway is now was the first Newmarket Hotel, Buckland’s saleyards, a slaughterhouse, local pound and tollgate. So it wasn’t a very desirable residential area.”

Highwic’s original owner was Alfred Buckland, a merchant and one of Auckland’s most substantial landowners. “He built this modern, forward-looking home based on an A J Downings American pattern book The Architecture of Country Houses,” says Cheryl. “In a sense, the house was leading fashion.” The property became home for Alfred’s 21 children and still shows evidence of the original Victorian garden with its mature trees, old orchard and formally edged flower beds. Walk up Highwic’s shady driveway and the commercial sounds of Newmarket soften away. The beep of the car park fades. It’s possible to hear birds.

For the most part, though, Newmarket still pumps to the noises of transport and connections, commerce and industry. It’s just that the sounds of horse-drawn vehicles, soldiers’ marching boots and trams have been replaced by the beeps of backing trucks, the pounding of jackhammers and the shop-blare of Beyonce.