Corner and Middle Courtville - Windsor Towers and Westminster Court

By The Auckland Psychogeographer

A.Sinclair O'Connor designed four up-market apartment blocks on the north side of Parliament Street. These are Middle Courtville (1914), Corner Courtville (1918), Windsor Towers (1920s) and Westminster Court (1936). Apartment blocks for the well off like these were rare in sprawling Auckland.

An extraordinary, picturesque complex of flats, Courtville is at once faintly Parisian yet a genuinely Auckland product. The units are quaint, austere and practical in the Antipodean way - but there’s a European theatricality and intricacy to them, boasting well-loved plasterwork, dramatic windows and sensitive timber – along with the occasionally eccentric services typical of the day. Designed by the Fremantle-born architect Arthur Sinclair O’Connor, it’s his most loved legacy with a long history of bon vivant residents. Nestled across the road from both the High Court and Old Government House, Courtville was saved from the wreckers ball by the sterling work of a certain member of Parliament – Helen Clark. The saga is neatly encapsulated by Metro magazine, here.

Crucially, Courtville remains a remnant of a direction towards an uncrowded and high-quality style of communal living that Auckland city – for numerous reasons – turned away from in the early 20^th century, amidst the pull of suburbia. Just down-at-heel enough to elude the investor class, yet resiliently poetic and graceful, Courtville is more stage set than architecture.