Merchants Houses

"Like elites elsewhere, the rich made for the ridges. There they could look down — literally and metaphorically — on Auckland’s messy business district while enjoying fresh air, sunshine and views of their ships heading for their warehouses."

** An interesting survival history
**Like elites elsewhere, the rich made for the ridges.

There they could look down — literally and metaphorically — on Auckland’s messy business district while enjoying fresh air, sunshine and views of their ships heading for their warehouses. After the cashstrapped City Improvement Commission decided to subdivide much of the eastern side of the Albert Barracks Reserve, this part of town drew merchants like flies.

Handy to their city businesses, it was also near to the Northern Club, Government House and their other places of worship. A requirement to build just one dwelling on each leasehold allotment and for each townhouse to be worth at least £700 completed the social engineering. Property owners included chemist James Sharland, newspaper publishers Henry Brett and W Scott Wilson, butcher William Hellaby, merchant Arthur Nathan and brewers Thomas Whitson and Moss Davis.

The houses should have come down when the 99-year leases expired but five – 21 to 31 Princes Street - survived. Nola Easdale has documented their history up to 1900 but do not get too carried away by romantic visions of the lifestyles of the colonial elite. They cleared out soon after the electric trams and steam ferries opened up greener suburban pastures.

In fact, these houses were becoming boarding houses even before Queen Victoria breathed her last. For most of their existence these so-called merchants’ houses sheltered the sort of people originally meant to have been kept out of this part of town, or the unsung institutions that have saved them from destruction. ‘Hamurana’, number 29, houses the Auckland Civic Trust.

© 2002 Original text – Gavin McLean.

Further reading: Nola Easdale, Five Gentlemen’s Residences, Princes Street, Auckland, Auckland City Council, Auckland, 1980