• CHAPMAN'S TERRACE
Address: 235-241 Stuart St
Built: 1881-1882
Architect: David Ross
Builder: Jesse Millington
Terraced houses were rare in Victorian New Zealand, despite being common in the United Kingdom, where most settlers were born and from where so many building styles were transplanted. Types of terraces there included not just working-class rows of plain design, but also the stylish homes of affluent city dwellers.
Unsurprisingly, there was less demand for such buildings in New Zealand, as the young colony was less urbanised, but of those that could be found many were in the most industrialised centre, Dunedin. More than 20 terraces built between 1875 and 1915 survive in the city today, all rows of at least three dwellings.
One row in Upper Stuart St still announces its original name to the world in large letters: Chapman's Terrace. It was built between 1881 and 1882 as an investment property for Robert Chapman, and remained in family hands until 1910.
Chapman (1812-1898) was one of Dunedin's earliest colonial settlers. Born at Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, he worked as a solicitor in Edinburgh before coming to Dunedin with his wife Christina on the Blundell in 1848. He served as registrar of the Supreme Court and clerk to the Provincial Council, but is probably most often recalled as the person who funded a memorial to the Rev Thomas Burns, built in the lower Octagon. Completed in 1892, this stood 19m tall and cost more than 1000 to build (as much as a substantial farm homestead). It was demolished in 1948.
Robert's son Charles, a lawyer who also served as mayor of Dunedin, managed the tenancies of Chapman's Terrace from its earliest years, and probably also had a hand in the building project. The architect was David Ross, who had earlier designed the terrace at 107-111 York Pl, completed in 1877. Ross had been engaged by Chapman before, having designed Dunottar House and another villa residence for him.
The terrace was built in the Renaissance Revival style, and small but prominent porticos made striking features. The parapet originally had a balustrade, and its loss has affected the balance and proportion of the composition. Pairs of round-headed windows echo other designs by Ross, including Fernhill (John Jones' residence) and the Warden's Court in Lawrence.
Tenders for the project were called in September 1881 and the contractor selected was Jesse Millington, who at around the same time built Stafford Terrace at 62-86 Dundas St (now known as the ''Coronation Street houses''). The Stuart St building was complete by the end of June 1882, when it was described in the Otago Daily Times: ''The houses ... are of a very superior class, both as regards design and convenience. The block comprises three houses, each of which contains 10 rooms, exclusive of bathroom, storeroom, pantry, &c. Two flats are above the streetline, and two below. All the rooms are fitted up with gasaliers and electric bells of an improved type. The buildings are an ornament to the upper portion of Stuart Street, for they are nicely designed, and considerable expense has been devoted to external as well as internal finish.''
The steep site falls sharply away from the street, and though the building appears only two storeys high from the front, four levels can be seen from behind. The lower ones were built with bluestone walls, the upper ones in brick with cemented fronts. Each street entrance is almost like a little drawbridge, and there is quite a drop behind the iron railings.
The houses were first advertised as ''suitable for professional men'' and their central location was one of their best selling points. For periods each was run as a boarding house or lodgings, with landladies and resident owners over the years including Helen Nantes, Annie Korwin, Alice Vivian, Eliza and Honor Pye, Mary Hutchinson, Susan Miller, and Margaret and Enid Simmonds. Those who took rooms included labourers, carpenters, clerks, salesmen, a sharebroker, a chemist, a photographer, a journalist, a draper's assistant and a dressmaker.
From 1885 to 1902 the middle house was occupied by John Macdonald, a medical practitioner and lecturer at the Otago Medical School. For a year or two the house below was occupied by George Bell, editor of the Evening Star newspaper. A resident of long standing was Mary Martin, who lived in the upper house c.1924-1945. William and Mary Ann Barry lived in the middle house c.1911-1932, and during that time World War 1 affected the residents of Chapman's Terrace as it did all of Dunedin. The Barrys' son was killed in action in France just a month before the Armistice.
MADAME ELVINO
One of the most colourful occupants was Constance Alene Elvine Hall, known as Madame Elvino, who lived in the middle house from 1904 to 1910. Originally from Ireland, she variously advertised as a professor of phrenology, world-famed psychometrist, medical clairvoyant, metaphysical healer, business medium, palmist, psychic seer, and scientific character reader. She travelled the country, giving consultations and running popular stalls at carnivals and bazaars. She married John C. Paterson, a sawmill manager, while living in the terrace.
In 1908, Madame Elvino was charged with fortune telling, an offence under the Crimes Act, but acquitted on the defence of the celebrated barrister Alfred Hanlon, on the grounds that she had only given a ''character reading''. She was convicted on another occasion in Christchurch in the 1920s. In a New Zealand Truth report titled ''Face Cream and Psychic Phenomena for Frivolous Flappers'', Elvino was described as a ''short, dark, plainly-dressed little woman, with a pair of twinkling eyes peering out from behind rimmed spectacles, she looks the last person on earth from whom one would expect any striking occult manifestations''.
In 1951 the lower house, then known as ''Castlereagh'' was purchased by the New Zealand Institute for the Blind. The refurbished rooms were opened in July 1952 and the institute also acquired the middle house. After extensive alterations in 1960 (including the removal of partitions) the top floor contained a social room, braille broom, and cloakrooms, while on the ground floor were a lounge, therapy room, cutting-out room, and the manager's office. A new stair was less steep than the old one. The institute (later Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind) remained in the building until new purpose-built premises on the corner of Law St and Hillside Rd opened in 1975.
The terrace has been home to a legal practice since 1975, when Sim McElrea O'Donnell Borick & Thomas moved in. McCrimmon Law is now based here and in 2013 one of the building owners, Fiona McCrimmon, oversaw the extensive refurbishment of the terrace.
The balustrade was removed in the 1960s, but other original facade features remain happily intact, including pilasters with Corinthian capitals, square columns, quoins, and a dentil cornice. Some internal features that survived 20th-century alterations have also been preserved, including beautiful kauri floors, turned newel posts, ceiling roses and other plasterwork, and a few of the fireplace surrounds.
As someone who lived in the terrace for two years as a student, I am delighted to see it so well looked after.
I wonder if my room was Madame Elvino's ...
• For more from David Murray go to: builtindunedin.com
