At a time when Christchurch is losing so many of its heritage buildings, a Dunedin project is re-creating a lost Victorian facade. Kim Dungey reports.
Workers trying to re-create the facade of an historic Dunedin building have no original plans, none of the original mouldings and after more than a year of research, are no closer to resolving one crucial element.
The capitals were the most prominent feature of the Standard building when it was built in Princes St 136 years ago.
But with all the decorative mouldings taken off in 1969, there is nothing left to copy or take measurements from.
Plasterer and conservator Daniel Pollard is convinced someone must have a clear early photo of the building, the working drawings tucked away in a cupboard or even a piece of one of the capitals in their garden. And he wants to hear from them.
"When working on projects such as this there will always be someone who approaches us when the scaffold is down and all the mouldings are painted and say, 'You've got that wrong. See, look at my photo'. We don't want that to happen."
Sandwiched in between two grand buildings - the old BNZ and National Bank - the plain, orange-painted premises now look out of place. But they were once much more ornate.
Designed by Mason and Wales, the three-storeyed Standard Fire and Marine Insurance Company building was Italianate in form, with bluestone side and back walls dating back to the 1860s. The rest was built in 1875, replacing a wooden structure on the site.
The Standard Insurance Company remained in the premises until 1884, when it moved to new offices in Lower High St. Later occupants included the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Company, restaurateur and fishmonger Samuel Kenneth Gardham, William Stewart Fishmongers and Cafe Cecil Supper Rooms. The fish shop and the Canton Restaurant both traded there until the 1990s.
The exterior ornaments were removed in 1969, the same year the nearby stock exchange building was demolished, Pollard says, looking around at the concrete buildings that came later. "It was quite a destructive period for this area of town."
Empty since 1997, the Standard building is now owned by Ted Daniels and Wayne Marsh who secured a $60,000 grant from the Dunedin Heritage Fund to re-create the Victorian facade.
Though hundreds of photos were taken of its impressive neighbours, images of the Standard building before 1969 remained elusive.The photos Pollard did find were grainy, taken from obscure angles or showed the building cast in shadow. Mason and Wales no longer had the original drawings and months of looking skyward at other heritage buildings for inspiration, buying old books and postcards, trawling the internet and searching public archives in Australia and New Zealand had only limited success.
The capitals below the arched windows were Corinthian but there are thousands of different styles of Corinthian capitals, he says.
They also appear from the dozen or so photos he does have to be "huge" in proportion to the rest of the building, making him wonder if they were an overrun from a stonemason and not designed specifically for the Standard premises.
One complicating factor was that architects did not always follow the "rules" of each architectural style, but put their own stamp on a project.
"The entrepreneurial genius of the architect and his little tweaks here and there are what is making life difficult."
In the meantime Pollard is continuing with the rest of the project, re-creating 229 individual mouldings ranging from brackets, corbels and lettering to pediments and pieces of cornice.
Each is drawn by hand and cast from one of 32 moulds that are made of rubber, fibreglass, fibrous plaster or a combination of those materials.
The pieces are made from a glass-reinforced concrete material, which is strong but lightweight, then pinned to the building with steel rods and an epoxy glue with a pulling strength of six tonnes.
The large sections of cornice at the top of the building weigh 40kg to 50kg and had to be lifted floor by floor with a gas lift.
Ted Daniels expects the premises' top floors to be tenanted by small offices and the ground-floor foyer to be connected to the former BNZ and the old Stanton stationery building behind, both of which he and Mr Marsh also own.
And he hopes the project will inspire more people to restore other historic buildings that have been "defaced" over the years.
While some might say the project is producing "fake heritage", the only alternatives are to keep an unattractive building or to knock it down, severing the link between the three adjacent premises and with the past, Pollard adds.
"Returning it to its original form must be enhancing the heritage streetscape of this area. It takes an ugly building and makes it beautiful again."
Details
To learn more or to contact Daniel Pollard with information, go to www.standardrestoration.co.nz.
Bringing back the beauty
The restoration of Dunedin's Standard building is the antithesis of what is happening in earthquake-damaged Christchurch, says Daniel Pollard, the owner of Historic Building Conservation.
"It's putting ornaments back on buildings instead of running scared and saying 'let's strip everything off and make them safe'. Yes, make them safe but bring back the architectural beauty of them as well."
Using correct fixing principles minimises the risk of heavy ornaments falling to the ground, injuring people, and eliminates the need to strip heritage buildings of their architectural ornament, he says.
"In Christchurch now, everything is polystyrene. Where's the heritage value in that?"
Pollard had worked on several buildings that were destroyed in the Canterbury earthquakes, including the Lyttelton timeball station and Godley House in Diamond Bay.
"It's sad," he says, "but what can you do?"
Pollard moved to Dunedin seven years ago from England, where his first job was at Windsor Castle.
With its short history, New Zealand has less heritage stock and needs to be more proactive about caring for its historic buildings, he says.
"If anything, it needs to be stricter than England because it's got less to lose."
And the Canterbury earthquakes should be a wake-up call: "It's even more reason to embrace what heritage we do have left. Colombo St could easily be replicated in George St."