The Empire Tavern reopened this week. Peter Entwisle takes a looks at its lineage and cultural history.
Are you kidding? That will be some people's reaction to the suggestion the Empire Tavern in Dunedin is a historic place of international significance.
Yes, it's old, but to many it seems just another old building and not particularly distinguished.
Yes, claims have been made that this old darling has a special, local significance, but that's been contentious.
A trawl through the facts shows that it does indeed have a local claim.
But it has another, much greater distinction.
The Empire is old, like many Dunedin pubs.
It used to have it blazoned on its windows at 396 Princes St, this is Dunedin's oldest.
Is it? The legend on the windows mentioned 1858 and that is the date of the licence.
It is one year before the Provincial Hotel's, a respectably ancient establishment.
Frank Tod's compendium Pubs Galore tracks the history of Dunedin hotels from 1848.
The first licence was issued in June that year to the Commercial.
Another was given in January 1849 to the Royal, a third in 1852 to the Settlers.
These have all been either transferred to another site or have lapsed.
A fourth was issued in 1858 to the Queen's Arms in Princes St, the site of the Empire today.
The licence has been kept up ever since and Tod explains that the name has changed. The Queen's Arms became the Union in 1891.
The Union became the Empire in 1900.
That's the basis for saying it's Dunedin's oldest pub.
One can almost hear the "but, but, but . . ."
from the champions of rival hostelries.
The Provincial, in Stafford St, has been nostalgically recalled as the terminus of the Cobb & Co coaches.
One can see them in photos with horses and tackle, parked outside the old building.
Or can you? The structure in the photos is not quite the same as what you see today.
There's a bit still there that's old, but is it the relevant bit?
The advocates of the Empire point to a photo of the Queen's Arms about 1864 to show it is old, too.
But that shows a two-storey building, while the present one has three.
So did they just add another floor? Some have thought so, but the record says no.
On May 28, 1879, an advertisement appeared calling tenders for "taking down and rebuilding the Queen's Arms Hotel", placed by T. B. Cameron, Architect.
He was the designer of the present building, or at least its main part, facing Princes St.
It has unusual features, such as a surviving barrel drop in the footpath outside, still with its wooden trapdoor and stone kerbing.
But it is only one of many surviving Dunedin hotel buildings dating from the 1870s.
When Frank Tod's book was published, in 1984, the Empire's claim to fame was really that it occupied the oldest surviving, continuously licensed site in Dunedin.
Now that is a distinction, or rather it was, because the passage of time, or legislation, has somewhat undermined it.
In 1989, local government reform saw Port Chalmers absorbed into Dunedin.
There, the Port Chalmers Hotel stands on the site of the Surveyors Arms, licensed by the Akaroa-based magistrate John Watson in 1846.
Which means the Empire is now only the occupant of the oldest surviving licensed site in central Dunedin.
Those local body reforms changed a number of "oldest" claims.
Ferntree Lodge, built by 1849, has had to give up its title as Dunedin's oldest surviving house to Johnny Jones's homestead at Matanaka, in existence by 1843.
It may seem the Empire's distinction has been whittled down by later twists of fortune.
But other developments have provided it with another, more remarkable distinction.
Although its basis is recent, its origins lie in the pub's earliest days.
From its beginning as the Queen's Arms, the Empire has had strong Irish, Catholic and musical connections.
The names of some of its publicans, Hogan and Moloney, reflect its Irishness.
The second Catholic mass in Dunedin was celebrated in a skittle alley on the premises.
And in June 1858, the original publican, J. W. Feger, advertised that he had engaged a Mr Baker "from the London concerts" to give free entertainment.
Much later, in the 1970s, John and Maureen Simpson had the Empire.
They established a Bavarian Bar on two upper floors with a band of cardboard figures in a balcony overlooking the bar below to provide a bit of atmosphere.
At the time, Dunedin pubs had bands, usually playing covers - other people's music.
A local promoter, Michael Overton, approached the Simpsons with a different idea.
In July 1981, the Empire became a regular alternative venue for bands playing original music.
They included the Chills, Sneaky Feelings, the Stones, the Clean and the Verlaines, cornerstone groups of the Dunedin Sound.
Matthew Bannister, of Sneaky Feelings, recalled this in his book about the group, pointing out the Simpsons were "friendly and approachable" while "most pub managers were ogres to whom bands were a necessary evil".
John Dix highlighted the key role of the Empire in the development of the Dunedin Sound in his 2005 study, Stranded in Paradise . . ., a history of popular music in New Zealand.
The Dunedin Sound flourished, not only here, but elsewhere in New Zealand.
Its fame spread and it became an underground cult in Britain and America.
If some have overlooked its significance here, that's only because it is alternative, intellectual, and perhaps because of our lingering cultural cringe.
We still tend to recognise success only when it is hailed somewhere else.
It can take time for the news to get home.
By 1989, the Dunedin Sound phase was over.
The Empire changed hands and a new publican wasn't interested in music.
The licence continued but the bands didn't play on.
Or they did, but later, under other management, by which time the local music scene had also evolved.
But now the pub has changed hands again, and the new owner, John Fogarty is determined to sustain the tradition.
While different, the Empire is like the Cavern, the Liverpool venue where the Beatles played.
That's been filled in, partly restored and is now a tourist attraction.
And it's like CBGB, the Manhattan home of underground rock, launchpad of the Ramones and Blondie, unfortunately, now only a memory.
Happily, the Empire is still mostly intact from its Dunedin Sound days.
Its role as its cradle is not just a city or New Zealand distinction, but an international one.
And that's something really to shout about.
It can be polished up.
We're lucky Mr Fogarty is doing that.
• Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
