Building’s many faces topic of talk

The former Angus Motors Building now houses apartments and the SPCA Op Shop. Image: David Murray

Behind the 1930s streamline facade of the Angus Motors Building sits a place reinvented.

Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena archivist David Murray will outline its 151-year history during a talk on September 24.

It began with the Spanish Restaurant, a boarding house from 1864. Its proprietor, Olegario Guardiola, of Barcelona, promised "every delicacy that art and genius can devise".

In August 1874 a night fire at the Guthrie and Larnach timber works spread to the restaurant.

The Evening Star described more than 50 boarders barely having time to escape, some clambering down ropes flung out of windows.

Mothers were "rushing about in a half-dressed state with their children in their arms", the newspaper said.

It took only 10 minutes for the restaurant to be burnt to the ground and by 5am about 2000 people had gathered to witness the destruction.

Owners Robert and Thomas Haworth rebuilt in brick, their iron merchant shop below and the Spanish Restaurant with a large boarding house above.

In 1904 the property was sold to Norman Bell, founder of the Bell Tea Company, who expanded it by a third to accommodate his firm while retaining and renovating the hotel.

The Spanish Restaurant (left) next to the Guthrie and Larnach factory in late 1881 or early 1882. Photo: Toitū Otago Settlers Museum

The next major redevelopment came in 1938 when Todd Motors took over and remodelled the exterior.

Victorian styling was concealed behind a new modern frontage, creating a sophisticated look for the car showroom.

Angus Motors took over the business in 1941 and several car firms occupied it until the 1970s, when it was home to engineering outfits.

In 1987 the building received another face-lift, transformed by a wall of tinted glass into ’80s chic for European marques such as Jaguar, Audi and Fiat.

Behind the glass the 1930s exterior endured and in 2015 it re-emerged as owner Bill Brown began refurbishment, including earthquake strengthening and asbestos removal, installing residential units on the upper floors and revealing heritage features.

The street store has continued to find new uses, most recently as an SPCA op shop.

Mr Murray will share stories of people connected to the building, among them journalist and poet Thomas Bracken, speculating it may be where he wrote the words for what became the national anthem, God Defend New Zealand.

"I do still wonder if Thomas Bracken wrote the words to the national anthem there.

"Because it was the time he was living there that he wrote it, but we will never know where he wrote it, because he had an office in town, or maybe just sat in the gardens or something and wrote it."