Saving the old
The earthquakes wiped out a lot of central Christchurch history. But the care going in to what remains is starting to show results.
Tucked around the corner from the big one is the little one. And what a story of contrasts. The big one is of course Christ Church Cathedral, left open to the elements and rotting in the Square, mired in its interminable wrangle between diocese and heritage advocates.
The little one is another Benjamin Mountfort Gothic Revival gem – the 1870s Trinity Congregational Church – at the moment concealed behind fences and scaffolding on the intersection of Worcester and Manchester St.
‘‘Honestly, this is like a scale model of the Cathedral,’’ calls restoration manager Richard Lloyd over his shoulder, as he leads the way, ducking between poles, with Dr Anna Crighton from the Christchurch Heritage Trust following behind.
Remember Trinity Church? Pre-quake, it was owned for a long time by State Insurance – which had the Art Deco office block next door – and used as a meetings centre. Then it became the Octagon restaurant for about 20 years.
With a shaggy green cypress shading the front courtyard – known as the ‘‘singing tree’’ because of the roosting birds it attracted – the building was one of the central city’s quiet architectural surprises.
Strolling past with the dappled sunlight falling across the church’s soft grey stone, a tram clanking home to its depot behind, for an instant you might think you had wandered into a charming Parisian side street.
Trinity’s 16 metre bell tower came crashing down in the earthquakes and for a time the church was cunningly wrapped in a big photo of itself. An optical illusion that made tourists do a double take.
Then it disappeared behind a high fence – another part of the city’s history probably gone and forgotten so far as many people were concerned.
Lloyd beams as we finally scramble our way around to the front of the building and he can show where his crew have been drilling rows of holes in the mortar, starting from ground level of the stonework.
It really was a close shave for Trinity Church, Lloyd says. When he got involved in 2012, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) was going to sign the order to level it the following week. ‘‘They had a demolition company already booked in.’’
Another central city landmark could have been lost forever because – in a city still shaking with its big aftershocks – the authorities were thinking only of bringing every dangerous and uneconomic building down.
But Lloyd, a contractor with experience of stone buildings, had a chat to his Italian supplier, Mapei. They told him of a lime grout they used to save old structures over there.
Lloyd points to a broken section of wall. That’s just like the Cathedral, he says. Two wythes or thicknesses of stone with loose rubble filling the gap in-between.
State Insurance in fact quake-strengthened Trinity with concrete ring beams in 1975. However stiff concrete and flexible stone rub against each other destructively in a shake, Lloyd says.
What they would do in Italy is pump in this liquid mortar through holes beginning at the base. That will bind up the inside so the building can be secured to meet the new earthquake code for a fraction of the price.
How much saved exactly? ‘‘Oh, about a tenth of the cost,’’ Lloyd says. Well, compared to the alternative of taking away the roof, pulling down the walls, rebuilding everything from scratch … as they say they would have to do to save the Cathedral.
Lloyd looks nervous now. He knows he is getting political. Yet really, he says, if you take your time, heritage properties have their solutions.
Continuing, Lloyd says Trinity’s tower is going to be reconstructed as a light weight frame wrapped in a veneer of the original stone cut to slim 4cm wafers. ‘‘You won’t be able to tell.’’ Even the Oamaru stone corners will be sliced with an internal L-shaped cut to leave an unbroken facing.
Despite the church needing a complete new Welsh slate roof – something which after 148 years was due anyway – all these tricks
are going to save millions, he says.
Crighton then wants to talk about what has become the other half of this restoration project taken on by the Christchurch Heritage Trust, a private charity formed to save the Excelsior Hotel from developers in 1997.
Soon to be connected by a glassroofed passage, forming a single functional complex, sits the old two-storey weatherboard Shand’s Emporium.
Built in 1860 in Hereford St as a lawyer’s office, Shand’s became another hasty rescue operation when a plan to move it to Ferrymead Heritage Park fell through for want of funds.
The trust bought it for a gold coin off property owner Antony Gough and luckily had the exactsized space to put it where Trinity’s outside storehouse had come down.
‘‘I get so excited about it as this is a project like no other,’’ Crighton says – the city’s oldest wooden commercial building now next to one of its oldest stone ones.
The trust is also building a modern annexe at the back to house toilets, kitchens and other facilities for the complex – nicely echoing the outlines of Shand’s in terms of size and cedar shingled roof.
Crighton says the whole development should cost $5 million, with $1.5m of that in various grants. In a few months, the trust will be looking for a tenant. By Christmas, it should be open.
With its original interior, perfect acoustics, and unique heritage story, it will make an ideal 300 seat public venue.
And Crighton says if the damaged State Insurance office block next door can be restored, you have Cathedral Junction just opposite with its trams, the Old Government Building still there too.
Worcester St will be a great little heritage precinct – Christchurch history tidied up and strengthened, good for at least the next 150 years or so.
Every restoration project has become precious because Christchurch has lost so much of its familiar past. And surprisingly, says Crighton, the authorities are not appearing that protective of what remains.
For the past year or so, the city has been undergoing a fast-tracked District Plan review under a panel of Government-appointed commissioners. She says rather than strengthening local heritage regulations as you might have expected, the panel has gone the other way.
For instance, the rules have been rewritten in a fashion that gives developers a freer hand to gut heritage interiors. ‘‘That’s cruel.’’
Also there was the precedent set in letting Ben Gough’s Tailorspace Investments delist and demolish the Public Trust Office in Oxford Tce – a fine 1920s Cecil Wood design whose levelling had already been blocked a couple of times.
Fortunately Gough then sold out rather than going ahead, says Crighton. Other developers, Sam Rofe and Rob Farrell of Box 112, have stepped in with the intention of saving the building.
David Pedley, a resource management lawyer at Adderley Head, says Christchurch City Council (CCC) did start off by submitting a tougher planning regime to the panel. More properties would have been included in a list of those buildings deserving tighter protection.
But perhaps because of the council’s lack of time to gather the supporting detail, and the priority the panel was giving to being ‘‘enabling’’ of the central city’s rebuild, much of what CCC suggested got knocked back, Pedley says.
‘‘Most people were a bit surprised at how far the panel went. All the core heritage is still protected. You can’t just come along with a bulldozer and knock it down. But there are now more practical exceptions than might exist elsewhere. It’s not protection at all costs.’’
CCC regeneration manager Carolyn Ingles says the council had to accept the panel’s view that the post-quake context is different.
Ingles says if the authorities are not flexible in allowing heritage buildings to be repurposed by owners – given a new commercial life – then even more risk becoming ‘‘demolitions by neglect’’.
Crighton says the attitude is a carry over from the Civil Defence and then Cera era. Buildings are just buildings, not the living stories of a city.
However, chin up, she says. Because 2017 could be the year the city starts to appreciate that its glass is still half full when it comes to its heritage fabric.
Often hidden behind fences or apparently abandoned like Trinity Church, there are a number of significant renovation projects in the pipeline.
The lower High Street area, which could have been wiped out, is now shaping to be another small heritage precinct, Crighton says. Likewise the Public Trust Office is important to anchoring the Oxford Tce river front as a heritage zone.
Summing up progress on the Public Trust building, Box 112’s Farrell explains he and Rofe first got involved because they are already committed to the restoration of Caffe Roma, the three storey, orange-brown, 1930s building further along Oxford Tce,
on the edge of the Convention Centre site.
Farrell says Caffe Roma – originally the Midland gentlemen’s club – has been rescued with the help of a council landmark grant and will hopefully be re-opened by the end of the year, complete with its rimu panelling, coffered ceilings, stained glass windows and even caged lift.
‘‘It will be exactly how it was, but with a good wipe and a refresh. We’re not removing anything. Not one skerrick.’’
So Farrell says, like Trinity Church, the public will get a nice surprise once the wraps finally come off and Caffe Roma is unveiled, ‘‘good for another 100 years’’.
The Public Trust building is more challenging. The inside has already been stripped out by Tailorspace. ‘‘But we want to do the look of the building justice,’’ Farrell says.
Final settlement is in June. Box 112 still has to find tenants to make it work. And the best way to brace and level the building needs to be figured out.
However in a couple of years, along with the Canterbury Club, Municipal Chambers, Provincial Council Buildings, and hopefully also a repaired Harley Chambers, there will a fair selection of the city’s old buildings populating that section of the Avon.
‘‘The Public Trust Office faces our waterfront, it faces the right way for the sun. Its going to be a magnificent building again,’’ Farrell reassures.
High St is another area that has a better future than might have seemed the case a year or so ago.
Developer Richard Peebles has emerged as a particular saviour, buying up the seven Duncan’s buildings the Crown had taken over as part of the Innovation Precinct project.
This row will link with Peebles’ $50m shop and office complex that has managed to preserve the facade of the demolished McKenzie and Willis furniture store.
Then long-time High St developer Shaun Stockman of KPI Rothschild has taken on the rebuild of the Billens site – a historical building the Christchurch Heritage Trust was planning to restore, but which got razed in 2012 while occupied by squatters.
Stockman says the new Billens won’t be a slavish copy, however it will be recognisable as a modern version of the old frontage and layout. ‘‘We’re getting bricks with the same profile made in Germany.’’
With Peebles’ Duncan’s buildings due to reopen early next year, High St will look cohesive as a heritage zone. And Stockman says it will be better than before because with the new offices of the Innovation Precinct – the Vodafones and Kathmandus – the area will be bustling commercially.
‘‘Don’t forget all the brothels have gone. We have lost a lot of the cheap grungy buildings that were here.’’
That is the thing, says Stockman. A lot of the central city has been erased by the earthquakes, yet the heritage remaining is being brought up to the best quality.
Combined with the new glass and steel buildings, the maze of new laneways and intimate spaces, it will make for a spectacular mix within a few years, he says.
Back at Trinity Church, Lloyd and Crighton continue to enthuse about the details of the project.
Crighton says the pipe organ had to go because it would have cost $500,000 to fix. Yet that has freed up considerable space inside the church’s octagonal main chamber.
And the totara front doors – currently on loan to the museum’s Quake City exhibition – are going to be reinstalled complete with their spray-painted Urban Search and Rescue (Usar) markings still on them.
Crighton says that legacy of the earthquakes is part of the church’s authentic history now and will help to put its restoration in context. Plus, adds Lloyd, it is a subtle way of reassuring visitors no one died in the building.
A few have had that worry, he says, because they heard about the collapse of the Durham St Methodist Church, where three men were crushed in the middle of salvaging its organ on February 22.
Crighton says where new materials have to be used – like the Oamaru stone to patch an archway – it won’t be weathered to conceal the fact. That is the proper approach to heritage.
But the church’s internal woodwork has come through amazingly well, she says. Even the three stained-glass rose windows – the Cathedral only boasts the one – will be about 80 per cent original when repaired.
Lloyd says thank goodness Trinity was secured against pigeons fairly early. Raising an eyebrow, he says you wouldn’t believe the pile of poop they can create in just a few days.
Again the sharp contrast with the bigger heritage property sat around the corner in the Square. Crighton is tight-lipped about that. ‘‘A building is only as good as a willing owner,’’ is all she says.
But this city landmark has been saved, along with the quirky green and red Shand’s building, and quite a few other favourites around town.
Another year, says Crighton, and the public too will be able to see there is some reasonably good news so far as the central city’s heritage is concerned.