Little House, Big House...

Radio Record, 5 June 1936, Page 54

Little House, Big House...

By

ROBIN

HYDE

Charm of Lesser Known Homes

in Auckland

F course, everybody, thinking "Let us now praise famous firesides,". sticks to the big houses of Auckland-sunken gardens, veranda ballrooms, complete with fairy lights. or something like that

wonderful Turkish steam cabinet that , used to lurk upstairs in the late Dr. F. Rayner’s house in Gillies Avenue." The place belongs to Sir Carrick. Robertson, now and has changed its former name, "Moose Lodge," to something Scottish, so whether it is still possible for the inhabitants to sit on tapestry stools, slowly steaming, with the walls around composed entirely of mirror-glass and a frieze of tiny, gaily-_ painted hunting and fishing scenes, while. from the floor of glass stream rose and golden lights, I know not. : I don’t: blame people for admiring the larger Auckland demesnes. There is a certain lavishness about them-beauty and brummagem tripping along hand in hand, in many cases-and new and better castles arise almost erery month. i

Auckland fell for Spanish mission in a big war, feeling that its islanded

blue harbour and semi-tropical climate demanded something a little warmer than thé usual colonial effort-two murky-looking stories, write-painted wood, with Norfolk pines shading the windows, and a red roof on top, tiles if you’re lucky, galvanised-iron if the builder felt that way. On the whole, the Spanish mission was a step upward, and, at its best, it now provides’ some really beautiful and amenable houses, structures which look at home with the scenery. At its worst, it has scattered Auckland with large chunks of stucco, over which a terrifying mixture of cheese omelette seems to have been poured. Sometimes this is left plain, something scalloped in little drips and waterfalls, intensifying the omelette effect. These houses are only for strong stomachs, and, besides, their architecture behaves in the most peculiar way. I can think of one block of dwellings entered not normally by a door, but darkly by going beneath arches and then creeping up flights of steps. The entrance looks like the sort of place: where one deservedly gets one’s throat cut. The exterior

_ colour is of orange brightness. . . » 3 The fact was, the Spanish mission idea is derivative architecture, lifted en masse from California, and used without any thought that the light refraction here is utterly different, and that what blends into the ‘painted desert" and: hard blue sky stands out like Welsh rarebit in a New Zealand setting. The speculators in the style (apart from their lucky shots, as mentioned above) will just: have to keep on living with themselves, until the years tone their mansions down. However, what really entered my mind was less the colourful. discomfort and eyeache of some of the larger and fiercer houses, but the attraction of some of Auckland’s: little ones. Little house, big house ... we told it over on the ryegrass in childhood; and the little

house stil] comes out as popular favourite among the young and newly-

wed. inis narration leaves the palaces alone, and deals therefore with (a) the two shapely houses, (b) the very old flat with the very new trimmings, (c) the little house under a grapevine, (d) the flat that was a stables, and the old house attached thereto. Of the two shapely houses, both newly-built, the home of Mr. and Mrs, R. Anschutz, down toward the waterfront in Herne Bay, is the more designedly modern. It was built last year’ by a young and extremely progressive Auckland architect, and visitors never have to tell taxidrivers the number of the house. They. just say, "The house with the different shape," and the driver at once says, "Ah," and tips you out on the correct doormat, which is, by the way, very nearly on the street-front, though a tiny space has been allotted for growth of cacti, or other rectinlinear plants, The house with the different shape-nearly rectangular. but with high forehead and no- frontal excrescencesis colour-washed smooth cream, and permitted green ‘ facings: Behind it is a cool little (Contd, on next page.)

garden stretch where nectarines are digging their toes in, watched by the lamentable ruins of one of Auckland’s old stables. Inside, it pecemes what Alice in Wonderland called "curiouser and curiouser," but always in a delightful and convenient way. For instance, you know what-a nuisance books are in the average bedroom.. They must be at hand, but when they aren’t lying With theiy binding in ruins beneath the bed, they are usually piled up on tables, or ‘bookcases which take up too much room. Why didn’t somebody ~ think before of a deep niche bookcase, like an open cupboard, cut into the wall directly over the bed, softly lighted and painted to harmonise with the colourings of the room? Down in the kitehen, there’s the same touch of cleverness. The milkman doesn't leave his bottle on the step for the delight of prowling cats; he pops it through a shutter into safety. The drawing-room repeats long, flat, cool lines of colour. in everything from_ cushions to curtains. The stairway is not ‘the narrow tunnel ‘of the usual house, dyed with the, Chingse.blood of innumerable spilt cups of tea, but airy, well-lighted and deep. The' modernism _ in the Anschutzes’ home (Mr. "An: — schutz is lecturer ‘in psychology at ‘the Auckland University) is not the chrom, ° jum:.and colour-clash variety, ‘but the ‘simplicity and restfulness, of «things. ' that cause the .minimum. of ‘trouble. to: «’ oth the eye and the: limbs of: ‘the * beholder. The other shapely house-Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Binney’s home on the Kohimarama heights--is in some ways like the first,.in others very. different. The soft cream of its colour-washed stucco shows behind two straight rows of poplar trees, dropping now "their blackened silver pennies." Directly w front of the house is a little terrace garden, strips of grass alternating with strips of stone. The moment the wide door is opened. it shows one compara-. tive novelty in New ‘Zealand architee-ture-q wide and pbeautifully-shaped hall, with perfectly plain carpets, the velvety green of moss, spreading from room to room. Nearly every modern house, in the past few years. has been built with at least one green room, asually the bata: room: here the cool note of green is reflected right through the housefrom bedrooms to beautiful drawing: room, where an enormous English fire place adds the unbeatable comfort of the sometimes good old days to tbe charm of modern ones; from qdrawingroom to the veranda _ writing-room, which looks down on a blue curve of sea. The same idea of modernism, the harmony of furnishings, from lamp shades to tables, makes the house an invitation to rest. One might say thai the whole psychology of modern homefurnishing is precisely’ this: when it is good, it is a relaxation in colour and comfort: when it is bad, it bristles with aggressive little gadgets, idzas about modernism, which stick into the stranger’s ken like the quills of the fretful porcupine. And can one introduce the modern note, without the advantage of a new house to. work with and design? One of the most attractive little flats I have seen for a long time belangs to young Auckland newly-weds, Mr. and Mrs, "Bob" Lowry (she formerly Miss Irene Cormes). They decided to go flat-hunting, but flats which looked at all amenable to discipline were few and far between, Finally, in Herne

Bay, they found the downstairs flat of an old house, rather like the ’tween. decks of a galley-steps and stairs be-" tween its rooms, glass doors, a thick glass roof for a veranda bedroom. When they took it, it must have looked like the home port of the Ancient Mariner. When they were:. ‘finally "at home" (with kippered herrings matching the still faintly nautical the

wallpaper had disappeared under sack-ing-nothing more, nothing less, and . until: you’ve tried it you ‘don’t realise how good its plain brown visage looks in decoration. Broad bands of green touched it up here and there, and the white overmantel, which looked originally as though some Victorian papa might have rested..his brow against it while repeating family prayers, had (Continued on -page 58.)

Auckland Homes: { (Continued from page 55). \. also disappeared under green, and looked straight into the face of a futuristic Russian poster; demonstrating the activities of white horses, pink people, and delicate little black ant white pigs. One of the finest old houses in Auckland-"Cleveland House," Remuera, inhabited in turn by the Isaacs, the Dargavilles, and later by. Mrs. Moore-Jones, whose very early "school for young ladies" was carried on, after her death, by her daughter, Miss Moore-Jones-last year was turned into a block of flats. Luckily, its striking exterior, the only castle in Auckland that I really like, and the only one complete with tower-room and alleged "ghost," has been little altered. But what was first a Stables, under the deodar trees planted by the first owners, became in Moore-Jones days a‘sunny' kindergarten, and later. a flat. The Auckland writer and artist, Mrs. Hugh Robinson ‘(better known ag Alison Grant); lived there with husband, baby son and bullterrier pup until this year.-when she departed for Australia and left it in the hands of another young Auckland couple, Mr. and Mrs. J. Dumble. The now very modern and attractive little flat, standing beside the. enormous old house whose parquetry hall Was lit only by gas-jets as recently as ‘a year ago. ig still haunted -by’ black and white doves.