Our oldest building

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1860s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Arana, geography, psychology

J.W. Allen took this photograph in the late 1860s from around where Marama Hall is today, on what was known as Tanna Hill. On the right in the middle distance is a circular garden, part of the original Botanic Garden on Albany St. On the left is the Cook family home (now Mellor House). The Leith, which is not visible, wound around the bottom of the hill. The university moved to this site in the late 1870s. Parts of Tanna Hill were levelled for building, notably the land where the Archway Theatres and Applied Sciences Building are now. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 68, S14-434b.

I’ve been on an intriguing mission to identify the oldest surviving building on the Dunedin campus. Assisting me were two architectural history experts – David Murray (Hocken Collections), keeper of the wonderful Built in Dunedin blog, and Michael Findlay (Department of Applied Sciences), who sparked the idea for this project and then helped me identify likely suspects. I’m most grateful to them, and also to Chris Scott of the city council archives, who helped with clues in old rates records.

When considering old University of Otago buildings, most people probably think first of the old stone buildings at the centre of the campus. When the university council decided to move operations from the original location in Princes Street, it commissioned two large buildings on its new site beside the Leith in North Dunedin. Work on the chemistry and anatomy building (now the geology building) was completed in 1878, and on the main building (now the registry) in 1879. Both were smaller than they are today, with extensions added in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The St David Street homes for four professors (now known as Scott/Shand House and Black/Sale House) were also completed in 1879.

As the university expanded, it began acquiring properties neighbouring its original block of land. Often these included old houses, which ranged from tiny cottages to substantial residences. Some were later demolished to make way for new buildings but others have survived, including a few which pre-date the geology building. Their original residents had no idea they would one day be living close to a university, let alone that their house would one day be part of it!

The east side of Mellor House, photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

We are pretty certain that the honour of being the oldest building on campus belongs to Mellor House, one of the old Union Street houses now occupied by the psychology department. The house was originally built in 1862 for Thomas Calcutt, a printer who migrated from England to Otago in 1858. As well as continuing to work in the printing trade, Calcutt served as a court clerk and later became a valuer of land taken for public works. He probably picked up the latter job because of his experience as a land speculator, for his 1895 obituary notes that “he displayed much natural shrewdness in matters of business, and made many profitable speculations in landed property.” Early on – certainly by 1861 – he acquired all of the land in the block bounded by Clyde Street, Union Street, Leith Street and the river; there were no houses on the land at that stage. In March 1862 advertisements appeared in the Otago Daily Times for carpenters and painters for “a Dwelling House now building for Mr Thomas Calcutt, Pelichet Bay. Apply to the foreman on the Ground.” By October of that year, Thomas and Mary Calcutt were living in their new home, dubbed Leith Cottage, where Mary gave birth to their son Arthur.

Mellor House as it appears from Union Street. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

Sadly, baby Arthur Calcutt died at just four months, but in January 1864 another child was born at Leith Cottage, this time to its new owners, George and Ann Cook. While the Calcutts’ stay in the house had been brief, the Cook family were to own it for eight decades. George Cook was an English solicitor who arrived in Otago late in 1860 and was admitted to the New Zealand bar in January 1861; intriguingly, his wife Ann and one of their children migrated a couple of years earlier, on the same ship as Thomas Calcutt. The final reference I have found to the name “Leith Cottage” dates from 1868, when Ann Cook advertised for a general servant. Perhaps this name was dropped as the house was extended: like many houses of the period it has clearly been enlarged from humbler beginnings.

The house at 93 Union Place, which dates from the early 20th century, was moved there from the site of the new Commerce Building. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

By the time George Cook died in 1898, aged 82, he was Dunedin’s longest serving lawyer. He was a careful and conservative practitioner: “an upright, estimable lawyer of the old English school – a man who brought with him to the colony all the traditions and all the prejudices of the English bar, and who resented all innovations.” The Cooks lived in splendid isolation on their property until around 1902, when further houses were added to the block; presumably Ann Cook sold off some of the land after her husband died. Some of the houses built around that time also survive and are now occupied by the psychology department, including those at 99 Union Street (next to the Commerce Building) and 97 Union Street (Galton House). The charming two-storey house on the corner of Leith and Union streets was originally at 103 Union Street, but moved to its current location at the top of the hill in 1990 to make way for the new Commerce Building.

Galton House was built in the grounds of the Cook family home in the early years of the 20th century. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

When Ann Cook died in 1907 she left the original family home to son John Alfred Cook. John Cook was another solicitor; indeed he practised together with his father for some time. Law ran in the family: another son, Reginald Cook, was a lawyer in Sydney, while daughter Clara Cook married lawyer Frederick Chapman, who became a well-known judge. Their brother George was a government engineer, while Spencer was a banker and Montague worked for Dalgetys. Later Cook generations also entered the law, and the name survives as part of legal firm Gallaway Cook Allan. John Cook died at his Union Street home in February 1945 at the ripe old age of 92 years and his wife Margaret died four months later.

At that time the university was on the lookout for houses suitable for student accommodation. The roll was on the rise, and would shoot up in 1946 as returned servicemen came to university. It purchased the Cook family home and named it Mellor House in honour of one of Otago’s most successful graduates, chemist Joseph Mellor. A blueprint drawn up for the university in 1945 reveals it as a substantial residence, with six bedrooms, a study and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs were a drawing room, dining room, library, kitchen, scullery, pantry and bathroom, and there were a couple of outbuildings as well.

The growing university needed room for classrooms and offices as well as student bedrooms, and in 1946 Mellor House began its life as a university building with a dual purpose. Upstairs the bedrooms became an outlying part of Arana Hall. The “Mellor House boys” – a mixture of returned servicemen and young school leavers – had their meals at the main college but slept in the old Cook family bedrooms. Arana still has a delightful photograph of one of the residents dressed in some old Victorian woman’s clothing they discovered upstairs! Downstairs became the home of the newly established Department of Geography. Two rooms were knocked together to create a classroom and the pantry became a staff office. Tea on the verandah was a departmental tradition.

The mixed use of the building could be interesting at times. Saturday morning geography labs were often accompanied by the “Mellor House boys” singing in the shower, and fuses frequently blew due to residents plugging toasters into light sockets. As the geography department grew, it gradually expanded upstairs and into a prefab hut in the garden; the last Arana “boys” lived at Mellor House in the late 1950s. Late in 1964 geography moved to the newly built Library/Arts Building (since replaced with the ISB Building). Mellor House then became home, once again, to a newly established department: this time it was psychology.

The Department of Psychology now has a claim to one of the university’s most modern large buildings – the William James Building, completed in 2010 – and what is almost certainly its oldest building – Mellor House, completed in 1862. I wonder what colonial property developer Thomas Calcutt and the legal Cook family would think of the current use of their home!

 

Building for the arts

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1960s, art history, classics, economics, education, English, geography, history, languages, music, philosophy, politics, religion, teacher education, theology

The new Arts Building, photographed around 1970 by Arthur Campbell. The open area at the northern end was later built in to create more teaching spaces. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

“We hope to give the people of Dunedin an arts building they can be proud of,” commented vice-chancellor Arthur Beacham in 1964. Fifty years later, that building is listed for replacement as part of the university’s 15-year building development plan. A new arts building – indeed a whole new humanities precinct – is planned, with construction scheduled to commence late in 2019. It seems timely, then, to look back to the beginnings of the original Arts Building.

Beacham made his 1964 comment as he welcomed the news that the government had granted approval for the University of Otago to obtain sketch plans for a new building to house some of the Faculty of Arts. This was a period of strong central government control over university development. The national University Grants Committee juggled requests for new buildings from the various institutions and made recommendations, which were then approved and funded by the government.

Otago arts student numbers were growing steadily, having doubled to reach nearly 1000 over a decade; they were predicted – fairly accurately as it turned out – to double again by the early 1980s. “Students are being taught in every basement, attic and old house we can bring into use,” noted Beacham. The English department was based in Cameron House, a grand old house which would later make way for Unicol; it also shared space in Lower Studholme, a neighbouring house, with the geography and education departments. Education, one of the largest university departments, also used Marama Hall, while geography had space in Mellor House. Political science and history occupied St Anne’s, yet another old house, once part of Studholme Hall’s accommodation, which would be demolished to create the Unicol site. Classics and modern languages had their home in the old professorial houses, while music, economics and philosophy were in the houses at 403, 411 and 421 Castle Street. Some classes took place in the revealingly named “arts hut”.

A new library was under construction and would open in 1965. Plans were for this to house some of the arts departments – political science, English and geography – until the library expanded to fill the whole building. The new Arts Building would supply teaching space and offices for most of the remaining arts departments. Its site, which had been set aside for a proposed building by the university council as early as 1960, expanded the campus in a new direction.

The site of the new Arts Building is marked ‘Phase I’ in this plan from the 1964 Design Report. The Student Union building is under construction at front left, while in this photo work on the library is yet to commence. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Angus Ross papers, MS-1050/014.

The new building was designed by J.O. Aimers of old Dunedin architectural firm Mason and Wales. His design report of 1964 noted that the long narrow building of six floors would allow for future developments nearby while providing well for “Staff Studies, Seminar Rooms and Research Rooms requiring good daylighting and aspect”. Larger lecture rooms would take up the ground floor space: “This avoids problems in vertical circulation.” Seminar rooms for smaller classes and tutorials were located at the centre portion of each floor, meaning staff offices were in “quiet cul-de-sacs which are desirable in a Faculty of Arts.” Those “cul-de-sacs” would not always be as quiet as the architect anticipated. Ninian Smart, a distinguished religious studies scholar who visited Otago in 1971, recalled “the former dean of arts, reprimanded by the registrar for playing cricket on the matted corridors of the new arts building” (please tell me if you know who that was!). The long corridors would prove a temptation to cricketers of later generations as well – I recall corridor cricket taking place in the history department early in the 21st century.

Building, noted the Otago Daily Times, was “dogged  by Government delays at each stage of planning,” but in 1966 the university received the good news that cabinet had approved a tender from Dunedin firm Mitchell Brothers Ltd for construction of the new building. The total cost, when equipped, would be around £550,000. Occupation was scheduled for 1969, but in September 1968 the builders made an “all-out effort” over two weeks to complete two of the larger ground floor lecture theatres so they could be used by the Dunedin Teachers College. The college’s buildings were destroyed by a large fire on 3 September 1968 and the university – then a separate institution – offered this, along with some other accommodation, as “rescue aid.”

The Minister of Education, Arthur Kinsella, formally opened the Arts Building on 5 March 1969. He noted that the building “was a particularly fine one. The planning had been done economically, and he felt it was good value for money.” These comments were presumably a reaction to the criticism of Prof Eric Herd, dean of the arts faculty, who informed him that the building was “already too small …. Surely it is less expensive in the long run to design a building which will last for 20 years instead of three.” In 1972 the government approved preliminary planning of another larger “arts-library block” – the future Hocken/Richardson Building – which would house several arts departments, allowing others to expand within the 1969 Arts Building.

People sometimes refer to the Arts Building as the Burns Building, as its larger teaching areas are known as the Burns lecture theatres. I was asked recently if these are named after Reverend Thomas Burns, the spiritual leader of the Otago colony and first chancellor of the university, or his nephew Robbie Burns, the poet. I haven’t managed to find the answer yet, but either – or both! – would be appropriate for a building which is now home to the Department of English and the Robert Burns Fellow as well as the Department of Theology and Religion. Others who call the Arts Building home at present are the Departments of Politics, Classics, Languages and Cultures, History and Art History, and the administrative staff of the Division of Humanities.

Like all parts of the university, the Arts Building has seen many interesting people come and go through its history. Though few of its current occupants seem to regret its planned future replacement, it does hold many memories. Do you have any to share?

A quarter-century of tourism

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1980s, 1990s, 2000s, geography, marketing, tourism

By the 1980s New Zealand was being marketed as a destination for wine tourism, and this became a field of teaching and research for Otago’s new Centre for Tourism. This 1980 poster, published by the Government Printer, was photographed by Terry Hann for the National Publicity Studios. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference Eph-D-TOURISM-1980-01.

It is now twenty-five years since the University of Otago established a Centre for Tourism and first offered a qualification in that subject. Its arrival was not without controversy – some academics argued that tourism lacked a body of unique disciplinary knowledge and could not be treated as the equivalent of other subject areas. Nevertheless, there was clearly a gap in research into the industry, and Otago was keen to make its mark in this emerging field.

In 1986 the university invited Prof George Doxey of York University, Toronto to visit. His report, “A programme in tourism at the University of Otago,” noted that the tourism industry was growing rapidly in New Zealand but this growth was not accompanied by solid research. A new tourism research centre could play a vital role in coordinating research and training in this increasingly important branch of the economy. The Otago Polytechnic already offered a one-year course in tourist studies; he recommended the development of postgraduate programmes at the university.

After further consultation with the tourism industry the Centre for Tourism got off the ground in 1989. It was, essentially, an initiative of the departments of geography and marketing, and had an interdisciplinary focus. These departments, along with sport and leisure studies at the School of Physical Education, had already been teaching on tourism in some of their third and fourth-year papers; most of these papers had arisen out of an interest in outdoor recreation. Twelve students enrolled for the new Diploma in Tourism qualification in that first year. It was a postgraduate qualification, though people with extensive experience in the tourism industry could enrol without a prior degree. Students completed four papers and a short dissertation.

Students were attracted to New Zealand’s first postgrad course fully devoted to tourism. After the first five years the centre’s director, Geoff Kearsley (previously a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography), noted there were now two applications for each of the 30 places available, and students in the Diploma for Graduates and Masters in Regional and Resource Planning programmes often took a tourism paper or two. The centre already had PhD and Masters students, and nearly a hundred dissertations and theses had been completed. The most popular fields of research were visitor satisfaction, environmental protection and wilderness management.

The growth of the Centre for Tourism led to changes. In 1993 Kearsley, previously half-time in the role, became full-time director, and its administration moved from the Department of Geography to the Division of Commerce, where it became part of the Advanced Business Programme for six years. The Centre’s research received a big boost in 1995 when Kearsley, together with Prof Rob Lawson of the Department of Marketing, received a $900,000 grant from the Public Good Science Fund for a project on sustainable tourism – this was the biggest external research grant yet awarded to the university. Kearsley was promoted to a personal chair in tourism studies the following year.

A 1984 poster promoting New Zealand’s recreational possibilities. Outdoor recreation was a subject of interest to various Otago departments and became an important field of research for the Centre for Tourism. New Zealand Tourist and Publicity Department poster. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference Eph-D-TOURISM-1984-02.

Meanwhile, important new developments were happening at undergraduate level. In 1994 the Centre offered its first undergraduate paper, TOUR 201, Principles of Tourism. This attracted over 150 students in its first year, and in 1995 a second stage 2 paper on world tourism was added. In 1997 a stage 3 paper on tourism and heritage helped meet student demand for further courses. In 1996 Kearsley commented that tourism was still being looked at vocationally in New Zealand, and needed to develop “as an academic subject in its own right”; it would “eventually stand alongside history, geography and other social sciences.”

Not everybody agreed. There may have been a market for an undergraduate degree in tourism, but many academics remained wary of its disciplinary credentials. The centre failed in its early attempts to have tourism included as a major within a commerce degree, but did succeed in having their own degree, a Bachelor of Tourism, introduced in 1999. In 2001 the Centre for Tourism reached a new stage of maturity when it became a full department within the Division of Commerce. Finally, in 2007, tourism became a major within the restructured BCom degree, and the BTour came to an end.

As the tourism industry has become an ever more important part of the New Zealand economy in the past 25 years, tourism has also developed as an academic discipline. Undergraduate degrees specialising in tourism are now also available at Waikato, Victoria, Lincoln and AUT universities, as well as in various technical institutes. While competition for the student market is intense, Otago has maintained a strong department, currently employing nine academic staff. As at the beginning, it retains a strong focus on postgraduate research, with thirty current PhD students.

Do you have any stories to share of the first twenty-five years of tourism at Otago?

Geography gets off the ground

Tags

1940s, 1950s, field work, geography

Geography students on a stage III field trip outside the Vulcan Hotel, St Bathans, c.1953. Head of department Ron Lister stands sixth from left in the front. Can you identify anybody else? Photograph courtesy of Patricia Graham.

Geography has the high school syllabus to thank for its beginnings as a university subject at Otago. In recent weeks I’ve posted about a couple of popular subjects that first got their own departments at Otago in the 1960s: psychology and anthropology. Geography got off the ground a little earlier because, unlike those two subjects, it was taught in schools. In 1945 the government introduced extensive changes to the secondary school curriculum, including, among other things, a new focus on social studies. With the school leaving age raised from 14 years to 15 years in 1944, and a policy to reduce class sizes, there was an ever-increasing demand for teachers able to teach junior pupils social studies and senior pupils geography. Secondary principals had already been campaigning for a full university degree in geography for some years, and there was clearly a demand for the subject from people who had enjoyed it at school. World War II only increased this demand – overseas service prompted an interest in geography for some New Zealanders, while others who had stayed home and followed the events of the war also developed a new passion for the subject. Existing geography courses at Auckland and Canterbury could not keep up with the demand.

The department began when Otago’s first geography lecturer, Ben Garnier, arrived late in 1945; from 1946 students could commence a major in geography for a BA, and an MA course began in 1950. Garnier was born in China and educated in England; he completed a master’s degree from Cambridge and taught at Wellington Technical College before taking up the Otago post. After leaving in 1951 he continued his academic career in geography in Nigeria, the US and Canada. Garnier later recalled his first lecture at Otago. The new department was allocated a few rooms in Mellor House, an old home in Union Street (now part of the Department of Psychology), and the furniture arrived just a couple of hours before the first class. “When I entered the lecture room, I could hardly believe my eyes,” wrote Garnier. “Every seat was taken. There were people sitting on the tables and others were propping up the walls, while a substantial number had spilled over onto the verandah outside. Instead of the 20 to 25 students I had been advised to expect, there were, as I remember, between 70 and 80 starting off geography at Otago.” Garnier was delighted at this response, and relieved when the university found them a larger lecture room.

The booming new department got a helping hand from the Professors of Geology and Mines, who lent maps, aerial photographs and equipment to help with the practical elements of the course. The first demonstrator was one of the many returned servicemen flooding onto campus; he was studying mining but his experience as an Air Force navigator made him ideal to teach some geography skills! Richard Greenwood, another Cambridge-trained geographer, arrived early in 1948 as the department’s second lecturer; his wife Eileen, also a geographer, became a demonstrator. Greenwood recalled that the students “were a stimulating mixture of school leavers and returned servicemen.” He taught on the regional geography of Europe and Asia, while Garnier concentrated on physical geography, including his special interest field of climatology. Students interpreted maps and carried out rural and urban surveys as part of their field work. The Taieri was a frequent subject of student surveys, and Karitane was another location mapped and interpreted with varying degrees of success by early students. Senior students went further afield for their practical work. 1940s student Mary Jackson (nee Kibblewhite) recalled a Stage III field trip to Benmore Station, near Omarama, where “my birthday was marked by a day’s deer stalking with four male students and a large meat pie for my birthday cake, which the five of us ate while sheltering from the wind in the snow tussocks high on the hills.”

The 1954 Stage III field trip was based in Balclutha. Ron Lister is on the far right. Seated next to him is Mary Kibblewhite, then possibly Doric Mabon and Elizabeth Blomfield. The woman closest to the camera is Beverley South; next to her is Jocelyn Cole, then John Sinclair and Mary James. At the back left, partially obscured, is Raynor Robb. Second on the right from him is Ray Shave. Photograph courtesy of Patricia Graham.

Regular field trips and tutorials helped create within geography a spirit of camaraderie and the department became well-known for its friendly environment. Though neither Garnier nor Greenwood remained long at Otago, they successfully established, with only minimal resources, a large new department. Their initial work was consolidated by their successors, most notably Ron Lister, who replaced Garnier as senior lecturer in 1952. When geography finally got its first professorial chair, in 1965, Lister was appointed to the role; he retired in 1982 after thirty years as head of department.

Some of the information in this post comes from a wonderful book of reminiscences, From Mellor to Hocken, published in 1995 to mark the department’s 50th anniversary. Do you have any further stories to share of the early years of the Department of Geography? I am grateful to the remarkable Hugh Kidd, long-time geography staff member, for helping identify the photographs. Can you spot anybody else you know in them?

Out in the field

Tags

1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, botany, field work, geography

Botanists on a research trip to Secretary Island, Fiordland, in 1964. From left: Alan Mark, Geoff Baylis, George Scott, Larry Bliss, Peter Wardle, Harold Jacobs. Photograph courtesy of the Department of Botany.

Otago was delighted to be listed as one of the world’s most beautiful university campuses by the Telegraph last year, and by the Huffington Post more recently. Otago has another great advantage in being located in the stunning natural environment of southern New Zealand (not that I’m at all biased!). A major part of the appeal of the university for some staff and students is its proximity to spectacular landscapes and opportunities for snow sports, tramping, and other outdoor recreation.

Of course, for some staff and students, notably those in the botany, geography, geology and marine science departments, getting into the great outdoors is not just recreation, but a significant part of their study and research. Over the years undergraduate geography students have attended field camps in various locations around southern New Zealand, among them Tekapo, Pounawea, Herbert, Gunns Bush, Bannockburn and, more recently, Ruataniwha. While the field camps for geography science majors tended to be out in the wilderness, geography arts majors stayed in more settled locations, such as Queenstown, Invercargill, Oamaru and Wanaka. Conditions were not luxurious – Emeritus Professor Peter Holland recalls the year when it was so cold at Bannockburn that the pipes froze and there was no running water! Residential field camps played no small part in the friendly and family-type atmosphere which made the department very popular with students.

Prof Alan Mark (front left) and botany students on Mt Armstrong, in Mt Aspiring National Park, 1984. Michael Heads is at the back wearing a check shirt – do you recognise anybody else? Photograph courtesy of the Department of Botany.

For a couple of decades botanist Alan Mark took the students in his combined second and third year course on New Zealand plant ecology on an extensive 10-12 day field trip to experience the varied ecological niches of southern New Zealand. These remarkable trips generally included on the itinerary Oamaru, the Mackenzie country, Mt Cook, Mt Hutt, the Craigieburn Range, Arthurs Pass, Harihari, Haast, Jackson Bay, Central Otago and the Mt Pisa or Old Man Ranges. Accommodation ranged from shearers’ quarters to Forestry Service stations. It was a physically demanding trip, but once they had recovered students came to appreciate all they had learned, and it certainly brought classes closer together. Botany students also took less demanding weekend trips to Manapouri, with the extra attractions of a boat trip and a good lunch courtesy of the Guardians of Lake Manapouri.

Many postgraduate students and staff of these departments carried out their own extensive field trips as part of their research, and of course marine scientists had their own research vessel … but I’ll save that for another post. Do you have any memorable stories to share about university field trips?

A damp party of botanists emerges from sampling forest on Secretary Island, Fiordland, c.1995. From left: Kath Dickinson, Brent Fagan, Alan Mark, Steven Roxburgh, Brent Kelley, Warren King. Photograph courtesy of the Department of Botany.