CHRISTCHURCH IN THE TWENTIES—I Changes In Business And Residential Areas

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 14

CHRISTCHURCH IN THE TWENTIES—I Changes In Business And Residential Areas

(Written by

RUTH FRANCE

the Christchurch Civic Trust)

Change is inevitable, and desirable, yet that does not prevent a certain nostalgia for the scenes of one’s youth, now unrecognisable, and for the more leisurely manners and methods of transport which helped make the setting and character of a city, but which were the first of its attributes to change.

Christchurch possesses still many of her older buildings, some of which it is hoped will never fall to the bulldozer, for we need the past as well as the present and future; but the surroundings of these buildings are no longer the same.

In my youth the raw look of colonial times had given way to a green-hearted city, which now, alas, is giving way to concreted ear-parks like rashes round the buildings. The city has spread into residential districts, residential districts have spread to the country. And since the twenties shops, schools, university and museum have undergone great changes. To the casual eye the centre of the city was then much the same as now. There are new buildings, but not a great many, and some facelifts. In

the twenties Tattersall’s Horse Market still lifted its curved roof in Cashel street, its shadows even then redolent of the past, and the City Council Chambers were on the way, albeit with the usual acrimony, the foundation stone being laid in 1922. Lower High street was a busy shopping centre, with two large stores, of which Stranges was gutted early in the decade by one of the city’s notable fires. The Bridge of Remembrance was built at that time, being completed in 1923, and fulfilling only too well the prophecies of the Jeremiahs who foresaw that the carriageway under the arch was much too narrow for future requirements. Leisurely Shopping The old-established shops were different places then. They were quiet, with carpeted floors and men in morning coats who pulled forward a chair for madam to sit on, high-seated so that she might examine closely the goods on the counter which were unfolded and displayed for her attention. There was then no plastic packaging which must not be disturbed, and the assistant spent some time in refolding goods once madam was satisfied, or had postponed her decision. It was in the early thirties that the first American style department stores appeared in Christchurch, with goods displayed in trays on the counters. The old shops with their elaborate appointments, the comfortable lounges with great bowls of flowers and open fires in the winter now seem Victorian in their remoteness, as do the tearooms and dining-rooms with which the city was well-fur-nished. Stiff white tablecloths and gleaming arrays of silver, waitresses in black with starched white caps and aprons, more flowers. The Christchurch customer was then well cared for. There was more time, for everything. Pickford and Chaplin

The Avon and the State theatres have been built since the twenties, but others, though refurbished, occupy the sites I visited as a child to see Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Tom Mix. The Liberty, The Crystal Palace, The Strand, took the Saturday afternoon threepences of my sisters and myself for two hours of doubtful pleasure, for to me everything was real, and when Mary Pickford wept I did too. I could scarcely bear it

As I grew older I was more able to separate the dream world from the real, so that the hardness of the chairs in the then recently-built Radiant Theatre, now the Repertory Theatre, is as lasting a memory as the magnificence of the performance of Professor Shelley as Socrates. I was only too anxious, in the finish, for the hemlock to do Yet I found Allan Wilkie’s production of “The Tempest,” in the Theatre Royal, a magical performance. For some of the scenes the stage was bathed in green light, giving an unreal, remote quality, though this atmosphere, again, was difficult to keep alive when we came out from our precarious perch in “the gods” to descend the open-air iron stairway which then was the only access to the gallery, and was like nothing so much as a fire-escape. What a race up there, when the doors opened, to obtain the best seats.

Here too we saw Sybil Thorndike as Saint Joan. No great film surpassed the memory of these flesh and blood performances, which, after the advent of talking films in the thirties, became a thing of the past. The picture theatres were refurbished, the Regent acquired a ceiling of twinkling stars which was a source of wonder, and Al Jolson, Janet Gaynor, and Deanna Durbin shone as brightly, with Shirley Temple to follow. Four Newspapers There were four newspapers in the city: "The Press” and the “Lyttelton Times” were morning papers. The “Star” and the “Sun” came out in the afternoon. The depression of the thirties reduced them to two, the “Star” and the “Sun” combining for a while as “StarSun.”

It is difficult, when remembering the city as it was then, not think of people; these two helped to form in no small degree the character and the flavour of Christchurch. Since I was young then I have vivid memories of how Esther Glen, of the “Sun,” organised hundreds of children, gave them an outlet for their energy and their talents, ask Profes-

sor Shelley for the use of the university Little Theatre, and produced a great pantomime, which somehow staggered to a successful conclusion in the newly built Civic Theatre.

The commercial part of the city did not spread very far. The west end between Rolleston avenue and Cambridge terrace, apart form the university, was a residential area of large houses with tree-hung gardens. A few guest houses, no flats. These came as something new, in the thirties. Boys’ High School occupied one of the university buildings, moving to Riccarton in 1927. The university controlled the Public Library. Perhaps because one was young, the thought of change was remote. Then was now, the present, which controlled the future. One did not imagine, somehow, the future absorbing the present, which became, too soon, the nostalgic past, so that buildings, places, convey not only their present occupants and present uses, but sounds and faces of the past. Engulfed by Factories

The city has encroached on pleasant homes of Armagh street and Oxford terrace. Near the hospital one sees mainly petrol stations and garages. Industry has spread to the east, the south and the south-west, eating up the early cottages in St. Asaph street and Moorhouse avenue.

In the early twenties Stewart street existed as a Dickensian winding street of old cob tages and overhung shops which emerged on Moorhouse avenue. Today factories have taken over almost the whole area, a process which perhaps began when in the late twenties the avenue was laid down as the first concrete road in Christchurch. It was inevitable that the early cottages and shops should disappear; only a few of them remain, as in Fitzgerald avenue and Ferry road. These were already old in the twenties, some with a doubtful history as grog shops. Because industry has not disturbed them they are likely to remain for a time yet. In the west, where industry has expanded along Blenheim road, lay open country. On Riccarton road there was much unbuilt land beyond the then small shopping area, and Clyde road was the tram terminus. Beyond this were few houses. To travel from Riccarton to Lincoln road was to go across country. Near the Show Grounds were areas of open land, and all building stopped near the Spreydon School, which again was the tram terminus. Along Lincoln road, then unpaved, herds of sheep and cattle were driven to the saleyards every Wednesday, raising clouds of dust which hung golden in the late

afternoon sun, when they were driven out again. First Aeroplane From near the tram terminus my sisters and I watched in 1928 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith's Southern Cross circle and descend towards Wigram airfield, at the end of the first successful flight across the Tasman. We were not more moved when the Russians launched the first Sputnik. Nor had we been less moved when in 1919 the whole of our schoolmates and teachers at Cashmere School rushed out of doors to view an aeroplane which was circling the hills. It was the first we had ever seen. Hoon Hay road, again, was a country road. There were large areas of vacant land in Spreydon, at the south end of Colombo street, and among the houses on Cashmere. To go to school there was to journey to the edge of the world. Beyond the school lay golden tussock paddocks where we girls made houses among the pine trees. The walls were of sacking stretched between the trunks, and the beds of piled pine needles. Territorial rights were set out by lines of stones, though we admitted favoured visitors. Only the school bell recalled us to the terrors of spelling, which we learned then in the primers. Building the Takahe The tram went beyond the houses as far as the Takahe, probably because this was the only available flat land on which it might pause. The Takahe in the twenties was unfinished, derelict. The visionary Harry Ell had no money for its completion. He was regarded as a fanatic. But during the depression the Government sent men on relief work to finish' his Summit road and the Takahe, though not the other rest houses which were a part of his plan. The Sign of the Kiwi, once a tearoom, lay unused for years, though it is now a shop. The rest house at Kennedy’s bush is a ruin. Fendalton stopped short at Clyde road, which again was a tram terminus. Since few people possessed cars, houses clustered along the tram routes. The park there was in its rough beginnings, and Memorial avenue, which was then Burnside road, soon ran between paddocks. Harewood Airport did not exist Yet the tennis club remains in the same position. We panted round it on hot evenings. Other suburbs too, Papanul, St. Albans, did not extend far from the city. St Bede’s College was in the country, as was the Northcote settlement for returned servicemen, which languished for lack of transport becoming a white elephant There was no Ovaltine factory, and Belfast was an isolated community.

Transport as always, was the important factor. The means of transport of the twenties were very different from those of today. (To be concluded)