Michael Fowler: Colonial treasurer sparked colonial treasures

The Napier Court House in 1876 – note how close Marine Parade beach was then. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

Napier in 1874 was the year it was proclaimed a borough council.

At the bottom left of the area photo is the Hawke's Bay Club (built in 1868 and rebuilt 1906), and across Browning St from this building is the framework of the Napier Court House (now Conservation House) going up.

Both these buildings are on what was known as Beach Rd, which went from the now Dome Building to Coote Rd. It was about this time that the name was changed from Beach Rd to Marine Parade.

The almost-triangle section that the courthouse is being built on was a government reserve, upon which the Napier Borough Council would open its offices in December 1884, and build an athenaeum (replaced in 1937 with what is now MTG Hawke's Bay).

Colonial treasurer and later premier Julius Vogel embarked upon a substantial programme of immigration and public works during the 1870s by borrowing from London money markets.

New Zealand's non-Maori population nearly doubled from 1871 to 1881, and Napier's would grow from about 3500 in 1874 to nearly 6000 in 1880. (My great-great-grandparents, Henry and Mary Ann Smith, arrived at the beginning of 1874, and Henry would be employed later that year as the sexton for Napier Borough Council in the Napier Hill cemetery.)

This growth strategy of Vogel and his supporters was to advance the purchase of Maori land (as cheaply as they could) during the 1870s, which they believed if integrated into the European economy would assist in reconciliation after the New Zealand land wars of the 1860s. It obviously resulted in more dispossession of Maori from their land.

Napier seemed to be benefiting from the economic activity (including the railway being built in Hawke's Bay) as a correspondent wrote in 1873 to the Hawke's Bay Herald:

"There must be some inducement to bring so many commercial travellers into the town. There must be some money made by the traders, or we should not see so many of them building handsome villas on the hill. It appears to be only necessary to start a shop to do well. A humble shop grows into a large store, and the owner takes rank with importers. In a year or two the trader purchases a buggy and drives out on Sundays and on public holidays. In another year he builds a house, grows roses, and goes in for plants and shrubs with botanical names nobody knows the meaning of. All this time the trader gets stouter and stouter; in the words of Mr Weller [character from Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers] he 'visibly swells' with his banking account."

Hawke's Bay Club (bottom left) and Napier Courthouse under construction in 1874. Photo / Don Wilkie

As part of the public works programme, the Napier Courthouse was built, in the colonial architectural style of its time, and the only one surviving from the Vogel era in Hawke' Bay.

It was designed by colonial architect William Clayton, who called for tenders in 1873, and was opened in 1875 at a cost of £3437 (2021: $496,000). The builder is thought to be Edward Ashton, who lived in Shakespeare Rd.

During the 19th century, the Supreme Court was in session at various times of the year, but it has also accommodated police, the Registrar of Pensions, Births Deaths and Marriages office, bailiffs, Magistrates Court, Maori Land Court, and the District Law Society and its library, over its 113-year history as a courthouse.

As the photos show, the courthouse was in close proximity to the sea. As a result, there was from time to time trouble with high seas. In 1877, stones hurled from the angry sea smashed into the courthouse shattering its windows. This event, along with houses on Marine Parade being similarly damaged, led to the eventual building of the sea wall, whose remnants can of course be seen today.

The Napier Courthouse survived the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake – due only to the wind's direction being fortuitously in its favour. Its wooden pile construction assisted in it surviving the shaking. With one of the few buildings left intact, it was then used as a mortuary for the many killed in the earthquake.

A new roof had been put on the building in October 1930, and it was renovated in May 1931, indicating some damage was done to the building from the earthquake.

Napier Borough Council was keen to purchase the Napier Court House building in June 1931, so they could control the whole block bounding Marine Parade, Browning St, Herschell St and upper Tennyson St, which included their civic offices and the athenaeum. The courthouse was to be demolished and a civic town hall built on the site. Fortunately for heritage enthusiasts, suitable arrangements between the government and council could not be made, and it remained in use as a courthouse until August 1988.

A new courthouse (the present one) in Hastings St was then used after its closure, and the Department of Conservation in 1989 acquired the former courthouse, which it still occupies today.

Recognising its significant heritage, the former Napier Court House was given a category one classification in June 1990.

Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a contract researcher and commercial business writer of Hawke's Bay history. Follow him on facebook.com/michaelfowlerhistory