Frederick Street: little street, big story

Many Wellingtonians would struggle to find Frederick Street on a map, and once they found it, would see little of interest in this scrappy backwater between the arterial rush of Taranaki Street and an unfashionable stretch of upper Tory Street. But even on the surface, there are individualistic quirks and remnants of older times. And the deeper one digs, the more one finds connections to Wellington’s artistic, architectural and cultural history, from secret societies and “the patron saint of pot”, to free jazz and pop-culture mosaics.
Haining Street might be better known as the heart of Wellington’s old Chinatown (with its dark tales of opium and gambling, and the death of Joe Kum Yung at the hands of a racist madman), but Frederick Street was also an important part of that quarter. At the time, it was known for buildings of a slightly higher quality, which may be why today there are more architectural reminders here of the city’s Chinese past. This street also had its share of police raids on pakapoo (gambling) dens, and pakehaā boys and girls were warned not to stray among the rickety cottages for fear of being boiled in a copper or sold into white slavery, but it’s the relics of slightly more respectable institutions that survive today.
While there’s little more than a gateway and façade left at number 2, Chinese and English inscriptions signal the former headquarters of the Tung Jung Association. One of many social clubs that helped Chinese immigrants hang on to provincial and village ties amid a hostile white populace, Tung Jung maintained a presence here until the 1990s, when it moved to the fringes of Te Aro. Despite lurid speculation from outside their community, most Chinese were just struggling to make a living, like every other Wellingtonian in early settler times.
There’s a more imposing reminder of old Chinatown at number 37, in the solid neo-classical form of the Chinese Masonic Society. The “Masonic” part of the name is baffling at first, and apart from the gouged-out remnants of the Masonic square and compasses on the parapet, it’s hard to see what connects Wellington’s Chinatown to Freemasonry. In fact, the adoption of some Masonic symbolism and regalia is a relatively recent stage for an ancient quasi-secret society – variously known as Chee Kung Tong, Tiandihui, the Hung League and the Heaven and Earth Society – with distant origins in Chinese dynastic politics. Nevertheless, the society was respectable enough for the building’s 1925 gala opening to be attended by the mayor and archdeacon of Wellington. This may have been the beginning of the end of Chinatown. As prejudice slowly waned, the community dispersed and became a much more integral part of wider society. As social historian David McGill once wrote, “The Chinese have prospered and grown invisible”.
Perhaps the most visible and architecturally noteworthy remnant is the Anglican Chinese Mission Hall. Like the others, this building has little if any connection to traditional Chinese architecture. Instead, its cross and foundation stone represent its mission to “spread... His kingdom among the Chinese in this diocese”, and the tall Gothic windows and clerestories connect it to Frederick de Jersey Clere’s better known edifices such as St Mary of the Angels.
Religious fervour and charity have long been part of Frederick Street, and a building at the Tory Street corner connects it to one of New Zealand’s most remarkable religious figures. The Suzanne Aubert Compassion Centre is named after the nun (also known as Sister Mary Joseph) who ran away from her French family to help the poor and sick in New Zealand. The centre carries on the work of Wellington’s first soup kitchen, which Aubert set up in nearby Buckle Street, and behind the child-like stick-figure murals it provides food, friendship and advocacy for the troubled and homeless. Aubert was also known for manufacturing herbal medicines, partly based upon traditional Maori rongoa, and it’s the fact that some of these contained hemp that has led stoners to claim her as the “patron saint of pot”.
If you pass down Frederick Street on a Sunday, it will be surprisingly busy as the congregations come and go from a large Pentecostal church that backs onto the street. The church is part of a movement called Christian Revival Centre New Zealand, indicating a zeal that seems at odds with its nondescript exterior. There is a wider trend for new churches to eschew architectural expression of their faith in favour of industrial-scale halls. These churches serve denominational and ethnic catchments (in this case, Filipino, among others) rather than parishes, so parking and access to the motorway are more important than attachment to a physical community.
There are other anonymous buildings here that play host to more earthly powers, such as the blank hulks of substations, protecting behind rough-cast concrete the nodes that keep Wellington humming. Scrappy ivy and token native plantings hide car-park walls, and much of the north side of the street here is dominated by the intimidating façade of an anonymous three-storey building. However, its history is revealed by a plaque on its side wall – “Opened by the Right Honourable R.O. Douglas, 1985” – beside a half-forgotten logo, a bold arrow swooping around a compass rose to form a stylised ‘d’.
This was the home of Databank Systems Ltd, formed in the days when a ‘computer’ wasn’t something you’d carry in your pocket, but a hulking beast that took up a whole building and required careful tending by white-coated technicians. In 1967, BNZ decided it needed a computer to handle the increasing volume of cheque transactions (even the word ‘cheque’ looks quaint today), but the National Bank was the only one with a precious computer import licence. The trading banks all banded together to form one computing company, and for many years a series of semi-secret locations formed the electronic nexus of the country’s financial web. Douglas’s economic maelstrom eventually put an end to such cooperation, and the premises now house the technology arm of just one bank. Even so, the introverted design still reflects the paranoia of an era when an anarchist tried to blow up the Wanganui Computer, and Mi-Sex sang, “There’s a million angry citizens / Looking down their tubes at me”.
Frederick Street has also been home to much more tangible forms of industry: paper mills and coal depots, auto garages and grocery warehouses maintained a gritty, workaday feel in the neighbourhood for most of the 20th century. But those industries began moving on some time ago, and we have just lost one of the last survivors of Te Aro’s industrial past. The stout but earthquake-prone walls of Murdoch’s pickle factory have now vanished from the Taranaki Street corner, and with them the peeling, painted billboard for “Icing Sugar, Spices and Pickles”. Old-time denizens of the street are unlikely to miss the pungent miasma of vinegar, but as the barren expanse of the resulting temporary car park lies fallow, awaiting the slow turn of the economic cycle, it leaves an uncomfortable gap in the streetscape.
Most of the recent changes along the street have been more incremental, as new occupants take over old buildings and make them their own, often playing a subtle part in defining Wellington’s wider identity as “cultural capital”. This fits in with the standard narrative of inner-city regeneration: abandoned industrial buildings in unfashionable quarters provide cheap accommodation for artists, followed by creative professionals, then cafés, galleries and shops, and before long the neighbourhood is either a hub of urban vitality or a gentrified wasteland devoid of all authentic character, depending upon your point of view.
Two of the former Chinese institutional buildings exhibit part of this process. After the departure of the Chee Kung Tong, the old Chinese Masonic Society building was home to various office and residential activities, including Film New Zealand, which helps film-makers find locations across the country. It’s now the studio for Inject Design, which has created a visual identity for some of the businesses and musical acts that have helped define Wellington’s inner-city image over the last decade, including Mojo Coffee, Fat Freddy’s Drop, The Matterhorn and Scopa.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Mission Hall has nurtured a less commercial streak in Wellington’s artistic life. After time as a photographer’s studio, then as a band practice space, it was for some years the home base for Plan 9 Music. David Donaldson, Steve Roche and Janet Roddick are legends in the Wellington avant-garde music scene, and anyone of a certain age will remember Six Volts and Brainchilds gigs with bewildered fondness. As Plan 9, they created everything from ambient sound design to live performances based on the works of James K. Baxter, Len Lye and Kurt Weill. Their success grew with Peter Jackson’s as they contributed to soundtracks for his biggest films, and they’ve now moved out to join him in Miramar.
But that has left room for Fred’s, or the Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society to give it its full name. From free music and improvisational jazz stalwarts Jeff Henderson and erstwhile Six Volter Anthony Donaldson, to postmodern turntablist Alphabethead, via duelling cellists, art exhibitions and interactive theatre, the spirit of experimentation lives on.
There’s also a touch of architectural experimentation among the otherwise utilitarian late-industrial streetscape. Gus Watt’s townhouse conversions have transformed a stolid warehouse into an exuberant expression of vernacular architecture. Rather than a blank wall at ground level, there’s a Hundertwasser-inspired mosaic that flows between abstract and representational, incorporating two-dimensional cabbage trees behind the real ones, while a blue-skinned James Dean lounges on a motorbike, complete with working headlight and indicators.
Across the road, there’s a much more restrained building that is nonetheless the result of some innovative thinking. A group of academics at Victoria University wanted to undertake a practical experiment in affordable, sustainable inner-city housing, and after researching appropriate sites they settled on Frederick Street. The design experimented with double-duty use of materials, adaptable living spaces, optimal orientation and low-impact construction, and the resulting apartments sold readily. Nearly ten years on, the use of modest materials is perhaps a little too obvious, and the ground floor does little for the life of the street, but as a prototype it’s an example that’s worth pursuing further.
To my eye, though, the most successful piece of contemporary architecture has to be the Croxley Mills apartment conversion. The new floors complement rather than imitate the original building, with sharp planes of glass and lightweight materials riffing against the solid heft of the factory below. A stainless-steel helix rises between balconies, bringing shiny futurist dynamism to an otherwise elegantly controlled composition.
The new residents of Frederick Street have now been joined, possibly for the first time, by tourists. Gourmet Stay has recently opened in an undemonstrative three-storey building, combining the most bijou of boutique hotels with a ground-floor café and deli, and with the Watt apartments and Masonic Hall it adds up to a human-scaled, quasi-European urban streetscape. As well as providing accommodation and artisan cheeses for palate-conscious visitors, might Gourmet Stay also hail the start of a new retail-friendly future for this near-forgotten street?
In some ways, Frederick Street is coming full circle. From a residential neighbourhood with scattered retail and (often illegal) entertainment, the quarter has gone through the familiar cycle of decline, rebirth and gentrification, and now combines a burgeoning population with the beginnings of a revitalised street life. Much, however, will depend upon the response to earthquake threats and the fragile fortunes of the urban economy.
In the 1920s, these blocks were earmarked for wholesale demolition, partly to provide a grand boulevard leading up to the National War Memorial, and partly as an excuse to clear the embarrassing ‘slum’ that Te Aro had become. As much as such an exercise in formal axial planning would have provided a stunning urban set piece, we would have lost the messy but vital history of these backstreets. We can now recognise the importance of streets and lanes to the life of the city, and Wellington is all the richer for this intricate, chaotic palimpsest of urban history.