Auckland architecture: decorated gable ends

Some of the loveliest decorative elements on Auckland’s historic colonial villas appear on the gable ends above the windows.

Like the other embellishments on these villas – the lacy fretwork panels and brackets, the carved balustrades and finials (illustrated in my recent blog, Auckland architecture: the classic Kiwi villa) – the gable ends are adorned in a variety of ways and styles. Some are relatively plain and simple, others are extremely ornate.

The adornments range from fretwork panels under the gable ridges and overlapping shingle infill, to decorated stucco panels and curved timbering. In almost all cases the peaks of the gable ends are finished off with turned finials which, according to ancient wisdom, serve to ward off witches!

Here are some of the beautiful examples I’ve photographed during my walks around the inner-city suburbs of Auckland.

Auckland architecture: the classic Kiwi villa

One of the things I enjoy most about walking around the streets of inner-city Auckland is the architecture, in particular the feast of old villas that still grace the streets of suburbs like Parnell and Grafton, Ponsonby and Herne Bay, St Mary’s Bay and Grey Lynn.

Many moons ago, I owned and lived in one of them, in Ponsonby, in the days before they became the heart’s desire of the trendy young professionals with more money than sense who are willing to pay in excess of a million dollars for what is basically a small old wooden cottage. 

I suppose I should be grateful to those wannabe social climbers as at least their aspirations ensure the continued existence of these charming pieces of New Zealand’s architectural history but I can’t help but despair at how they gut the interiors of all remaining traces of the villa’s past and preserve only the facades, in the same way the developers of the late twentieth century gutted Auckland’s old office towers and hotel buildings.

Luckily, I only see the exteriors during my meanderings so I can fool myself that their interior heritage features remain intact. Luckily, too, most of the exterior ornamental elements on these old villas are to be found around the front entry porch or surrounding their generous verandahs or adorning the gable ends, so are easily viewed by the pedestrian.

I’m no expert on architecture, so here, briefly, is what those who are have to say about these charming old villas (Patrick Reynolds, Jeremy Salmond and Jeremy Hansen, Villa: From heritage to contemporary, Godwit, Auckland, 2012):

The villa as a style in colonial New Zealand assumed the dress of the Gothic revival, but fused this with the classical language of Italianate architecture, hybridising both styles into something unique to this country. (p.23)

The villa went through several phases covering the early and late Victorian eras (up to 1905), Edwardian (until 1910) and finally ‘transitional’ as it began to absorb elements of the bungalow style, and as a style of building it expired around 1920. (p.26)

At the height of the villa building boom, a dizzying array of fretwork, embellishments and bay window styles were available, used on both large gentleman’s residences … and on more modest buildings. (p.60)

Cast iron decoration

Above and below, wooden fretwork and friezes

Sometimes manufactured from cast iron, more often carved in timber, the embellishments you are likely to spot on these charming old villas include delicately designed fretwork brackets on the verandah posts, lace-like fretwork friezes and geometric lattice infill running along underneath the verandah roof edges, finely turned balusters on the verandah railings and fancy finials on the gable ends.

According to Stuart Arden and Ian Bowman in The New Zealand Period House: A conservation guide (Random House, Auckland, 2004, p.206), during the mid to late Victorian era and the Edwardian years, these ornamental elements of the villa’s architecture would have been highlighted by the paint colour schemes:

Complex styles usually picked out trim and framing elements. Veranda posts had brackets and mouldings of contrasting colours to posts; finials were a contrasting colour to their brackets; doors had the panels a lighter colour than the stiles and rails, and gable framework was a contrasting colour to the filigree details between. Cresting was generally dark, brackets under eaves could be a different colour to the cornice and the eaves another colour, usually light.

Sadly, many of Auckland’s old villas are nowadays painted in single, stark colours – plain white seems to be a particular favourite, which only serves to display their owners’ ignorance of the history of their property.

Stark white and characterless

Though there are already some restrictions in place, personally, I’d like to see Auckland City Council place much more emphasis on preserving the city’s built heritage, by more stringently limiting and controlling the alterations owners can make to heritage properties. Hopefully, then, what remained of the city’s colonial architecture would be preserved and conserved for those strolling the city’s streets in the future to enjoy. 

For images of the decorative gable ends of colonial villas, see Auckland architecture: decorated gable ends.

Kuala Lumpur: the shophouses

Of the many architectural works that attracted my eye during my recent short break in Kuala Lumpur, the old shophouses were some of the most colourful and character-filled.

As the name suggests, these buildings were a practical combination of shop on the ground floor – which might also include some kind of service provider like a barber, or a cottage industry like a lantern maker, or a community space like a school – and living accommodation, for one or more families, on the upper one or two storeys. 

This building type is common throughout southeast Asia, where examples can be seen in those admirable cities that have preserved their historical heritage, and is similar in many ways to the British terraced house, with no separation but rather a single partition wall between the individual structures.

Kuala Lumpur suffered a massive fire in 1881, devastating for the people of the time but fortunate for lovers of these architectural gems, as, afterwards, the British Resident instructed the locals to rebuild a version of traditional attap (wooden houses) but with clay bricks and tiled roofs. Though many shophouses are now sadly crumbling and decrepit-looking, and overshadowed by modern concrete and glass monstrosities, the use of more permanent construction materials has ensured that many have survived into the 21st century.

These are narrow but deep constructions – an approximate size would be 20 feet x 80 feet but there is nothing standard about these buildings! Their narrowness may reflect the fact that buildings were traditionally taxed by the size of their street frontages, or it may be due to the practicalities of obtaining wooden beams to span the building’s width (rather than having to build inner supporting walls).

There is usually an open court-yard in the middle of the building to provide natural light and ventilation throughout the structure, and all shophouses were required to have a five-foot-wide covered walkway (called kaki lima in Malay) along the street frontage, to allow pedestrians to walk in the shade during the summer, to keep dry during the rainy season and to shelter from vehicular traffic. This eminently sensible idea dates as far back as 1573, when Phillip II of Spain included a similar decree for constructions in South China, and can also be seen in the historical buildings of Manila and Singapore.

In inner-city Kuala Lumpur the oldest shophouses can be found along what was High Street but is now called Jalan Tun H.S. Lee (jalan is the Malay word for road). The oldest examples date from the 1880s but the more common are the neoclassical buildings dating from the early 1900s. Their facades incorporate elements of Chinese, Malay, Indian and European design, including Ionic columns, intricate egg-and-dart and Chinese mythological motifs in the plaster mouldings, and ornate wooden window frames and fretwork.

Another interesting feature along these old roads of Kuala Lumpur is that the roads are often higher above ground than the shop frontages. The repaving of roads and the addition of sewers and other utilities has, over the years, raised the road surface above the level of the five-foot walkway.

Though traditionally the shophouses would have been plastered an off-white colour, many of the modern survivors have been painted a riot of bright colours, ranging from sunshine yellow and peppermint green to lipstick pink. In Kuala Lumpur, some of the heritage walking tours incorporate shophouse-lined streets in their itineraries but it is easy enough to discover these beauties for yourself, simply by wandering the old streets of the Chinatown area. They are a feast for the architectural eye and deserve to be conserved and restored to their former beauty.