Happy 50th Birthday to the Rotorua Museum

Fifty Years in the Bath House 

The building : a few facts

• Bath House designed by Arthur S Wohlmann. Inspector of Works Mr. B.S. Corlett., J.W. Wrigley (Rotorua Architect) and W.J. Trigg (Draughtsman) were responsible for the plans c.1903

• Building commenced January 1906; Official opening 13 August 1908 by Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward. The extra wings originally on the plan were not added at this time.

• In 1912 the first south wing extension is opened.

Photo taken by Alison Leigh 2013.

• The building was not kept in its original state due to lack of funding and eventually by the late 1940s the ‘Bath House’ was in a very bad state and the local Borough Council lobbied the Department of Health to do something about it. BAY OF PLENTY BEACON, VOLUME 12, ISSUE 98, 22 SEPTEMBER 1948 click this link to see what was being said.

From : Rotorua Photo News, 6 June 1964, p.2

• Health Department handover to Rotorua City Council would eventually include 2.5 acres to build the Sportsdrome on and a sum of £60,000 to be spread over 3 years from 1963.
• In 1964 the Sportsdrome was built and connected to the Bath House via an elevated walkway.

The Museum

• The City Engineer reports that the south wing is structurally sound and suitable for a Museum.
• https://www.rotoruamuseum.co.nz/visit-us/taking-the-cure/a-brief-chronology/
• The name “Tudor Towers” is adopted for the building. c.1964 

• In April 1967 Council approved the plan to convert the South Wing into a Museum.
• Mostyn Thompson was invited to be the Museum’s establishing curator/preparator with Don Stafford appointed permanently to that position September 1968. The Museum was officially opened 1st November 1969. A mezzanine floor was introduced a this time and is where the “Colonial Display Rooms” were staged.
• Don Stafford resigns as curator and Ian Rockel is appointed as his replacement. DP 14^th July 1970. 
• Named “City of Rotorua Museum & Arts Centre” 1970 
• New Art Gallery opens in the north wing October 1977. 
• Renamed “The Rotorua Museum & Art Gallery” 1979. 


• In 1980 the recreated basement mud bath was closed due to vandalism. 
• An extension of the ‘Tudor Towers’ building is approved in 1981.  DP 27^th May 1981. 
• In 1982 the ‘South Centennial Wing’ is recommended. After many alterations and replacements later the exterior extension was completed 1983. Official opening/naming DP 23 May 1983. 
• The name ‘Tudor Towers’ to be dropped in favour of “The Bath House Art & History Museum” DP 21 June 1983. 
• The Centennial Wing is redesigned and named the Te Arawa Wing. DP 29 May 1987. 


• The Tudor Towers lease expires 2 Sept 1990, this presented an opportunity to redevelop the Bath House. 
• In 1992 ‘The legacy of Houmaitawhiti’ exhibition is opened. 
• In 1993 a Conservation Plan for the Bath House is commissioned. 
• In 1994  a new name is adopted “The Rotorua Art & History Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa”


• In 2006 The Centennial Project Stage I is completed with the reopening of the viewing platform.
• In 2008 The Centennial Project Stage II is completed with the north wing extension opened.
• In Sept 2011 The Centennial Project Stage III is completed and named the Don Stafford Wing. DP 3 Sept 2011.

• ‘Rotorua Museum to remain closed following detailed assessment’ DP 7 July 2017
• “A comprehensive assessment of Rotorua Museum has shown it falls well below earthquake safety standards and will need to remain closed for the foreseeable future.
• The good news is that it can be fixed. How that happens, how long it will take and how much it will cost now needs to be determined.”


The Future :



Proposed structural strengthening  : Rotorua Museum website image

Sources

1. ‘Bath House, Rotorua: conservation plan’ by Works Consultancy Services Ltd. c.1993
2. www.rotoruamuseum.co.nz
3. 'Taking the waters: early spas in NZ' / Ian Rockel c.1986
4. 'Rotorua Museum: Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa: Strengthening, restoration and redevelopment'
5. 'Rotorua Daily Post' 

This Blog post is by Alison.

Rotorua : Summer of STEAM, Post # 3 : Our Architecture

Rotorua's Architecture.

Our tallest buildings :

Photograph by Alison Leigh for Kete Rotorua, 2013

• 1908 The 'Bath House' by Dr Arthur Stanley Wohlmann with help from the Government architect Mr B.S. Corlett, the draughtsman for the Department of Tourist and Health Resorts and Architect Mr J.W. Wrigley.  Built by Mr William E. Hutchinson, Builder and Contractor from Ponsonby, Auckland.  

The 'Bath House' is described as 88 ft. in height to the ridge and has a decorative tower above that.
Over the years since it's opening there have been a number of additions and alterations, 1911 and 1935. In 1957 Cabinet recommended that the building be demolished! Thankfully the Rotorua City Council took it on in 1963 and by 1969 it had been restored to it's former glory. Opening as the Museum in 1969 with Mr Don Stafford as the curator.

Further additions and alterations followed in 1977, 1979, 1982, 2008 & 2009.  The Bath House is currently closed for earthquake strengthening the time frame is not yet decided. For further details click this link  The Bath House

With thanks to 'Tudor Towers - The Rotorua Baths' a thesis by Paul Rewi Bennett c.1984,  and the Rotorua Museum website for the above information.

• 1914 The new Post Office & Telegraph Office was opened with a spectacular clock tower.

Photograph taken by Alison Leigh on the 2nd Floor of the Library Building 2016.

• 1958 The new Arawa Trust Building with 2 floors above street level shops.
• 1962 The Government Buildings in Haupapa Street - The Maori Land Court 3 floors, Minsitry of Works and Social Welfare Building 4 floors and the Government Life Assurance building 3 Floors.

Photograph by Margaret Callaghan for Rotorua Library 1990

• 1964 The new 304 Shopping complex opened on the SE corner of Pukuatua & Tutanekai Streets with 2 floors above the street level shops.
• 1964 State Insurance Building
• 1966 The new Post Office, 5 Floors.

The now Old Post Office Building on Hinemoa Street
Photograph by Alison Leigh for Kete Rotorua 2012.

• 1970 The Bay Savings Bank building was officially the tallest in Rotorua with 7 floors, then known as Parkes Building, now called the "Hinemoa Tower".

This building was the tallest in Rotorua until the Woodcorp Tower was built in 1987.

• 1971 Geyser Court our first shopping mall opened, with a mezzanine. 
• 1972 T & G Building 3 floors above street level shops. 
• 1983 The Vacation Hotel described as multi-story luxury on the site of the old Brents Hotel.
• 1987 The new officially tallest building in Rotorua, Woodcorp Tower at 10 floors. Now in 2017 known as the Zen Building, which lies empty awaiting transformation into a luxury hotel. Still officially the tallest building in Rotorua.

Photograph by Alison Leigh for Kete Rotorua 2012.

For more photographs of Rotorua buildings visit Kete Rotorua

Health Benefits of the Spa City, Rotorua

The Hot Springs of the North Island in the 1800's.

The health benefits of the region are well documented in newspaper articles and government reports dating from the late c.1840's onward.  You can read one from the ‘New Zealander’ published 22 August 1846 here on Papers Past.

The early Hotel owners of the day built bath houses exclusively for use by their guests. The following advertisement being for the Rotorua Hotel in 1872.

Latterly they used their location and nearness to the baths to their own advantage as the following advertisement for Stephen Brent’s Temperance Hotel (built in 1884) shows.

With thanks to Papers Past for access to this newspaper.

In the New Zealand Herald of 26^th January 1872 an article entitled  “New Zealand Hot Springs” was printed from a ‘correspondent of the ‘Australasian’ (published in Melbourne 30/12/1871)

Excerpt :

“I wish to draw to the attention of those who are afflicted in health to the renovating properties of the mineral springs of the North Island of New Zealand. These springs range from cold to boiling heat (the natives cooking their food in the latter) and are particularly efficacious in cases of rheumatism, cutaneous eruptions, scrofula and indiscretions arising from excess and fast living”

He goes on to write ‘Having derived incalculable benefit from them, I should be ungrateful  were I not to make known their blessings to suffering humanity’

Another writer known as ‘Young Australian’ wrote a series of articles for the The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser  and published on Saturday 27 May 1882 p 836.

The 3^rd of which gives the reader an amazing word picture of this region of New Zealand now known as Rotorua.  Part of his description of the area reads:

“From Ohinemutu to Sulphur Point is less than a mile, the path leading near the foreshore of Lake Rotorua. The track is sandy, and bordered with tall ti-tree scrub, so that the scenery is not at all enticing; but an examination of the point well repays the task of getting there”.  He goes on to say ‘ We passed through the site chosen for the new Government township of Rotorua;  but unless my judgement is at fault, the Government have been badly advised, as the situation is liable at any time to an outburst from the fiery furnace beneath, whose proximity is only too patent by te heat of the ground’

And

‘It may be reasonably conjectured that people will have a natural abhorrence to living over a subterranean stew pot’

Prior to European adventures in our steamy region, Maori had already discovered the benefits of living around the hot pools and mud of Ohinemutu and the Kuirau Spring.  Don Stafford writes of the journey of the Arawa tribe to New Zealand and how Ihenga discovered the two lakes which he named Rotoiti and Rotorua, later to be settled by the descendants of Rangitihi.

Maori enjoyed the hot spring they named Manupirua (a famous bath) at the southern end of Lake Rotoiti – as published in the Bay of Plenty Times, 3.6.1876.  Note: This same hot spring can be enjoyed today by all, if you have a boat suitable for taking you across Lake Rotoiti to where a jetty and pools are, for a reasonable price.

By 1873 over at Sulphur Point there were several other ‘pools’ frequented by locals and latterly invalids who came for the benefits of the ‘Priest Bath’, the ‘Coffee-pot’, the ‘Pain-killer’ the ‘Kill or Cure’ the Knock Me Over’ the ‘Laughing Jackass’ the ‘Last Resource’ the ‘Madame Rachel’ the ‘Postmaster’, the ‘Priest’ and others for whom they were named by men who chose to dig themselves their own bath, ‘Cameron’s Bath’, ‘McHugh’s Bath’ and ‘Mackenzie’s Bath’ some of which can be seen in the book by Phil Andrews ‘Government Gardens’.  None of the above are in use today, due in part, to what we now know as hydrogen sulphide gas, which can and has caused death. 

Excerpt from the Hot Lakes Chronicle : "Dr Ginders caused the following notice to be posted:- It is not safe to remain in these baths longer than 15 minute, nor is it safe to move about from bath to bath. The water should be disturbed as little as possible, as movement only tends to disengage a larger quantity of the deleterious gases"

Dr Alfred Ginders claimed that, the “Wikirihou’ or Vaux Spring supplying the new sulphur baths, could be a cure for drunkenness’ the author of this article published in the, Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 29, Issue 1491, 28 May 1898, was a little skeptical!. 

Public hot baths and bath houses were not in existence until the ‘Pavilion Baths’ and ‘Blue Bath’ were built. During excavation for the Blue Bath “workmen dug into a sulphur cavern coated with yellow sulphur crystals at the foot of which a hot spring emitted sulphur impregnated steam”  from ‘The Government gardens’ by Phil Andrews,  p.33   

The bath house was opened to the public by, celebrity journalist, Mr George Sala in November 1885.

Creator unknown : Photograph of Madame Rachel and Priest's Baths Pavilion, Rotorua.
Ref: PAColl-8389. Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand. /records/22764256

 
‘The Duchess Bath’, was opened by the then Duchess of York in 1901.

Inside The Duchess baths, Rotorua. Tourist Department album 11. Ref: PA1-o-503-05.
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23245611

The Bath House (now the Museum) was built and in operation from 1908.

Photograph by Alison Leigh. December 2017.

With thanks to Don Stafford, Phil Andrews and Papers Past for the information above.