Cultural Significance

This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1993. The following text is from the original Recommendation for Classification report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. Social: The hospital is associated with the provision of health services to a small rural community for over half a century.

Historic Significance

Historical Significance or Value This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1993. The following text is from the original Recommendation for Classification report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. Historical: The present Maniototo Hospital is Ranfurly's second. It was begun in 1930 to replace the old Ranfurly and Naseby hospitals and was funded by donations from local benefactors, subscribers and government subsidy. It was extended circa 1950. The future of the hospital is uncertain due to recent changes in the health system.

Physical Significance

This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1993. The following text is from the original Recommendation for Classification report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. Architectural: Maniototo Hospital is designed in Inter War Stripped Classical style. Features of this style evident in the design of the hospital are (I) the use of plain, simple, brick surfaces (2) a symmetrical facade (3) a division of the facade into vertical bays (4) vestigial Classical columns in the first floor loggia (5) vestigial Classical entablature or string course separating the ground from the first floor (6) large simple areas of glass (7) Classical doors with fanlights and bolection mouldings with antefixae.

Detail Of Assessed Criteria

This historic place was registered under the Historic Places Act 1993. The following text is from the original Recommendation for Classification report considered by the NZHPT Board at the time of registration. e) The community association with, or public esteem for, the place: The Maniototo Hospital was built with money raised by public appeal. The hospital is currently run by Maniototo Health Services Ltd , a community owned company, who purchased the hospital from Healthcare Otago for $1 last year. g) The technical accomplishment, or value, or design of the place: Maniototo Hospital was designed by architect Henry McDowell Smith. He was trained in the Classical idiom and was well versed in Classical revival styles but also designed in less conservative styles. The Law Courts Hotel, Dunedin, 1937 (Cat II) comes seven years after Maniototo Hospital and is designed in International Moderne style. The Maniototo Hospital looks distinctly modern for its time and is unusual for New Zealand architecture in the 1920s and 30s, particularly when you compare it with the design of other hospitals being built at the same time. These other hospital buildings are extremely conservative essays in Classical styles of architecture which look straight back to the nineteenth century. The hospital is a functional building built for a functional purpose. Applied Classical design, in the case of Maniototo Hospital, appears to have given way to a functional design which reflected more accurately the purpose of the building. The traditional approach would otherwise have been for Smith to signal the fact that his building was a hospital by designing it in a typical Georgian institutional manner and by attaching a Classical columned portico to the front of the main building with an impressive entablature and pediment. The fact, however, that Smith did not do this with his design suggests very strongly that in this case he preferred to adopt a modernist functional aesthetic which would have been quite a radical (and professionally risky) thing to do in 1930. This building is a transitional design between an already out-of-date Stripped Classicism and Modernism and occupies an interesting position in the evolution of modern New Zealand architecture. The building has retained much of its original integrity both inside and out along with most of the original interior fixtures. There is a sympathetic addition of an east wing that was completed in the 1950s. Conclusion: The Maniototo Hospital, 1 Tyrone St, Ranfurly, is recommended for registration as a Category II as a place of historical and cultural heritage significance and value. The present hospital was built in 1930 funded, in large, by community donations. The building's design by architect Henry McDowell Smith is modern for its time and is rare for New Zealand architecture in the 1920s and 1930s particularly when it is compared with the design of other hospitals being built at the same time.