Dr Ewart’s House and Surgery in Wellington’s Willis Street was constructed in 1909. It has architectural significance as a well-composed and intact Arts and Crafts building. Built for prominent doctor John Ewart and inhabited by a series of doctors until 1971, it possesses historical significance for its long-standing association with private medical practice.

The Ngāi Tara people were early inhabitants of Wellington and the harbour came to be known as Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the great harbour of Tara, after the rangatira of the same name. In the seventeenth century Ngāti Ira of Hawke’s Bay joined Ngāi Tara and extensive intermarriage occurred between the two tribes. Other iwi who made a home in the region included Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne, Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Māmoe. Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga migrated south from Taranaki in the 1820s and early 1830s during a period of great upheaval associated with the introduction of Pākehā muskets into te ao Māori. In 1824 Ngāti Mutunga built the five-acre Te Aro Pā in what is now central Wellington, and the pā gave its name to the wider area. Te Aro Flat, as it became known, was included in the purchase of land at Te Whanganui-a-Tara by British colonising firm the New Zealand Company in 1839.

The land around and inland from the harbour was divided into town acres. Town acre 118 was the future site of Dr John Ewart’s house and surgery. Ewart was superintendent of Wellington Hospital from 1889 to 1909. An excellent administrator, outstanding surgeon and a good employer, he was held in high public and professional regard and made significant improvements at the hospital, including the implementation of aseptic treatment and longer nursing training. He retired in 1909 and entered private practice in Willis Street, having commissioned Wellington firm Hoggard and Prouse to design a combined residence and surgery. Known as the ‘Harley Street’ of Wellington, Willis Street was full of medical practices and doctors typically lived in the buildings.

The two-storey building Hoggard and Prouse produced was Arts and Crafts in style, with textured stucco walls, a Marseille tile roof with prominent gables and overhanging bracketed eaves, an arched main entrance porch, arched secondary entrances and a combination of deeply recessed and bay windows. Somewhat unusually, the building’s main elevation did not face west to the street but rather was north-facing. Ewart sold the building to Dr Ernest Giesen in 1924 and it was used for medical purposes by a series of practitioners, including Sir Thomas Stout and David Whyte, both prominent figures, until 1971. Various commercial tenants occupied the building until approximately 1993, when it was purchased for high commission by the government of Papua New Guinea.

The interior was converted into six apartments in 1943 though these appear to have been used as consulting rooms. In 1985 a large wing was added to the Victoria Street end of the building. Designed by Athfield Architects, it is sympathetic in design to the original. The 1909 building was earthquake-strengthened in 2012.