On 17 October 1865, a Crown grant for sections 111, 109 and 113 in the town of Wellington was issued to Maori Chief Te Ropiha Moturoa. In 1866 Edward Pearce, a successful merchant and local politician purchased section 111. Pearce used it as a paddock and between 1869 and 1870 he built a stable on it. The Te Aro Rating Book indicates that a house to the value of £15 was built on the section between 1871 and 1872. The land was subdivided in the 1870s and sold off. On 5 December 1876 Thomas Kennedy Macdonald (1847-1914) purchased part of section 111. He acquired the remainder from clerk Samuel Costall on 22 August 1877. In the Te Aro Rating Book, the entry for 1878 to 1879 indicated that a house valued at £120 had been constructed Macdonald's land.
Macdonald, better known as "Kennedy Mac" to his contemporaries, was born in 1847 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, to Scottish parents. The family returned to Scotland with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1848. He was educated in Dundee, Scotland, and then at Hare's Private Academy in Adelaide. On 15 November 1870 he married Frances Rossiter in Melbourne and a year later he emigrated to Wellington, carrying with him a letter of introduction from Sir Donald McLean, former Chief Land Purchase Commissioner and Native Minister. Originally he worked as a clerk at the Mount Cook barracks, then for the Jacob Joseph Company. He began his own accountancy business in 1873, which expanded into land and goods auctioneering and land agency. He eventually took on a partner, Alexander Wilson, in 1891. According to a contemporary newspaper report, his company, Thomas Kennedy Macdonald and Co. Ltd., had a "practical monopoly" on accounting business in the capital in its early days, and later "held a leading position in the colony, [with] the great majority of the great estate sales [of the 1890s] coming under [his] auction hammer". The company's office was located on prime Lambton Quay land. He was also involved in a number of other business ventures. In 1873 he was the secretary of the New Zealand Titanic Steel and Iron Company; founded the Equitable Building and Investment Company in 1877; was a chairman and board member of the Gear Meat Preserving and Freezing Company from 1882; participated in the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition in 1885; was member of the first conference of the Industrial Protection Societies of New Zealand in 1888; from 1886-1896 he was Chairman of the Wellington Woollen Company; was a member of the Wellington Harbour Board, and its Chairman from 1906-1907; in 1905 he was appointed to the board of directors of the New Zealand Times Company; and he was one of the first advocates of the utility of steam trams as a form of public transport, founding the Wellington Tramways Company.
While Macdonald was clearly an important commercial figure, he also played a leading role in local and national civic affairs. Noted for his eloquence and tremendous public speaking skills, Macdonald used these qualities to good effect in various political campaigns. Macdonald was progressive in his politics, and a political ally of Richard Seddon and the Liberals. He preached protectionism, and advocated the manufacturing and industrial development of the colony, and played a major role in the land settlement which occurred under the Liberal administration. He represented the Te Aro Ward on the Wellington City Council in 1877-78, and was also City Auditor for a time. He stood as a candidate for the Wellington Mayoralty in 1889 and won election to the House of Representatives for Wellington City in 1890, where he sat on a number of important Royal Commissions, including the investigation into the Public Trust Office in 1891. He became chief Government Valuer for Lands from 1895 to 1901 after the Government Advances to Settlers Act was passed in 1894. Later he was often selected as an assessor in disputes before the Land Compensation Court. In 1903 he was appointed to the Legislative Council, a position he held until 1911. At the time a huge banquet was held for him, attended by many of the colony's political, commercial and social elite, and he was described as having, "eulogisms [sic] showered upon him by the press of the colony".
Macdonald also played a role in the arts and cultural sphere. He was a Council Member of The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, a member of the Wellington Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, and superintendent of sports for the Caledonian Society.
The end of his life however was troubled by poor personal health and increasing legal problems- as Fair Play pointed out in 1893, Macdonald was "a man who... made bitter enemies and strong friends". He was bankrupted in 1891 and forced to resign his seat in parliament. In 1911 he was found guilty of misappropriating trust funds. He avoided serving a jail term due to his poor health, a result that shocked editorial writers in the city. Late in 1913 he was admitted to Porirua Mental Hospital where he died of "Chronic Brain Disease" on 17 October 1914. Widely remembered as genial and good natured, and an extremely influential, widely known and important member of late nineteenth century colonial society, he was buried in Sydney Street Cemetery. Eventually five Wellington Streets were named after him or members of his family.
It is unclear when the house, known as "Inverlochie" (later Inverlochy) was constructed but Macdonald and his family occupied it from 1878. Around this period, Wellington city underwent a major economic boom. This was caused by an upsurge in migration led population growth, while export driven economic development also occurred. It was a time when "the face of the town was also changed" in appearance, with more "handsome buildings" being constructed. The business and wharf districts were enlarged by reclamations, and factories moved to fringes of the Wellington urban area. At the time Macdonald lived at Inverlochy House, the Parliament end of The Terrace was known as Wellington Terrace, and the South End was Woolcombe Street. From the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, when many of the stately old homes were knocked down and replaced with corporate offices, it was "more home than office for [Wellington's] captains of industry". Notables such as Sir Robert Stout and Alexander Turnbull resided there, along with other politicians, merchant, businessmen and retired military officers, while the Governor General's house was located in the Parliament Grounds at the time.
Inverlochy House would certainly have hosted and entertained many of these people, and there are newspaper reports of the house hosting weddings for members of the Wellington social elite. After travelling through iron entrance gates and then the tree lined "The Avenue", guests were then "treated in summer to a walk through the conservatories, past the fountains, into the fernery and up to the summer house on a slope at the back which commanded a wide view of the city." There was also a tennis court for more energetic entertainment. As historical interior photos illustrate, the house was a trove of ornaments, sculpture, paintings and antiques, reflecting Macdonald's financial success and status.
However, while Macdonald amassed large financial gains, he also incurred some considerable losses and in 1891 he was declared bankrupt. The house, which had been transferred to his wife Frances Rossiter Macdonald in 1884, was sold at auction in 1893. It was described in the newspaper as having "with every modern convenience", and surrounding property encompassed garden and shrubs, two conservatories, a vinery, a watered fernery, stables and "also a fowl house, summer house, wash house and offices".
Over time the site passed through many owners and the land, the building, and its wider area were extensively modified. One of the owners was James McLellan, who lived in the house from the late 1890s to 1920. McLellan was the manager of the important iron manufacturing company, Lysaght Company Limited. He was a Council Member of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce in 1890, and President in 1894. In 1919 he was Vice President of the Association of New Zealand Chambers of Commerce. He was also on the Wellington Harbour Board in 1904.
At the turn of the twentieth century the house was turned into two luxury apartments. In the mid 1920s it was further subdivided into nine self-contained flats, and became known as the "Inverlochy Flats". Over this same period the estate was encroached on by various developments. The house lost some of its grandeur and began to suffer serious wear and tear due to absentee landlordism. The city council was force to issue a clean up notice in 1979 as rubbish and other material at the site had accumulated and was "likely to harbour rats and other vermin". In the 1970s it was occupied mostly by young students and workers who enjoyed a communal spirit living in the old house, sharing maintenance duties and one telephone!
The days of communal living at Inverlochy House would come to an end in 1979/1980. In 1979 Rodney Dearing and Graham Whiteman transferred their remaining share of the ownership to their co-owner Ronald Allan, who, on the same day, transferred the ownership to his father-in-law, the property developer Frank Renouf, of F. H. Renouf Enterprises Ltd. Renouf, who was one of the major property developers in New Zealand from the late 1970s until the sharemarket crash and economic downturn of the late 1980s, promptly put Inverlochy House on the market, and entered into negotiations in 1979 to sell the property to Williams Development Holdings. In 1980 Renouf, preparing to sell the building, refused to make the upgrades that the Wellington City Council required in order to re-license Inverlochy House as an apartment block. The writing was now on the wall for the remaining tenants, especially as Renouf was now arguing for the necessity of selling the property, which was claimed to be running at a loss of $20,000 a year.
In 1980 Williams announced their intention to purchase the Inverlochy House site, demolish the historic building and construct in its place a six storey, seventy-unit motel. The purchase was predicated on the proposed motel gaining town planning consent, and since the area in which Inverlochy House was sited was zoned in the 1972 District Scheme 'Residential C', allowing high rise, high density building, the process seemed a formality.
However, residents of Inverlochy and the wider community along with other interested parties (including the Historic Places Trust) fought an eventually successful campaign in opposition to the plans. Tenants were served with eviction notices in March 1980 and there were garden parties and market days organised to protest the sale and raise funds. An Inverlochy Preservation Trust was formed in May 1980, and collected donations with the aim of trying to buy the property, while the Terrace End Residents Association was formed and produced a newsletter, the Terrace End News from July to November. Tenants appealed to the District Court, serving injunctions on Williams and the City Council, which failed, while sympathetic City Councillors also tried to have the zoning reconsidered. By November the last tenants had moved out. Despite a last ditch petition, containing 2000 signatures, it seemed that the demolition was going ahead, and that Inverlochy House faced its last days.
Unbeknownst to the wider public the City Council and Williams had been in confidential discussions about the future of Inverlochy House. In its original application, Williams suggested that they would be willing to gift the building to the Council, who could then have it relocated. This suggestion seems to have been discarded as being too expensive. The resulting public outcry made Williams and the Council reconsider their options though, and as early as August, the Director of Architecture for Williams was mooting a different plan. They were willing to build the motel on adjacent land, and not demolish Inverlochy House, on the condition that they could have dispensation for car parking which would have been in excess of the limits allowed in the District Scheme. This was confirmed by the Mayor on 24 November, and the next day Williams held a press conference announcing it was going to gift Inverlochy House to a trust. While clean up work began almost immediately, the paper work and various legal processes took a number of years to finalise but the property was transferred to the Inverlochy Trust. In 1987, the Inverlochy Art School was officially opened in the building by Mayor Jim Belich. With the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts taking possession, renovations were undertaken (see above), and Inverlochy House was slowly restored to its former grandeur.
Major changes and modifications continued in the early 1990s. In 1993 the Wellington City Council decided the print studio at the City Gallery no longer met their requirements, and was made available to interested parties. Although the Academy of Fine Arts was not originally keen on the acquisition, they eventually agreed to install it at Inverlochy House. Twenty thousand dollars was spent on designing and refurbishing the new upstairs space. Equipment from Wellington Polytechnic and the College of Education was also installed, and the print studio was officially opened in 1994.
More significantly, there was also a change in the ownership and management of the Art School at Inverlochy. Tensions began to develop between the Academy of Fine Arts and the management of the Art School. By 1993 the Academy had spent over $150,000 on renovations, and there were increasing concerns over the School's financial position. The Academy Council agreed to allow the Inverlochy management to operate autonomously for one year, and also made available an interest free loan of $20,000. However, the precarious financial situation did not change, and the Academy Council unilaterally decided to close down the Art school in October 1994. In response the Inverlochy management decided to form an incorporated society and run the art school separately from the Academy. Sir Arthur Williams agreed to be the school's patron, and in December 1994 Williams School of Art at Inverlochy was registered. It continues to oversee the operation of Inverlochy house to the present day, holding art courses over a wide range of disciplines for both adults and children and has also hosted Artists in Residence and The Stout Trust Winter Lecture Series.
Inverlochy House retains aesthetic, architectural and historical significance as there are a number of authentic original fittings and fixtures. It is one of the few remaining examples of the type of colonial upper class housing that characterised the Terrace area at the turn of the twentieth century. It also has a more recent social significance, illustrated by the successful campaign to stop its demolition in 1980. Finally, its current usage fits well with the character of its original owner. "Kennedy Mac" was an important, if today forgotten, member of the Liberal political and commercial elite. However, he was also a patron of the arts and culture, being a member of the Council of the New Zealand Academy of Arts. He also, appropriately, urged the preservation of historic sites.