Early history of the site
Green Lane Hospital lies at the foot of Maungakiekie (One Tree Hill), the site of a large pa occupied for several centuries prior to colonial arrival. According to one perspective, a community was established on the hill at some time between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries by Ngati Awa chief Titahi and his people, who had migrated to the area from Northland. By the early eighteenth century Maungakiekie was the domain of Te Waiohua, whose leader Kiwi Tamaki increased its defensive capabilities. The Auckland isthmus was subsequently conquered by Ngati Whatua, after which Te Taou chief Tuperiri is said to have built a new pa on the site which he renamed Hikurangi. Tuperiri is stated to have still been in residence in the 1790s.
Following the founding of Auckland as colonial capital in 1840, the British Crown obtained land around Maungakiekie in 1841. Although much of the surrounding area was subdivided and sold for private farms, approximately three hectares (seven and a quarter acres) at Green Lane was set aside by the Crown in 1850-1 for hospital purposes. Auckland's first public hospital had been founded a few years previously in the Auckland Domain as part of the earliest wave of state-financed institutions of this type. In the absence of other facilities, such hospitals cared for the elderly poor and others in need of assistance, as well as strictly medical cases.
In 1885, pressure on these institutions provided impetus to the passing of the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act, which established a colonial version of the British Poor Law administered by a network of local Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards. This consolidated patchy arrangements for poor relief into a national system. In 1886, the land at Green Lane was transferred to the new Auckland Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, and subsequently used for the construction of a Home for the Aged Poor. The number of destitute elderly had grown significantly as a result of the generational ageing of early Pakeha pioneers without family to support them, and was exacerbated by the onset of a national economic depression that affected Auckland from the mid 1880s. Until the end of the century Auckland Province had the largest number of over 65s in the country, and was obliged to make provisions at an early stage.
Construction of the Costley Home for the Aged Poor (1889-90)
Prior to the construction of the new Home in 1889-90, few refuges for the elderly existed in New Zealand, and most of those that did were adapted from earlier structures or housed a variety of destitute or homeless inmates. Statistics in 1885 record refuges in only five settlements in the colony, although the list excludes at least one casual shelter. In Auckland, elderly individuals had continued to be accommodated in rundown buildings in the Auckland Hospital grounds. Created at an early stage in the expansion of an institutional approach to welfare during the 1890s and 1900s, the Board's new Home can be seen to represent a major development in the growth of care for the elderly in Auckland and beyond.
Occupying land next to John Logan Campbell's farm at Epsom, the site had previously been used as a market garden and lay close to the main road between Auckland and Onehunga, the two main settlements in the Auckland Isthmus. The use of rural or semi-rural locations for institutions for the elderly was encouraged by government officials, who believed that inmates should be away from the 'corrupting' influences of town and in a place where moral character could be built through physical work such as cultivation. In this respect, approaches to caring for the elderly poor were similar to those for other groups perceived as problematic, with reformatories, industrial schools and psychiatric institutions often being erected on comparable sites. When the Board announced the winner of a design competition for a new Home in 1886, its choice was criticised by some for looking too much like a prison.
The Board subsequently requested Edward Bartley, a notable Auckland architect, to undertake a new design. Bartley had previously worked on a variety of commissions, including ecclesiastical buildings, factories and residences. In 1886-7 he was responsible for the construction of a new charitable structure in central Auckland, the Sailors' Home. In early 1889, he produced a design for the Home at Green Lane which contributed to his appointment as architect to the Board, a position he retained until 1906. Along with his work on the Sailors' Home, the Green Lane project was the first of many hospital- and welfare-related commissions that he undertook in the region. These included the Costley Children's Hospital (1898), hospitals at Whangarei and Waihi (1900 and 1902), the Infectious Diseases Hospital (1906) and the Jubilee Home for the Blind (1906).
Bartley's design was for an imposing two-storey polychrome brick building with a central projection, flanking wings and double-height verandahs. Its main entrance incorporated a portico with Corinthian columns surmounted by ornamental balustrading. The design combined eighteenth-century institutional architecture with more recent hospital forms. Like early institutional approaches, its main structure incorporated a central lobby and large flanking rooms. At the rear, however, it contained several double-ward pavilions of single-storey height, connected to the main building by a covered passageway. Developed to improve ventilation or to alleviate the pressure of patient numbers, double-wards had become popular in British hospitals by the 1850s and have been seen as a transitional form between corridor and full pavilion plans.
In April 1889, a foundation stone for the new structure was laid by the incoming colonial governor, Lord Onslow (1853-1911), in what was claimed to be his maiden speech in the colony. A year later, he formally opened the building. Construction was funded from a large bequest by an early Auckland resident and businessman, Edward Costley (c.1796-1883), who had specified that his fortune should also be used to benefit other charitable institutions in Auckland, including the Auckland Hospital, the Parnell Orphan Home, the Auckland Free Public Library and the Sailors' Home. Costley's actions were extensively praised by Lord Onslow and others at the opening, reflecting the prevailing view in governing circles that individual charity should supplement state assistance. His benevolence was also physically enshrined in the institution, with the words 'Costley Home for the Aged Poor' being carved above its main door. The builders included E.A. Matthews, who had submitted a tender of £7,297 for its construction, and J.J. (James) Holland, a future mayor of Auckland, who was subsequently credited as its contractor.
The Home was evidently intended to house up to 142 men and 100 women, greater than the largest previous charitable institution in New Zealand - the Otago Benevolent Institution. The ratio of male and female beds reflected the composition of the elderly population, which was approximately 60 percent male. In the main building the sexes were segregated, with a central vestibule in the downstairs area separating a men's dining room and office to the east from a women's dining room, female dormitory and reception room to the west. Both dining areas were serviced by a kitchen, store room and fenced yard at the rear. Upstairs, there were three more female dormitories, several bathrooms, and rooms for the manager and matron. The male dormitories and facilities were in three sets of double-wards at the rear.
The main structure formed part of a larger complex, which incorporated a washhouse and laundry, morgue, straw room, small cancer ward and refractory ‘for the accommodation of inmates who are insubordinate, as well as those who are accustomed to ramble out in the highways in quest of treble XXX'. An open courtyard to the north of the main building contained a circular carriageway, a stone boundary wall and timber gates, presenting a formal entrance from Green Lane. Other features included a carriageway to the rear and a large vegetable garden. Extensive grounds were planted with grass and ornamental trees.
Although the institution was primarily for elderly residents, at least one young patient with brain disease was accepted. Lying-in rooms were also soon added in the main structure for single or poor married women, who were occasionally admitted for childbirth. Inmates were expected to work, with men growing produce for the home and women carrying out sewing and other duties. Washing for the home and other institutions was also carried out in the laundry. A piggery close to the main building raised proceeds to subsidise the Home.
Residents appear to have come from a variety of backgrounds. One early inmate, Sir Charles Burdett (1835-1892), is said to have been a member of the British aristocracy who had served as a captain in the third New Zealand - or Waikato - War (1863-4). In 1888, Burdett had become a cause celebre in the national and international press after being sentenced to fourteen days hard labour for taking two roses from Albert Park. Later residents are reported to have included several members of the 65th Regiment or ‘Royal Bengal Tigers', which operated in New Zealand between 1846 and 1865. At least two individuals held campaign medals for service during the New Zealand Wars. Women whose stories were highlighted in local newspapers included Alice Kay, believed to have been about 100 years old.
During the 1890s the site was enlarged through land acquisition, and further structures were erected including a brick church in 1898 (later demolished). An average number of 190 residents were cared for by just five staff, which included the manager and matron. Although the famous English contralto Madame Patey (1842-1894) sang for inmates in 1891, accusations of ill-treatment began in the same year. By 1902, conditions were sufficiently bad to draw criticism from one of Onslow's successors, colonial governor Lord Ranfurly (1856-1933), who stated that workhouses in Britain were better in many respects.
In 1903, a Royal Commission into the Home's affairs blamed the Board for unhygienic conditions, the presence of mentally deranged inmates and drunkenness among staff, and recommended a complete reorganisation of the institution's system of control and management. Further criticism came from the Premier, Richard Seddon (1845-1906), who subsequently visited the home in December 1905. As leader of the ruling Liberal Government, Seddon had introduced the first non-contributory state pension for civilians in 1898, reflecting a mood for greater social justice for the elderly and other disadvantaged groups during the 1890s and early 1900s.
Construction of the Infirmary Ward for Incurables (1906-7)
The Board responded to this criticism, and to more extensive concern expressed by a Royal Commission into its running of the Auckland Hospital, by improving facilities at the Home. In 1904, a new kitchen block designed by Bartley was erected. More significantly, the Board also commissioned designs for an Infirmary Ward for Incurables at the site. Such a structure was apparently intended to improve conditions at both the Costley Home and the hospital by facilitating access to medical attention for the aged infirm at the former and separating terminally ill patients from acute cases at the latter. It would also relieve overcrowding at both institutions.
Plans were initially produced by Edward Bartley although the final design was by G.W. Allsop, who had replaced Bartley as the Board's architect as part of a fresh approach. The building was to be a single-storey brick structure of detached pavilion type, with a central entrance, cupola and short towers at each corner. Separate pavilion wards had become standard in British hospitals from the 1860s after observations during the Crimean War (1854-6) by Florence Nightingale and others emphasised the importance of ventilation in the treatment of the infirm. Separate pavilion or ‘Nightingale' wards consisted of long, narrow structures with rows of beds and windows along each extended wall to capitalise on the perceived benefits of cross-ventilation.
Initially promoted as more medically effective, pavilions are considered to have remained a dominant architectural form for hospitals and related structures until the early twentieth century partly because they reinforced the emerging professionalisation of both medical employees and architects. Shortly after construction work had started, Allsop embarked on a tour to study the construction and equipment of hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, and was to specialise in the design of such structures during his subsequent career. His design for the Infirmary Ward employed a Queen Anne Revival style, which fused the building's institutional form with visual features used more commonly in contemporary domestic architecture, such as ‘half-timbering'. In Britain, Queen Anne Revival had been used for at least one Home for Incurables (Jaffray Suburban Hospital, Birmingham, 1885) and was sometimes employed to produce hospitals with a less institutional appearance.
The building's foundation stone was laid by the Minister for Education and Public Health, George Fowlds (1860-1934), in November 1906. The recently appointed Fowlds was a noted overseer of health and other social reforms. Funds came both from the Board and a £500 bequest by Captain David Rough (d.1899), an important early colonial official who had been Auckland's first harbourmaster, had raised the British flag at the foundation of Auckland, and had also been a witness to a signing of the Treaty of Waitangi at Tamaki in July 1840. At an eventual cost of £5,000, the building was a substantial financial outlay, being at least twice that of contemporary cottage hospitals. The Board may have raised money by selling land elsewhere in Epsom for subdivision, contributing to the area's increasing suburbanisation.
The building was one of the earliest purpose-built institutions for incurables erected in New Zealand, and probably the first to have been erected as part of an old people's home. The only previous purpose-built Home for Incurables, the Victoria Hospital for Chronic Invalids in Wellington, was opened in April 1905 but formed part of Wellington Hospital rather than the adjacent Home for the Aged Poor. By December 1906, a small annexe for incurable cases was also operating in Invercargill. Both Fowlds and senior health officials considered the creation of such facilities in each hospital district to be essential, and preferably as part of old people's homes. Their establishment in these locations has since been seen as doing much to positively alter the nature of benevolent institutions, as well as advancing the links between illness and old age.
Fowlds opened the new building in December 1907, at a large ceremony attended by numerous dignitaries. Members of the Board were proud of the structure, emphasising its pioneering nature and declaring it to be the finest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Said to have been designed and built on the most up-to-date principles, the building contained beds for 30 patients in a large open ward with two single-bed rooms and a sunroom at one end of the structure, and a two-bed room, dispensary and scullery at the other. The sunroom was reported to be ‘where the old men may sit and smoke or read in winter time,' and the single-bed rooms were for cases requiring quietness or for patients who were dying. A newspaper report of the opening stated that ‘it has been a great fault in the hospital up to the present that there was no provision for dying cases, these patients simply being placed in a corner of the ward and screened off.'
The building's north-south orientation corresponded with that encouraged for pavilion plans in Britain, and its north-facing sunroom indicates an adaption to Southern Hemisphere conditions. The number of patients accommodated also coincided with the ideal, which was generally between 28 and 32 for a main ward. Contemporary changes to the broader complex included altering the drive in the open courtyard to accommodate the new building, which now framed its eastern side.
Greater medicalisation of care was soon underlined by the recommendation that the manager and visiting medical officer of the Home be replaced with a medical superintendent and matron. Enhanced concern about hygiene led to the earlier piggeries being removed. Separate accommodation for staff was added in the grounds, including a Nurses' Home (later demolished) to the west of the main Costley Home building in circa 1912. The Infirmary was also soon enlarged to accommodate separate wards for men and women.
This involved raising the building's roof and adding an extra storey, two flights of steps and a lift-well, as well as a two-storey verandah. The new upper floor (for men) duplicated the plan of the lower level (subsequently allocated for women). Designed by Allsop, the additions followed the Queen Anne Revival style of the original structure and were erected by Facer and Co. They were opened in November 1917 by the then chairman of the Board, M.J. Coyle, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr C.E. Maguire, and other dignitaries attending. By 1919, the enlarged infirmary held space for 70 inmates.
Inmates during this period included the notable artist and engraver Louis Steele (1842-1918), who had painted portraits of many famous New Zealanders. Steele had also collaborated with C.F. Goldie and Kennett Watkins respectively in the well-known works, ‘The Arrival of the Maori in New Zealand' (1898) and ‘The Burning of the Boyd' (1889).
Further alterations to the complex included the construction of a separate Female Infirmary on the western side of an extended quadrangle in 1923-4 (since demolished), which mirrored the size and orientation of the earlier Infirmary Ward (subsequently known as the Male Infirmary). Larger nursing facilities (still surviving) were also erected at the rear of the complex in 1925. These changes accompanied a renaming of the institution as the Auckland Infirmary in 1924, reducing the stigma of its associations with colonial charity. The incised name ‘Costley Home for the Aged Poor' was symbolically removed from the main building and replaced with ‘Costley Wards', possibly at the same time that some alterations were made to the interior.
Containing an increasing proportion of chronically ill patients, the complex is said to have subsequently functioned more like a geriatric hospital.
Construction of the Main Building (1941-3)
More substantial changes occurred following the privations of the Great Depression and the election of the first Labour Government under Michael Joseph Savage (1872-1940). Savage had been a member of the Auckland Hospital and Charitable Aid Board for much of the period from 1919 to 1935, maintaining an active role in its work until just before being elected to power. In 1938 he oversaw the Social Security Act, which introduced the concept of free and universal health care covering general practitioners, hospitals, and pharmaceutical and maternity services, pre-dating British moves for a National Health Service by a decade. Access to hospital care was vastly expanded with the number of hospital beds increasing nationally from 9,234 in 1938-9 to 13,780 in 1946. By the end of the Second World War (1939-45) it was claimed that New Zealand had more hospital beds per 1,000 head of population than any other country.
Although expansion had been contemplated at Auckland Hospital since at least 1930, Green Lane was preferred for growth immediately after the reforms. The foundation stone of a large new structure, the Main Building, was laid by the Governor-General Sir Cyril Newall (1886-1963) in May 1941, at which time the Board's desire to expand facilities into suburban communities was highlighted. While construction was underway, the broader complex was converted to a general hospital, renamed Green Lane Hospital in 1942. Geriatric services were eventually transferred to Cornwall Hospital in nearby Cornwall Park. The new work was intended to be part of a long-term improvement of services on the site and elsewhere in the region.
The Main Building was erected between the main Costley Home structure and the Female Infirmary, reinforcing the quadrangular arrangement of the earlier wards. The project involved the demolition of the 1898 brick chapel. Costing £175,000, the new structure was opened in February 1943 by the Prime Minister, Peter Fraser (1884-1950), who succeeded Savage. Fraser had been Minister of Health during the 1938 reforms, playing an important role in encouraging doctors to form part of the scheme.
At the time of its opening, the structure was described as the finest in New Zealand and a handsome building of imposing design. Fraser called it ‘a beautiful building' and is said to have referred to ‘the promise of the beauty of its exterior being fulfilled by the interior.' Of elongated high-rise design, the building adopted a Modern or Functionalist appearance that reflected the progressiveness of the social reforms that underpinned its existence. Six storeys high and of reinforced concrete construction, its main facades incorporated sweeping and elegant cantilevered balconies designed to allow maximum air and sunshine into the wards.
The form of the new facility reflected moves away from pavilion buildings towards more cost-effective structures incorporating numerous wards. This was due in part to a shift from theories about the importance of ventilation to those that stressed hygiene. In Australia, Inter-War Functionalism was seen as ideal for hospitals due to its emphasis on cleanness and efficiency. The building's up-to-date appearance can also be seen to have reflected an increasing emphasis on new technology in health care.
Responsibility for the building's design lay with Raymond Farrell, who had been appointed architect to the Hospital Board in 1938. It may also reflect the input or influence of the Australian firm of Stephenson and Turner, which had been taken on with Farrell to provide specialist advice on plans for the Auckland Hospital in early 1939. Stephenson and Turner had pioneered the use of functionalist modernism in Australia, particularly for hospital construction, and are considered to have revolutionised Australian hospital design. The building was erected by Fletcher Construction Company Ltd which, along with other contractors, offered its services on a non-profit basis due to the war effort. Shortages evidently caused plans to extend the balconies around the western side of the building and finish corridors in tile and net plaster to be dropped. In 1950, the international Everyman's Encyclopaedia is reported to have described the structure as ‘a fine specimen of a modern architectural conception of a hospital'.
The building made provision for 264 beds, which were divided among rooms containing no more than six beds each. Individual floors were treated as separate units, containing not only accommodation but also auxiliary rooms for staff work and patient activities. Auxiliary rooms on each floor included a sister's room and nurses' changing room, a kitchen, patients' day room, sink and steriliser rooms, bathroom and lavatory accommodation and a recess for patients' chairs, as well as rooms for linen, flowers and patients' clothes. According to one account, Ward 1 on the ground floor was for children, Ward 2 accommodated thoracic surgery, Ward 3 housed medicine (including cardiology), Wards 4 and 5 were for general surgery, and the top floor held quarters for resident medical officers.
The rest of the complex was reorganised, and by October 1943 the hospital held surgical patients, those with tuberculosis, and individuals with chronic disorders. The Costley Wards contained the Casualty Department and the earliest operating theatres, with the first cardiac surgery being performed there in 1944. Its upper floor still catered for female geriatrics, the only part of the complex devoted to this activity. The former Infirmary Ward was also converted to male and female wards for acute cases, a purpose it retained for thirty years.
Subsequent use and modifications
Notable medical practitioners in the general hospital included James Lister Newman (1903-1983), regarded as the father of geriatric medicine in New Zealand, who became medical superintendent at Green Lane in 1959. Under the surgeon Sir Douglas Robb (1899-1974), the cardiothoracic surgical centre gained an international reputation, subsequently advanced by Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes (1924-2006). Barratt-Boyes performed the first open heart surgery in New Zealand at Green Lane in 1958, and four years later became only the second heart surgeon in the world to replace a heart valve. Trees were planted in the quadrangle to mark the first open heart surgery and other events. In 1950, operating facilities moved from the Costley Wards to the ground floor of the Main Building.
Further expansion and reorganisation in the 1960s and 1970s involved the demolition of the early twentieth-century Nurses Home in 1964 to make way for a new Administration Block within the previous quadrangle. As well as containing the offices of the medical superintendent and matron, the purpose-built block also housed a library and the Accident and Emergency Department. Extensive redevelopment, including the creation of the National Women's Hospital, took up much of the earlier grounds to the south. In 1970, the pavilions at the rear of the Costley Wards were removed. The remainder of the Costley Wards contained cafeterias, and banking and postal services. With the demise of Cornwall Hospital, geriatric wards were created in the former Infirmary once again, incorporating an added ablution and toilet block in 1972.
In 1989, the hospital became a specialist facility. Services in the Costley Wards (now known as Building 6) and former Infirmary Ward (Building 5) have since closed, and the 1923-4 Women's Infirmary has been demolished. In 2009, a public campaign against demolition of the former Infirmary Ward resulted in it being retained. The Main Building (Building 7) remains in use as part of the Greenlane Clinical Centre and is supplemented by other multi-storey structures to the south.
