Erected in 1901 on the Symonds Street ridge, Braemar forms a large, architecturally notable residence in a traditionally high-status part of central Auckland. A plastered brick building with grand decorative features, Braemar has associations with this area’s evolving communities including those linked with medical practice and the Jewish faith. Braemar’s conversion into apartments by the 1920s reflects the city centre’s changing composition following the move of many wealthier residents to the outer suburbs. Successful community-led efforts to save and restore Braemar in the 1980s form a notable example of citizen action and changing attitudes towards heritage preservation in the late twentieth century. Situated near the former Supreme Court, Old Government House and other prestigious places, the place forms part of a significant landscape associated with important aspects of Auckland’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century evolution from New Zealand’s administrative capital to major commercial centre, as well as earlier history.

The Symonds Street ridge was settled by successive iwi prior to European arrival in Tāmaki-makaurau including Ngāti Rauiti hapū of Te Waiohua, and Ngāti Whātua. Located near the Waitematā harbour, the site may be associated with a coastal pā Te Reuroa and subsequent horticulture in the area, including potato cultivations and a peach tree orchard in the early nineteenth century. A spring with high-status associations, Waiariki, is situated a short distance to the north. Following the commencement of European settlement in 1840 and establishment of the colonial capital of Auckland, the ridge became the military and administrative epicentre of New Zealand particularly around Albert Barracks, Government House and the Supreme Court. After the capital was relocated to Wellington in 1865, grand residences associated with wealthy merchants were increasingly built in the area including a large timber house on the site of Braemar for medical surgeon and Justice of the Peace, Thomas Brutton Kenderdine (1828-1894). This burnt down in 1900, and dental importer John Russell Gray (1836-1914) erected the current brick residence the following year. The site was advertised as directly overlooking the harbour, where Gray’s imported products are likely to have arrived from overseas. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Symonds Street ridge held strong associations with private medical practice and practitioners, perhaps initially due to the presence of wealthy patrons and the perceived healthiness of its elevated physical position and open spaces.

Named Braemar after Gray’s Scottish origins, the substantial new dwelling occupied the upper part of a steeply-sloping section and was designed with a strong street presence. Incorporating Anglo-Dutch style influences, it was erected with an asymmetrical front façade featuring a projecting bay carried through to an elaborate gable, and a recessed arched entry with a decorative entablature and pediment. The multi-floor residence was composed of a two-storey front portion with a four-storey rear portion to account for the slope of the site, covered by a hipped, Marseilles-tiled roof. Internally, the well-decorated residence contained eight bedrooms, multiple living spaces, servants’ quarters, and modern conveniences including a hydraulic lift.
Following Gray’s emigration to Canada shortly afterwards, the house was leased from 1907 by Jacob Ziman (c.1857-1942), a prominent Jewish businessman who was associated with several Jewish organisations including as the first president of the Auckland Chevra Kadisha (1906-1912) and president of the Auckland Hebrew Congregation (1912) while he and his family resided at Braemar. The area had long been associated with Auckland’s Jewish community, who had erected a large synagogue on nearby Princes Street in 1884-5. Reflecting decreasing demand for large inner-city residences as wealthier families increasingly established themselves in new outer suburbs, Braemar subsequently operated as a boarding house from 1915. In 1917, it was purchased by business associates William Walter Stanton and Ernest Herbert Potter, who erected the immediately neighbouring Courtville (1915) and Corner Courtville (1919) as purpose-built apartment blocks for inner-city professionals. Braemar was converted into multiple units with shared facilities as part of the overall Courtville complex. Flats were individually rented out for many decades and a community culture developed among the Courtville residents.

In 1974, the Crown purchased the Courtville apartment blocks including Braemar for an expansion of facilities at the adjacent Supreme Court (now High Court), which led to the formation of the Save Courtville Committee. Organised during a period of heightened concern about the rapid loss of heritage places in the 1970s and 1980s, the committee and the subsequent Courtville Association - formed of apartment tenants - was eventually successful in saving and purchasing the buildings, which were also subsequently restored. Braemar was returned to being a single residence after 1995 and has been in use for visitor accommodation in the twenty-first century. Retaining many well-preserved, internal and external features - including unusual-surviving ironwork fencing and gates on its street frontage - Braemar forms a notable example of turn-of-the-century, high-status residential design in one of central Auckland’s most important surviving historical landscapes.