The brick cottage at 226 Rutherford Street, constructed in 1886, has historic significance as a representation of the type of dwellings built for the working class rental market in the late nineteenth century. This place retains a good level of architectural integrity and makes a valuable contribution to the historic streetscape of central Nelson alongside the five other cottages erected next door by the same builder between late 1886 and early 1887.

Located in Te Tau Ihu, the top of the South Island, the Nelson region has a lengthy history of Māori occupation, with many iwi settling there and later moving on, often after being displaced by new arrivals. The area that comprises what is now Nelson city was known as Whakatū. It was one of the sites chosen for Pākehā settlement by commercial immigration firm the New Zealand Company and the first migrants arrived in 1842.

Bricklayer and builder William Dear (1845-1915) came to Nelson in 1882, having first migrated to Wellington from England in 1874. After working as a contractor he engaged in his own speculative building projects, purchasing town acre 659 from lawyer and mayor of Nelson Charles Fell in 1887 and building six cottages on it intended for the rental market. The brick cottage was built in early 1886, prior to the land purchase, and may have been briefly occupied by Dear and his family. Dear commenced building another five (timber) cottages on the section by December 1886, prompting a report in a local newspaper that ‘the greatly improved appearance of Waimea Street [Rutherford Street]…is to a large extent owing to the enterprise of Mr W. Dear, who seems to be always engaged in putting up new houses.’ Dear’s entrepreneurial spirit was not, however, matched by financial capability - he seriously overreached himself with the cottages and was bankrupted in 1887, losing them to mortgage holders. The cottages had a range of predominately working class occupants from this point, such as labourers, tradesmen and farm workers, as well as single women and widows. They were collectively known as ‘Dear’s Cottages’ from construction and the name has endured into the twenty-first century.

All six buildings were typical working class box cottages and had five rooms: a sitting room and bedroom in the front separated by a central hallway heading to the kitchen, and two bedrooms at the back. The brick cottage had a hipped roof and the central four-panel front door topped with a transom window was flanked by two double-hung sash windows bearing a subtly-curved head that echoed the smaller window. Above the door and windows were two rows of horizontally-placed bricks reminiscent of understated voussoirs. All of these original features remain intact. The rear of the cottage was sheltered by a verandah, which was replaced with an extension at an unknown date.