This historic place was entered on the List under the Historic Places Act 1993 and reviewed under the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014. The following text is the original citation considered by the NZHPT Board in 2005, authored by Christine McCarthy. Information in square brackets indicates modifications made by HNZPT staff for the 2024 review.
[The human presence in Wellington is said to begin with the explorer Kupe, who travelled to Aotearoa New Zealand from Hawaiki, the ancestral Polynesian homeland of Māori. He left his mark on the land by naming places, such as the islands Matiu and Mākaro in the harbour, before returning home to Hawaiki. Following permanent settlement in Aotearoa, the rangatira Tara, son of Whātonga and the eponymous ancestor of Ngāi Tara, travelled south from Māhia Peninsula and settled at what came to be known as Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the great harbour of Tara. In the seventeenth century Ngāti Ira of Hawke’s Bay joined Ngāi Tara and extensive intermarriage occurred. Other iwi who made a home there included Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne, Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Māmoe.
In the 1820s and 1830s, iwi including Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Tuturu, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Maru and Nga Rauru, along with Ngāti Toa Rangatira from Kawhia moved south down the island to the Kapiti Coast and then on to Te Whanganui a Tara, because of pressure and the threat of attack from northern iwi. One of the first kāinga Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama built, in 1824-25, was Kaiwharawhara Pā, at the mouth of the Kaiwharawhara Stream which flows down Ngaio Gorge. The gorge was heavily forested and had kāinga and cultivation areas along its length and on either side, including a large 147-acre cultivation at Otari, servicing pā at Kaiwharawhara, Pipitea and Ohariu. A well-used track ran through Ngaio over the hills to Ohariu and Makara, and there were more cultivations for Kaiwharawhara Pā in the Trelissick Park area.
Pākehā Settlement
In 1826 two ships belonging to London-based immigration firm the New Zealand Company sailed into Te Whanganui-a-Tara and identified it as a promising site for Pākehā settlement. When the company was revived the following decade Te Whanganui-a-Tara was again in its sights. By then, Pākehā had been in Aotearoa New Zealand for some time. Missionaries were concerned about the impact of Pākehā settlement on Māori communities and feared the growing encroachment of land speculators. They encouraged the British government to act and by early 1839 it was clear that annexation was nigh. The New Zealand Company raced to buy Māori land before the government banned sales and in August 1839 agent William Wakefield bought ‘vast tracts of land’ around Te Whanganui-a-Tara from Te Ātiawa rangatira Te Puni and Te Wharepōuri. The highly controversial purchase was challenged by other Māori leaders but Pākehā settlement nevertheless ensued and the first immigrant ships arrived early in 1840. The new town at Pito-one (Petone) was moved across the harbour to what is now Wellington after it was flooded by Te Awa Kairangi (Hutt River).
The first European settlers moved to the suburb of Ngaio in the 1840s, the most prominent being future premier Sir William Fox, whose 1857 house, Crofton, lent its name to the settlement until 1908. Ngaio’s population grew after the opening of the Wellington Manawatu Railway in 1885. In 1907 a large area of land atop the hill above Trelissick Park was subdivided by Juliette Deane, and became Lot 65 DP 1162, which was further subdivided in 1927 to create Lot 1 DP 8974 on which Kahn House would be built.]
[Ernst Plischke and the design of this house]
Designed between 1940 and 1942, Kahn House is a key work in the oeuvre of Ernst Anton Plischke (1903-1992). Plischke was born in Vienna in 1903. He qualified as an architect in 1932 and worked in both Vienna and New York. Plischke’s work won numerous awards and his Vienna Werkbundseidling (1928-1930) and Labour administration offices at Liesing (1930) featured in Alberto Satoris' 1935 publication Gli Elementi dell'Architettura funzionale. During the Nazi occupation of Vienna, Plischke emigrated to New Zealand. As a member of the socialist Austrian Werkbund and the husband of the Jewish Anna Lang, Plischke would have been in danger had he remained. While in New Zealand he was employed in the Department of Housing Construction (1939-1947) and [then from 1948 worked] in private practice. His design work includes houses, residential apartment blocks, churches, monuments, an office building, furniture and town planning. He left New Zealand in 1963 to take up the position of head of the Akademieder Bildenden Künste, Austria. The [New Zealand Institute of Architects] (NZIA) recognised the contribution Plischke had made to New Zealand architecture in 1969 with the award of an honorary Fellowship. He was also awarded the Great Austrian State Prize for Architecture (1935).
Kahn House was the first house Plischke designed in Wellington and the second he designed in New Zealand. It was commissioned by [German] émigré clients. As such, it reflects the cultural context in New Zealand at a time when numerous Europeans immigrated to New Zealand to escape Nazi persecution. These immigrants and refugees were often listed or classified as ‘enemy aliens’ (as was the case with Plischke and his Jewish wife Anna Lang), and they often formed close social and intellectual communities apart from mainstream New Zealand. Engagement with European art and design (what Tyler calls ‘the urbane’) characterised the aesthetic appreciation of this social group. This is reflected in the modernist design of [the] house.
The design was completed in 1941 and was formed by the [clients’] requirements, and Plischke's ideas about, and preference for, Modernism. [One of the clients] requested that the house include a raised floor ‘stage’. This stage became a major feature of the house’s unusual layout.
To accommodate the stage, the house was designed with one main L-shaped and split-level living/dining room. The lifting of the floor for the stage meant that the kitchen had to have steps up to the end used for dining. This, and the inconvenience of carrying meals from the kitchen up the steps to the dining room (the table sat up to 18 people), must have been a point of discussion at some stage, as Plischke [later] said he was ‘no good on kitchens’.
Despite the unusual layout, the living/dining spaces were positioned to ensure all day sun, which meant that the living room remained warm (even during winter) without additional heating. At times it needed ventilation. This was provided by the side glass door on the south-west elevation (near hall entrance), which opened from the inside. Passive ventilation was also achieved through vent grills, which could be opened and closed via a nut and bolt system designed by Plischke.
The design of [the] house had other features that were unusual for a New Zealand residence of the period. The living/dining space, which was ‘larger than was usual’, included large areas of floor to ceiling glazing. These windows survived the 1942 Wellington earthquake unscathed and [very few] have ever cracked (despite the high wind loading on the large areas of glass).
Another unusual feature was the exterior sliding door on the north-west elevation, which is thought to be the first glass sliding door in domestic architecture in New Zealand. Plischke wrote in 1969 that ‘In place of conventional French windows I have tried, as far as I am aware, for the first time in New Zealand, to detail a sliding door which can withstand the strong winds and rain of Wellington’. The door was of great interest to visiting architects because it was hung on the outside and Tyler notes that ‘Plischke brought all his Housing Department colleagues there to view the detailing of the sliding door’. The door was a particularly assertive gesture because it was placed in the path of the prevailing wind, and was an innovative adaptation of [an] industrial prototype (garage roller door).
The design for the rest of the house was comparatively conventional, though the width of the hall was unusually generous. Plischke used translucent glass in the gridded window at the end of the hall near the entry to the L-shaped living space. This was a deliberate decision to both let light into the hallway, and to obscure the outside so that when people entered the living room the view had its full impact.
Kahn House was built to Plischke’s design by H[erbert] Bradshaw, of Khandallah for approximately £2103. Constructed on a hilltop, the building had extensive views. Completed by 1941, the building featured an ‘innovative construction system ... [a] wooden skeleton and flat roof’. Plischke described this as ‘break[ing] away from stud frame construction and the [New Zealand] Housing Department Standards and [a] start on a timber skeleton building as I have done in [the house I designed in] Attersee’. The construction was very different to the usual New Zealand construction at the time, and reflects Plischke's priorities (especially regarding the relationship between the interior of the house and its landscape context) as a modernist architect. The progressive nature of the house is reflected in the fact that, as a boy, the [clients’] child was aware that the house was more avant-garde than other houses in the area.
[European refugees arriving in New Zealand encountered a society where many of their cultural habits and expectations could not be met. However, many found kindness in their neighbours and were especially welcomed by ‘the local intelligentsia’ and creative communities who were ‘grateful for the presence of refugees, for so many of whom imaginative work is necessary and only its absence remarkable.’ With such limited theatre and cafe society available, the Europeans compensated with gatherings in their own homes. The ‘stage’ of the house can be seen as a necessary feature in this context, and hosted private performances, lectures and recitals, including a 1942 illustrated lecture by Plischke on Austrian Baroque architecture. Howard Wadman wrote, for the 1948 Yearbook of the Arts in New Zealand, that with this house, Plischke:
‘…has made the owners at home in a different world. The difference is not merely one of ‘taste’ but of total consciousness. A different kind of life can be lived in this room, and a more liberal personality developed in it.’
Mingling with the highly-educated and cultured Europeans had a profound impact on a generation of New Zealand intellectuals, artists, writers, musicians and architects, not to mention the impact that was eventually felt by wider New Zealand society as our Post-war culture developed. Allen Curnow’s poem ‘At Joachim Kahn’s’, published in 1944, illustrates some of the influence that the cultural mix at these private parties and events had. The impact of the specific setting is hinted at too: Curnow’s words reference the house’s architecture, particularly the floor-to-ceiling glazing, in his poem of experiencing an evening of Beethoven’s music during southerly weather. ]
[In 2005] the house still included much of the original furniture and the kitchen, toilet, and bathroom all [had] their original fittings. The [clients] brought furniture to New Zealand from Germany and Plischke designed the house to accommodate special pieces (such as the piano alcove, and the recess for the bookcase in the wall between the kitchen and the living room). Plischke also designed an alcove for the refrigerator, and the cupboard outside the backdoor, beneath the toilet window.
In the living/lower area of the L-shaped room the light fitting (chosen by Plischke) is original, [and] the table [and chairs] on the stage [were] brought from Germany. The table had a servant bell, and could extend out to accommodate 18 people for dinner. The chairs would be arranged diagonally at an angle from the edge of the stage when people visited, while [guests] would sometimes sit on the steps to the ‘stage’. The built-in bookcase in the study (south-east bedroom) is original. However the bookcase in the sunny bedroom in the western corner is a [later] alteration. The hall ‘coat cupboard’ (on the right side of the passage to the kitchen) [was designed as] a curtain around a metal shelf and [the] rack fitting was probably brought from Germany.
[In 2005], the house [was] in close to its original condition, [and the exterior appears much the same in 2024]. Of particular note [was] the original colour scheme on the interior. However, the exterior blue is close but not exactly the same as the original. The original sky-blue colour had less green and was more of a cornflower blue than the current colour. [Windows in the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen were replaced with aluminium double-glazed joinery c.2006, and the eight large rectangular floor-to ceiling window panes along the northeast elevation of the living area were replaced with four large square panes at a later date. The glazing along the important northwestern elevation (including sliding door) has also since been replaced with double-glazed units, and these have retained the appearance of timber joinery. All of the living-room glazing remains floor-to-ceiling, and all windows in the house retain their original dimensions and positions.]
The key change to [the original design of the] house [was made] to the lower storey. Beneath the main floor, at the level of the driveway is a laundry, and a garage that was added in March 1965. There was always a washhouse down there, referred to in the original building specifications, and shown on the south-eastern and south-western elevations, but not in plan on the original drawings submitted to the city council. The driveway was put in in 1964. Prior to this, access to the house was via the old path through the bush (still existing). As Tyler notes: ‘visitors arriving for parties in the war years would have climbed up steps from the street through native bush’. The landscaping of the section was not professionally designed, with [the clients] designing and planting the garden.
[As an early example of continental modernist housing in New Zealand, the house has become celebrated as an important element in this country’s Modern Movement architecture, and appears in numerous publications. As early as 1950 it was used as an example by Plischke to make ‘the case locally for Internationalism in architectural style’, and it predates any of his other Wellington houses by at least seven years. Internationally, images and information about the house have been selected for inclusion in various exhibitions, including: 1983 Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Austria, catalogue: Fonatti, F. ‘E.A. Plischke’ Katalog zur Ausstellung 1983 an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Vienna: Akademie der Bildenden Künste, 1983); and 2003 Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) and the Kaiserliches Hofmobiliendepot (Imperial Furniture Collection), Vienna. The invitation to the 2004 City Gallery, Wellington, exhibition ‘Ernst Plischke: Architect’ featured a sketch of the house and a perforated cardboard model of the house that could be popped out and made up in 3D. The following year, the house featured in another major retrospective, ‘Ernst Plischke in New Zealand’, at the Auckland Museum (8 April-19 June 2005).]
