Early history of the site:
Prior to the founding of colonial Auckland, the Queen Street gully was known as Waihorotiu and was subject to intermittent Maori occupation. Te Whatu waka landing and mooring area was a rocky ledge at the foot of what became Shortland Street. Ngati Whatua’s offer to transfer a large area of land to the British Crown for the creation of a colonial capital was formally agreed in September 1840.
The site of D. Graham and Company’s Building, within Allotment 1 at the southern corner of Queen Street and Shortland Crescent (Street), formed part of an 1842 Crown Grant to Robert Tod of Nelson. The allotment had not sold at the first land sale on account of its proximity to swamp. At that time the sea reached the foot of Shortland Crescent one block from the foreshore - Fore (later Fort) Street - which along with the Queen Street wharf formed the main landing place for imports and people during much of the period when Auckland was colonial capital of New Zealand. The port was the main entrepot in northern New Zealand.
Tod’s holding was subdivided in 1843 and Queen’s Lane created. In 1844, the steep section of Shortland Crescent was cut down to fill the lower-lying portion of the Crescent, and form and metal Queen Street. Portions of Allotment 1 changed hands several times before John Graham (1820-68) purchased rear Lot 5 in October 1859 from boot-maker Andrew Rooney - to which he added Lot 4 occupied by Boylan’s premises fronting Queen Street, in May 1861.
Graham had arrived in Auckland in the 1850s to join his brothers David (1822-73) and Robert (1820-85) who settled in the early 1840s. The Grahams were born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, to Barbara Stirling Rennie and her husband Robert Graham - a farmer and coal merchant - so had financial backing. Robert was to become the most prominent of the siblings. A land speculator and developer he was a pioneer of the New Zealand tourist industry; laid out Grahamstown at the Thames goldfield opened 1867; and was a Superintendent of Auckland Province (1862-5).
David and Robert Graham with business partner John Dickson opened a drapery store known as Victoria House in February 1844 part way up Shortland Crescent. In September 1844, Victoria House relocated to the Queen Street corner; and in 1848 to a purpose-built, three-storey brick store on the corner of Queen’s Lane. The partnership R. and D. Graham dissolved in 1849. The firm continued as Graham and Henderson until 1853 then became D. Graham and Company. By the 1850s, clothing formed about a third of total imports to the colony with drapery items being the largest single class of goods imported. An 1884 newspaper article recalling the early city cited Victoria House as the leading drapery establishment of old Auckland.
Construction of Graham’s Building (1862-3), Queen Street:
Encountering mortgage difficulties, in January 1862 John Graham conveyed the Queen Street holding to David a well-established member of Auckland’s business community.
David, the first of three Graham brothers to settle in New Zealand, had arrived in 1840 setting up as a general merchant at Kororareka before moving to Auckland by 1844. He was one of seven townsmen elected to Auckland’s first City Council (1854); was a chair of the Harbour Board (1856), and the City Board of Commissioners of which he was member (1863-8); and co-founded several important business institutions - some achieving colony-wide financial influence that led to Auckland’s dominance as the commercial capital of New Zealand after 1880. Graham was a founding trustee of the Auckland Savings Bank (1847); inaugural Deputy Chairman of the New Zealand Insurance Company (1859); and a director (1862-3) of the Bank of New Zealand founded in 1861.
Whilst retaining ownership of Victoria House in Shortland Crescent, in 1862 D. Graham and Company commissioned a new drapery shop and warehouse fronting Queen Street. As the commercial and mercantile character of the inner city became more pronounced the price of Queen Street land accelerated, displacing Shortland Street as Auckland’s main business thoroughfare. The stewardship exercised by businessmen like Graham who served on local bodies, played a significant part in Queen Street’s rise - as did the Auckland Gas Company of which Graham was a founding director in 1862.
Messrs D. Graham and Company’s purposed-designed drapery and warehouse was an early three-storey brick building on the east side of Queen Street, surrounded by timber structures of two storeys or less. Some five-and-a-half decades later respected local architect Edward Bartley (who arrived in Auckland in 1854) was to attest in a witnessed declaration that in 1862 Graham had erected the brick building - still standing in 1914 in its original state as to its main external walls - across the rear right-of-way (Queen’s Lane).
Site excavation began in June 1862 for the scoria block foundations that were to support the 27.5 x 8-metre (90 x 26 feet) structure clad with slate roof. The basement was constructed as a bonded store.
Brickwork contractor George Boyd’s use of a mortar of burnt Raglan limestone supplied by Graham was a particularly early use of a resource the discovery of which was reported in October 1862. Graham had nine tons of the limestone brought up and burnt at Onehunga to create a product said to be of excellent quality for building purposes. Raglan lime, used by Seccombe and Son for their Khyber Pass Brewery (1864) and more generally in Auckland, Taranaki and Whanganui in the 1880s and early 1890s, was later found to be excellent for plastering and drew favourable comment from members of the Auckland Institute of Architects in 1885.
In mid-March 1863 Messrs. D. Graham and Company’s new premises approached completion. Reflecting growing unease at the shift of the demographic centre of gravity south following the rise of pastoralism and the discovery of gold in Canterbury and Otago, the building was promoted in the local press as ongoing evidence of Auckland’s stability and progress.
The stucco-finished façade incorporated decorative quoin-work. The shop’s centrally-located entrance and two large plate-glass windows were protected by specially imported, revolving, fire-proof shutters. On both upper floors a centrally-located opening accommodated three window divisions side by side each containing double-hung sashes. The window opening on the first floor was trimmed by a plain pediment; that on the second floor by a moulded lintel supported by brackets, and a string course that doubled as a window sill. The façade was completed by a shallow entablature.
Internally, a staircase led from the basement to the three upper floors. The ground-floor shop extended the length of the building and was lit by a large roof-light. The walls and ceiling were plastered. The two upper floors were showrooms.
The premises were designed by the prominent Auckland-based architect James Wrigley (1837?-1882) who after his arrival in Auckland in 1859 is reported to have erected the original portion of the Whau Lunatic Asylum in 1865 (later known as Carrington Hospital) at the time the largest building in the Auckland Province. Known as the designer of a number of churches in the Auckland region, Wrigley was also the architect for substantial additions made to the Northern Club in 1870 and to Robert Graham’s Waiwera Hotel in 1880.
The contractors were Messrs Boyd, brickwork; Thorpe, carpentry and shop fittings; and Gough, plaster work. John Thorpe appears to have been the most senior of a number of carpenters in Graham’s employ. His responsibilities extended to overseeing sawyers working in the Waikato. George Boyd (1825-86) who styled himself as a builder was the founder of the Newton brick and tile works, an important nineteenth-century Auckland enterprise.
Early use of D. Graham and Company’s Building (1863-71):
The drapery store opened on 11 April 1863 on a portion of Queen Street reputed to be one of the principal locations for the city. Stock included clothing; fabrics; hats; haberdashery; fancy goods; damask table cloths; rugs; writing paper; and, wallpaper. Skilled staff included mantel-makers and milliners. The Company owned one or more provincial drapery businesses.
A hoist raised goods from the back lane. Direct communication was provided between the Shortland Street store and the new building separated by a fire-proof-door. At the rear of the premises the laying of foundations was progressing for a three-storey building intended as a residence for Graham’s young male employees.
In 1867 D. Graham and Company succumbed to the economic depression. War expenditure had ceased after the Waikato Campaign (1863-4); many Maori withdrew from the colonial economy; and the rural hinterland on which Auckland’s merchants and businessmen had counted failed to materialise. Relocation of the colonial capital to Wellington at the beginning of 1865 removed General Government spending enjoyed by local businesses. Graham had outlaid substantial capital in 1865 erecting a bonded store in nearby Vulcan Lane for grocery and liquor wholesaling.
Graham sold D. Graham and Company to his brother John and brother-in-law John Kirkwood in early 1867. Graham, Kirkwood and Company drapers traded from the Queen Street store but failed shortly after.
Some held the Grahams and three other notable businessmen ‘the clique in Queen Street’ responsible for the collapse of Auckland’s prosperity; although in December 1867 Graham was presented with an address signed by many of the province’s bankers, merchants and farmers assuring him of their continued regard and esteem. Following his death in 1873 aged 51, Graham’s remains were interred in Symonds Street cemetery - one tribute noting that there was not an enterprise which tended to the advancement and progress of the city that David Graham had not identified himself with.
In 1868 Graham’s Building opposite the recently-completed landmark Bank of New Zealand was purchased by Auckland drapers Keesing, Doitsh, and Keesing. Ralph (d.1913) and John Keesing (d.1914) had arrived at Auckland in 1842 with their parents. The family was among the founders of the first Hebrew congregation where Ralph assisted with services prior to the appointment of a rabbi in the early 1850s. In keeping with Jewish religious observance the Queen Street store was closed on Saturdays, although resumed business at sunset. The business ceased in 1871.
St Mungo Place (1871-89):
The building, well-fitted for the drapery trade but said to be equally well adapted for a banking-house or first-class hotel, was bought in 1871 by noted photographer and property investor John Nicol Crombie (1827-1878) who also purchased adjoining property including the City Club Hotel (Victoria House, 1848). Crombie, well known for his photographic record of Auckland, its people and events over the years 1855 to 1869, returned to England in 1872.
The building was advertised as suitable for letting to jewelers, tobacconists or other fancy traders and divided into three leases. Plaster lettering ‘St Mungo Place’ was added to the façade. A street verandah, in place by 1881, may have been added at this time.
The drapery shop, said to be one of the most commodious in the city, became St Mungo House. Alterations by Dickson (builder) included construction of a further stairway to the first floor to provide access to the top floor (within the tenancy). Prominent Auckland draper William Rattray (d.1934) whose business retained the name New Zealand House took a ten-year lease in 1871. London-born Rattray’s strong financial management skills enabled the construction of a substantial St John ambulance station and headquarters in Auckland’s Rutland Street in 1912-13.
Another portion of St Mungo Place was let in 1871 to Hill, Fenton and Hulbert, retail hatters. Prior to the firm’s arrival from Melbourne, all hats and caps were imported to Auckland (attracting heavy customs duty) and sold at draper stores. The firm commenced manufacturing in Victoria Street, employing a number of people to create hats for both sexes, in addition to the making of ceremonial and military headwear. By 1872 when Hulbert left, the partnership was hatter to Sir George Ferguson Bowen the colonial Governor (1868-73). Trading as W.H. Fenton after late 1877, the firm moved out in 1879.
The third portion of St Mungo Place (part ground floor, and the entire first floor) was fitted out as St Mungo Café - a shop, out-catering business and café opened in September 1871 by Charles Canning (c.1823-1897).
Edinburgh-born Canning had been in business as a confectioner in Auckland since his arrival in 1855. Advertisements promoted the sale of breads, biscuits and confectionary, including tinned biscuits that had been kiln-dried and were mentioned as suitable for long voyages. Jellies for invalids were also available. On the first floor was a complete suite of rooms set aside for the accommodation of Auckland’s ladies.
Nineteenth-century café culture appears to have come to New Zealand in the early 1860s. Canning’s Queen Street premises, including its dining establishment, was a reflection of social change and the development of an increasingly prosperous and growing middle class in mid-Victorian Auckland society. Men were generally able to dine out in restaurants, hotels or public dining-rooms. With the emergence of shopping as a middle-class leisure activity, however, there were few places where respectable non-chaperoned women could dine before the widespread development of tea rooms and related dining establishments.
The café, drapery and hatter’s co-located at St Mungo Place, although physically discrete tenancies, anticipated in some small way the emergence of New Zealand department stores in the early twentieth century.
In 1882 Canning’s St Mungo Café moved into ornate purpose-designed three-storey premises on the adjoining property - a project undertaken during Auckland’s economic boom of the late 1870s and early 1880s and instigated by Harriet Ashby, the remarried widow of the late Crombie who had died in 1878 during a trip back to New Zealand to check on his investments.
Rattray’s former tenancy was taken over draper and clothier John Leck in late 1881. Snedden bought Leck out in January 1884, closing three-and-a-half-years later during the economic depression of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Draper Robert Gray subsequently traded from the premises for two years until mid-1889.
In 1882 tobacconist Arthur Tilly became a tenant, selling cricketing material as a side line. Commencing in 1884, professional offices known as St Mungo Chambers operated above the shops.
Court Brothers and twentieth-century drapers (1889-1936):
In June 1889, the drapery tenancy was taken over by Court Brothers who appear to have occupied most of the building by the turn of the century.
John Court had joined the partnership established by his siblings George and Frederick Court on Auckland’s Karangahape Road three years before (1886). By 1889 the business founded in a deep economic recession had expanded to a second store - St Mungo Place, on Queen Street. The early partnership was dissolved in March 1891. The following year alterations and improvements by Julian (builder) evidently made the spacious and well-lit shop one of the largest in the city. An additional 15.25 metres (50 feet) of counter room was provided, and better lighting.
The Auckland firm split in 1902 with George Court remaining in Karangahape Road; and John Court in Queen Street. The premises at 104 Queen Street were the first retail outlet of John Court’s enterprise, a venture that expanded to become two separate shops on the east side of Auckland’s main street by 1905, and three by 1909. John Court consolidated with the purchase of premises on the corner of Victoria Street in 1910, a building doubled in size in 1916 to become one of Auckland’s landmark department stores.
Clothier John Dalton installed water closets in St Mungo Place circa 1911. The premises were briefly without a draper from circa 1913 until 1917. Outfitters E.C. Browne and Company Limited commissioned alterations designed by local architects May and Morran and installed electric lighting in the building in 1917. The three first-floor sash windows overlooking Queen Street were replaced by one large window. An upper-storey window on the south elevation was remodeled to provide an egress door for a fire escape to Queen’s Lane.
Boots the Chemists (1936-90) and after:
Some months before the election of the First Labour Government to office in New Zealand in December 1935, representatives of Boots - England’s largest manufacturing and retail chemists - acquired centrally-located premises in the dominion’s two main centres. The nineteenth-century enterprise founded by Jesse Boot (later Lord Trent, d.1931) sold drugs for less than competitors and branched into pharmaceutical manufacture in addition to the chemist shops of which there 1,120 employing 12,500 sales staff in Britain by 1936.
Boots’ proposal to establish a chain of pharmacies was opposed by the dominion’s retail pharmacists who were already experiencing growing competition from grocers and Friendly Societies and feared the foreign firm would displace small owner-operated businesses. Lord Trent, the chairman of directors of Boots Pure Drug Company Limited, visited in February 1936 to confer with the New Zealand government regarding the objections raised by New Zealand chemists. The Trents were accompanied by Colonel Braithwaite (a director of the firm) and Lady Braithwaite. As the remarried widow of Lord William Plunket a former Governor General of New Zealand (1904-1910), Lady Victoria Alexandrina Braithwaite (1873-1968) was already well known to New Zealanders. The mother of eight children had lent her name and support to the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society, a national voluntary organisation founded in 1907. Dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of babies and their mothers ‘Plunket’ remains a household word throughout the nation, suggesting that Lady Braithwaite’s links with child health may have smoothed the way for Boots’ business endeavours.
Boots’ first retail store outside England opened in Willis Street, Wellington, on 29 January 1936 in a building since demolished, a parliamentary select committee having agreed with Company representatives that two shops could be opened pending a full state inquiry. Although the firm’s products had been exported all over the world, prior to entry into the New Zealand market, Boots had not established retail outlets overseas.
The Auckland branch opened six months later in the former Graham’s Building, 104 Queen Street, a property later bought by Boots in 1939. Boots’ interior alterations were designed in 1936 by the Wellington architectural firm, Clere and Clere. The staircase remained within the rear of the building. Decorated plaster scotia and centre-pieces on the ceiling and cast iron columns with foliated capitals (ground floor) may have been part of the 1917 renovation. On the second floor, separate toilets were provided for the sexes. The remaining section of the roof light was closed over.
As at the Wellington store, a photographic section is likely to have been provided for a developing and printing service; and a small room for the measuring, fitting, and applying of surgical apparatus. Prescriptions were filled in a windowed booth open to public view. Although the staff serving behind counters along both ground floor side walls was predominantly male, the company provided new employment opportunities and a good career structure for women in a male-dominated industry.
A government policy was devised to reduce the number of pharmacies and the price of medication through licensing, a deliberate precursor to introduction of pharmaceutical benefits as part of a free-at-point-of-use health system instituted under the Social Security Act (1938). Boots was permitted to continue operating the two stores, but the Pharmacy Act of 1939 restricted expansion as all pharmacies had to be owned by a pharmacist.
Subsequent alterations to the Queen Street premises included the creation of openings in the north wall in 1957 to enable Winstone Limited to expand its offices from the adjoining Craig’s Building into Boots’ second floor - an alteration reversed in 1980. A mezzanine floor was provided within the rear portion of the ground floor in 1961, and various new shop fronts and shop ceilings installed over the ensuing years. At an unknown date the large window on the first floor façade was replaced with a timber-framed composite containing three windows and four transoms, an alteration more in keeping with the building’s early appearance.
The property was sold in 1991. The ground floor retail store remains in use as a pharmacy (2013), over eight decades after Boots first put the Queen Street building to such use.
