NZ Visual Diary - entry 436
the New Zealand Villa
A recent photography walk took me the length of Richmond Road from Grey Lynn to Ponsonby, two of Auckland’s upscale suburbs. I saw lovely examples of villas and bungalows, the styles of residential architecture that typified the housing stock built in Auckland’s suburbs from the late 19th century and across the early decades of the 20th century.
The photograph included in today’s post was amongst my most favoured examples of villa architecture that I spotted during my walk. I am not a sufficiently skilled architectural historian to write with assured confidence, but to my eye the villa depicted here illustrates a transitional period as architects borrowed from established forms but experimented with novel architectural expressions.
I believe that the incorporation of an oriel window within the front facade was not a comnon architectural element of the villa style. It may have been a gesture by the architect to Victorian arts & crafts architecture from which the New Zealand villa style emerged. The elaborate gingerbread trim incorporated within the porch valance and sprandrels are also shared features between the Victorian arts & crafts and villa styles.
On balance, however, the villa and bungalow styles of residential architecture were more modest in size and plain in detail than their antecedents, offering an attractive but less expensive alternative for a burgeoning middle class population that would settle in Auckland’s expanding suburbs in post-World War I New Zealand. The California bungalow provided the perfect template from which to build and innovate.
One final observation: the profusion of flowers in the front yard, in lieu of expansive grassy lawn, is to my way of thinking quite brilliant. It is as if visitors to the home were being invited to walk along a bridal path of well-wishers on their way to the front door of the home.
I found in the front yard of a nearby home further evidence of the neighbourhood’s amiability, as expressed through its street-side gardens. An exquisite Hibiscus flower poked its head out to greet me as I walked by.
