NZ Visual Diocese - entry 156
St Patrick's Presbytery (Auckland Catholic Diocese)
Built in 1888 to serve as the residence of the St Patrick’s Cathedral clergy, the Presbytery is a magnificent building. Its architectural beauty is rivalled by its purpose-built history. The Presbytery is the longest, continually lived-in residence in Auckland's city centre.
In 2015 the Auckland Catholic Diocese undertook a two-year fundraising campaign to address the building’s infrastructural needs, including its seismic vulnerability. In 2021, the comprehensive renovation project was recognised by the New Zealand Institute of Architects.
The Hobson Street building facade featured here is replete with some of my favourite architectural elements, including a handsome pediment at the roof line, ground and first floor oriel windows, stained glass and ornamental inlays within the window transoms and the balanced asymmetry of the building face.
The Heritage NZ website offers a detailed narrative on this impressive residential structure:
St Patrick's Presbytery, Auckland, is the only purpose-built Roman Catholic cathedral presbytery of nineteenth-century date to survive in New Zealand.
Erected in 1888, the two-storey building of Gothic Revival design was built as a priests' residence and as the administrative centrepiece of the Diocese of Auckland, the Cathedral complex of St Patricks and the local Cathedral parish. The presbytery was part of an important ecclesiastical complex in the city centre, initially founded in the 1840s by Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier (1801-1871), the pre-eminent Catholic clergyman in early colonial New Zealand. A stone cathedral within the complex was replaced in 1885 by a larger building, the Cathedral Church of St Patrick and St Joseph (NZHPT Registration # 97, Category I historic place). A few years later, the construction of a prestigious new presbytery was underway, commissioned by Bishop John Luck (1840-1896). This replaced a smaller timber structure on the site into which Bishop Pompallier and several other priests had probably moved in 1850, following the conversion to other uses of the first presbytery in the complex, which dated to 1842. Construction of the new building was enabled by a generous bequest from Monsignor Henry Fynes, a previous Administrator of the Cathedral.
The brick presbytery was designed by Edward Mahoney and Sons and built by E. J. Matthews. Costing £2,000, the imposing structure was declared to be 'comfortable and convenient, and a great improvement on the previous building.' The presbytery is considered to be a unique example of the strict Gothic Revival ecclesiastical work of Edward Mahoney & Sons, and is said to be one of the most rigorous examples of ecclesiastical domestic architecture of its type to be erected in Auckland, strictly fulfilling the notions of the influential British architect, Augustus Pugin. Pugin's architectural work and writings advocated the use of medieval Gothic architectural forms, and were important influences on church design and associated ecclesiastical buildings in the mid to late nineteenth century. There were close personal ties between Bishop Luck and Pugin that may have influenced the choice of style. Luck had grown up in one of Pugin's former homes in Ramsgate, England, and was friendly with Pugin's son Peter Paul Pugin, who was an architect on a later project for Luck.
For a hundred years after its construction, the presbytery continued to be the administrative centre of the Diocese of Auckland, the most populous diocese in New Zealand, which extended as far south as Gisborne and the King Country. It also encompassed an extensive Maori Mission. Clergy based at the presbytery also directly served the cathedral, having responsibilities for conducting services celebrating special religious events, including ordinations and installation of the bishop. The presbytery further served an extensive inner-city parish, with its priests providing a variety of pastoral care, such as ceremonies linked with important life-cycle events among other matters. Members of the parish and others met with the clergy at the presbytery for preparation for baptism, holy communion, confession/reconciliation, confirmation and marriage. Important meetings at the presbytery included an occasion in March 1922 when eighteen of Auckland's city and suburban priests unanimously passed resolutions supporting Dr James Liston who faced prosecution in the Supreme Court by William Massey's government for allegedly making seditious utterances at a St Patrick's night address in the Auckland Town Hall. Liston was ultimately acquitted by an all-Protestant jury and went on to become Auckland's longest serving Bishop. Several Administrators of significance have also served from the building. These include Matthew Brodie (1913-1915), who upon leaving St Patrick's Cathedral became Bishop of Christchurch and the Roman Catholic church's first New Zealand-born bishop; Monsignor Leonard Buxton (1925-1942), whose initiatives included the Roman Catholic publications The Month and Zealandia; and others.
The building remains generally well-preserved, although some changes were made in the 1960s and 1970s. The presbytery continues to be used to house the priests of St Patrick's parish and the parish office, and remains an important part of the Cathedral complex. 1
Heritage NZ website < https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/2645/St-Patrick-s-Presbytery-Catholic >