Smeins, pp 13, 54-5 Garvin, p 175.

customers.73 The appearance of 'Matai Awa', a house built in 1912 for W.G. Bassett of Wanganui and attributed to local architect Thomas Battle, attests to the use of Barber's book of

Modern Dwellings elsewhere in the country.74

Another Christchurch house designed by the England Brothers, now demolished, also appears to

have been based upon an American plan book. Built for Peter Grant, it was erected on Colombo

Street, the city's principal north-south axis, and published in Progress in July 1906.75 One month

later the McDougall residence was published in the same journal; authorship of both houses was claimed by the architectural partnership, just as J .S. Guthrie was to do with 'Los Angeles' five years later.76 The most notable feature of the Grant house was its extravagant corner tower, clad in zinc tiles, which rose above a curving verandah and was topped by a curvaceous two-part dome. The surface of the tower above the sash windows was decorated with swags and the whole effect was one of an exuberantly ornamented outcropping from what was otherwise a reasonably conventional weatherboard building, complete with a Marseilles tile hipped roof enlivened by cross gables. Art Nouveau motifs ornamented interior fittings such as fireplace tile surrounds and overmantels and the stair hall was lit by a leaded glass dome with Art Nouveau floral patterning offset by plaster swags. In detail as well as in outline the Grant house owed much to Barber's work. It is not known, however, whether the England Brothers sent away to Knoxville, Tennessee for the working drawings or simply prepared their own based on a careful study of the plan book illustrations.

73 _{The plans in Colonial Homes -A Collection of the Latest Design [2"d ed., Yoho & Merritt, Seattle, 1921, p. 4], for} example, are offered for sale 'as shown or reversed'.

74 _{Bovey & McDonald, pp. 28-9. Barber, p. 323.} 75 _{The Grant residence may be compared with Desi}

gn No. 211 in Modern Dwellings. Barber, pp. 234-6.

1 59

Edward England's own home in Springfield Road (1907), a two-storeyed house clad in shingles

above a rusticated masonry base, is more modern both in its exterior and the treatment of its interior than those illustrated in Barber's Modern Dwellings.77 Still, given the architect's previous work, it may owe more to a plan book such as Seager's Newsom volume, more than likely known to England from his student days, than to the American professional periodical cited by Jeremy Ashford. 78 _{jpie England Brothers designed houses for some of the leading citizens of their}

day in Christchurch. Their evident reliance upon at least one American plan book is suggestive, not only of the extent to which New Zealand architects were willing to use foreign publications to expedite their design work, but also of the appeal of those desi_gns to their clients. If the England Brothers followed the lead of their American colleagues, however, it is possible that Messrs McDougall and Grant were not aware that they had paid for a plan book house. 79 ]

Whereas the England Brothers' debt to American plan books is not widely known today, Louis Hay's ownership of the Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth portfolios is well documented and often cited as an indication of the progressive nature of Hay's architecture, despite his provincial back_ground.80 The Hawke's Bay architect's one and only overseas trip was made in 1908, to

Australia, and so he must have acquired Wright's German publications through a bookseller in New Zealand. Peter Shaw has written that Hay's debt to Wright is first visible in the desi_gn of

the Vigor-Brown house of 191 5 (Napier). In two of his desi_gns that date from 1920, however -

the Gisborne house 'Waiohika' built for Emily Gray and the Soldier's Club on Napier's Marine

77 _{Pictorial Archives, Alexander Turnbull Library, 71. Christchurch. St Albans. Houses. England. 21027 1 / 4, 7938}

1/1, 4262 1/15133 1/1, Steffano Webb Collection G5126-31 inclusive.

78

J.

79 _{Smeins, pp. 295-6. D.A. Andersen & KH. Krafft, 'Plan and Pattern Books: Shaping Early Seattle Architecture',}

Pacific Northwest Quarter/y, Vol. 85, No. 4, October 1994, p. 1 50.

80 _{See Chapter Two. P. Shaw, Louis Hery Architect, Hawke's Bay Cultural Trust, Napier, 1999. See also Shaw, A}

Parade - the influence of the Prairie style is much more evident.81 Here the horizontality of Wright's Chicago houses, and their equally characteristic openness of plan, is handled with confidence by Hay, who went on to apply the lessons he had learnt from Wright in commissions for commercial and civic buildings. 'Waiohika' and the Soldiers' Club therefore suggest a slightly later acquisition date than Shaw has previously put forward.82 Anthony Alofsin has recently questioned the extent to which the Wasmuth publications influenced European architecture, given their limited print runs.83 _{However, both Thomas Marvel's study of Puerto Rican architect} Antonin Nechodoma, who had acquired the Wasmuth folios by

1 9 1 5,

offers new evidence as to the wide distribution and careful use of these publications. 84

In New Zealand the relative historical awareness of the use of American architectural

publications by Hay and the England Brothers suggests that historians have drawn a distinction between two different classes of architectural publication; the one held up for scrutiny because it

evokes professional study and a worthy intellectual pedi_gree, the other overlooked as it suggests

plagiarism and expediency. The mutual choice of American domestic architectural models in this instance offers a way of reviewing the usefulness of this distinction and illuminating more clearly the precise nature of local architectural practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries. 85