Análisis de la Demanda de Turismo Interno

As Thomas van Leeuwen has written, the skyscraper signified 'an optimistic belief in the future', particularly during times of economic depression.398 More than just a symbol of modern American business practice and the United States' 'great gift to the art of building',

the skyscraper had become an icon of modernity by the mid-1920s.399 When Building Todqy,

soon to be renamed Home & Building, was launched at the end of 1936 its striking black, red and white cover featured a step-back skyscraper in profile. Thus New Zealand's newest magazine, 'devoted to the interests of all ... who are interested in architecture and buildings', began its efforts to promote the development of 'a characteristic native architecture' using the visual language of modern American building.400 _{Any possible irony in this juxtaposition} appears to have escaped the notice of the journal's editors. By 1936 the image of the skyscraper had been assimilated into the visual culture of New Zealand, just as the motion picture and the Chevrolet had become part of the lives of many thousands of New Zealanders. By the time the United States entered the war, and began stationing troops in New Zealand, the built environment of this country was as illustrative of N.Z.-U.S. relations as the annual import-export statistics or the history of religious adherence or labour relations.401

American architecture offered a wide range of useful solutions to the challenges encountered by New Zealand architects and their clients. By 1940 the California bungalow and American Colonial Revival styles had been exerting a pre-dominant influence upon New Zealand domestic architecture for more than three decades. Their visual appeal lay in their evocation 398 Van Leeuwen, p. 36.

399 Tallmadge, p. 296. R. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream - Making Wqy for Moderniry, 1920-1940, University of California Press, Berkeley & London, 1985, pp. 155, 242, 255.

4oo _{Building Tod}

qy, Vol. 1, No. 1, October-December 1936, pp. 1, 5. 401 _{See Chapter One.}

135

of two distinct ways of life, but their use by architects and builders also represented the pragmatic choice of two styles suited to local construction methods and materials. In domestic architecture a direct personal experience of American housing by the commissioning client could also be the catalyst for a particular design. On occasion, however, the resultant design might owe more to the power of words than architectural forms in asserting the linkage between an American model and its local interpretation.

In common with the Colonial Revival, styles such as the Spanish Mission Revival and Art Deco were derived from European models but they quickly became inextricably linked with American architectural design and way of life. 'Untrammelled by the past, but with every

architectural tradition from which to borrow', architects in the U.S. and in New Zealand used such styles, often in association with particular building types, to embody ideas of leisure, progressivism, regionalism or modernity.402 _{Travel to the United States facilitated the}

adoption of American architectural styles by some New Zealand architects but, as will be seen in the next chapter, professional publications were also a potent source of inspiration and information in this respect.

A full appreciation of the impact of American construction methods upon local practices before 1940 awaits a full-length history of the New Zealand building industry. Some preliminary conclusions can, however, be reached from an examination of the architectural periodicals that commenced publication in the early twentieth century. The need to erect earthquake resistant buildings, for example, engendered a relationship with the western seaboard of the United States; one that went beyond structural solutions to take account of stylistic models when the reconstruction of Napier and Hastings took place in the early

at Auckland University College, had little to offer New Zealand in the formulation of the building codes that were devised after the Hawke's Bay earthquake (see fig. 63).403

American buildings that had withstood the impact of such major earthquakes were cited, from at least the time of Thomas Turnbull, in support of the contention that multi-storey buildin_gs could be built in earthquake prone regions.404 The architectural development of New Zealand's urban centres, Wellington in particular, can in part be attributed to the positive lessons offered by American commercial architecture.

American architects established certain norms in the planning of buildings that became the benchmark for desi_gn both at home and abroad. The luxury hotel, the Akron plan church and the atmospheric theatre offered Americans and New Zealanders alike a shared experience of specific architectural spaces. In the movie theatre, the car factory and the commercial high­ rise too, social and economic life took place against a backdrop that owed much to the globalisation of American desi_gn solutions and business practices.

New Zealand's leading architects, as well as those lesser fi_gures engaged in provincial practice, adopted the formal and functional lessons of American architecture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The greater volume of documentary evidence available to the historian in the period after 1905 would appear to offer evidence of an increase over time in the American influence upon New Zealand building. Any such suggestion needs to be carefully interrogated, however. In the next chapter the considerable contribution made by American pattern books to the field of domestic architecture will be examined to suggest the widespread use, and influence, of such publications in nineteenth- 402 _{Building Todqy, Vol. 1, No. 1, October-December 1 936, p. 5. See also C. Norberg-Schulz, New World}

Architecture, The Architectural League of New York & Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1988, pp. 7-8. 403 S.I. Crookes, Earthquake-R.esisting Construction - A &view, Wilson & Horton, Auckland, 1931, p. 6.

137 century New Zealand. The focus will be largely upon the vernacular environment. Within the architectural domain it might be noted here that Benjamin Mountfort, the pre-eminent Gothic Revivalist of nineteenth-century Christchurch, and Wellington's construction pioneer, Thomas Turnbull, were almost exact contemporaries.405 _{If architectural historians were to} give equal weight to style and structure in a reading of their historical significance, the multifaceted, Anglo-American nature of New Zealand architectural practise in the late nineteenth century could be more readily appreciated.406 _{That the medieval internal} buttressing of Mountfort's Anglican Cathedral of St John the Evangelist (Napier, 1886-8) could not protect it from total collapse in the Hawke's Bay earthquake of 1931 suggests that the Christchurch architect would have been better advised to look to Turnbull's modem

American construction methods and the mission architecture of California than to the churches of Spain and Italy that were intended to safe_guard his desi_gn.407

In February 1939 Home

&

Building included amongst its pages a photograph of the winning house from the 1937 Pittsburgh Glass Institute competition. The accompanying text read: 'Although this house was built in America it could very easily be adapted to New Zealand needs'.408 _{This chapter has been concerned with enumerating the considerable number and}

variety of architecturally desi_gned buildin_gs in New Zealand that illustrate the 'easy adaptation' of American architectural models over the seventy years or more prior to World War Two. The purpose of the next two chapters will be to offer reasons as to 'how' this was accomplished.

404 _{See, for example, Progress, Vol. 1 , No. 12, 1 October 1 906, p. 352.}

405 _{B.W. Mountfort (1 825-98), T. Turnbull (1 824-1 907). See I. Lochhead, A Dream of Spires - Be'!}amin} Mountfort and the Gothic Revival, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 1 999.

406 _{James F. O'Gorman develops a similar discussion about Henry-Hobson Richardson (1 838-86) and Frank}

Furness (1 839-1 912) in 'Then and Now: A Note on the Contrasting Architectures of H.H. Richardson and Frank Furness', H.H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers, and Their Era, M. Meister, ed., Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1 999, pp. 76-101.

407 _{Lochhead, A Dream of Spires, pp. 1 65-73.}

408 _{Home & Building, Vol. 3, No. 2, February 1 939, p. 39.}

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