Fire 1888 - Published October 2000

RAMBLINGS.

A few issues back I wrote about the fire that devastated the lower part of Victoria rd in 1888.   At that time I was having difficulty finding a photograph   of the street as it was before the fire. The only one I had been able to locate did not show the lower section of Victoria Road. It was therefore most fortunate that when I was looking through my own collection of Devonport views the other day that I found the photograph shown above. It clearly shows the wonderful old Flagstaff hotel on the corner of Victoria and Beach rd, now Queens Parade.  This was one of the very few buildings that survived the fire. There was a mistake in the previous article on the caption of the photograph which suggested the building had been destroyed. It was the brick wall of the Oliver Mays building that saved the three places on to the South of it.

In this photograph the Mays building stands out with its brick sides clearly visible. The two storied wood building next to the hotel is  was possibly a dwelling, being large and nearly taller than the hotel with part of the veranda  and smaller roof line attached. 

The next building is the Willey”s Refreshment Rooms. The post office having moved to the Mays building next door, possibly in 1882 when it was constructed.  Oliver Mays was the Postmaster for the area.

Above the Post Office sign is one which reads, Lilewalls. This was probably a business housed in the Mays building.

Past the Mays building is the sign for Davies Bros. Livery and Blacksmith. This one of two stables in the main street . The other was further up Victoria rd and belonged to Mr Patterson and it was in the front leased buildings of Pattersons that the fire started..

It was interesting to have a phone call from one of the Davis relatives after my article on the fire. She was the Grand Niece of Mr Davies. She informed me that her family were related at the time through marriage to the Pattersons. Which meant that both of the main stables in Devonport were in fact connected to each other.

This photograph clearly shows the other wooden buildings up to Clarence Street, which were all burnt to the ground in the fire.

Following the fire the council were quick to create bylaws pertaining to buildings in the inner building zone along Victoria road.

Regulations were passed which required any building with in this zone to be constructed with brick or concrete walls of not less than eight and one half inches thick. There were also regulations concerning roof claddings and other requirements to reduce the fire risk.

This area become known as the  “ Brick Area”.

Thus in by 1888 many of the buildings were being rebuild in brick, most of these still stand today.

A number of these new buildings were built in  a Victorian Italianate  Revival style. This type of building had developed in England in the early Victorian era of the 1840  and  50,s. Based on the designs of the  Renaissance and venetian Gothic Palaces of the merchant princes and bankers of the Italian city states. The motifs were considered as being symbolic of commerce.

The street façade was the most important element, the form of the building being concealed behind the parapet. The importance of the building being expressed by the ornateness and the decoration of the façade. The backs of the buildings and outhouses were unadorned and utilitarian in character. You can still see this today if you go behind the shops in Victoria Rd.

Buildings still in existence from this rebuilding period are from Clarence street  down.

Buchanan’s building part of which was demolished, where the Westpac trust offices are. However one arched pediment remains.

The 1888 building. Thus named because of the date cast into the central decoration on the façade. This building houses the Pharmacy and other businesses. It is very much of the Restrained Revival character with its triangular pediment. The alleyway still there is the only one remaining of what was a feature of many of the buildings in Victoria Rd.

The next building now housing Smiths Reality  was built in the early 1890s.The two shops it contains are of different sizes as indicated by the two windows on one part and one on the other. A classical revival style of the late Victorian era.

The next building would have been the ornate classical Bank building  which was pulled down and replaced by the very ordinary new ASB bank structure, which looks so out of place in the beautiful line up of facades in this part of the street.

The building housing the fish shop looks as though it is part of the earlier Mays building alongside of it. However it was constructed after the fire in 1890. In the photograph in this article you can see the difference in the ornamentation on the façade.

 The Mays building now containing Jack Scotts arcade was the only main building in the block to survive the fire and prevent it going further along the street to the buildings on the other side. It had been constructed of brick and is the oldest building still standing in this part of the town. It had been built in 1880 or 81. The building was extended to the south in 1909 with an addition that matched the detailing of the original building.

There is much more to say about the buildings and the shops and business that occupied them. However to finish I would like to take you back to that early photograph taken before the fire.

Unfortunately it is rather faded. It was a ¼ plate photograph cut down to fit on the small carte de visit type card.  It was take from the wharf and shows in the fore ground on the left hand side a large stack of roughly cut wood piled up on the wharf. There is a ladder with a person on it up the side of the Flagstaff Hotel. On the right hand side we see a Horse drawn wagonette with a man and two children standing behind it. Then we have a women dressed in black holding onto her hat as she walks in what must have been a strong breeze. In The background the curved area of dirt is Kerr st with a picket fence along one side of its gravelled surface.  There is a large flag pole up Victoria road about where the old house has just been removed from. It is a great photograph and what makes it more important is that is was probably a private one and not by a commercial photographer of the time.