Edmund Anscombe - Architectural Practice in Wellington

Architectural Practice in Wellington

In Wellington Anscombe set up a practice on The Terrace and he and his daughters lived on Oriental Parade at the back of the section Anscombe was later to build Lyndfield (now Anscombe Flats). They lived there until the apartment block was completed in the late thirties. These apartments, like many projects during the inter-war depression, were built on the "No. 13" scheme where a percentage of the project's cost was met by Government funding. The Anscombes occupied the penthouse flat at Lyndfield, which, when his daughters married and left home, became a place of regular extended family gatherings. The flat was also where Anscombe trialled drafts of his schemes, letters, and proposals in front of his architect sons-in-law, daughters and grandchildren for discussion and feedback.

Anscombe employed a small office in Wellington which designed a range of work including residential apartments (Lyndfield and Olympus on Oriental Parade, Franconia on The Terrace (1938), Belvedere at the corner Austin and Majoribanks Streets), Hamilton Flats (Hawker Street) and commercial and institutional projects including: the Post and Telegraph Building, Herd St (1939), Dominion Motors, the Island Bay kindergarten, and the Lloyd St, Disabled Soldiers' Vocational Centre (1943). His work in the Hawke's Bay area included offices and a wool store for the New Zealand Shipping Co. Ltd at Port Ahuriri, Washpool Homestead, the Farmers Co-operative Association Building, Westerman & Co (1932), and the State Theatre (1933–34) with Vernon Brown in Hastings. One of his longest serving staff in this Wellington office was Mrs. Ethel Bulté, who was known as "Auntie Pat" by Anscombe's grandchildren. She was Anscombe's secretary and is remembered by the grandchildren as always wearing black, her "grey hair pulled back into a bun" with the appearance of being an "efficient secretary." She remained a friend of the family even after Anscombe died.

Once established in Wellington, and after the extension of his office into the Hawke's Bay following the 1931 earthquake, Anscombe travelled to the United States again visiting the Chicago World's Fair for three weeks in July 1933. On this same trip he visited Long Beach, California where he was ""very impressed with the beautiful waterfront feature enclosing an area of 32 acres (130,000 m2) of still water."" This influenced his 1945 proposal for a bandshell and amenities on a 20-foot (6.1 m) wide promenade wall to enclose 10 acres (40,000 m2) of still water with an illuminated fountain at Oriental Bay, published in The Evening Post in February 1945. Such schemes were sometimes extensions of building projects as in the case of the Post and Telegraph Building in Herd St which shaped a proposed gardens in Chaffers Park part of a plan, which was realised, to extend Cable St as "a new approach to Oriental Bay." Anscombe also contributed to the discussion of the shaping of the Civic Centre, publishing a scheme in The Dominion in June 1934.

In early May 1940, Anscombe anticipated travel to America and wrote to the Minister of Supply, Dan Sullivan, that he was

"anxious to visit the United States shortly - primarily to visit both the San Francisco and New York Worlds Fairs - but while there I intend to check up on the latest development in Combined Factories, Housing, City Planning Schemes generally, Air Port Schemes, Bus Termini Stations etc." (unpublished letter to D.G. Sullivan, Minister of Supply, May 1940)

He offered to report on these to the Minister on his return. Sullivan replied asking Anscombe to "particularly look at the latest developments in that country with a view to translating them into a concrete proposal for this country." On this trip Anscombe visited: the Douglas aircraft works, Santa Monica, the Curtis Wright Corporation, St Louis, the Lockheed factory, the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, San Diego, and the Packard Company. He furnished a report to Sullivan dated 16 January 1941 in which he outlined the American context which supported the building of combined factories and referred Sullivan to his 1919 brochure: Modern Industrial Development. Two years later he published such a scheme for Aotea wharf in Wellington.