The Grand Hotel, Akaroa

I’ve recently been doing some archaeological work in fabulous Akaroa, part of which has been looking into the history of a very prominent Akaroa building – The Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel is the first major Victorian era building seen when entering Akaroa. Built in 1883 by Robert Bayley, the hotel is a neo-Renaissance design that was very popular in Victorian New Zealand and throughout the British Empire. This architectural style, with its use of arches, balustrades, portico, prominent wings, and grand central staircases, intended to harken back to the architecture of the Italian Renaissance and to connect our young nation to that era of high culture and enlightenment.

But the current hotel is not the first hotel to be built on site. And its construction in 1883 marked a major shift in architectural style in Akaroa away from French influenced design to British.

Special thanks go to Akaroa Museum curator Daniel Smith who sourced many of the the historic photos that appear in this blog post.

The first hotel on the site was the ‘French Hotel’ built by Christian Jacob Waeckerle in 1860. Waeckerle was a German immigrant who had arrived with the French and German settlers to Akaroa abord the settler ship Comte de Paris in August 1840.

As an aside, the Comte de Paris arrived in Akaroa just 2.5 months after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by Ōnuku chiefs Iwikau and Hone Tikao, and only 6 days after the raising of the British flag at Akaroa. Had the Comte de Paris left France any earlier the South Island may have been a French colony!

While en route Waeckerle met Marie Judith Eteveneaux and would decide to stay with her in the French settlement at Akaroa rather than moving onto Takamatua with the other German settlers. They would marry in the early 1840s.

Waekerle would start off as a contractor and was employed in metalling several of the roads around the Akaroa township (Lyttelton Times 29/01/1859: 5). After several years of this he finally had the money to purchase some land, leave contracting behind, and build his hotel.

In 1857 he purchased Town Sections 122, 123, and 577 on the corner of Rue Lavaud and Woodills Road. Waeckerle’s ‘French Hotel’ would be built in 1860 on sections 122 and 123.

Waeckerle’s hotel was a French colonial architectural design, two-storey, with hipped roofed wings on either side. Like most buildings in early Akaroa it was built entirely of timber. This was likely harvested from the local forests that had covered the surrounding volcanic hills of the harbour, and prepared by one of the local sawmills.

The main body of the building was off set from the road and featured a broad bullnose veranda very typical of French colonial architecture. The windows were all French casements. These would be unusual for the rest of Canterbury as English architecture tended to favour up-and-down opening sash windows. But French casements were right at home in the French settlement.

The French Hotel was a focal point of Akaroa life.

• In 1862 Waeckerle set up a twice weekly postal service from Akaroa to Pigeon Bay (Lyttelton Times 12/04/1862: 6).

• In 1863 he began a horse rental service from the French Hotel to Purau (Lyttelton Times 11/03/1863: 6).

• The hotel functioned as a town courthouse and morgue prior to the opening of the Akaroa courthouse in 1880 (Star 24/04/1871: 2).

• And it hosted town parties and celebrations (Lyttelton Times 27/12/1870: 2).

As an interesting aside both of the above photographs show a rectangular cottage on Waeckerle’s land on the corner of Rue Lavuad and Woodills Road that is under construction.

In the first photo, taken c.1860, the cottage is clearly being built as there are wall supports in place. In the second photo, taken 1869, the construction has been abandoned and the windows have been boarded over. This cottage never did get its roof.

Waeckerle would leave hospitality in 1874 to go into politics. He would serve as the mayor of Akaroa 1878-1880, after which he would enter retirement. Running the hotel passed to his son-in-law, Robert Bayley. Waeckerle would sell his Rue Lavaud land (including the hotel) to Robert Bayley in 1876.

The abandoned house on the corner of Rue Lavaud and Woodills Road was demolished and a new gable cottage was built on the site in 1880. This would be Waeckerle’s home for his retirement.

Waeckerle’s cottage still exists today.

On Monday 20th August 1882 a serial arsonist struck Akaroa. As reported by the Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser (29/08/1882: 2):

On Monday morning some incendiary or incendiaries committed on of the most atrocious acts ever perpetrated. In cold blood the fiend, or these fiends, in human form, heaped a mass of gorse, saturated with kerosene, against the walls of three hotels in the borough, and, regardless of the fact that there were woman and children sleeping in the upper storeys, set them on fire.

The French Hotel was completely destroyed.

Attempted arson would occur against two further hotels around the harbour in the following weeks.

In the 1880s the temperance movement was beginning to gain moderate support throughout the country, and it was thought by the Akaroa residents that the arsonist may have been an alcohol abolition fanatic who was targeting liquor licence holders (Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser 29/08/1882: 2). Although no evidence of this was ever brought forward and the identity of the arsonist was never determined.

After the destruction of the French Hotel Robert Bayley began using Waekerle’s cottage as a small pub.

Obviously having not learnt his lesson, Bayley received an anonymous letter from the arsonist in the following October threatening to burn down the cottage (Press 24/10/1882: 2). A check of the grounds found that the underfloor space of the cottage had been packed with combustibles!

Robert Bayley immediately began construction of a new hotel. This would be opened in 1883 and still stands today as The Grand Hotel.

The building was designed by Christchurch architects Cain and Wilkens and was built by the construction company of Mr Leah.

The new hotel was being built in a very different era, and a very different Akaroa.

In the 1880s the original French settlers who had arrived as young adults in 1840 were now in their 60s, if not older. And many English settlers had moved into the area over the decades. As a result, the French cultural influence on the town was almost gone.

Bayley’s new hotel would reflect this. Doing away with French design, this new hotel would be done in an Italian inspired neo-Renaissance style popular throughout New Zealand and the British Empire.

The Italian Renaissance was a period of rapid cultural and scientific growth over the 15th – 16th centuries following the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts by European scholars. It was the time of Di Vinci, Copernicus, and Galileo, the painting of the Sistine Chapel, and invention of the printing press.

Rome and Greece were seen as being the last great cultures of learning and science in Europe, and so Renaissance architecture borrowed heavily from the architecture of the classical period to show that Renaissance Italy was the natural continuation of those advanced ancient empires.

If the Italian Renaissance was a continuation of ancient Rome, then Britain – home of Isaac Newton, the industrial revolution, modern engineering, and the most powerful nation the world had ever seen – was clearly the natural continuation of the Renaissance. A nation of science, learning, and art rivalling anything that had come out of Italy, and a military power rivalling that of ancient Rome.

British neo-Renaissance architecture drew heavily on that of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Italian Renaissance and intended to establish the pedigree of the British Empire to those previous cultures of high learning and military strength. This style makes heavy use of columns, pilasters, domes, portico, arches, balustrades, stringcourses, decorative fluting, rusticated stonework, modillions and other brackets, open interiors, and grand staircases.

Bayley’s hotel was neo-Renaissance style through and through. Gone was the wide veranda. This new building would sit flush with the footpath in a position of strength, its two-storey façade dominating this part of Rue Lavaud. Gone were the French casement windows. Bayley’s hotel would have English sash windows topped with fluted arches sitting on carved pilasters. And gone were the hipped rooved wings – this building would have prominent square wings reminiscent of English manor houses and palaces.

This new hotel was going to be a statement. It was going to reflect all the virtues of the British Empire and highlight Akaroa’s place within it.

The time of French Akaroa was over.

But 1883 was also a far different economic environment.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans Akaroa harbour had been forested, and by 1860 there were several sawmills in operation. At the same time brick making in New Zealand was in its infancy in the 1860s, making bricks expensive. Waeckerle’s original timber hotel was a product of that economic reality.

Bayley’s hotel reflected the rapidly changing nature of the New Zealand landscape and economy.

In the 1880s the native forests that had grown around the harbour had been long ago harvested. Meanwhile the brick manufacturing industry was in full swing with several local manufacturers, and bricks were plentiful and cheap. And the national infrastructure had developed to the point where you could bring in building materials from almost anywhere in the country.

Bayley took advantage of this. His new hotel would be built of brick. But further to that – the façade of the Grand Hotel is made from Oamaru stone. It was the first building in Akaroa to use this exotic material. Each stone weighed 2.5 tons and was brought in by ship at considerable expense to Bayley (Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser 07/11/1882: 2).

The façade was unfortunately painted over in the 20th century, but when it was new it would have been a blazing bright white – a glowing beacon to the success that Akaroa had become and a true statement of the wealth and resources Robert Bayley had access too.

The new hotel was opened as ‘Waeckerle’s Hotel’ in April 1883. Bayley put on a massive banquet free of change with fireworks, a band from Christchurch, toasts, and dancing. The building was described as:

A most imposing structure… [that] will certainly give visitors from the town a favourable idea of Akaroa, being almost the first building of any importance they pass coming into the town (Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser 23/01/1883: 2).

Bayley began advertising the hotel as ‘Waeckerle’s Grand Commercial Hotel’ later in 1883. Bayley would retire in 1901, but the term ‘Grand’ would stick with the building.

In 1908 a new proprietor, W. F. Roche, would officially change the name of the establishment to The Grand Hotel, a name which has remained to this day.