The Devonport Flats (now referred to as 'apartments') consist of three separate four storey buildings built in 1923 and 1924. The first block - middle one on St. Aubyn Street - was completed in 1923, shortly followed by the corner block on Dawson Street. The largest block at the eastern end of the site was built in 1924. Originally known as "Waldies Flats", they were built for Mr A.B. Waldie.
Mr C.R. Foote sold the apartments to Mrs Julia Robinson from Christchurch in early 1972 for about $650,000. Mrs Robinson's brief ownership of the Devonport Flats was plagued with financial problems and in 1984 Bruce Burmester and two unnamed partners purchased the property for what was said to be a similar price as that paid by Mrs Robinson.
The growing trend for inner-city living in the 1990s resulted in increased demand and prices for the Devonport apartments.
Conservation architect, Chris Cochran, in the 1995 NPDC CBD Heritage Inventory called the flats "an historically interesting phenomenon, a large inner-city complex of residential flats from the 1920s, very rare in New Zealand until the government built inner city state housing blocks of similar scale in Auckland and Wellington in the late 1930s."
The building featured in Kelvin Day's "of passing interest" series in 2013.
Puke Ariki holds blueprint plans for the buildings (ARC2006-004).
"Waldie's Flats, New Plymouth" (Bernard Aris sketch)
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