'Glen Stuart' 19 Bracken Street (circa 1912-13)

This house in Bracken Street was built about 1912-13 for New Plymouth businessman Charles Stuart Curtis. At the time the road was known as Glen Road - the name changed to Bracken in the early 1920s.

It was designed by the Stratford architect Mr. J. D. Healy. The choice of Healy was likely a reflection of the many years Charles Curtis had spent in business in Stratford. The house featured prominently in a full-page montage of "beautiful homes of New Plymouth" in the Auckland Weekly News. (Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19140226-41-1)

The author Helen Brown was brought up in the house and reminisced about her upbringing there in a Taranaki Herald article in 1987. 

When the house was advertised for sale in 1978 it was described as containing two self-contained units - "easily converted into a five bedroomed home."

The house sold for $50,000 to Peter and Jocelyn Rich who still own the house (2023).

Category A Heritage Building - N.P.D.C. District Plan.

Related documents and plans:

Stratford Evening Post report on Auckland Weekly News article (3 March 1914)

Glen Stuart (Taranaki Herald 23 September 1972)

Glen Stuart (Taranaki Photo News, 15 December 1972, Issue #201)

Maintenance money for heritage buildings (Daily News 14 December 2000)

A matter of life and death (Taranaki Daily News 18 March 2014)

The architectural legacy of John D Healy (Taranaki Daily News 22 June 2019)

Gone With the Wind (Live Magazine Summer 2020)

See Taranaki Land Deeds Index I14, page 826; also, Deeds Plans 26 and 45.