Eltham Town Hall: Good Friends

A restful silence. A whiff of grease paint, a waft of sawdust and old timber. A cavernous space, like a giant mouth open on a high note. If you stand in the centre of the Eltham Town Hall these are the things you may hear, smell, see and feel. Or imagine.

Close your eyes and picture what spectacles have been seen by these soaring walls, swiftly hoisted up by handy men in six months from 1910-1911. If you can't visualise the past, can't see in your mind's eye the dramas played out on stage, on the dance floor, in the back row of the upstairs seats; fail to hear the hush, hush, hush of taffeta dresses brushing on carpeted stairs, or feel the cold-puff breath of souls departing, you soon will.

This is a tale of a town hall and its starring role in 93 years of history. Let the show begin.

In 1910, a 24-year-old architect called John Alfred Duffill drew up plans of the building, sketching a looming structure with a grand frontage, plush foyer, roomy dance floor, a seated balcony, wings for supper room and storage, a sloped stage, orchestra pit, dressing rooms and a basement.

The Hāwera architect, who began his career in Eltham, went on to design hundreds of Taranaki buildings during the first half the 20th Century. His resume contains enough iconic structures to fill a postcard stand, including the Whangamomona Hotel, Waverley racecourse grandstand, the Malone Memorial Gates in Stratford, the Pease Building in Eltham and a large dollop of dairy factories.

Right next door to the Eltham Town Hall is another Duffill design. The elegant municipal building, built in 1911, was home to the Eltham Borough Council before 1989 local body changes. The building was restored in 1995. 

The town hall is still in use and in splendid shape thanks to the dedication of many Eltham folk. One is former Eltham mayor Margaret Smith, who spearheaded the Friends of the Town Hall group back in the early 1980s. This group is still actively involved in preserving and promoting the hall. Two other town hall devotees and Friends are Karen Christian and Don Drabble. Karen's book, The Eltham Town Hall, Memories of a Community Treasure, was published in 2003.

Don, nicknamed ‘Mr Town Hall’, wrote the historical portion of Salmond Architect's conservation plan. "It's just that I have been here so long." He has also appeared on stage and worked behind the scenes, danced the night away and sweated through the ‘flicks’. Between them, Don and Karen hold the town hall's past in their heads and its future in their hands.

Back in 1910, the foundations of the hall were laid by Manaia firm John A. Ryan and Sons, says Don. "The most amazing fact is that this was built in six months - they must have had a hell of a force here to do it."

Architects who surveyed the building for its conservation and restoration work this century marvel at Duffill's feat. "They said it would be here for another 100 years" Karen says. The outside walls of the hall look as tall as a small mountain. Sheets of blue-grey corrugated iron rise more than 12 metres towards the sky. That's from the side. At the back, where there is storage below the stage basement, the building becomes a sheer cliff about 18 metres high. "When you think about the construction of putting it here" Karen says. "Amazing men" Don says.

The hall was built in the days before hi-tech cranes and machines. "When you look at the beams running through here and know that it was mostly locally sourced" Karen says. Don says: "All the sawing of the native timber - it would have all been done by hand. It's mainly heart rimu, with a matai floor and a tōtara frontage. Goodness, gracious me, it's quite wonderful!"

The town hall sketches showed a major change had been made to the entrance. For some reason, it had been restructured to make it smaller. "It was shocking, you could not move in and out because you had to through a dog leg and a fairly narrow door" Don says.

The Friends have taken it back to Duffill's original idea, restoring the grandness. "When you stand in the entranceway and look through, there's just a sense of a great opening and something wonderful happening on stage" Karen says. "But of course that's theatre." Don gazes at the sight. "It would have been the eighth wonder of the world for the citizens to stand there and look at it."

Back on 2 May 1911, Eltham people would have poured into the hall for the first time to hear a recital by ‘Giant of Song’ Eugene Ossipoff, from the Moscow Grand Opera.

Women may have been dressed in long velvet dresses over taffeta underskirts and boned bodices. Others may have swished into the hall wearing beaded evening dresses of chiffon and netting, while others may have been swathed in silk and satin with plump sleeves of net and lace. Men at their sides may have been attired in black frock coats, over waistcoats, white wing-collar shirts, black ties and top hats. Or they may have simply been wearing lounge suits with turned up trousers.

They would have donned their glad rags a week later for the official opening on 8 May, the same day the town's gasworks opened. The hall event was celebrated with a banquet and Minister of Land Roderick McKenzie formally declared the entertainment centre open. During his speech, the minister assured the ‘self-conscious’ people of Eltham that they would ‘grow enough to fill the large hall’.

In January 1912, Eltham businessman Charles Anderson Wilkinson applied to lease the building three nights a week to show films. He was granted the lease, and advertised the hall as the ‘Princess Theatre’, one of the many names given to the hall during its lifespan. About three months later, a Mr Baker took over Wilkinson's theatre contract.

The movies shown were nothing like today's Hollywood affairs. They were black-and-white silent movies, given dramatic sound by an in-house pianist. In Karen's book, long-time Eltham resident Eva Hargreaves tells of going to the pictures. "We had a permanent booking for Saturday night in the new hall. If you couldn't go you rang up and said you weren't coming and they then sold the seats" she says. "The town hall had a beautiful dancing floor. When you went to the pictures you had your feet in sawdust. The sawdust was to prevent the floor getting scratched. Afterwards, the sawdust was swept up with big brooms and put into sacks and it was stored under the stage along with the seats."

Eva Hargreaves also remembers when the ‘talkies’, or films with sound came out in the 1930s. Along with entertainment, communication was one of the hall's big roles.

In 1914, a balcony was installed on the front the building for public receptions and announcements. "People would gather down on the street" Don says. "They did the same thing in New Plymouth; they used the balcony of the Criterion [Hotel]." From public balconies, people heard election results and learnt of war. In Eltham, the town hall platform was used to broadcast the start of World War One in 1914 and its finish in 1918. That same year, the town hall was home to the sick.

When New Zealand troops returned from war they brought death with them. Spanish Influenza swept the globe, killing about 40 million people worldwide, and Eltham people were not immune to the devastating illness. "This was a temporary hospital" says Karen. Don says: "There were many hospitals set up around town - even garages."

When people came down with a headache, sore throat, burning fever and aching body, they were put in makeshift hospitals to isolate the sick from the well. When flu sufferers died they were moved to a temporary morgue set up in the basement of the municipal building, next door to the town hall. Records show that 23 people from Eltham and the surrounding borough died of Spanish Influenza. Nationwide, the death toll topped 8600.

But the town hall is remembered more for life, laughter - and some loathing.

From September 1920, children were admitted free to the pictures and 10 years later, the first local full-length talking picture, Devil May Care, was shown at the hall. By then the building was called the Eltham Municipal Theatre (named in 1929).

Don, born in 1929, remembers going to the annual Eltham School fancy dress ball when he was a young boy. "The children danced and had a grand march, which started off in pairs and then fours, eights and sixteens. We dressed in all sorts of costumes, clowns, cowboys and fairies. I went as a clown - me and my brother [Athol] both."

He also has powerful memories of going to the ‘flicks’. "The early movies were wonderful. They were made up of newsreels, cartoons, serials, which the children loved of course. It was imperative that we returned every Wednesday or Saturday to see how the Lone Ranger was getting on, or the Green Hornet... and be suitably horrified by such movies as Werewolf and Frankenstein - which we were. We used to be frightened out of our wits" Don says.

It was also important to be dressed up to go to the pictures. "My mother would say 'You will not go to the movies looking like that!'" Shirts had to be tucked in and buttoned, socks pulled up not bunched around ankles, hair combed, hands, face - even behind the ears - washed clean.

Karen's earliest memory has nothing to do with fear, filth or fashion, but with fascination. "It was when I was five or six, sitting in the downstairs theatre seats, hardly touching the floor with my feet and being completely over-awed by the proscenium arch. I can still see myself sitting there - it's a very strong memory. But my confession is, I don't know what was happening on stage."

The arch, which frames the stage like a massive soccer goal, was made by master craftsmen using laths and plaster. Laths are flat strips of wood used to shape a framework. This was then plastered. "It was a handcrafted job" Don says. Beyond the arch is the large stage, measuring 50 feet (15.2 metre) by 32 feet (9.75 metre).

Standing on the boards, Karen says: "You can see now you are in a theatre. One of the features is the sloped or raked stage. It of course creates its own dramas from making sets to allow for the slope on the stage to having props like wheelchairs heading for the orchestra pit when people have forgotten to put on the brake."

The town hall has hosted national opera and ballet companies, Don says. "The rake is there so people can see the feet of the dancers. It induces a different perspective" he says. The stage is equipped with traps, a fly loft, lights, ladders and the height from stage to gridiron is 40 feet (12.2 metres). "There's nothing modern about this" Don says. "There's all the ropes and pulleys."

Karen agrees: "It's real theatre here." A conscious effort has been made to preserve the old-style theatre as it is. An example is the old wooden ladder used to climb into the rigging of the stage. "You can see the grooves of people’s feet over the years" she says.

For safety reasons, a new metal ladder is now used instead, with the defunct feature left behind for display. High above, sheets of material hang like sails on a becalmed Spanish galleon. "It's quiet today" Karen says. "But the rigging is often quite noisy when it's windy - just like a sailing ship."

Even graffiti has pride of place in this space. At the side of the stage, written in what looks like black crayon, are details of the initial production, Diane Develops, staged in November 1926. In the basement below are more scribblings, including a giant reminder of Don's brother, Athol, who painted in black along a supporting beam: "AJ Drabble 1950 Phone 94W Eltham." Athol and Don had been involved in painting all the electrical piping in the town hall. "He died in 1956" Don says. More signatures and show names detail the past. "Even people from the restoration project signed their names" Karen says.

In a corner of the basement a pile of dusty and dilapidated theatre seats await to be repaired. "It brings a lump to my throat when I see those" Don says. But there is hope for these cast-offs. Those in the foyer and the 163 on the seated balcony prove they can be returned to their former glory - with a lot of help from their Friends.

Time and time again, Eltham residents have rallied to help the hall in hours of need. "About 12 to 15 years ago, there was talk of it being sold" Karen says. "The community - as they have at every point in its history - they fought to keep it. It's been a central part of the community. It doesn't matter what issue, they have always spoken out for it." Don nods: "It's a self-preservation kind of thing, 'You have taken everything else away - don't take our town hall'."

Leave the memories ingrained in the mataī dance floor, an expanse of home-grown timber as golden as toffee bubbling in a pot. Feet have waltzed upon that floor, shuffled to the Charleston, stepped out to the foxtrot, twisted to rock 'n' roll, grooved to disco beats, pounded to punk and gently tapped beneath seats during musical productions on stage. The Jubilee Ball was held at the hall in 1934, and the Eltham Dairy Company's annual ball was a prime event.

At the beginning of World War Two, the building had another name change, becoming the Regent Theatre. In 1939, it was also given a full revamp.

On 17 August 1945, the Eltham Argus reported that a victory ball was held in the town hall two days before. "From the time of the first announcement, residents let themselves go in an effort to give expression to the feeling to joy and relief occasioned by the end of six long years of anxiety and sorrow... the war was over, and nothing could restrain the exuberant manifestation of joy" the newspaper said.

In 1951, the hall had another change of identity, becoming the Civic Theatre. On 3 September that year, it played host to the Eltham War Memorial Debutante Ball. The girls were presented to special guests, Major-General Sir Howard and Lady Kippenberger.

Keeping up links with Mother England, in 1952 Eltham residents organised a ball to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's marriage to Prince Phillip. The following year, a film of the Queen's Coronation was screened. And to honour a magic moment in New Zealand history, a special screening about Edmund Hilary's 1953 victorious assault on Mount Everest was shown. From big to small - that year, the Eltham Little Theatre put on its first major production, Quiet Weekend, produced by Masie McCallum.

Opera singer and teacher Sally Sloman (nee Rush) has recollections of louder times. The former Taranaki woman was dazzled by the old New Zealand Opera Company, when it toured the provinces in the 1950s. "Eltham Town Hall was like a Viennese opera house and it was such a thrill when the divas came to town" she told the New Zealand Herald in April 2004.

Later, Sally would be on stage inspiring other young people to raise their voices to the Gods. Now, she's mostly backstage running the Opera Factory in Auckland. During her formative years, she was one of Sister Mary Leo's girls - along with two singers destined to be dames - Kiri Te Kanawa and Malvina Major. "They used to call me the Taranaki nightingale" says Sally, who performed with the Perkel Opera Company for 12 years. Her mother, Mavis, and Aunty Nola (two sisters who married two brothers) also loved the theatre. Both were involved in many Eltham productions, with Nola often running the shows as director.

Another songbird was Margaret Smith, who became Taranaki's first woman mayor in 1980. "My life has revolved around singing." Margaret performed in musicals and theatre at the hall and also brought the stars to town. With Sally connected to the Perkel Opera, Margaret organised the company to perform in Eltham and the troupe visited eight times.

Don also found himself on stage over the years. "I was in a number of Little Theatre plays. I took ordinary parts in them - never a leading character. The most memorable one was called Dry Rot, a comedy about horse-racing. I was a jockey's runner, that's the person who runs backwards and forwards doing jobs for the jockey and the trainer."

He's also been kept on his toes in the projection box. From about 1950 to 1955, Don worked as the projectionist in the tiny tin-lined room at the back of the seated balcony. It was warm work. The giant film projectors, as fearsome as World War Two anti-aircraft guns, poured out heat from whirring engines. "I used to take my shirt off and be in here sweating on a Saturday night and go home absolutely buggered," he says, standing at his old station. "By the time you had finished a night of projecting on your own, you knew you were working alright.

From 7.30pm until after midnight, he'd aim the sights of the 1929 German Walturdaw Five machines at the large screen. "They still operate as far as I know," he says. But sometimes, the 35 millimetre film would snap. "No matter how careful you would be, you couldn't avoid a film breakage" Don says. "You would turn on the house lights, even close the curtains, carry out the repairs and then carry on. It was quite a panic station in those days when you had a full house. It was all up to you."

Don says that during his stint, Peerless Magnarc automatic-feed archouses were added “so we could show the big Cinemascope films”. The first of these wide-screen motion pictures shown at the town hall was The Robe. This 1953 epic about early Roman times and Jesus starred Richard Burton and Jean Simmons.

In the 1960s and '70s, Taranaki's Indian community would descend on the Eltham Town Hall to watch Bollywood movies. Former Opunake resident Christine Nana was among them. "We'd all get really dressed up - me in a new dress that my mother had tailor-made and my brothers in shirts and flares." She says her mum and dad, Shantaben and KeshaBhai Nana, weren't impressed by the fashions of the day, especially their sons' long hair. "Many a heated word was said about the length of hair in my home" she says.

The Nana clan, who owned a fruit shop in Opunake, would trundle to Eltham in ‘my dad's flash Humber Hawk’ car. Outside the hall on Stanners Street the Indian families would wait in cold southerly winds for the projectionist to arrive. "The ladies would be in colourful saris and jewels, though many donned a cardy [cardigan] to ward off the wind" Christine says.

The men were less grand in European-style suits. "My brothers, who were in their teens, would be strutting about hoping to catch a glad eye or two," But they would always have their little sister tagging along with them.  "I don't think they were too impressed by this" she says. "After fellowship and showing off our nice clothes, we'd all descend upon the town hall to be entertained by the latest film. Sometimes the films were classic love stories with the songs, music and overacting - these I found the most boring. The best ones were those that told a story from the Mahabarata or the Ramayana [both Hindu epics]. These always had special effects (and still the songs and music), which I found fascinating and appealed to my sense of fantasy as a child."

Christine, born in 1965, was just a babe bundled up in her father's overcoat when she began going to Eltham for Bollywood weekends. "They happened fairly regularly - every few months I think - and virtually the whole of the Taranaki Gujarati community would descend upon Eltham. I can't remember how many, but enough to fill Eltham Town Hall. I don't know what the locals made of us."

From Bollywood to Hollywood - many of the overseas movies were wound in a wee space known as the film winding room. Lists of films from the 1930s onwards are written on the back of the door. The Friends have left these words in place, allowing people from the past to tell their own stories. Just like in Karen's book, which was inspired by tales from the townspeople.

"It was really the number of times that people mentioned something to me about the hall or a function they had been to, or an experience at the hall and I thought 'If someone doesn't write these stories down, they will be lost'. You could just tell it was an important part of their lives" she says. "Over the years there have been so many people involved in the town hall. It's like a jigsaw - so many people have a piece."

The hall itself is being slowly put back together, made whole again, by the Friends, the South Taranaki District Council and the community. They have also had a great deal of help from service clubs like the Eltham Lions Club. Now the Friends plan to resurrect a storage place in the wings, refurbish more seats, fix up the old manager's office and ensure the hall is used by the community and seen by touring groups.

Standing outside, Karen looks up at the building. "It's often been described as a simple building, but it's beautiful" Karen says. Don nods: "Before it was done up I would go in there and I would leave feeling terrible, but now I feel great. People are certainly influenced by their surroundings."

Christian, K. (2003). The Eltham Town Hall: memories of a community treasure. Eltham: Karen Christian.

Eltham and Districts Historical Society (2000). Eltham and Districts, Then and Now: a millennium project. Stratford: Eltham and Districts Historical Society.

Standish, R. (1984). Eltham: one hundred years. Eltham: Eltham District Centennial Committee.