The University of Otago Clocktower complex is a group of architecturally and historically significant buildings in the centre of the University of Otago campus. Founded in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1869, the University of Otago was the expression of the province's Scottish founders' commitment to higher education. They were also the inheritors of a strong architectural tradition and gritty determination. Defending the decision to build in expensive materials in an elaborate historicising manner, the chancellor, Donald Stuart, said "the Council had some old-world notions and liked to have a university with some architectural style".Quoted by Ballantyne in Porter (ed),1983 p.171. This attitude persisted for over 50 years and resulted in an impressive group of buildings.
Building history The university was originally housed in William Mason’s post office in what is now the Exchange area of the central city. It was decided the building and the location was unsuitable and the university managed to acquire the site then housing the Botanic Gardens in North Dunedin beside the Water of Leith.Letter JLC Richardson/AC Strode 13/12/1874, Inwards Correspondence, Otago University Council.
This was two of the city blocks surveyed by Charles Kettle bounded by St David Street in the north, Albany Street to the south, Leith Street to the east, and Castle Street on the west side. It was bisected west to east by Union Street. The Water of Leith traversed it from the north running along its Castle Street margin though turning to flow eastward beyond the Union Street crossing. Architectural opinion of the day favored the site now occupied by Otago Boys' High School.Dr D.M. Stuart in Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives 1879, p.383 para 7725. The university authorities were under the misapprehension that the city had given up the stretch of Union Street bisecting the site.The Otago University Exchange Bill had a clause in it excluding that part of Union Street from the transfer of ownership to the university. New Zealand Statutes, 1875, p.22. That the university was unaware of this is made clear by a report of a city council meeting Otago Daily Times 27/10/1875.
An architectural competition was held and was won by Maxwell Bury (1825–1912). His plans to build in brick in the Classical style were changed to build in the Gothic style in stone.Ballantyne in Porter (ed), 1983 p.171. His conception was of two parallel ranges running north and south in the more northerly of the two city blocks. One range with a clock tower would face west across the Leith to Castle Street. (University of Otago Clocktower Building.) The other behind it, now called the Geology Block, would run close along the eastern Leith Street boundary. There would be four professorial houses in two semidetached blocks, in brick in the Queen Anne Style, immediately to the north, facing St David Street.An observer writing in 1890 described them as in the Queen Anne Style and of “dark red brick”. Quoted by Ballantyne in Porter (ed), 1983 p.171. They are a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 4406)
Construction began in 1878 and it seems the north part of the Geology Block was completed that year while the north part of the Clocktower Building and the Professorial Houses were completed in 1879.Galer, 1989, p.21 mentions that construction started in 1878 and that the north end of the Geology Block was the first completed. Rosemary Entwisle, 1999, gives the date as 1878. Entwisle gives the date of the completion of the north part of the Clocktower Block as 1879. Entwisle gives the date of completion of the Professorial Houses as 1877 but Ballantyne, in Porter (ed.), 1983 p.171 cites an Otago Witness which seems to confirm they were completed in that year. Costs to that date were 31,275 pounds.Morrell, 1969, p.50. In 1883 Bury was called back to oversee a southward extension of the Geology Block. With this his work on the complex ended.
The resulting two large ranges were of bluestone with Oamaru stone facings and slate roofs on foundations of Port Chalmers breccia. A contemporary described them as “Domestic Gothic, somewhat severe” and as “a venerable pile”.Quoted by Ballantyne in Porter (ed.), 1983, p.171.
The reference to “Domestic” Gothic was perhaps inspired by the oriel window and the clock tower on the Clocktower Block but the rows of lancet windows give the structures an ecclesiastical air. They were clearly intended to evoke the ancient university buildings of England and Scotland which represent a domestic type of church architecture. The use of corbels, turrets, and undressed masonry give the buildings a specifically Scottish Baronial feeling.
It has been pointed out the tower shows the influence of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s (1811–1878) University of Glasgow completed in 1870.Ballantyne in Porter (ed), 1983, p.171 referring to E.J. McCoy in McCoy and Blackman, 1968. It does but even at this early stage there were significant differences. Scott’s building was a hilltop monument while this is a low-lying structure in a riverside setting. Bury’s surviving drawings show he intended the ranges to be extended and the Clocktower Block to have a symmetrically balanced principal western facade.They are now in the Hocken Collections, Dunedin. In the event the whole group and this particular feature developed differently.
After a long pause, a building for the Dental School was completed on the corner of Castle and Union Streets in 1907 to the design of J.Louis Salmond (1868–1950).Galer, 1989, p.48. The building is a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 2230). (It is now the Staff Club.) In 1908 the School of Mines was constructed, designed by Edmund Anscombe (1874–1948). He now conceived and carried out a different development of the whole complex.Galer, 1989, p.47 for the date of the School of Mines. The School of Mines is a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 4771). The endpapers of Porter (ed) 1983 reproduce a drawing by Anscombe’s draughtsman DPB Hosie of 1915 or 1916 showing the essential idea of what would be achieved had been worked out by then.
In 1913 he extended the Geology Block.Galer, 1989, p.21. In 1914 he completed a southward extension of the Clocktower Block. The same year he completed the "Students’ Union": Allen Hall and another block which were linked to the School of Mines by an archway opening to Union Street.Morrell, 1969 p.95 gives the name of the first southward extension of the Clocktower Block: the "Oliver Classrooms". At p.103 he gives the name of the whole group extending to the School of Mines including the archway and Allen Hall as the “Students’ Union”. Entwisle, 1999; Galer, 1989 p.47. The Clocktower Block is a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 62). In 1920 his Home Science School was completed across Union Street to the south.The foundation stone records it was laid 15/11/1918. Morrell, 1969 p.127 records its opening 26/4/1920. The Home Science Building is a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 2226).
In 1922 he completed the Clocktower Block with a further southward extension. The following year his Marama Hall, between the Geology Block and Allen Hall, was opened.Galer, 1989, pp.20 & 46. Marama Hall is a Category 1 historic place, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 2227). He also extended the Dental School.Galer, 1989, p.48. All of these structures were built in complementary bluestone with Oamaru stone facings in the now thematic Gothic style. The cost of this new burst of the building was substantially more than 30,000 pounds.Morrell, 1969 gives the cost of the first construction of the Dental School as L3,150 p.93; the School of Mines as L5,389 p. 95; The Oliver Classrooms (southward extension of the Clocktower Block, 1914 as perhaps L4,000 p.102; the Students’ Union as L10,292 p.103; the Home Science School L5,971 p.103: totaling L29,702. This doesn’t include the further extension of the Dental School; the 1914 extension of the Geology Block; the final southward extension of the Clocktower Block or Marama Hall.
An ornamental footbridge had been put across the Leith at St David Street in 1903.The bridge is a Category 2 historic place. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 5253). Following severe flooding in 1923 and 1929 the stream was extensively channeled where it passes the Clocktower Block.Cable, 2005, p.5 gives a summary of the construction and reconstruction of walls in this reach relying in part on an unpublished report to the city council of 1931. Work was proposed after 1916. After floods in 1923 and 1929 work was carried out to specifications by three engineers, including the Dunedin city engineer, with the result that the present appearance (apart from the modifications to the west of the Castle Street parapet of the 1980s) was achieved by 1939. After the 1929 flood, which damaged the Union Street vehicle bridge, it was repaired and furnished with ornamental bluestone and ironwork to match the buildings.The Union Street bridge is a Category 2 historic place Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (List no. 2231). The bluestone abutments were built in 1912 and remain. There were repairs after the 1923 flood and major reconstruction after 1929 one. Cable 2005 p.5. It provided new access to what had become the complex's formal entrance at the Archway. The whole northerly city block was surrounded by decorative cast iron railing.
Anscombe had effectively extended Bury's two parallel ranges into a notional quadrangle with a formal entrance from the south. Across Union Street from that he started another quadrangle, its west flank formed by the Home Science Building set high on a cliff above the Leith. He also subtly recomposed the Clocktower Block with the double gables of its western façade's southernmost extremity balancing the asymmetry created by the further extension of this reach from the tower which had originally been intended as the centre of the composition. Even Anscombe's infill buildings and blind walls contrive to seem not haphazard, utilitarian interventions but manifestations of the slow, organic evolution of centuries. The unity of the whole was nicely underlined by the bridges, channeling, and railing.
The building was such that it formed an enclosed courtyard with turrets and a clock tower that could be seen from Castle Street and the Water of Leith. The courtyard is designed in Collegiate Gothic style using bluestone construction.
That the effect was appreciated is clear from the frequency with which it was photographed and otherwise reproduced from this time. (The gargoyles above the Union Street Archway entrance have been one of several favored subjects.)
The cost of building this way was increasingly high. The university had started a satellite campus in King Street. For decades the clock tower complex remained essentially unchanged.