Sure to rise again

Cuisine tourism has always been a feature of the city of Christchurch and on a recent visit Suzanne Middleton pays homage to a heritage funded by an iconic and philanthropic 20th century food company as the earthquake smashed city recovers.

“Food and Wine has always been a strong focus of the tourism industry in Christchurch and Canterbury,” says the chief executive of Christchurch & Canterbury Tourism, Tim Hunter.

“Bars, restaurants and cafes have been some of the first businesses to re-emerge, driven by a very determined hospitality sector giving life back to the city. Much of this new hospitality is occurring in the heart of the city which is a major confidence boost to other investors.”

My early memories of Christchurch are of the beautiful Edmonds factory, built between 1920-23 in the industrial section of Ferry Road in Woolston, with its lawns and dazzling flower beds at the front - images still preserved on the covers of the various editions of the classic Edmonds Cookery Book.

Edmonds Baking Powder is still a hugely popular product in this country since Thomas Edmonds produced his first 200 tins in 1879. To this day, you will find it in most Kiwi pantries, along with other baking essentials like custard powder and cornflour. In the early days, recipes were printed on discs of paper and placed in the lids of the baking powder tins.

The first cookbook, with the title The Sure to Rise Cookery Book, was published in 1908 and given away to reward loyal customers. Edmonds staff over several decades even scanned the engagement notices in newspapers and posted a free copy of the book to every engaged couple. Married women could write to the factory to receive a free copy.

The ‘American Colonial’ style three storey rectangular factory, with its iconic ‘Sure to Rise’ sign and sunray motif, didn’t fall victim to the earthquake in early 2011 as it had already been demolished in the name of corporate progress, along with most of its gardens, amid much controversy in 1990.

Thomas had been a keen horticulturalist and member of the international Garden City Movement which aimed to redress some of the woes of 19th century industrialisation by encouraging factory owners to set up gardens for the enjoyment of their workers. Factory garden competitions were fiercely contested.

Fortunately back in 1990 when the demolition ball was swinging, a large garden to the west of the factory was bought by the Christchurch City Council and The Friends of The Edmonds Factory Gardens restored it as a peaceful enclosed area with ponds, roses, hellebores, irises, water lilies, oaks, chestnuts and lawns. The site is the venue for the annual Garden Party, in association with the city’s Festival of Flowers, with the next event on February 17, 2013.

“We still get a lot of support from the extended Edmonds family,” says John Hoskins, the president of The Friends of The Edmonds Factory Gardens.

“We are slowly getting the gardens back to pre-earthquake standards, with just the waterfall and stream, victims of liquifaction, to go.

“Hopefully they will be up and running by the date of the Garden Party.”

The factory wasn’t the only contribution the Edmonds made to the beautiful architecture of Christchurch in the first half of the last century. By 1929 their baking powder business had grown from the original room at the Edmonds grocery store in 1879 to become a national brand, with annual sales of 2.5 million tins.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of their residence in the city and Christchurch City Council's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the Edmonds donated about 5000 pounds towards the city’s River Bank Improvement scheme, made up of a band rotunda and shelter, riverside walk and clock tower, a phone box, circular seat, lighting standards along the Avon River, a curved balustrade wall along the river bank, and steps down to the landing at the river’s edge and the reserve. This area became known as Poplar Crescent, after the suburb of Poplar in London where Thomas Edmonds was born, and also in reference to the poplar trees lining the river bank.
In 1989 the band rotunda on Cambridge Terrace close to Manchester Street was converted into the Thomas Edmonds Restaurant which had become the Retour by the time of the earthquake.

Which makes me wonder how much of this Edmonds’ heritage will be retained in the city’s rebuild plans?

“There are so many important elements to consider with the rebuild plans to ensure a liveable and successful city – hospitality businesses are commonly a result of social hubs being created organically,” says Tim Hunter.

“We are confident that the city planners understand that people bring life to the city and hospitality is already featuring as a key element of the rebuild.”

The band rotunda was severely damaged by the earthquake, but as it is a category II heritage building, a deconstruction and protection plan was developed with the City Council's heritage team to remove the structurally sound dome and roof and salvage samples of the less damaged columns, balustrades, steps, plinth and basement.

Anna Crighton from The Heritage Trust says what’s left of the Edmonds heritage buildings fall under the Avon River Precinct plan. “How much will be retained for the future will be a decision/plan made by the consortium which wins the design proposal competition,” she says.
The Herbert Sutcliffe’s School of Radiant Living building, which later became the Repertory Theatre, donated by the Edmonds, survived the first earthquake of September 2010 and was looking good for restoration, says Anna, but the February 2011 earthquake finished it off and it is now completely demolished.

As to the features of the 1929 River Bank Improvement scheme, “The clock tower has been made safe and will be restored as will the telephone box. The light standards have also survived as did the balustrade and steps as well as the shelter,” says Anna. 

“I am not sure what condition they are in however. The band rotunda has been deconstructed and, as far as I know, will be reconstructed on the same site. The CCC has advised accordingly. 
“Once again, its future will be for the consortium which wins the Avon River Precinct design competition to decide and plan for.”

The fighting spirit
The blueprint for the restoration of Christchurch proposes a ribbon of parks along the Avon River to recapture the city’s reputation as the Garden City.

As the damaged buildings in the CBD are demolished, or parts of them are knocked down leaving only the facades propped up with giant chunks of metal and even lines of containers, opportunities for creativity abound.

During my visit to the centre of Christchurch in November 2012, I grasped what they mean by ‘rediscovery of public spaces’. They’re luring people back into the city with the Restart Mall of containers titivated into shops, a mini soccer pitch opposite the Ibis Hotel (the first to reopen in the CBD), a market just for children on a busy street corner, and numerous other small scale attempts to resuscitate the inner city right up to the edge of the impenetrable mesh fences surrounding the Red Zone.

The current gap fillers and pop-ups appearing on empty sections are like symbols of what’s been lost. On Oxford Terrace, former home of The Strip (party central in the old Christchurch) was the Dance-O-Mat - a dance floor on a vacant lot where you can plug in your iPod and dance to the music. On another empty site a large fridge with double glass doors displayed a few dozen books, a tiny library in a city where the public library system has been badly damaged. In Colombo Street in Sydenham a piano sat discreetly in the back corner of a section. It’s covered with a heavy plastic sheet, waiting for anyone who fancies a singalong.

But the most ambitious and inspirational project in this broken city is the rebirth of C1 Espresso, which reopened in the beautiful Art Deco High Street post office in November 2012. With their premises across the road demolished, the owners have gutted the former home of Alice in Videoland to create a 300 seat café.

“Despite it being all new we wanted people to feel it was part of their lives,” says C1 Espresso co-owner, Sam Crofskey.

He aims to make customers feel they are in a familiar place, with table tops made from recycled weatherboards off houses in the Red Zone, a Lamson Tube (think department stores of your childhood) to convey orders to the kitchen, a treadle sewing machine dispensing water, and lights recycled from the Christchurch Arts Centre.  Tables will cover a “parklet” in front of the building, and the roof is home to grapevines and a beehive.

“We're trying to challenge people to do better than this,” he says in terms of recycling, using heat from the kitchen to heat the cafe, sourcing their coffee from a women's co-op in Samoa, beehive on the roof, saving water etc.

In a wasteland of rubble, containers, creaky buildings and rearing cranes, this ambitious café on the very edge of the Red Zone epitomises the phoenix spirit of Christchurch at the end of 2012. 
I think Thomas and Jane Edmonds would have liked that innovative spirit.

For more information visit http://www.christchurchnz.com.

      

Factory workers in 1906, sourced from Christchurch Public Library's website.

Summer 2012

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