Without question, the move from Rationalist House will mark the end of an era. For more than sixty years the Association has been based in this grand Edwardian property on Symonds Street. Prior to that, for more than thirty years, the Rationalist Association was based in offices in downtown Auckland. In its early years it used the office in the Ferry Building of G A Rawson, who served as secretary. It then moved to an office high up in the Victoria Arcade on Shortland Street. Its public meetings were originally held in the cinemas of Auckland, some of them owned by Henry Hayward, the Association’s president from 1931 till his death in 1945. After the war their public meetings were held at the Fabian Clubrooms at the bottom of Queen Street, opposite the central post office. Neither office was large enough to house the growing library of books, most of which remained in storage.
The acquisition of Rationalist House
The story of the acquisition of the building is, in its way, inspiring. The first notice of a building fund appeared in the June 1946 issue of the NZ Rationalist, with an ambitious target set of £5000. Three months later, in September, announcement of the building fund was splashed across full page of the journal, with a new target of raising £400 within a month. ‘The need for office accommodation and facilities for lectures has been impressed more and more forcibly upon the executive committee with the particularly rapid growth of the Association in recent years, but this precluded anything being done to relieve the situation.” A wealthy member, who remained anonymous, had promised to match the first two totals of £200. The first £200 was reached by the end of that month and the second in October. The donor was as good as his word and matched both totals. By the end of October the fund sat at more than £800. A new target of raising £1000 by February was set.
After that, donations dropped off, and for years to come most issues of the journal recorded modest donations coming in for the building fund, usually between ten shilings and a couple of pounds. Although every now and then the total jumped, as at the end of 1949 when a bequest from a member identified only as ‘A’ added £341. The donor could well have been Sydney Ashton, a veteran of the Boer war who worked as a mining engineer until he was blinded in an accident. By 1949 the fund stood at £1800 and in 1952 it was reported as totalling £2212. The June 1952 issue of the journal reported: ‘Several prospective premises were viewed this year, but were finally turned down through insufficient funds to purchase, develop and maintain such properties.’
Donations dribbled in through the 1950s, occasionally punctuated by another significant donation, as in 1955 when ‘MU’ sent in £200. By 1955, almost ten years after the fund was launched, the fund stood at £3985, a fair amount, but still not enough for the sort of property needed. As a result an element of tension crept in to the ongoing search for a property. At the AGM of 1956 Mabel Wilson, who went on to become the Association’s first female president, moved a motion that no purchase of a building could proceed without a two thirds majority of the council. An attempt to water the motion down was defeated and it was carried.
Things gathered pace by the end of the 1950s when the estate of W G Besky came through. Besky had left two properties in Auckland to the Association which, after their sale and legal expenses, netted £5000 for the Association, a very significant sum. And in the same year G H Bell offered to hand over to the Association property he owned in Tauranga valued at £1000. Now, at last, the Association was in a realistic position to buy. A subcommittee of the council had prepared a report detailing the sort of property they were looking for. Necessities included a meeting room capable of seating upwards of 150 people, offices, a reception room and space for the library, with off-street parking. A building of 3,400 square feet was thought necessary for the job.
Toward the end of 1958 Ben Wood, the Acting President, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the council to consider leasing a property on Hobson Street, one that could provide a rental income for the Association as well as a base for it. Another property on Scotia Place was considered. Over the Christmas break of 1959- 1960 two other buildings were under consideration, one in Wakefield Street and one in Symonds Street. At a special meeting held on January 21 1960 the council agreed to put an offer in for the Symonds Street property. The asking price was £13,500. The council met twice more, without agreeing to proceed with the purchase, during which time the treasurer, Mr Glen Nash, a supporter of the purchase, resigned. In later years, memories differed somewhat over the differences of opinion. Anthony Woodrow, one of the ‘young turks’ on the council, told me in 1993 that the older members were opposed to the purchase. That’s not entirely correct though. While some of the older executive members were cautious about the proposal, not all were opposed. Wallace Nelson, the president, and Alex Robarts, one of the vice-presidents, and both of them long-serving members, moved and seconded the motion to purchase the building at the general meeting. The motion was carried unanimously. The motion was then confirmed at the following executive meeting, also unanimously. The price had by this time been renegotiated to £12,500. It is a tribute to the tenacity of the members that the building fund had remained operational for fifteen years. The securing of a permanent headquarters was a remarkable achievement and one that few freethought organisations around the world can match.
Occupying Rationalist House
Once one problem has been resolved, there are always new ones ready to take their place. And so it proved with Rationalist House. The building had been constructed in 1912 and owned from the beginning by a prosperous medical family. Dr James Hardie Neil, CBE, DSO (1875-1955) and his son Thomas (b. 1908) had conducted their medical practice in the front rooms and lived upstairs. Dr Hardie Neil was a distinguished ear, nose and throat surgeon with an international reputation. He served with distinction in the Boer War and the First World War and had even been selected to play for the All Blacks in 1905, but had been unable to join the team due to work commitments. While the Hardie Neil family lived there, the building was known as ‘Pahi’. But they were long gone by 1960 and the property was in a poor state of repair, so money and elbow grease were needed to get it into a presentable state.
Even after fifteen years scrimping and saving, the Association did not have the money to buy Rationalist House outright. A mortgage of £6000, payable at six percent, remained, and another appeal was made to members to donate funds. By April members had donated £174, and the offer made the year before by George Bell was called in. Sale of the land in Tauranga duly netted £1000. A further £181 came in over the next few months. Within a year the mortgage stood at £4000. But the cost of renovations had been extensive, with £3664 having been spent in the first year. But now they could start taking in some income from rents. Before 1960 bequests had been the largest source of funds, but from now on that would be matched, and eventually superseded, by rents. The efforts continued, and within four years the Association had freeholded the property.
The first successful rental was downstairs, which became a jazz club of notorious reputation. Musicians long recalled the glorious evenings spent in the basement at Rationalist House. Upstairs was home for a succession of organisations, including the Society for Closer Relations with the USSR and, for many years, the Socialist Party. In the 1980s Friends of the Earth were based downstairs. In the 1990s a succession of businesses rented upstairs, some of them successful, some like an art gallery in the 1990s, less so. Without doubt the most successful tenancy has been the foodbar occupying a portion of the ground floor which took the inspired name of Rations. Under a succession of owners, Rations became an institution for the commuters and residents of the neighbourhood.
Finance was not the only problem though. When the Rationalists took the building over in 1960, Symonds Street was no longer as salubrious as it had been half a century earlier when it was home for the wealthy of the town. By the 1960s the buildings opposite had been turned into O’Rorke Hall, student accommodation, and the building sitting alongside Rationalist House, known as Avonhurst, had become a guest house. Every now and then, ongoing problems with rentals, parking or dodgy neighbours provoked a desire to sell up and move on. Early in 1971 the council voted unanimously to sell the building for the closest figure they could get to $60,000. There were few serious offers, the best one coming from the Baptist Youth Hostel Association a year later. The idea was then dropped. There was a renewed burst of interest in 1984 and 1985 when the Chase Corporation, then a high-flying investment group, came calling. It had already bought and demolished Avonhurst next door and was looking to do the same with Rationalist House. The council at the time was dominated by staunch older Marxists and wanted nothing to do with the arrogant young capitalists. Rumours circulated every now and then that the university would make a bid for the property. After the collapse of Chase Corporation, the empty site next door, where Avonhurst once stood, was now owned by the university and was ripe for development. But nothing ever came of it.
Rationalism over the decades
Over the decades Rationalist House has hosted some extraordinary speakers, people who have been part of New Zealand’s history. Probably the single greatest advantage of Rationalist House has been its proximity to the university. From the very beginning, speakers from the university who might otherwise not have travelled far or wished to darken our doorstep were able to do so without difficulty. One of the earliest speakers at Rationalist House from the university was Dr R W Pollard, lecturer in French at Auckland, who in November 1960, spoke on the deteriorating situation in Algeria. Outside of the university, John A Lee, the rebel politician, and Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, long-time mayor of Auckland, both members of the Association, spoke to members on several occasions. Committed campaigners like Tom Newnham spoke on apartheid in South Africa, Dr Woolnough spoke on abortion rights and Phillip Alpers on gun control. In 1970 Rationalist House hosted Gora, the great Indian campaigner for atheism and founder of the Atheist Centre in Vijayawada, which still does excellent work there. In 1978 a young David Lange spoke on ‘Representing Atheists and Agnostics’. And in 1982 Madalyn Murray O’Hair spoke to packed meetings at Rationalist House, followed a few months later by Lloyd Geering, who asked the question ‘To what extent should religion be reasonable? Twenty years later the Association hosted Jeffrey = Moussaieff Masson, a prominent critic of several strands of Western mysticism and Jungian psychology. The most significant art event held at Rationalist House was the exhibition of works in 2011 focusing on the blasphemy issue by the Nelson-based artist Nichola Romney. Rationalist House has also hosted book launches. Two of my early books, including Heathen in Godzone in 1998, began life there and in 2022 Eru Hiko-Tahuri’s ground-breaking work, Maori Boy Atheist, was launched into the world.
Perhaps the social side of Rationalist House will be its most significant legacy. I have attended four weddings there and innumerable funerals. Annual dinners have for many years been held at Rationalist House. On and off since the 1960s university students have met at Rationalist House for companionship with like-minded people. Film clubs, solstice parties, DVD sessions, board games and evening classes; they have all taken place at Rationalist House. These are the memories that fill people’s lives.
I think the most remarkable person I hosted at Rationalist House was James Randi, during his visit in 1993. Though a very short man, and even then quite aged, his intellect was formidable and, quite frankly, terrifying. The limitations of Rationalist House were apparent during his visit, because the building was never going accommodate an audience for someone of that reputation. Randi’s talk in Auckland was held at the Pioneer Women’s Hall in the city. The same problems were evident during the visits of lan Plimer in 1996 and Sean Faircloth in 2012. Both these high-profile speakers needed larger venues than Rationalist House could provide.
By the early 1990s, after a generation of occupancy, Rationalist House was again in need of an upgrade. Late in 1994 a comprehensive renovation of exterior and interior begun. Overseen by Ngaire McCarthy, more than $117,000 was spent making the building more workable and attractive. The demolition of Avonhurst next door revealed the attractive stained glass window in the main room. This was the first of a series of periodic renovations and improvements which have gone on ever since.
Housing the library was one of the main purposes of the building. From before Rationalist House was bought, the Association had possession of two extensive libraries from deceased members, William Brabant and Sam Ujdur, but lacked the space to house them satisfactorily. For many years the library was crowded into the small room behind the office and next to the toilet, meaning easy access was still difficult. Library facilites were drastically improved, as was the office and the equipment available to it. Part of the renovations of the 1990s was to upgrade the basement and turn it into a comfortable and welcoming library space. It also allowed the focus to shift on updating the collection. The library had rather frozen in time, with few new titles after the mid-1950s. The extra space and people willing to devote time to the proper classification and improvement of the stock has been a significant improvement. And in 2012 the ground-floor verandah was closed in, giving more space and discouraging anti-social behaviour that was an issue there at night on occasions. In 2016 the big decision was made to relocate the library from the basement to the upstairs floor. The basement was always very slightly damp, which is no good for books, and once again space had become something of an issue. So over six months the library was relocated up two storeys and reorganised. The bulk of this work was done by Ngaire McCarthy and Judy de Leeuwe. Sadly, the library has never been so well displayed as it is now, at the time when once again, it must be relocated. The NZARH library remains one of the finest collections of its type in the world and the safe and effective display and use of it must be a priority for the new building.
The end of an era
One issue that has dogged Rationalist House from the beginning is parking. With only two dedicated parking spaces outside the building, this has always been a problem, and one without an obvious solution. And there is also the ongoing issue of managing any expensive asset. People who take on council positions are usually motivated to advance the aims and objects of the Association; a secular, reasonable and open society. But inevitably they spend a disproportionate amount of energy in the time-consuming business of managing the building. This is not a problem specific to the NZARH of course. It’s the price an Association pays for being relatively asset-rich.
Tiresome though they can be, issues like parking and management fatigue can be dealt with. It was two unexpected blows within a few years of each other that conspired to bring to an end to our occupation of Rationalist House: the Christchurch earthquake of 2011 and then, nine years later, the pandemic. Christchurch had been filled with buildings of the same vintage as Rationalist House and was a significant part of the city’s charm. But buildings of this vintage are notoriously vulnerable to collapse in earthquakes and the changing codes to make buildings of this type comply with earthquake safety standards require deeper pockets than we have. Based on an inspection in 2013 of the exterior of the building alone, the Auckland City Council told the Association that Rationalist House was, in its official parlance potentially ‘earthquake-prone’, which had serious implications. The independent report commissioned by the Association provided enough evidence against being ‘earthquake prone’ as the city council understood it, but did conclude the building was a moderate risk in event of seismic activity. So began a whole new series of expensive changes and improvements to conform to new standards and ensure the building remained insurable. At the same time, the long-term tenants upstairs moved out, signalling time for more, quite expensive, refurbishments to attract new tenants. In the short term, the expenditure worked because the Association attracted a new wave of credible tenants, most notably a tech design company working in collaboration with Auckland University on some cutting-edge research into Al. But after two years, they moved out after having been bought out by an Australian company.
The commercial rental market was quiet at this time, with few firms looking to take on tenancies. Then came interest from an Internet Café, but with a twist. The nature of their business meant they were not interested in the top floor. They only wanted the main floor where our office and meeting room were, and also the basement which contained our library. This was a difficult decision for the council, but in the end they agreed that all NZARH activities would move upstairs in order to accommodate our new tenants. We’ve already noted the library moving upstairs. While this was happening, all other NZARH operations moved upstairs into the attractive space there. It looked as if a new era of stable occupancy had been achieved.
Then came Covid. The lockdowns hit our tenants hard and they began to struggle with their rents. This made a further decision the NZARH needed to make so much more difficult. The main disadvantage with upstairs was the difficulty of access for people with mobility issues. But the cost of installing a lift was prohibitive, running to anywhere up to $120,000. The time had come, once again, to consider, whether Rationalist House at 64 Symonds Street was the right building for the NZARH for the long term future. The vote among members has been taken, and an overwhelming majority has endorsed the decision to move.
Speaking personally, I will be desperately sad to see Rationalist House disappear. It has been part of my life for more than forty years. But change is inevitable and the Association must adapt. Between them, the post-earthquake regulatory environment and the effect of covid lockdowns have made the argument to move overwhelming.
Time to move on.