The Spread of Purpose-Built Flats to the Suburbs: A Study of Mount Eden Borough, Auckland, 1922–1939

In New Zealand, purpose-built apartment buildings first appeared in the 1910s, mostly close to central business districts. More such buildings followed in the 1920s, including tall, landmark examples late that decade, and another wave in the mid-to-late 1930s, between the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II. Notable in the 1920s and the 1930s, too, was the proliferation of smaller blocks of flats in suburban locations. This article explores the first purpose-built blocks of flats in Auckland’s former Mount Eden Borough. It examines them collectively, to identify patterns apparent in the types of people involved and in the buildings as built. This is effectively to ask what the suburban blocks of flats reveal about New Zealand’s history of constructing multi-unit housing, and if they can be understood as a typology. The article reveals a range of patterns among the developers, architects, builders, and occupants, and commonalities in the siting, scale, materials, and amenity of the buildings, more readily apparent in the mid-to-late 1930s when most were Spanish Mission, Art Deco, or Moderne. The findings are specific to the one geographic area, but there is evidence to suggest that similar trends were also apparent elsewhere.