A Certain Stirring Thrills the Air: the design of IYA Radio Station, 1935, in context
Linda Tyler, Director, Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, The University of Auckland.

Commissioned at the height of the Depression by the conservative New Zealand Broadcasting Board, the IYA building in Shortland Street was Auckland’s first purpose-built radio station. ?Deceptively large, the IYA station’s structure presents a single storey fa?ade to Shortland Street, but extends for another three levels down the hill to Fort Street at the back.? Requirements of early radio broadcasting technology dictated that the building be solid and soundproof therefore there are double brick walls twenty-one inches thick to block out noise, and copper framed arched “windows” reveal a second layer of brick rather than a view of the interior.? Studios below street level at the front can still be used for music practice and recording as they were built beneath the road and into the hillside to block sound.

Above the central dome in the foyer of the 1YA Studios is a conspicuous broadcasting aerial which used to bear the station’s logo in neon. This transmitter indicates the function of the building but was described in newspapers of the time as Auckland’s equivalent of the Eiffel Tower. My contention is that the 1YA Studios Radio Station designed by Norman Wade and Alva Bartley in 1934, was a kind of local architectural wonder, and qualifies as one of the most unique buildings of the decade. In responding to the combination of the demands of radio technology and the steep site it established a prototype or style for radio station buildings nationally.

Norman Wade (1880-1934) and Alva Bartley were both second generation architects. Edward Bartley, Alva’s father was a prominent architect in Auckland during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Beginning his architectural training in his father’s office, Alva Bartley would have been introduced to a wide range of commercial work, until the First World War when he enlisted for the armed service. He remained in Europe after Armistice, studying in London at the Architectural Association, and becoming an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1919.? In 1920, he returned to Auckland, and formed an architectural partnership with T.E. Norman Wade, the son of architect H.G. Wade, who at that time was in partnership with his brother Harry L. Wade, and had designed the Mt Eden Borough Council Buildings in 1912-12. As Wade and Bartley, they were responsible for the design of the Public Library and Borough Council offices in Dargaville (1922), the Commercial Hotel in Shortland Street, which is now De Bretts (1927), A. & G. Price Ltd. in Quay Street (1927) and Pascoes Jewellers, in Karangahape Road.? ?Their most important building was the celebrated Auckland Electricity Power Board Building (1930) in Queen Street, and it was the success of that structure which won them the contract to design the IYA Shortland Street Studios Building (1934).

The Auckland Electricity Power Board (AEPB) building still stands on the corner of Durham and Queen Streets and it is distinctive for its pressed cement fa?ade (patented by Hall & Stanborough) and corner turret. Described in the newspapers at the time of opening as a skyscraper, at eight storeys in height it was certainly one of the tallest buildings in Auckland at the time and its style was dubbed “neo-Assyrian revival”.? Floodlit at night, and with the fastest lift in the city, it was a celebration of technological advance, and an effective advertisement for the glamour of electricity which had only recently superseded gas and coal as the major source of power in homes and businesses.

Radio broadcasting in New Zealand was allied with the widespread adoption of electricity, with the first radio broadcast being by Professor Robert Jack, Professor of Physics at Otago University, Dunedin in November 1921.? By 1925 a private company, The Radio Broadcasting Company of New Zealand Ltd. (RBC) had been contracted by the Government to provide a national broadcasting service from the main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Transmission began at the Auckland station which was given the call signal 1YA in makeshift buildings soundproofed with scrim and coconut matting in Symonds Street in 1926.? The broadcasting power of this studio was just 500 watts which meant that it could only be received in a radius of about 5 kilometres.? The well-primed public from the North Shore to Papatoetoe that had bought their own radios and paid an annual licensing fee of ?1 10s from (coincidentally) April Fool’s Day 1925 in anticipation were sorely disappointed.? The Radio Broadcasting Company received ￡54,166 from these licensees and it was this money that assisted in the financing of building new main centre stations which would boost the growth and importance of broadcasting.

A bill to make broadcasting a state enterprise was passed on 11 November 1931 and the New Zealand Broadcasting Board was established. Down at the grassroots in the radio stations themselves, technology to record sound for later broadcast was not available until 1935 by which time radio was very firmly established as a source of entertainment and information – a stirring had certainly begun to thrill the air. Radio stations began to employ their own instrumentalists and singers once they had the ability to record programmes and present something other than live broadcasts.? The growing audience of radio fans was assured of a daily programme service, with the exception of one silent night each week, with broadcasts from 7-11am each morning ending with the Friendly Road devotional services for the last half hour, and then silence until 5pm when musical programming would begin and continue until close down at 11pm. Subscriptions to the Radio Record and Electric Home Journal which is the predecessor of The Listener were provided to the licensees. An amendment to the Act in 1934-35 enlarged the New Zealand Broadcasting Board and gave it powers of supervision over all private broadcasting stations and their programmes and the authority to “prohibit, either absolutely or subject to such conditions as it thinks fit to impose, the transmission from any broadcasting station of any programme or part which in its opinion is unsuitable for broadcasting.”

It was this newly instituted and powerful New Zealand Broadcasting Board which was the purchaser of land in Shortland Street in July 1933 for the purposes of building a new Auckland radio station which would signal the importance of the new medium. That the new radio station was able to be opened eighteen months later was due to the army of unemployed workers available to be deployed on the site and the result of political pressure from Labour leader Michael Joseph Savage who wanted to exploit radio’s power to reach the masses in the lead-up to the election of 1935. With no competition process held, Wade and Bartley must have attracted resentment in winning the commission from the government during the height of the slump.? Designs for the building had been drawn up by 31 January 1934, with Wade and Bartley being paid 4% of the contract price or about ?1500 in February of that year, and a subsidy from the Commission of Unemployment being made available to employ workers on the site. ?By August 1934, pressure was mounting to get the building finished in time for the scheduled opening broadcasts on 23 January 1935 to the extent that the NZBB applied to the Unemployment Board for approval to increase the labour hours worked on the studio contract from 40 to 44 per week. By October, the finishing touches were being made to the building, and the Minutes of the Broadcasting Board record that noted Auckland interior designer Mr John Redfern had been appointed as advisor to the Board on its selection of furniture.? In December 1934 the sign supplied by Claude Neon was affixed to the transmitter which had finally been erected on the roof of the building.

Not surprisingly, given the worldwide economic downturn which had resulted in the lack of commercial projects, the building of 1YA in Shortland Street was one of the most important constructions in the city of Auckland during the Depression years. In August 1934, the NZIA Journal had reported in its “Buildings in Progress” section that the 1YA Radio Station and its relay station at Henderson, also designed by Wade and Bartley were the only constructions of any significance taking place in the city at that time.? The writer comments obliquely on the Neo-Romanesque styling, hinting that the traditional references are as interesting as international style modernism. He writes: “…according to an illustration in The Herald, [1YA] has no windows facing the street, the design pertaining to a form of shallow Romanesque blind arcading.? The construction is of brick weightbearing external walls, with reinforced concrete internal piers.? The street front is faced with Glenburn brick and should be very interesting when completed, even though there is nothing modernistic about the elevations.”

The NZIA writer may have been aware of the adventurous designs for radio stations in Europe from the preceding decade. In the late 1920s when radio broadcasting began to build momentum as a populist medium, Germany was the only country to have a bespoke broadcasting facility, and this was the icon building designed by Hans Poelzig on the outskirts of Berlin.? The Rundfunkhaus was sited on the town boundary opposite what was known as the Radio Garden.? The smaller-scale Dutch Labour Party Broadcasting Station at Hilversum, designed by Snellebrand and Eibink dates from 1932.??

However, the building that Wade and Bartley designed for Auckland shows that rather than look to these European high modernist prototypes, it was British and American Art Deco designs, particularly the bold design for BBC Broadcasting House in 1932 which were influential in the conceptualising of a design for 1YA. Nicknamed “The Top Hat”, the BBC building had showed architects that a radio station should differentiate its appearance from ordinary office buildings. In August 1932, a special issue of The Architectural Review was published, dedicated to the new building in Portland Place designed by Lieutenant-Colonel G Val Myer and Marmaduke T Tudsbery, who was the BBC’s Civil Engineer.? The magazine called the BBC building “a new Tower of London” writing of its significance as a flagship building, and its iconic status, “on the covers of magazines, on films, in catalogues, in guide books, in all the many means of publicity, the new BBC building, its studios, its gadgets, its engineering devices, will appear…[it becomes] a trademark for Broadcasting…something more than a mere block of offices, enclosing a sound factory; like the Tower of London, it becomes a national monument.” The 1YA similarly, epitomised the vision of the New Zealand Broadcasting Board in the early days of radio, appearing in the masthead of the Radio Record as the mascot building for the whole enterprise of radio broadcasting.

Wade and Bartley’s design reflects the influence of the demands created by radio broadcasting technology in New Zealand.? The Shortland Street Studios have twenty-two inch walls and triple glazing. Thick and windowless walls were necessary to stop the transmission of sound from studio to studio and from the exterior to the interior. Therefore the predominant style for American radio station buildings - “streamline moderne” – which relied heavily on the use of glazing, both with glass bricks and strips of windows was deemed inappropriate for stopping sound transmission.? In terms of sound engineering, however, the American radio stations were highly influential on New Zealand radio station design, with articles on the NBC Radio City Broadcasting Studios appearing in The Architectural Record on January 1934.

In terms of technical innovation in the building’s general construction, since it was built on an old beach cliff which is reclaimed land, the building had to withstand the thrusts of the hill it tucked behind, and the architects worked to standards developed following 1931 Napier earthquake. The efficacy of the reinforced concrete frame of 1YA was commented on in the New Zealand Institute of Architects Journal of 10 August 1934, but more attention was given to the elaborate interior with its decorative pilasters suspended beneath the roof structure and colourful decorative paintwork.

Singled out for mention is the glazed dome of the foyer with a lantern above it and decorative plasterwork encircling it which was originally brightly painted in seven colours.? Although the main studio was technically state-of-the-art with its recording equipment and non-reverberative surfaces, it was the elaborately decorative plasterwork pilasters and ceiling suported on a series of corbels that gained the architectural press’s attention.? The exterior, faced with Glenburn bricks and featuring “cast stone” ornament, was considered to have fortress-like detailing on its Shortland Street fa?ade, inspired by Romanesque architecture.?

Indeed there is a considerable amount of carefully detailing on this fa?ade. A series of brick faced piers each culminate in a pinnacle, and between each pier is a detail of blind arcading also faced with brick and featuring cast stone capitals.? Between the pinnacles is a cresting motif, and there is a repeat dentil course in every bay.? The main entrance portico in the centre of the Shortland Street fa?ade has an elaborate Romanesque moulded doorway, with blind arcading above and the portion of the fa?ade of the building which is visible from Shortland Street does not contain any windows as the windows on the lower storeys are hidden behind the front retaining wall.? As the building is constructed on a steep site, the back elevation which faces north, extends three storeys below Shortland Street almost to Fort Street. These side and back facades are relatively plain, and the lowest two levels have rectangular windows, while the third storey has semi-circular headed windows.

The steep site for the 1YA Studios clearly influenced the design of the building, but the architects have used the drop in level to their advantage.? The main studio is a double-height space, and it is one level down from the main entrance as were the main halls in the BBC building in London which may have been a prototype for this building as it was completed in 1932.?

Whilst 1YA was under construction, the NZIA Journal was at pains to point out that the design was “not modernistic”.? From looking at the interior fit out and sound proofing, the designers clearly addressed the technological and functional requirements of the brief, and their responses were advanced for the period.? However this adventurousness was not expressed in the styling or choice of materials for the fa?ade. The overall appearance of the building fits it into the broader category of Art Deco designs, and the decoration on the interior and exterior gave the building a romantic conception which allied it to the movie theatre building type. Ornate interiors, especially those of American theatres and hotels often featured in the architectural press distributed in New Zealand. There the eclectic selection of motifs ranged from the ancient civilisations to modern machines.? In the 1YA building, zig-zag pinnacles and the radio transmitter on the roof can be seen to express a kind of New York skyscraper sensibility in their verticality, while the stylised neoclassical motifs which were used follow the trends set by the Art Deco buildings of Los Angeles.? This similarity of styling to movie theatres, while keeping technical requirements to the forefront, led to the building being called “a magnificent Palace of Broadcasting” a kind of blend of practicality and romance.?

On 24 January 1934, the New Zealand Herald reported the broadcast speech given at the opening of the building by the Postmaster General, the Honourable A. Hamilton, at 7.35pm the previous evening noting that “the novel and beautiful decoration, lighting and furnishings were greatly admired by those who saw them for the first time.” The Weekly News unkindly pointed out the unintentional howler in Hamilton’s speech: “statistical comparison, said Mr Hamilton, allowed that New Zealand stood relatively high in density of listeners among the countries of the world.? One house in three had radio installed.? The Minister assured listeners that the Government was keeping a close watch upon technical developments such as those in the realm of television.” The Weekly News also contained the Postmaster General’s praise for Mr HD Vickery, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board, whose “untiring efforts [have led to] the creation of a building which had no counterpart in the Southern Hemisphere, inasmuch as it had been designed and erected solely for broadcasting.” Mr JH Owen of Christchurch, Chairman of the New Zealand Broadcasting Board’s Advisory Council, dismisses any criticism of the programming broadcast on the YA stations nationally in his speech, after commending the work of the Board in getting the building so speedily constructed.? He contends that any adverse criticism of programming was “due mainly to the diversity of tastes and to undiscriminating listening and to the bad practice of keeping the radio tuned on all day long and never really listening to it.”

However, it was the editor of The Observer who had the most caustic comments to make about the delivery of broadcasting in New Zealand. Because of its early function as essentially another means of communication, broadcasting in New Zealand, had been associated with the responsibilities of the Postmaster-General, but the writer feels that it is time for a change:
The official opening of the new 1YA building last Wednesday was the occasion for a lot of self-congratulation on the part of the Post-Master General and the Members of the Broadcasting Board.? The new studio and the Henderson broadcasting station are an undoubted credit to the board and reflect its progressive spirit. But they do not qualify the Board to congratulate itself in the degree shown at the opening ceremony. Everywhere among listeners one hears bitter complaints of the 1YA programmes which appear to be less popular now than ever before in the history of the station.? All the bricks in the new 1YA do not adequately compensate Auckland listeners for the loss of [choice of station], brought about one may assume by the Broadcasting Board’s lack of vigilance in the interests of the people who pay it, the listeners.

By the following year, the editor of The Observer had his wish granted, and the programming of radio stations became a matter of national importance and no longer tangled up with the postal service. With the Labour Government, the concept of broadcasting as a social force was fully established. ?In 1936, newly elected Michael Joseph Savage dismantled the NZBB and placed responsibility for the control of the National Broadcasting Service – as it was first termed – in the hands of a Minister of the Crown who was charged with the administration of the Act. His understanding of its importance may be gauged from the fact that Savage himself assumed the portfolio of Broadcasting. The Act also provided for the appointment of a Director of the National Broadcasting Service. Canterbury University’s charismatic Professor James Shelley was appointed to that position on 1 December 1936, ushering in a glittering era of state funded production of homegrown music and drama. The Shelley era saw the 1YA studios in Shortland Street Auckland blossom into a hub for cultural production, a position it held until 1966 when the advent of television usurped both the Shortland Street studios and the radio’s place in the home of New Zealanders.

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