The stonemasons built a house that showed off their skills. They were bragging in stone. We can make a beautiful and unique house, they seem to have said with their tools.
The walls are creamy Oamaru stone, cut horizontally by repeating red brick lines. It's an immediately charming pattern. The exterior lintels, cornices, corbels, and gables are mostly carved Oamaru stone. Again their patterns, some chevrons, are repeated and draw the eye. It's also well proportioned, with two echoing roof lines. The inside is quality too. More on that later.
"I'm a little bit in love with it but I'm an architect, so I'm allowed," says Gaby van den Boom. He is taking this house down stone by stone and will reconstruct it somewhere else, once he owns some land. "It's one of the most beautiful houses I've seen."
"Everybody thought I was crazy taking a stone building down, which is probably true," says the Holland-raised and trained engineer and architect who came to Christchurch for the rebuild. He's got a job in the rebuild. After 3pm each day and all weekend long, he disassembles the house, storing the native timbers in a shipping container, the stone and French roof tiles on pallets.
Gaby van den Boom rests on a fireplace in the half deconstructed house he is taking apart stone by stone, photo by JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ
He devised his own system for labelling each element so it can be restored to its place. While many of the carvings are still sharp after more than a century outside, other have worn or were damaged in the earthquakes. A new stonemason will be required to cut some new shapes.
Van den Boom discovered the house at 19 Forth St, Richmond, for sale on the internet late last year. An open house was being held that afternoon. He attended and was struck. "When people connect to a building, that's called architecture," van den Boom says. He connected.
But he couldn't raise the money in time to buy it. The new owners wanted the 792sqm of land, not the building. So van den Boom proposed a deal: He would demolish the house for free. He would take it apart and clear the site quickly. "It would be a shame to see it as harbour fill in Lyttelton," van den Boom says.
Gaby van den Boom's deconstruction project is about half done, photo by JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ
The new owners are sympathetic, he says. They probably hadn't realised they were about to level such a little-known gem. They support the deconstruction project and extended his deadline. Van den Boom started on January 15 and now has until June 1 to finish the job.
The building "tells me how to deconstruct it", he says. If working one end of a stone is difficult, he moves to the other end and it's often easier. "It's guiding me a bit." Van den Boom can get emotional about the project. Over a coffee on New Regent St, he's almost misty-eyed about the building and his normally good English falters. At the site, he can't stop grinning: "I do it because I love it so much."
The stonemasons who built the house in 1910-14 in their spare time were George Barker Muschamp and his son Lorenzo De Castino Muschamp. George Barker was clerk of works on Christ Church Cathedral, the Star newspaper reported in November 1901. He may have worked on the old Press building as well. A clerk of works is essentially site foreman and probably among the most skilled craftsmen on site. Lorenzo died in 1962, described in his will as a retired stonemason. The house was not in his estate.
House Muschamp is being deconstructed by Dutch architect Gaby Van Den Boom and will be reconstructed somewhere else one day. The front entrance shows the amount of work done by the Muschamps.
A plaque attached to the building separately credits father and son for the building and Van den Boom thinks it was a joint exercise. He now calls the building "House Muschamp" in their honour.
These stonemasons were "showing off", van den Boom says. They had access to beautiful materials and made the most of them. Not just omamru stone, but native timbers, marble and good glass.
Stonemasonry is everywhere at the site. Radically different types of stone litter the ground, as if the Muschamps were salvaging rock from jobs. There's an altar on an outside wall, carved from marble. It was taken down after the quakes. Some of the concrete fences feature small gargoyles. The garage is half built with Oamaru stone, half with basalt stone.
The house is now called House Muschamp after the stonemason. This plaque IDs the masons.
House Muschamp is small: about 120sqm, three small bedrooms, one bathroom and some later additions out the back. Only three walls carry the horizontal red brick piping. The rear is just plain Oamaru stone. Van den Boom may take this opportunity to build a modern extension, giving the pokey and dark Edwardian kitchen an enlarged role in the recreated house. It depends on the land he gets and finance.
The interior walls are thick Oamaru stone, an unusual feature. Even the wealthy who built mansions of Oamaru stone used timber, plaster and lathe for internal walls. The Muschamps carved indoors too. There was a magnificent carved arch inside the front door, a ceremonial welcome to the stonemasons' little palace. The ceilings are stamped metal and 3.4m above the floor, another unusual feature. Standard stud heights today are 2.4m to 2.7m.
It's almost a miracle the bungalow survived the quakes. The residential red zone is a few hundred metres away. The land is TC3, the lowest quality. The building is heavy and the concrete foundation sagged on one side. Van den Boom credits the soft mortar used by the Muschamps. It gave the house some flex during the shaking.
Cornices and other decorative features on the house's exterior.
But the insurer wasn't interested in saving it. Lifting this house to fix the foundation would have been difficult and expensive, van den Boom expects.
He's not doing this just for the beautiful house. This European has something to say about Christchurch's approach to heritage architecture. "It's against my ethics to have a house like House Muschamp demolished," he says. " I think that Christchurch should be careful with old buildings ... There's a value to [them] that will be lost once they get demolished."
It's something the neighbours get. They were upset on hearing the house would be demolished, then pleased it would be saved, then sad it would be rebuilt elsewhere, van den Boom reports. It's a landmark in this warren-like enclave in old Richmond.
These sorts of carved interior details are everywhere, photo by JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ
Neighbours often drop by to chat with the architect from the old world saving a house in the new world built by masters using the most ancient of techniques.
Native timbers and leaded glass the front door.
WILL HARVIE REPORTER AND A FEATURE WRITER AT THE PRESS