Page:Ashburton•Scotter•1972.pdf/129

Yet in 1902 when he converted his factory to butter making two other men also opened butter factories, one nearby and the other in Wakanui Road, Ashburton. However, these ventures soon faded out. No satisfactory dairying industry was established in the area until 1910.

In many ways the borough of Ashburton got away to a poor start. In 1879 its appearance did not inspire confidence, the insolvency court had its hands full, and the town’s ‘character’ among Christchurch merchants was low. Its early reputation took some years to live down, especially among those not in close touch with its business life. Yet by 1882 it was said that ‘the era of rickety new buildings had passed’^[1] the jerry-built shops and offices along East Street were giving way to substantial brick and stone premises. In that year both the Bank of New Zealand and the Loan and Mercantile Agency Company employed W. B. Armson, a leading Christchurch architect, to design their new buildings. Friedlander Brothers and Bullock were filling the unsightly gaps near Montgomery’s Building; and Bullock’s Arcade provided a shelter from ‘the north-west sand blast’. Probably in 1882 following one of the town’s rare fires, Edward Cookson built one of the finest livery stables in the country—the present Radiant Hall. Across the railway tracks, larger stores than ever lined West Street. Ashburton was even considered ‘a good city for investment’.

By 1892, when ‘the clouds of depression’ seemed to be lifting, a newspaper reporter inspected two blocks of brick buildings recently erected, and declared that when they were finished East Street would do credit to any colonial town. As it was, some of the shops rivalled anything in their line in Canterbury. He felt that the sting had gone at last from Grigg’s sneer at ‘the jumped-up little town’. Nevertheless, he realized that Ashburton was almost unknown to outsiders, other than commercial travellers, ‘who declare it one of the best towns in New Zealand and are disbelieved’.^[2]

At the end of the century, therefore, the commercial buildings of the town presented a more attractive face to shoppers or to passengers in passing trains. But, by contrast, the public buildings decayed. The low, wooden post office built on the north side of Baring Square in 1875 was unsightly and inconvenient. The