42 Morris Street circa 1914. Photo: Suppleid
A house at 42 Morris Street in Napier has a long and varied history, and a Hawke's Bay author has published a book about it.
Elizabeth Pishief has captured what went on inside the two storey house in her new book: Birth & Rebirth: The Story of the Hudson Family Home, Bethany Maternity Hospital and Springhill Addiction Centre.
It began life as a family home in 1914 for the first headmaster of Nelson Park School, Edward Hudson.
The staff at Bethany in 1960 Photo: Hawke’s Bay Photo News/Steve Butler
In 1914 the house was rather grand digs for a Nelson school headmaster, Pishief told RNZ's Nine to Noon.
Headmaster’s home, maternity hospital, and addiction centre
"Edward Hudson's wife, Grace, was the daughter of a well-known family in Hastings … and they had had a very nice house in Hastings built that they'd built themselves as well, which sold for quite a lot of money. I think her father bought it."
It stayed a private family home until 1942 when the Salvation Army bought it to turn it into Bethany Maternity Hospital, she said. Maternity care in Hawke's Bay was notoriously poor.
42 Morris Street in 2020 shortly before demolition. Photo: Warren Buckland
"Hawke's Bay was one of the worst places to have a baby for both the mother and the baby in the country."
The women she spoke to that went through Bethany had largely fond memories, she said.
"The staff of Bethany were very kind, nice women."
"The mothers who were married all preferred going to Bethany. That was one of the advantages of going to Bethany, it was private, you had your own room."
The house remained as a place of care for pregnant women for 30 more years, she said.
The house's history spans periods of huge social and cultural change, and in 1980 it shifted gears again, reopening as Hawke's Bay addiction centre Trust's Springhill rehabilitation facility.
By the 1970s, society had changed, and unmarried mothers could look after their own children, she said.
"There was no need for it any longer and that's why, when Spring Hill was looking around, they had the opportunity to buy a place that was already registered as a hospital."
The house was demolished two years ago, but some of the original windows are in the new building, and some of the original timbers been repurposed into furniture for Spring Hill.
Demolition of 42 Morris Street by Simkin Construction. Men in safety gear because of asbestos in building. Photo: Warren Buckland