Les Harvey
His passion - preserving
By Frances Levy, NZWW, July 19 1982
Property developer and restorer Les Harvey sees ‘magic' where other people might see only grimy, peeling paintwork, crumbling bricks. And his self-appointed task? It is… to make the magic apparent to all.
“Of course I'm a nutter. I wouldn't be doing this otherwise. I don't care if people think I'm crazy….”
Les Harvey – in customary cap and familiar, well-worn, navy blue, rollneck sweater (on inside out) – pauses from scraping out cement off flagstones in yet another building he is restoring in Auckland's city centre.
Harvey is a successful Auckland businessman, probable millionaire, property developer, landowner, and restorer and creator of Auckland 's celebrated Parnell Village (labelled “plastic” by Wellington Mayor Sir Michael Fowler … more on that later).
He turned Parnell's once-shabby shopping area into a fantasy, a hotch potch of bricked walkways, restaurants and tiny speciality shops. He's the man who made brick courtyards fashionable (one brickmaker actually manufactures a model called the Parnell brick).
Les Harvey is a man who lives and works in the present, but who loves Auckland 's past, with an almost passionate intensity.
He scorns, councils, planning boards, government departments, procedures, town planners (“they're mad”) and architects alike.
“What do they know about living? They only plan on paper!”
He is equally blunt the Town Planning Act: “A complete farce!”
And he has no time for earthquake regulations: “When has Auckland ever had an earthquake; there's no way it could have one,” he says scathingly, and launches into an explanation of the city's geological structure.
“We're not Wellington – for heaven's sake!”
He points out buildings that have stood for 130 years or more: “They're good for another 130. There should be a sense of identity in a city. Places for sunshine, for trees, for people. I want people to see only beautiful things.”
Without a trace of modesty, Harvey says no one can restore old buildings as well as he does: “I grew up here in the city…I went to Wellesley Street school. I know this place like the back of my hand.”
His latest project is a building in Wyndham Street , a stone's throw from Queen Street . It was once a printing works, housing the city's first newspaper, Harvey explains. He is transforming it – slowly, lovingly, painstakingly – into something approaching its former Victorian glory.
“I'm going to turn the first floor into a fish restaurant,” he says, rushing up the newly repaired with its ornate carved wooden handrail and pointing expansively: “See, I've put in red stained glass – that's to put a healthy glow on people's faces!
“I'm putting in pitch caulking between the floorboards to make it look like boat decking and I'm taking off the old iron roof to put on a Georgian-style one with trellises to grow grapes and passionfruit.
“I'm putting French doors and balconies here” – and pulls aside some boarding to show gaping holes in the side of the brick wall, 7m above the path.
“And here,” he grins, going downstairs again, “we'll have flowers and chocolates and perfume. All sorts of magical things.”
Three doors further up, at another Harvey-restored building, he announces this is where he wants to get the Kawau Island liquor licence transferred; hinting at what's in store once the legalities have been settled.
As well known for his almost single-handed transformation of Parnell as he is for some of his more public battles with bureaucracy to save old buildings, he has conceded a temporary setback or two over the years: like his plans to turn Orewa House (on the Hibiscus Coast) into a crafts and community centre. Delays, he estimates, have cost him $1 million.
But he prefers to think more on his successes. They include Auckland's Wyndham Walkway – an arcade of tiny shops and food outlets leading through to another, older backwater of the city that includes the former women's jail, a sombre, solid, grey stone block, cheek by jowl with a warehouse (Harvey-owned) that he turned into Browns Mill – a co-operative venture for artisans, selling everything from pottery to wooden toys and hand-made leather sandals.
“Just putting the walkway in was a triumph. I had several battles over that – and I was sick, too, at the time. Look how it saves the sun behind His Majesty's Theatre.”
He reiterates his belief that people – of any age – need a sense of identity in a city: “They need landmarks that aren't going to be knocked down willy-nilly.”
Many of the buildings Harvey now owns have old childhood associations for him. Walking down on the south side of a city street, he points to a restaurant with a brick façade and brick walls within what was once a butcher's shop. An exclusive women's wear shop, next door, long ago made music – selling violins and fiddles.
Three doors further up there's an Italian restaurant. “See the archway. I did that, using banana boxes. It is good, isn't it. I'm a sculptor, a stone man.”
Les Harvey hurries over an intersection to boast of more restorations: a corner building housing an upstairs café with emphasis on outdoors dining, while a flower shop and a fish purveyor share ground-floor honours.
And, all the time, there are greetings to tenants, to passers-by. “Look,” he says, pointing upwards, “Can you see the pins in the wall? They used to hold the pawnbrokers's sign. I left them there as a memento and a couple of years ago I climbed up and painted that sign in memory of the former owner. She was a great old gal.”
He points to a flourishing plane tree: “It's French. It was given to me by the French Commercial Attache…and I planted it. No one harms anything I plant – they're too beautiful to hurt.”
Another row of shops – each housing something that in its own small way contributes to the character of the street. They're well patronised, too.
Les Harvey readily admits that if he could have his way, he would restore most old buildings. He detests the often anonymous office blocks that mushroom on city sites. Buildings should be people-sized, he maintains.
Progress, he believes, should not necessarily mean destruction. And he decries the loss of many of Wellington 's picturesque old buildings.
“They're what make a city, give it character and life. The loss is irreparable.”
His comments are not always appreciated. Witness Sir Michael Fowler's views on the Harvey refurbishing of Parnell.
Les Harvey's conversation is peppered with pithy asides as he talks not only about his fights with red tape but his on-going love affair with old Auckland .
“ Wellington has no soul. None whatsoever. Is that what Auckland wants? I want to make this is a place for people. They're what matter – not office blocks.”
Anything old…bricks, leadlight glass, hand-turned stair railings and newel posts, door frames – you name it and if it's old, Harvey is interested, his eyes lighting gleefully as he assesses how and where such items can best be utilised.
Junk, he grins, acts like a magnet for him: He's drawn irresistibly to abandoned objects.
Rubbish dumps, demolition sites, the basements and porches of old houses have often provided his best finds, he confides. Anything from an old-fashioned, forsaken phone box (minus the workings) to picket fencing, iron spiral staircases and kauri mantelpieces have been discovered by Les Harvey as he fossicks for what he terms “bits and pieces.”
Almost 70, Harvey says he can't save Auckland single-handedly: “I can only a little. A lifetime is very short for all the things I want to do.”
He never tires of transforming old buildings. Such places, he says, have magical qualities.
“If you look long enough you'll find something a little magical somewhere. Perhaps that's why I'm still a kid at heart.”
Les Harvey admits that occasionally walking past a shop window, he catches sight of himself and the reflection makes him chortle: “I must look a bit of a mess – but that's the way I work. I don't care what people think or say about me. At least I know what I'm doing. And if they label me eccentric – so what?
Personal appearances aren't important. I've never had a new car. I've got an old Holden. . Sure it's battered. It's gone two-and-a-half times round the clock, but it works.”
He says openly that banks, insurance companies and churches don't care very much for him.
“But you shouldn't do things simply for the money. You have to give value, too.”
Les Harvey says people now realise this. He's been repaid by the way Parnell Village has been cared for “Do you see any graffiti in the village: any plants, trees or shrubs uprooted. Do you see anything wantonly destroyed?
“No, of course you don't. It's a magical place and people respond…it's simple.”
He cites the reaction of overseas visitors – from North America, Asia, Britain and Europe – who are apparently enchanted by hand-laid brick paths, wooden overbridges and restorations.
He maintains that only now after years of battling, have the city fathers recognised his efforts in Parnell, Ponsonby and the inner city to save the past.
“Areas like Parnell have become tourist meccas,” he says. “This country needs overseas funds and I suggest to you that in no small way this has been achieved with concepts such as Parnell.”
Les Harvey doesn't claim to be a messiah, but he wholeheartedly believes that yesterday's faithfully-built objects also hold good for the future: “Look how well things were crafted then. They were meant to last.”
And the man who claims he doesn't know if he's a multi-multi pauper or a multi-multi-millionaire – professing not to care either way – is proud to call himself a patriot.
“I'm not ashamed of being one. I strongly believe that many others feel similarly: they're just wary of saying how they feel. Me? I've never suffered from shyness.”
If the tubby, blunt speaking financier says he's an unabashed romantic, he makes no bones about his feelings for his family: his wife of nearly 40 years, Zena, his sons, Kevin and Tom, and daughter, Nancy.
He lives with Zena in an unassuming house atop a cliff on Auckland 's North Shore . There are uninterrupted views of the harbour and gulf islands, and everywhere native trees, shrubs and flowers.
“It looks nothing from the outside; I had to built it with a Rehab loan after the war, but inside…some of my ideas show. It's comfortable and it's home.
Over the years Harvey has quietly purchased not only city or suburban properties but also occasional pieces of rural land – like the acre he owns in Te Puke called Dad's Acre (after his father).
“I learned a lot from him. He was a craftsman and he taught me to love old buildings. His philosophy was ‘If you do anything well, it's worth it. If it isn't, it'll be a disaster from the start.' And you know what? He was absolutely right. Even so, I've felt a bit like a midwife – I learned that skill in the navy – with some properties I've restored.”
One of five children, Harvey says he went to sea to learn everything he could about seafaring. Back on land he's applied that same theory to printing, sharebroking and real estate.
He was a toymaker, too, successfully selling out when he decided he didn't want to be one for the rest of his life. Les Harvey says profit isn't the driving motive behind his restoration plans: “If people are happy, then there are very few problems.”
He says he detests personal publicity: “I've never put my name on any of the buildings. It isn't necessary. What I do is more important.”
Nonetheless, he is a familiar figure to the public and his tenants alike. He enjoys the good-natured ribbing he gets from tenants – and gives as good as he gets.
Harvey loves talking to people. He greets a couple of Japanese tourists in their language. Amazed, they politely respond.
And then it's back to business: Yes, he agrees, the cost of maintaining a place like Parnell rises all the time. But if such places did not exist “…we'd all be a lot poorer – without beauty, without magic.”
Read next article on Les Harvey: Patriarch of Parnell (1988)