Wuhoo Timaru - Find Free Fun! - Stone, Spirits, and Stories: What the Old Criterion Hotel Tells Us About Timaru

By Roselyn Fauth

Criterion

The CriterionHotel was built in 1872-73, utilising Timaru bluestone, the local volcanic rock. And Right a map showing the neigbourhood in 1874. The Criterion was designed by local architect Francis Wilson, who held the lease for the hotel until 1877. There followed several ownership changes and the addition of a brick extension at the rear. It was one of the first blue stone buildings to be registered in Timaru. A contemporary of the Timaru Landing Services Building with tails of the days linking to sailors, whalers and traders.

A fire almost wiped three quarters of Timaru's wooden shops, offices, and homes off the map in 1868. Out of the ashes rose the Criterion Hotel, which quietly turned 150 last year. The Criterion was designed by local architect Francis Wilson, who held the lease for the hotel until 1877. There followed several ownership changes and the addition of a brick extension at the rear. Following a 1906 renovation by new owner Ralph Porter, it was renamed the Excelsior Tavern, which it remained through nearly all of the 20th century, ending its days as The Factory nightclub and bar and closing in 2021. In its hay day, it was at the center of the towns commercial area, pretty much on the edge of the harbour and a stones throw from the sailors reaching the shore. It had a very colourful reputation, known as a crack den, and the site of a double shooting. The hospitality trade is a different scene these days, impacted by legislation to curb binge drinking and drink driving. Today this Victorian aged buildings future now hangs in the balance...

Picture this... It's 3pm in the afternoon in December 1868. A hot, blustery nor west wind is blowing. A small fire breaks out on the corner of Stafford and Chuch Street, and the fanned by the wind, the flames jump property to property towards Woollcombe Street. In just three hours almost forty buildings, two-thirds of the wooden business district, is raised to ashes. Out of that devastation, the town was rebuilt in brick and stone, and one of the first big statements of confidence was the Criterion Hotel.

Criterion Excelsior Hotel Timaru Roselyn Fauth

Outside the Excelsior Hotel in 2025 - Photography by Roselyn Fauth

When the Criterion opened its doors in 1873, it was one of only three hotels in the town. In 2023 it turned 150 years old, having served generations as a hotel, bar, and social hub. For nearly a century and a half it was part of daily life in Timaru, adapting from Victorian billiard rooms to shilling lunches to nightclub dance floors. There was no party, or even a mention in the paper of its anniversary. It sat propped by scaffold on the main drag, looking sad, neglected and lonley.

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Standing on Stafford Street today, its weathered bluestone façade is easy to pass by. Some people see just another tired old building with a nightclub past. But if you pause, if you really look, you are staring at one of the last survivors of Timaru’s phoenix moment after the fire. Built in 1872 and 1873, the Criterion was one of only three hotels in the whole town at the time. Imagine the bustle inside: travellers from the Landing Service depot, locals grabbing a shilling lunch, billiards played under a lantern-lit ceiling.

What draws me most are the people. Francis John Wilson, the Cape Town–born architect who designed it, was said to have practically rebuilt Timaru after the fire. He raised ten children with his wife Emily and somehow found time to design schools, churches, and hotels. I wonder what daily life was like for her, keeping a large household running in a raw little port town while he juggled building contracts, hotel licences, and architecture commissions.

Later, Joseph Murphy added a grand billiard room with a coved ceiling and glass lantern. D. McGuinness brought in Maurice Duval, who also designed the Theatre Royal next door, to remodel the interiors and paint the exterior in a fresh light colour. Every change reflected how people socialised and what mattered to them at the time. What do our renovations and redesigns today say about us?

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The Criterion remained in continuous operation as a hotel and bar for nearly 150 years, right up until 2021. That is remarkable when you stop to think about it. Generations passed through its doors. Families dined there. Workers had their end-of-week pints there. And I bet there were plenty of meetings over the tables over the years. Young people (myself included) danced there when it became Bar Xcel and later the Factory Bar. I remember bands up on the beer terrace, we danced as the walls absorbed our laughter, music, and memories.

But here is the big question. What do we do with a building like this now?

Do we knock it down and build something shiny and new? Or do we keep the bluestone, the façade, the bones of the place, and adapt them for new uses?

If we take away the stone, we lose more than just rock and mortar. We lose a tangible link to the moment of resilience after the 1868 fire. We lose one of the few places left in Timaru built from local bluestone. We lose the chance to stand where thousands before us stood, to feel the continuity of being part of the same town, the same street, the same social fabric.

At the same time, we cannot freeze Timaru in the nineteenth century. Cities are living, breathing places. The real challenge is balance.

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I think this is where the debate lies. Some argue it is time to build new, to create modern, flexible spaces that serve today’s needs and breathe life back into the city centre. Others believe that once a heritage building like this is gone, it is gone forever, and with it a piece of our identity and the stories etched into stone. Both sides raise valid points.

Keeping the building means preserving authenticity, character, and the embodied carbon already in its walls. But it also means facing the cost and complexity of strengthening, refitting, and adapting it. Building new means starting fresh, with clean floor plans and modern systems, but it also risks leaving us with something that could feel generic, losing the richness that only heritage can carry. There is also the middle ground of keeping the façade and building new behind it, a compromise that can work if handled well, but can also feel like stage scenery if not.

So how do we weigh it up? Which option best serves Timaru’s future while respecting its past? Do we value continuity, memory, and resilience in stone? Or do we choose flexibility, efficiency, and a blank canvas? What balance will make our city feel most itself in fifty years’ time?

I guess it will come down to money in the finish, what will provide the best economic value and financial return?

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When I look at the Criterion, I do not just see an old pub. I see lots of questions. I ask, what do we value as a community? What kind of city do we want to create for the next hundred years? Whose stories will still be standing to tell it?

With the The Criterion being one of only three hotels in Timaru in 1873... Imagine all the town’s travellers, workers, and locals crammed into just three watering holes. The billiard room added in 1878 had a lantern roof four feet high, made entirely of glass, to let in natural light. Picture the atmosphere on a smoky winter’s evening. For decades, the main entrance was the second opening from the right on the façade. You can still see the worn stone at ground level where thousands of boots stepped over the threshold. When the building is lost, those images in our mind could be lost forever too.

Side quests to wonder about:

Before hotels and breakwaters, Ngāi Tahu lived and moved across this coast, gathering food and navigating the seas. How do we acknowledge those deeper histories of place alongside colonial heritage? Francis John Wilson was said to have practically rebuilt Timaru after the fire. He was an architect, hotelier, father of ten, and his grandson went on to become Government Architect of New Zealand.

What does his story tell us about ambition, resilience, and legacy? The Theatre Royal stands just a few metres away, designed by Maurice Duval, the same architect who remodelled the Criterion.

What happens when we see these buildings not in isolation, but as a cluster of shared stories shaping the heart of Stafford Street? From billiards to discos, from shilling luncheons to nightclub dance floors, the Criterion’s spaces kept adapting to the times.

What can the changing life of this one building tell us about how people connect, celebrate, and unwind across generations?

Now that the Criterion is closed, the bluestone façade still stands, holding nearly 150 years of memories. If we lose it, what else do we lose? And if we keep it, how might we imagine its next chapter?

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In 2003 I got a tour of the Criterion / Excelsior Hotel and wrote a few stories about the buildings and the owners on the block. Was interesting to stand in the rooms and imagine the people that would have stood in the same spot over the last 150 years. - Photography By Geoff Cloake.