Ryan Smock is on the phone from the ballroom of his Wairarapa house which was once part of the Greytown Hospital.
Built in the 1880s, Smock’s part of the hospital is fully renovated to luxury standards and is on the market, although when he bought it 10 years ago the building was abandoned and he and wife Nadine embarked on what was to become a seven-year renovation project.
Over 10,000 babies were born in his ballroom, which used to be the maternity ward, and many of the workers on the renovation were either born there or had connections to the hospital.
The couple is selling because they are moving to the Sunshine Coast in Australia. The property is advertised with enquiries over $2.995m, but when they bought it 10 years ago they paid just $230,000 because the building was in such bad shape.
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Now, it is a six-bedroom, three-bathroom, no-expense-spared home which includes an apartment with its own foyer, commercial space and a resort-style pool.
Then, it was covered in graffiti and people had nicked some of the native timber floorboards.
Smock, a property developer by trade, explains the building dates back to when people got around by horse and buggy. His house is the main one of six hospital buildings which were once joined up by a network of corridors.
The six-bedroom home is the original main building and now includes an apartment, commercial space and resort-style pool. Photo / Supplied
The ballroom-sized wedding venue was formerly the maternity ward. Photo / Supplied
The corridors were taken down and the buildings placed on separate titles in 2013. Smock said when he saw his building, the main one at the front, it took his fancy, despite it having sat empty for years and a lot of destruction having taken place.
“When I took over there were 57 broken windows and probably 20% of the floors had been stolen.”
The floors were tawa, matai, rimu and totara, and along with the stolen wood, also stolen were 300 metres of pink batts from the ceiling, all the radiators and the brass doorknobs.
The whole complex had been abandoned, Smock explained, but that was after a big fight from the community to keep the hospital open.
In 1991 when the district health board announced it was going to close the hospital he said 4000 people came together and held hands to form concentric circles around the building as a protest.
Some then went to Parliament and there was a stay of execution for seven years but the hospital did close in 1998.
When Smock took the building on, it was covered in tagging and graffiti: “There was probably 40 empty bourbon and cola cans, hundreds of cigarette butts, used condoms, but we could see that its structural integrity was here because it’s solid masonry.”
The seven-year renovation included replacing or repairing 46 rimu doors, 85kg of new door handles and door plates, and new floors. Photo / Supplied
The all-new kitchen. Not visible is the wood-burner heating system, new sewers and new wiring. Photo / Supplied
The couple had a lot of support from the community when they began renovating and they obtained a lot of demolition timber locally, and Smock said it was a great feeling knowing so many locals were born in their house.
Gardeners and nurses once lived on site and there were never any external locks put on the buildings because it was occupied 24/7, “and back in 1885 no one was going to be caught robbing the hospital.
“It was built prior to the motor vehicles so we’ve still got horse hitches that are attached to the building because originally horses and buggies were tied up around the southern side where the horses were kept in the shade of the building.”
The couple put in new sewers around the whole building – there are six toilets and three full bathrooms – and new wiring.
There are 85 kilograms of new door handles and door plates, and a heating system which consists of a 27kw wood burner which works as a heat transfer system and blows warm air around the home.
“The renovations from start to finish took seven years. To give you an idea the doors are solid rimu and they weigh 60 kilograms a door and there’s 46 doors.”
The salt-water pool was the most recent addition. Photo / Supplied
Many of the original floors and windows had been vandalised, so were replaced from local sources. Photo / Supplied
The doors were originally put together with hoof glue and kauri gum so no chemicals could be used in their restoration or they would have come apart, Smock said.
Among the last jobs were the pool, which is a 12m automated saltwater pool, and the garage, which has a billiard room and a projector for watching sport.
Smock thinks the home would be great for a multigenerational family, or even as a co-ownership model for friends because there was an abundance of space.
There is Airbnb potential and there is already consent to hold weddings and events, he said, and there are other commercial options.
The house is being sold by Jaime Slater and Eva Wintle of Tremains, who are also selling another historic Wairarapa property, this time a renovated 110-year-old Catholic presbytery called the Bidwell Manse.
The manse, they said, had undergone a “meticulous” restoration and had 3.9m high ceilings and matai floors, but the kitchen was the heart of the property, which they described as a “culinary masterpiece” with Archant porcelain benchtops and top of the range appliances.
- 193 East Street, Greytown, South Wairarapa, is seeking buyer enquiries over $2.995m
