- Janet Edmond's late uncle, Charles Nieukerke, was an eccentric with a brilliant mind who introduced computers to the Auckland City Council.
- The charitable trust set up by Nieukerke and his wife Eunice is selling their Onehunga homes, with proceeds going to build school libraries.
- The homes, described as "dripping with potential," are on the market for first-home buyers or developers.
Janet Edmond says her late uncle Charles (Karel Herman Paul) Nieukerke was eccentric with a brilliant mind.
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In the Auckland home he shared with his wife, Eunice, towers of books grew around him while he studied piles of early computer paper in a bid to solve gnarly efficiency problems at the city council.
The Dutchman introduced the council to computers and is understood to have helped Allied forces fly safely over the North Pole during World War II when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands.
“I'm told the Allies had a problem because bombers were getting lost over the North Pole because their compasses were being tampered with by magnetic North and he set up a system of four radar towers in different locations around the North Pole that enabled the Allied bombers to get home safely,” Edmond tells OneRoof.
87 Quadrant Road has been pitched at families looking for the next step up on the property ladder. Photo / Supplied
The large, smart-looking property is expected to fetch around $2 million. Photo / Supplied
She says her uncle’s passage to New Zealand in the early 1950s had something to do with the war but when she tried to find out more some of his immigration naturalisation records were classified.
In New Zealand, he met and married Eunice Stark-Brown and the couple settled in a villa on a corner site on Quadrant Road, in Onehunga. They also bought the neighbour’s villa when she died.
Edmond says her uncle and aunt died in the 1990s but before they did they set up their estate as a charitable trust to help the needy, with small grants being made over the years and the houses used by various organisations.
However, the trust has decided to sell the homes at 87 and 89 Quadrant Road, with the proceeds to go to building school libraries given the couple’s love of education and books.
The turn-of-the-century houses, one three with bedrooms and one with five bedrooms, are now on the market, being sold either individually or both together, with Barfoot & Thompson agent Carl Madsen saying the smaller house would suit first-home buyers and the larger aimed at families looking for the next step up. Alternatively, a developer could buy them both and have an 1800 sq m flat site next to Jellicoe Park.
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He describes the houses as “dripping with potential” but perfectly liveable.
Edmond, who is a trustee of the charitable trust, says both her uncle and aunt were fascinating characters. When Charles first arrived in New Zealand he shipped with him a kit-set house, which she thinks was part of the accommodation requirements of his visa. He put it together on a site in Otahuhu, where he originally lived.
In the Netherlands he had gained a bachelors degree in engineering, a masters degree in science and a doctorate in psychology, and he spoke four languages.
He initially worked as a lecturer at Ardmore Teachers College where he met Eunice, who was lecturing in infant teaching methods.
Eunice was also smart, setting up infant school teaching in Samoa, and winning a Fulbright scholarship to America.
“Charles spent most of his time working for Auckland City Council, where he was taken on as a time and motion expert.”
Edmond says he saved ratepayers money through streamlining council processes, introducing a property coding system picked up by many councils globally and was ahead of his time with computerisation.
Also on the market is 89 Quadrant Road, a three-bedroom home aimed at first-time buyers. Photo / Supplied
Both properties could be bought together, with the two sites offering 1808sqm zoned Mixed Housing Urban. Photo / Supplied
“He did all sorts of things, from following rubbish trucks round and improving the routes, to standardising the size of paper and envelopes the council used.”
Edmond recalls Charles pouring over “reams and reams” of computer paper at home in Onehunga studying council statistics.
She recently met someone who worked under him who told her not everyone had been keen on him at the council where he was known as the Flying Dutchman: “He was a very strident Dutchman and a brilliant mind, and he did an enormous amount of good.”
Both Charles and Eunice were community-minded, and Eunice, who received an MBE, was involved in many national organisations, from the Play Centre Association to the Marriage Guidance and the Maori Women’s Welfare League.
Despite Charles’ time and motion expertise, however, Emond says a renovation begun at number 87 was not completed until after he died.
“My uncle, as I say, was incredibly eccentric and had every copy of the Listener magazine since it was first published and huge stacks of Marvel Comics, and he was working on a maths problem that he'd been working on for over 20 years.
“His study was absolutely stacked to eye height with piles of books and things," she says.
“As he got older, he actually became a bit more eccentric and he'd buy dinner sets and things that were being sold cheaply because one piece was broken or something like that. He sort of became a bit of a hoarder.
“The building work never actually got completed and I do remember staying with them and the walls being all bare without plasterboard on them and my aunt working in a very temporary kitchen.”
Edmond says both houses were great and recalled number 87 as having a number of original features and a long “beautiful” corridor in the middle.
Madsen adds: "They feel like really good, solid character villas that are just waiting for someone to come in there and pull out their wallpaper magazines and unleash themselves on them.”
Madsen said based on other sales the smaller villa could go in the early $1ms and the larger one in the $2ms, “but we will go wherever the market takes us”.
- 87-89 Quadrant Road, Onehunga, Auckland, are for sale, deadline closing February 20
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/property/auckland/onehunga/87-89-quadrant-road/F6xku