Club administrator Anne Keating holds a cup and saucer sporting the Savage Club coat of arms. Photo / Laurel Stowell
Club administrator Anne Keating holds a cup and saucer sporting the Savage Club coat of arms. Photo / Laurel Stowell
It was a new-look but same-same hall that attendees walked into for the Andrew London and The Stable Geniuses concert in Whanganui Friday.
The monthly Whanganui Musicians' Club concert took place in a former Savage Club Hall following two weeks of continuous renovation work by volunteers.
The club's nextconcert is by boogie woogie pianist Jan Preston on August 24 and its two pianos have been tuned to concert standard by Andreas Schaffaczek, ready for that.
The work is all part of ongoing improvement by the club, administrator Anne Keating said.
It was funded by a grant of $2500 from the Four Regions Trust, and $2000 from the club's own coffers.
Since the club bought the pink-painted complex of corrugated iron buildings from the Savage Club for $1 in October 2016 there has been a lot of renovation and maintenance done.
Electric wiring was the main focus, and what the club found was scary and a potential fire hazard.
Volunteer Dave Griffiths works on the sound system. Photo / Laurel Stowell
"The wiring was incredibly dangerous. It was the oldest switchboard you have ever seen," Keating said.
As well as electrical changes the hall's stage has been taken apart and put back together.
In that process members found two stage backdrops behind the mountain and forest scene attendees have been looking at for the last 10 years.
The Whanganui Musicians' Club stage is pictured with its oldest backdrop, and the new supporting amo made by Gavin Buxton. Photo / supplied
The oldest was the front of a whare, which looked almost three dimensional, and in front of that was a menswear shop.
Savage Club memorabilia is now owned by Whanganui Regional Museum and has been stored at the museum and at the club.
In the "green room" where performers wait before going on stage is a roll of song sheets with the old Savage Club songs on it.
And there was a 100-piece set of Savage Club cups and saucers.
The amo that used to frame the stage - washed away from a whare at Tieke on the Whanganui River by the 1904 flood - have been replaced with a modern take by Gavin Buxton.
There's still lots to do - including adding disabled toilets and a ramp, upgrading the kitchen and building a recording studio, Keating said.
The complex isn't listed with Heritage New Zealand, but is recorded in Whanganui's District Plan. It was opened as Whanganui's first museum in 1894, offered to the Savage Club in 1933, and sold to that club for $1 by then-Wanganui mayor Michael Laws in 2008.
It's heritage all right, but the club doesn't want to freeze it in time.
"It has always changed, and will continue to change. It's interesting being part of this cultural history."
