The (New) Criterion Hotel
Residence of Doctors Arthur and Edith Pitts 1907- 1954
Located at the junction of Mill Road and Queen Street, the Criterion Hotel, (now called Artifax Café/Queens Lodge) was originally the residence and surgery of Dr Arthur Gentry Pitts who built the home for his wife and family in the early 1900s. With the closure of the (Old) Criterion Hotel, trading as an accommodation and public house on Queen Street since 1877, Mrs Nellie Donahue applied for a transfer of license to the Pitt’s former residence which she had purchased in 1956.
This transfer was not without opposition as several formidable residents banded together and petitioned against the licensing. But Nellie won the day and the freshly renovated doctor’s home opened its doors as the New Criterion Hotel at 11am on Saturday 9th September 1957. “The Cri”, as it is known by locals, has continued to operate in the hospitality industry.
The large two-storied brick and tile house was an elegant sight as viewed from the front, with its sweeping driveway and expanse of lawn bordered by rose bushes and landscaped plots of shrubs and trees. The Waimate hills provided an apt backdrop for the home of Dr. Pitts, wife Edith and their three children.
The medical practice was run from this home on Mill Road seeing patients in a room set aside for the purpose.
Dr. Arthur Gentry Pitts (MRCS LRCP 1901, Charing Cross, London, FRCS), was born in Hampstead, London. He met and married a New Zealander, Dr. Edith Cochrane-Brown (MB ChB 1903, Edinburgh). Edith Cochrane- Brown was from Christchurch and had been studying medicine in Scotland. The couple began work as medical practitioners in Waimate in August 1907.
The diversity of responsibilities that went with working in a rural practice meant the Pitts’ became an integral part of the Waimate community - first and foremost providing health care and supporting the work of the Waimate Hospital.
Along with Dr. Cruickshank and Hayes, Dr. Pitts and his wife were appointed consultants to the Waimate Hospital in 1915, each agreeing to act as Superintendent on a two-month rotation. The war (WWI) was stretching resources and doctors were difficult to find.
Arthur and Edith Pitts survived the post-WWI influenza epidemic that took the life of their colleague, Dr. Margaret Cruickshank, in November 1919. Dr. Pitts had informed the community back in December 1918 that the death rate overall was very high, there had been several deaths in the Waimate Hospital, and ‘we’re not yet out of the woods,’ he’d cautioned.
By this time, the Pitts had three children, two girls and a boy. Tragedy struck the family in 1923 when their eldest daughter, Joan, died from polio at the age of 13.
“A comrade, a defender and a friend in need”
Dr. Pitts was recognised for his 30 years’ service to the Waimate community at a public function in 1937. Apparently those collecting donations and tributes for the presentation of a ‘testimonial’ to the long serving doctor were pestered by many people wishing to subscribe. Tributes were paid for his devotion to the welfare of the community be it: his reputation for his medical and surgical skill, his proficiency in passing on all manner of health related knowledge, his long fight for hospital reform, or his availability above and beyond the call of his professional duties. Edith Pitts had given up her registration as a medical doctor in 1934.
Arthur Gentry Pitts died in Waimate in June 1957 at the age of 81. Edith was 73 when she died in 1953. Both are buried along with their daughter, Joan, in the Anglican section of the Waimate Cemetery.
Husband and wife had shared a love of music, Edith played the piano and Arthur liked to sing. It’s not inconceivable that musical evenings were included in their busy lives, hosted in their home on Mill Road. They could not have known that as the decades marched on this home would become host to generations of people enjoying an ever-changing diversity of music organised by a succession of hoteliers.
Dr. Pitt’s office in his residence, Waimate Museum & Archives N1471
