Monday, January 9, 2012

#1691 ... Once was Modern


Riddiford House is Wellington’s last remaining nurses’ hostel.

The 59-year-old brick and plaster building has been home to a wide mix of people, from nursing students in the 1950s to late ’70s to Cook Strait ferrymen in the 1990s.

More recently it has been home to Capital & Coast District Health Board staff, medical students and restaurant cooks from overseas, as well as families from out of town staying to visit family members today.

It is expected, the building once known as Number Three Residence will meet the same fate as the other two and be flattened to become a car park.

The building often brings “a wave of nostalgia” to visitors as they recall their student nursing days. Then there are the men who get “misty-eyed” thinking about the student nurses they took out on dates, while the “home sisters” guarded the front doors.

2 comments:

alex said...

everything was modern at one point.

Anonymous said...

Very very very fond memories of the nurses.