In a suburb which seemed, at the end of the nineteenth century, to be full of well-to-do businessmen and Congregational, Methodist or Presbyterian church folk, it is a surprise to find a name like Poutawera.
Thomas George Poutawera, or Tamati, was, indeed, a property owner in Mt Victoria in the 1890’s. He bought two sections on the Victoria Block in 1896 and built a house there which he called Rahiri. The house still stands, at No. 15 Porritt Avenue.
![The former Gray Estate can be seen, still uninhabited, on the left just above the middle of this photograph dated c. 1895. Poutawera’s house would be just out of the frame to the left of the ‘green’ patch. (Note Waring Taylor’s large house far right.) [Photograph from the collection of Alan Marshall]](http://mtvictoria.history.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Gray-Estate.png)
The former Gray Estate can be seen, still uninhabited, on the left just above the middle of this photograph dated c. 1895. Poutawera’s house would be just out of the frame to the left of the ‘green’ patch. (Note Waring Taylor’s large house far right.) [Photograph from the collection of Alan Marshall]