More Info →217 Grey Street

This house was built by a German settler Johan Ax c 1876. Ax worked around the region including the Manawatu Gorge railway line and the Taonui sawmill. Upon his death in 1934, Ax gave the house to his widowed daughter, May Freeman, who stayed there with her son, Sefton Freeman (who worked at the radio station 2ZA), until the house was sold in 1968. It is believed the house is the oldest in Palmerston North on its original site and one of the oldest to still have an outside toilet. The building was listed in category 3 of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust register because of architectural significance, but no longer exists.