Joseph Eli White established himself as a bricklayer then a builder and contractor, and by the 1900s he had built many major landmarks in Dunedin, and been elected Councillor and Mayor of the municipality of North East Valley.

[1] In 1909 he won the contract for a major tunnel required as an upgrade of the Waipori River hydro-electric scheme, the same year as his first theatre project.

He ran a very successful architectural practice though the 1910s and into the 1920s, designing numerous theatres and cinemas in both countries, as well as other commercial projects mainly in the Sydney area in the 1920s.

By the late 1920s, he was able to maintain a flamboyant lifestyle with a large harbour-front house in the exclusive Sydney suburb of Point Piper, a yacht and a luxury car.

By 1935 he was back in Sydney at his (heavily mortgaged) Point Piper house, which became a reception centre managed by Claire Whitcombe from New Zealand, who supplanted his wife.

[4][1] In 1940 he started a new venture, opening a dolomite quarry at Georges Plains, near Bathurst, but after disappointing earnings closed it in 1948 when he finally sold the Point Piper house and moved to a small flat at Kings Cross with Claire.

[2] In 1909, having established himself as a builder of large projects, and then as an engineer in Christchurch, White's career as an architectural designer began with a commission to improve the Princess Theatre in his home town of Dunedin by John Fuller & Sons theatrical management company.

[1] The year after that he was employed to completely remodel the Theatre Royal, Timaru, which involved inserting a whole new auditorium, with a balcony supported on only three posts set well back.

His early theatres had restrained classical or Edwardian Baroque exteriors, and Rococo or Louis XV interiors with lush plaster decoration and gilded highlights.

Elements were often repeated in different designs in different cities, such as the tiers of paired side boxes, with columns and caryatids, seen at His Majesty's, Wellington and the Grand Opera House/Adelphi in Sydney (dem).

While Townsville was Spanish in style the others had restrained Neoclassical auditoriums, with Ipswich and Rockhampton featuring large relatively plain brick facades.

[1] Thorne suggests that the loss of these capable employees, coupled with his frequent absences (on his yacht and overseas), contributed to the complete collapse of his practice when the Great Depression hit in 1930.