YORKSHIRE HOUSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1928, Page 5

YORKSHIRE HOUSE.

PINE NEW CITY STRUCTURE.

OFFICIAL OPENING PERFORMED.

The official opening of Yorkshire House, a building comprising eight storeys and a basement, erected by the Yorkshire Insurance Company, at the corner of Shortland and O'Connell Streets, took place yesterday afternoon.

The building, which is one of the finest .erected in Auckland of recent years, has an entrance from Shortland Street and another from 'O'Connell Street, both opening into a spacious»vestibule finished with New Zealand marble. Th* entrances and vestibule are finished with semi-pillars, surmounted by ornamental cornices, while the ceiling is of moulded plaster design. Bronze lias been -chosen for the finishings and rich mahoganystained panelling for the woodwork. There are two lifts, in addition to a stone staircase with a bronze balustrade.

In order to gain the best possible lighting of offices on all floods large windows have been employed, while the office partitions are wherever posible of glass. Large bronze chandeliers, together with other lights of the large bowl pattern, comprise the electric lighting system. The Yorkshire Insurance Company will occUpy the ground floor, while the remaining floors are to be let in suites of offices. The company commenced business in its new premises this morning.

1 The building was formally declared open by Mr. A. E. Moore, the Auckland manager for the company. There were present over 150 representatives of insurance companies and business and professionel men.

Mr. Moore said that the directors had agreed to purchase the site over six years ago, the first purchase by the company either in Australia or New Zealand. The old building in__ Shortland Street, which had been their* office for so long, had been used by Sir John Logan Campbell. In it the articles of association of many well-known companies, including the New Zealand Insurance Company and the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, had been drawn up. Referring to the age of the Yorkshire Company in England, he mentioned that a policy, drawn up on December 8, 1824, covering a house in York, was still in existence. Mr. Moore expressed the thanks of the board to the architects, Messrs. Blomfield and Hunt, and to the contractors, the Fletcher Construction Company. As far as possible only New Zealand material had been used in the building.

In proposing the toast of the Yorkshire Company, Mr. H. P. Kissling, general manager of the New Zealand Insurance Company, congratulated the company on the building they had erected. Referring to the history of insurance he said that the first company was formed in England in 1686. The Sun Office opened business in 1710, the Royai Exchange in 1720 and the Phoenix a little later. The Yorkshire Office had been founded in 1824 by a firm of solicitors, Thorpe and Gray, and for three generations it had been conducted by three members of the Newman family. The company had thus a right to claim to be an old one.