Opened To Public 100 Years Ago

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 22

Opened To Public 100 Years Ago

MUSEUM OF / NATURE

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

On Tuesday, December 3, 1867, 100 years ago tomorrow, the Canterbury Museum opened to the public. But it was not in the familiar colonial Gothic building in Rolleston Avenue. The museum of 1867 consisted of three rooms crowded with 7886 specimens, in the Provincial Council building on the bank of the Avon.

In announcing the opening of the museum on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., the “Lyttelton Times” commented: “We have no doubt, many people will avail themselves of a privilege so long withheld.” ,

taining 470 rock, mineral and fossil specimens and a herbarium, and these formed the nucleus about which the Canterbury Museum grew. His explorations of the province enabled Haast to add many more specimens to the collections, while in 1862 a further 2613 specimens were purchased from Germany by the Provincial Council. . Haast fought a vigorous campaign for a museum building. Most of the Provincial Councillors, however, had a single-minded interest in the provision of roads, drains, bridges and railways for their young community. A new era began for the museum when in 1866 the draining of a swamp ait Glenmark uncovered an amazingly rich deposit of moa bones. Haast visited the swamp and returned triumphantly to Christchurch, followed by a foUr-horse American waggon

piled high with the bones of these giant extinct birds. Public interest in a museum for the province was aroused. F. R. Fuller, the museum taxidermist, articulated the bones of seven moa skeletons, and people were demanding to see them. Haast persuaded the Pro-

vincial Government to give him the use of more rooms in their fine new building which had been completed in 1865. The best room was on the first floor above Bellamy’s —a room now used by the No.

5 Magistrate’s Court In this room just to the east of the Provincial Council Chamber, Haast displayed his star attractions, the seven Qlemnark moa skeletons. The rest of the museum collection mainly geological speciments was housed in two rooms in the tower at the north-east-ern corner of the building near the Armagh Street bridge. The museum on its opening was thus split into two parts at extreme ends of the building and a guide was almost necessary to conduct

The province had employed the German scientist, Julius Von Haast, as geologist since 1881. The Superintendent, Mr William Sefton Moorhouse, had called him down from Nelson when the contractors for the Lyttelton rail tunnel had given up on striking hard rock. Haast brought with him seven cases con-

visitors from one to the other. The eager interest of the public in the temporary museum penetrated to the Provincial Council and in December 1868 they voted £l2OO to erect a separate museum building on Rolleston Avenue then called Antigua Street. By April, 1860, work had started, just to the south of Christ’s College, on the new stone building designed by the architect, Benjamin Mountfort. The first building on the present site was opened to the public on October 1, 1870, and housed 25,353 specimens. Visitors of today may recognise Haast’s original museum building which appropriately houses the early Christchurch street and costume gallery.—D. R. G.