Saving the Post Office

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 14

Saving the Post Office

Christchurch has any number of older buildings that many people would like preserved. Some want to ensure that Christchurch retains good examples of all the major architectural styles in the city’s history. Some want simply to retain pleasing variety and detail. Only a handful of these older buildings, however, are so important that their destruction or demolition would change the whole character of the city. The Chief Post Office has come to be widely regarded as one of this handful of older buildings whose preservation is worth considerable trouble and expense. Fortunately both the Post Office and the Christchurch City Council, in whose joint hands the fate of the building rests, have accepted this. There now appears no serious possibility that the entire building will be razed. The problem of finding a use to which the building can be put after it has outlived its usefulness to the Post Office has already been solved.

But question marks still hang over the future of the building. The city will have to decide at some point whether to let part of the building be sacrificed to allow the Post Office to make its own best, and most economical, use of the land it owns between Cathedral Square and Hereford Street An alternative course is to foot the bill for the extra

expense to save the entire building. This cost may be considerable, depending on what the Post Office requires of its land. A compromise plan to retain the 'eastern, clocktower, portion of the building and demolish the northern portion so that the Post Office can develop the site to the best advantage may be acceptable. But both the Christchurch City Council and the Post Office should explore every possible way of saving, at reasonable cost, the whole building. At the very least sufficient of the frontages should be kept to prevent the old structure from becoming a minor ornament that has no real standing as a building. The greatest danger, short of complete demolition, is that the facades will be reduced by the scale of other buildings to barely more than a sculptural detail in Cathedral Square. That would be better than nothing at all; but the scale of existing buildings has already overwhelmed the Post Office. Its outline serves a good purpose at present in preventing the Square from becoming too severely encased by tall buildings of considerable mass. Apart from its inherent merits as a piece of Christchurch’s architectural history, the old building should continue to serve a more general purpose in the composition of the whole Square.