Building is also a museum piece

Press, 25 October 1985, Page 18

Building is also a museum piece

By

MICHAEL M. TROTTER

Most people go into Canterbury Museum to see the displays — the exhibitions of history, natural history, culture, and science, that the staff have produced for the interest, the education, and the recreation of 300,000 people each year. Next time you visit the Museum have a look at the building itself — the walls, ceilings, windows, arches, chimneys. Parts of the building are museum pieces in their own right. Canterbury Museum was opened on its present site in 1870, just 10 years after the arrival of the First Four Ships. The building was added to in 1872, 1876, 1882, 1958, and 1977, and is now 13 times the size of the original structure. When you visit the Canterbury Street or the Costume Gallery stop a moment and look up to the ceiling. Those kauri arches, the banisters, and the pillars are the same that supported that roof in 1870 when the museum was first opened to the public of Canterbury. We are indebted to the enthusiasm of Julius von Haast, the museum’s fist director, for its very existence. Nearly three years before the museum was built, Haast, who was the province’s geologist, had a small museum upstairs in the Provincial Council Chambers. It featured seven moa skeletons but it was cramped and not readily accessible. When the Provincial Council made a sum of money available in 1868 for a museum building, Haast called for donations from the public so that a higher, better, and grander building could be erected. His fund-raising campaign was successful and the result was what is now the gallery containing the reconstruction of an early Christchurch street. i- Some months before it was offi-

daily opened as the Canterbury Museum a special art exhibition was held in it. An admission fee was charged for this occasion, but patrons had the added facilities of a bar and a band. (When the museum proper opened in October, 1870, admission was free and has been ever since.) The museum proved to be very popular and two years later an additional wing was built across the south end. You can identify this clearly from the outside but only in the present oriental hall can much of the internal architecture be seen.

In 1876, the building was extended again, this time to the Rolleston Avenue frontage. The gallery least altered since then is the hall of biology, directly off the entrance foyer, where many of the original wooden uprights, arches, and beams can be seen rearing above the showcases.

This wing ran parallel to but was separated from the 1870 section, until 1882 when the gap was roofed over to become the gallery that now contains our representation of an early Canterbury village. After this, very little happened to the museum building for over 70 years; then a major addition was erected in commemoration of the centennial of the founding of the province of Canterbury. Although the parts of the wing that can be seen from the street copy the earlier frontage in both style and building materials, the architecture

of the remainder is typically that of the 19505. This can best be seen in the Pacific Hall, but even this has been changed by the removal of three rows of skylights that used to run the length of the gallery. The designers had not considered the fading of displayed material by strong sunlight, nor the harmful effects of great temperature changes caused by the uninsulated ceiling. Finally, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the museum itself, another wing was built and opened (somewhat late for its centennial) in 1977. The major gallery in this wing is the Antarctic Hall, and indeed this part of the museum is often called, quite unofficially, the Antarctic Wing.

There is a footnote to add to this story of the museum buildings, one which is particularly relevant to the suggestion that parts of the building are in a sense museum pieces.

All the nineteenth century construction was of unreinforced stone masonry walls and even though these have stood firmly for up to 115 years, they are not considered, by today’s standards, to have sufficient resistance to earthquakes. A massive strengthening programme has begun to save not only the building but also its essential character.

This presents severe difficulties as most of the masonry walls will require a new reinforced wall to be built up on the inside. Architects and engineers are planning how this can be done while retaining as many of the original features as possible.

Original beams retained