TOWN HALL TOWER

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 151, 23 March 1934, Page 13

TOWN HALL TOWER

“Safe as Good Building Can Make It” VIEWS OF THE BUILDER That the tower of the Town Hall Is as safe as good building can make it, and that by the time it fell as the result of earthquake, the rest of Wellington would be in ruins, is the opinion of a member of the firm of builders who erected the building. He added that no building was proof against a really serious earthquake. Of the members of the firm of Messrs. Paterson, Martin, and Hunter, the contractors for the erection of the Town Hall (which was designed by the late Mr. J. Charlesworth) only Mr. John Hunter remains a resident of this city. Mr. Hunter, in an interview, stated that the foundations of the Town Hall tower go 24 feet below the surface of the ground, probably the deepest foundations ever built on the reclaimed land of Wellington city. At 24 feet the material is conglomerate of clay, sand and shell, almost as dense as rock itself. When driving the piles the monkey simply danced on the pile-heads wlien it came to this ground. “To combat the seepage from the harbour which was very free below the five or six-foot mark,” said Mr. Hunter, “I had to build a coffer dam, with two thicknesses of timber, plugged with felt. This acted so well that the only seepage we got was from the bottom, which we were able to keep down with only one 9-inch centrifugal pump, though at first I thought we would need three. So that the foundation of the Town Hall tower stands on a solid conglomerate, at least equal in density to rotten rock, away below the old bottom of the harbour. It was on this foundation that we laid down a solid block of concrete 32 feet square and three feet in thickness, and from that floor we raised the foundation walls of the tower, which, at the base, are five feet in thickness —five feet of solid brickwork.”

“Some doubt has been expressed that the tower has no steel reinforcement,” said Mr. Hunter. “I can say that the tower has a steel frame. At each corner of the square of the tower is a vertical standard of the heaviest railway iron, fish-plated together all the way up, and to knit them together are 4-inch bands of half-inch steel, going right round the tower, on the outside of the rails, so that, beside its stout walls, there is a reinforcement of steel to give rigidity to the tower. I remember this very well, as it was myself who suggested what should be done in that connection to the architect, the late Mr. Charlesworth. For that reason, and I have told all this to the city engineer, I am inclined to think that there is not so much risk in this tower as the public have been made to believe during the past fortnight.”

Mr. Hunter also states that the roof of the front portico of the Town Hall is supported by strong steel girders which extend from the main building to the front of the portico structure, and that the big columns in front are built of solid brickwork, laid in layer by layer.