NEW RAILWAY STATION

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 158, 1 April 1937, Page 8

NEW RAILWAY STATION

Work Not Likely to Finish

Before June

DECORATION OF WALLS AND FLOORS Although the main structure of the new Wellington railway station is completed, there is still a good deal to be done to the walls and floors, and it now seems likely that the work will not be finished before next June. One has only to walk through the station as it is to-day to realise the delicacy and fineness of design and execution which marks the decorative finishing work applied to this building. A “Dominion” reporter yesterday inspected the ground floor of the station in company with the architect, Mr. W.

Gray Young, of the firm of Gray Young, Morton and Young, 'Wellington. Mr. Young was visiting the building for the first time since the whole of the scaffolding was removed from the concourse, situated between the ticket lobby and the platforms. Huge arches and frames, with reinforced glass skylights, form the ceiling of this space. Viewed from either end this series of massive arches makes an impressive architectural vista, suggestive of stability and strength. Very attractive in this part of the building are the buff-toned tiles, which carry a red and black border in an approved Maori design. Off the concourse are a succession of waiting-rooms. One is richly dadoed in warm Hamner marble—a mottled brown-red tone that makes an immediate appeal and is livelier than white or grey marble. The women’s waiting-room is beautifully panelled in Southland beech and beech root. While the ordinary beech is straight-grained, the root is brilliantly ribbed and figured. The floor of the concourse is finelyaggregated bituminous concrete, but that of the great vaulted ticket lobby or booking pavilion (which is pretentious enough for the latter appellation) is finished in especially designed terrazzo work, with a central geometrical design as a centrepiece, about twelve feet in diameter, in which the points of the compass are set out in grey terrazzo with the letters “N,” “S,” “E” and “W” picked out in red. The inner centre is in green terrazzo with a band of red. Another handsome detail of this vestibule is the doors. These are made of bronze, with chromium-plated guard rails across the glass panels.

One cannot venture very far in this building without finding something new in which utility is blended with a certain artistry. There is much to commend in the use of New Zealand marbles. The whole of the restaurant on the ground floor (western end of the ticket lobby) is dadoed in Hannier marble, and the main office entrance on the eastern side of the building (facing Bunny Street) is lined to the ceiling with Whangarei marble, a good effect having been obtained by using various examples of the marble to gain a shaded effect, from dark red to a pink white. The figuring in this marble is niore varied than in that from Whangarei.

The whole of the eastern side of the ground floor is to be devoted to goods and parcels. This section of the building has been floored with bitumen over concrete, as it has to stand up to a lot of hard work. This room is already supplied with hundreds of two-docker sheet steel tables painted green, for the reception of luggage. These were made at the New Zealand Railway Workshops at Lower Hutt. The Bunny Street reserve in front of the station is gradually taking shape. The pink flushed paving slabs which form the footpaths immediately in front of the station building and in Bunny Street are only superficially pink. These slabs have really been made with a red brick aggregate, so that when the pink flush wears off, as it soon will, the pavement will be redmottled. There is also a neat variety of colour in the brickwork used for the kerbs, and a special design for the centre of the main approach footpath has been cast in vari-coloured cement sections. It is estimated that some 700 persons will be employed in and about the new railway station when completed.