BUILT IN 1905

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1939, Page 12

BUILT IN 1905

PRE-CONCRETE DAYS

OPEN WELLS AND TIMBER

FLOORS

Victoria House was built in 1905 at | a cost of approximately £16,000 for the firm of Messrs. P. Hayman and Company to the design of the late Mr. W. G. Chatfield, Messrs. Myer and lllingworth being the contractors. It was thus of the pre-concrete days, but in' 1905 its design was considered one of the finest in Wellington, running up to the limit of 102 feet from footpath level. The outer walls were of brick, in very solid construction, 31|in thick at the bottom and 14in round the upper floors. Concrete bands surrounded the building at several levels, reinforced with tram rails (much as was the tower of the Town Hall), but the effect was a strengthening rather than a bonding such as is effected today by the linking of all steel members into a continuous band. Victoria House is owned by Mr. J. E. Williams, of Wellington, and was formerly known as Hayman's Building. It had a floor space of 34,300 square feet, a frontage of 60ft 2in to Victoria Street, a depth of 110 ft on one side and 94ft on the other. It was purchased for £29,000 in 1929. ON RECLAIMED LAND. It was .built on what was known many years ago as the Sir George Grey reclamation —actually on the site of the beach of Lambton Harbour. The foundation system is one of heavy concrete piers, for outer walls and the cast-iron pillars which csfrry the succeeding floors. Across the heads of the pillars run steel girders, but there is little steel otherwise in the building, for it was designed just prior to the revision of city bylaws after the disastrous fire in Lambton Quay in 1906, and at about the time when reinforced concrete was only beginning to gain recognition as a material for major construction. Two of the earliest buildings of the new fire-proofed type were the Nelson. Moate building, Wakefield Street, and the original New Zealand Fire Insurance Company Building, in Featherston Street, now being demolished to make way for the extensions to the A.M.P. block.

In 1905, lifts were the exception rather than the essential, even 'in multiple-storeyed buildings, and the regulations were not nearly as rigid as they were made by the revised bylaws of 1908. Neither of the wells in Victoria House was of the enclosed type now required in all buildings of four storeys and over.