SHAVINGS

Evening Star, Issue 21081, 19 April 1932, Page 2

SHAVINGS

A decrease of over 70 per cent, in the volume of business done by the building trade in Christchurch was disclosed by figures for the last twelve years produced at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Builders’ Association last week. Tho City Council’s figures showed that for the year ended March 31 there had been a decrease of eightythree permits for dwellings and fiftysix for business places. The number of permits was the lowest since 1919. Only eight permits of £2,000 and over, one of £4,000, and three of over £9,000 had been issued. There were 178 permits for motor garages in spite of the depression. The average cost of dwelling houses had fallen from £734 to £OB3 since tho year before. Only nine bouses of £I,OOO or over were built.

The construction of recent budding shows all over the world in great cities that there is an increased use of both liiotal and glass (writes “ R.D.G.” in the Melbourne ‘Age’). Just as the Gothic period of balance superseded the inert stability of classical architecture, so is masonry being superseded by steel trusses, columns, girders, and suspension cables. Metal sheathing is becoming more popular in facing buildings, and a great deal of ornament is being east in aluminium alloys. Glass is also rceiving fuller recognition, as modern methods of casting, handling, and setting enable it to be used with greater security and its utmost advantage exploited.

At the annual meeting of the Christchurch Builders’ Association Mr W. P. Glue said that the total value of building done in the Christchurch area for the year was £234,000, alterations being 30 per cent, of this amount. lor the twenty-nine years since 1904 the City Council had issued permits to the value of £12,250,000, an average of £450,000 a year. Last year’s figures totalled £173,000, which was only 37 per cent, of the average. The totals for the years up to 1919 did not include Spreydon, Woolston, Papanuij or Bromley. Another consideration was that building was much cheaper in the earliest years. Tho value of City Council permits since 1919 was £8,190,000, which gave a yearly average ot £630,000. Last years total was therefore only 27 per cent, of the recent yearly average. * # * * Work is to be started in the spring on the long-waited Parcels Office in Hatton Garden, Liverpool, the site of which has lain open since early _ war years. The new building, which will be completed by the summer of 1934, is to cost £IOO,OOO, and will accommodate the huge parcel post business of Liverpool, as well as the Customs Offices at present housed in somewhat unsatisfactory premises at Renshaw street.