£600,000 BUILDING.

Mataura Ensign, 26 January 1912, Page 5

£600,000 BUILDING.

AUSTRALIA IN LONDON, j The £600,000 scheme for erecting the palatial offices of the Commonwealth of Australia in the Strand-Aldwyeh site will be proceeded with without delay (says the 'Daily Mail'). The building will be begun about the middle of next year, it is officially announced, and in two years it is expected to be completed. The style of the building will be in conformity with that portion already erected and belonging to the State of Victoria. Besides tho Commonwealth, the live States other than Victoria will also find accommodotion in the building, so that under ono roof will be grouped tho administrative offices of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania. To make its Antipodean character complete New Zealand will be offered hospitality, .should that Dominion desire it.

The eight-storied building which it is intended to create will serve other and equally useful purposes than that of administration. Those periodical exhibitions of Australian produce, which are of inestimable value in advertising the resources of the .Australasian continent, will bo specially provided for in a large ball, whose area of 12,000 square feet will be topped by two massive domes. The building will bo of Portland stone with handsome arched windows on the ground floor) above which will rise for three stories huge columns, and on top will be a mansard rooff. An imposing feature will be a high dome at the Aldwvch-Straiid corner.