OLD CITY BUILDINGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22845, 28 September 1937, Page 13

OLD CITY BUILDINGS

Sir, —We are informed that the city engineer's department is about to perform a "face-lifting" operation on the old Gladstone Buildings at the foot of Queen Street. "The old-fashioned decorations are to be chipped off," and the building is to be given a new facade "in which the vertical lines predominate." It does not appear that any of Auckland's architects has been consulted; engineers, of course, can make a building modern and beautiful merely by chipping pieces off it. The scheme clearly violates an elementary principle of architecture, namely, that a building should harmoniso in some degree with its neighbours. The Gladstone Buildings have on one side the Harbour Board Building, a scholarly design inspired by the Italian Renaissance, and on the other Endean's Buildings, which, though modern, make a concession to the past with a large cornice. Across Quay Street is the Ferry Building, a monumental pile with largo attached classical columns. The Chief Post Office, not far away, also owes something to ancient Rome. Thus the city's gateway is no setting for a pseudo-modernistic building, designed by a merely sublractive process. Auckland already has quite enough of this typo of architecture, if such it may be cailed. As the scaffolding is already up, the City Council is unlikely to be deterred by any arguments, and one can only hope that it will bo considerate enough to paint the repivenated building a clean grey instead of giving it the fashionable "make-up" of yellow and pink. Chbistophkr Wren.