HOSPITAL EXTENSIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23205, 1 June 1937, Page 5

HOSPITAL EXTENSIONS

AUCKLAND’S BUILDING PLAN! ALTERNATIVE SCHEME CONDEMNED (Per United Press Association)' AUCKLAND, May 31. “If the Auckland Hospital Board adopts the alternative proposal before it for extensions estimated'to cost £400,000, instead of favouring the first plan for new buildings costing £750,000, the city will not have a modern hospital suitable for its requirements,” said Mr A. G. Stephenson, a Sydney architect, who is going to Wellington to complete the plans for the reconstruction of the Wellington Hospital. Mr Stephenson arrived at Auckland by the Mariposa. Mr Stephenson’s firm, Stephenson, Meldrum, and Turner, drew the plans some time ago for the reconstruction of the Auckland Hospital. In a report to the Auckland Hospital Board Mr Stephenson’s firm recommended the demolition of the main block. The alternative proposal before the board provided, he said, for a new ward block between the existing main building and the Costley building. If this were done there was no possible chance of securing a sound plan for either the initial or the ultimate development of the hospital. Mr W. E. Bassett, consulting’engineer, who co-operates with Mr Stephenson’s firm in its work with hospital buildings, is accompanying Mr Stephenson, who said he hoped that that the reconstruction of the Wellington Hospital would begin shortly before Christmas.