DREAMING SPIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 1

DREAMING SPIRES

HIGHEST POINT IN QUEEN STREET POWER BOARD’S BUILDING To dominate Queen Street, the new Power Board building will be crowned by shapely spires and minarets. Another distinctive feature, the variation in colour of the external finish, will introduce a new note to Auckland architecture. The finish now being applied shades from cream near the base to delicate pink, and then to an almost chocolate tint toward the top. Both the Queen Street and Durham Street facades will carry this tinting, but from base to summit the 130 ft. tower will be just a plain cream. Thus it is planned to give the soaring lines of the tower, crowning featture of a structure that is a symphony in vertical line, greater prominence in the general scheme. For the moment the crest of the tower appears as a rim of battlements, but in six weeks or so eight tall and graceful minarets will be added. The massive lift towers which rise at the rear of the building will carry corresponding features, and many tapered pinnacles will line the crested parapets, all designed so that the building will appear as a perfect whole from whatever angle it is viewed. In the accompanying picture the distinctive character of the minarets shown. Others will crown the main pylons on the facade at the seventh floor level, where the outer walls will be set back two feet. Two others, again, will be placed at the corners of the building in Queen Street and

(Photograph by courtesy Wade and Bartley, architects- > Durham Street, to create what is termed a “respond” to the main tower. ARTISTIC FLORAL THEME For all its imposing outward appearance there has been no squandering of money in the interior of the building. The vestibules to the suites of offices on each floor are spacious but plain. Only in the arcade on the ground floor, on the marbled facings to the three swift passenger elevators, and in the elaborate board-room on the fifth floor, has there been any striving for unusual effect. On the ornamental panels that can now be discerned between the tall fluted columns of the facade, a very interesting and artistic use has been made of a floral motif. This theme partly embodying the principles of native design, and presenting flax plaits, puriri leaves, paddles and the whorls of the punga, has been repeated in the ceiling of the boardroom, which is to be panelled with mottled kauri. Another interesting feature is the large curved windows on the corners in Queen Street. Some of these panes cover a 10ft. arc, and are the largest so far used in New Zealand. Spares have been secured in case of breakage. Heavy bronze doors will close the ground floor arcade after shopping hours. Bronze appears again in several features of the decorative scheme. Bronze urns at the seventh floor level will conceal floodlights that will illuminate the receding crest of the facade. The lower part of the facade will be illuminated from powerful floodlights above the verandah, while the tower will be thrown into powerful detail by lights concealed behind the lower minarets. BUILDING FOR BEAUTY All this is part of the Power Board’s policy in having the building partly serve the purpose of advertisement. In addition, it has followed the principle of public utility corporations overseas, which deem it a responsibility to build for lasting beauty. The board itself will occupy three floors of the building, and another floor, the second, has already been let as a whole to one firm. These and other tenants, along with the board itself, will probably be in occupation by Christmas. Not for some months, therefore, will they have occasion to use the elec-trically-heated hot-water system, operated by a large and efficient-look-ing boiler in the basement. The use of such heating in an electric-power board’s building might lead ejtnics to identify another of life’s little ironies. But the boiler is to be heated by powerful and modern electric devices.