HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

The New Zealand government was the first in the world to start a Public Trust Office in 1872. In 1904, the government paid the then outrageous sum of £1400 to San Francisco’s Reid Brothers architectural practice to provide expertise on the design and construction of the riveted steel frame – the building is the country’s first steel frame building. In 1926, a girder crashed down in the legal branch, apparently the result of damage caused in a 1923 earthquake. Nobody was killed, as it happened on a weekend, but staff were instructed not to sit under the girders until the building was strengthened in 1927. After the severe 1942 earthquake, the building was checked again. It suffered only minor plaster cracks which were attributed to the deliberate and acceptable movement of the building’s expansion joints. In 1975, a public campaign successfully saved the building from demolition. In 1984, Riddiford Group strengthened and upgraded the offices, and spliced a large addition on to the building. The 2013 Seddon earthquake, the largest in the city since 1942, caused Creative New Zealand to move out after plasterwork cracked. After the building’s body corporate (Creative New Zealand; Stout Street Chambers; Julian Parsons and Reedy Holdings) commissioned an assessment by engineering firm Dunning Thornton, they decided to sell the building to a party better placed to strengthen the building. In 2014, Maurice Clark bought the building. He was labelled a ‘‘hero’’ for taking on one of Wellington’s largest heritage strengthening projects.