NZ Visual Diary - entry 240
former Auckland Railway Station
Readers of my blog will acknowledge (perhaps with exasperation) that I never tire of saying how much I love monumental public architecture, although I would not exclude mention of grand buildings in commercial and religious attire. For sure, grand buildings facilitate noble but practical functions, be they commercial, civic or religious, but they are also conceived of and constructed to be transmitters of symbolic virtues - solidity and trust for banks & other commercial endeavours; pride & identity for civic entities; devotion & humility for religious institutions.
The Auckland Railway Station looms large in the development of Auckland as New Zealand’s commercial centre within the British Empire. Opened in 1930 the railway station anointed Auckland’s status as the commercial juggernaut of New Zealand.
Māori settlement in Tāmaki Makaurau (the te reo Māori name for Auckland) dates back to the 14th century. By the mid-18th century the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau numbered in the tens of thousands and they had established Tāmaki Makaurau as the largest trading centre in Aotearoa, the name that Māori gave to pre-European settlement New Zealand. Therefore, the Auckland region was already well established as a commercial centre before the advent of European settlement, and the settlers built upon that salient success.
Heritage New Zealand makes much of the symbolic importance of the Auckland Railway Station as a signifier of New Zealand’s progress as a young nation within the British Empire and Auckland’s centrality in that development when it writes:
The former Auckland Railway Station was one of the most self-consciously monumental public buildings erected in early twentieth-century New Zealand, and remains a powerful statement on the importance of state-run transport in the Dominion (1907-1947). Built by the Public Works Department in 1928-1930, it sits on reclaimed land close to the wharves and replaced a smaller terminal nearer the centre of town (see 'Chief Post Office'). The grand and ornate Beaux Arts-style building was intended to stand as a gateway to the city, and its construction involved the largest independent contract issued in New Zealand at £320,000. Railways were important for the economic development of the country, and were often seen as symbolic of 'progress'.1
The construction of the railway station heralded the growing economic prowess of the country and recognised the importance of the railroad as the metaphoric and material engine of that progress.
As Heritage New Zealand notes:
The building's design - by architects Gummer and Ford, and the railways' Chief Engineer, F. C. Widdop - was based on American models, such as Union Station (Washington) and Pennsylvania Station (New York), which were held to be the most beautiful and luxurious of the time.
The Auckland Railway Station is nationally significant as one of the largest and most ornate railway stations in the country. It was one of the most acclaimed structures designed by Gummer and Ford, who were New Zealand's premier architects in the early twentieth century. It has great historical importance for its associations with the public building programme of the 1920s, and with the central role played by the railways in national transport. It illustrates the then strongly held belief that state-run public services were associated with advanced social and political ideas.2
After plans were announced in the late 1990s to move Auckland’s transportation nexus to the former Chief Post Office and create the Waitematā Railway Station (commonly known as the Britomart Transport Centre), a large portion of the Auckland Railway Station was converted to provide housing for University of Auckland students. In 2008 the university ended its use of the station as a dormitory and the building was converted again, this time to a private hotel branded as the Grand Central Apartments.
Heritage New Zealand: Auckland Railway Station < https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/93/Auckland%20Railway%20Station >
Heritage New Zealand: Auckland Railway Station < https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/93/Auckland%20Railway%20Station >