NZ visual diary - entry 63

Craig's Building - Queen Street

I rarely pass on the opportunity to walk south on Queen Street from the Britomart Train Station to gaze at the Craig's Building. It is a gorgeous example of the Italianate architectural style.

The Heritage New Zealand website does a masterful job of chronicling the building's architectural and commercial significance:

Constructed in 1882 as St Mungo Café, the three-storey Craig's Building on Auckland's main street is a rare, known example of a purpose-built nineteenth-century restaurant. The brick structure has an ornate Italianate façade which incorporates ornamental detailing not commonly found on other surviving nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commercial buildings in Auckland's CBD and is part of an important group of mid-colonial commercial buildings in the lower Queen Street streetscape. The building served as the head office of Auckland industrialist and ship owner J.J. Craig and his company for much of the twentieth century.

Craig's Building has high aesthetic significance for its ornately detailed exterior and as part of a significant group of four mid-colonial era buildings that are an important feature in Auckland's lower Queen Street streetscape. It has considerable architectural significance as one of few known, purpose-built Victorian-era cafés and is a relatively well-preserved example of a surviving commercial building designed by the noted early Auckland architectural practice of Keals and Son. The place has historical significance for its links with the development of cafés in colonial society, as an important nineteenth-century venue for public dining and socialising for a growing urban middle class, and later as the head office of major Auckland commercial concern J.J. Craig Limited. The site also has connections with the noted early photographer John Crombie and his estate.

< https://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/4484 >