"The Dunedin Town Hall is a municipal building in the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. It is located in the heart of the city extending from The Octagon, the central plaza, to Moray Place through a whole city block. It is the seat of the Dunedin City Council, providing its formal meeting chamber, as well as a large auditorium and a conference centre. The oldest part of the building has been called the only substantial Victorian town hall still in existence in New Zealand. It isn't but it may be the most substantial Victorian municipal building still in use in the country for its original purpose.
The name is ambiguous. The structure was built in two major stages with a fifty-year gap between. The first stage, built in the 19th century, is a block of offices. This was popularly called the “Dunedin Town Hall” even though it had no auditorium. The second stage, built in the early 20th century, had not one but two auditoriums; this whole new addition was then officially designated the “Dunedin Town Hall”, and the pre-existing office block became the “Municipal Chambers”. The term “Dunedin Town Hall” now came to be used in its official sense but also specifically for the main auditorium by itself and frequently too for the whole extended building. In the 1980s the official name for the second stage additions was changed to “The Dunedin Centre” but few people know exactly what that refers to. This article is about the whole building.
Dunedin City was incorporated in 1865, the first so constituted in New Zealand. Following the population growth and wealth generated by the Otago gold rush, the city council decided it should build new and larger premises. The settlement's first wooden town offices were demolished in 1859, and no formal structure existed after that, partly because of indecision as to where it should be. A decision was finally made in favour of the site of the city's first hospital. (This is commemorated by a plaque in Municipal Lane.) A design competition was held which was won in 1877 by Thomas Bedford Cameron, with a design submitted by R. A. Lawson placed second.
When costed Cameron’s design proved to be more expensive than the £7,000 allowed for the project. The council, which had admired Lawson’s impressive front elevation, employed him to re-work Cameron’s design and also to supervise its construction. In the event he was allowed to substitute his own design for Cameron’s.
A contract was let to Mercer & Low for £15,230 – a considerable increase on the original budget. The foundation stone was laid on 23 May 1878 and the building was opened for business on 25 May 1880. By the time a clock had been installed the whole price was £20,000.
The structure was conceived as the first part of a larger complex which would eventually include an auditorium to seat 2,000 people. What was built in this first stage was a set of offices on the Octagon, with a council chamber and an observation tower, the latter intended as a lookout for the Fire Brigade.
This first building has three main storeys, the ground or basement constructed of Port Chalmers breccia with the floors above built of Oamaru limestone. There was a central entrance at the first floor level – the piano nobile in architectural terms - reached by a double flight of steps from the street. Above it there is a high tower of five more levels incorporating a clock, bells and a mansard roof. The four corners of the building also have mansard roofs. The tower is 47 metres (165 feet) to the base of the flagpole and is very prominent in central Dunedin. The building’s principal elevation still dominates the Octagon.
The inspiration of the design, or at least its main elevation, is Michelangelo’s for the Palazzo Senatorio on the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, the seat of the Roman civic government. With its corner mansard roofs and proportionately much higher tower, Lawson’s building also echoes the old civic halls of the Netherlands, and Flanders, the latter modern Belgium - for example, the Oudenaarde Town Hall. In this the design parallels George Gilbert Scott’s for St Pancras Station in London which similarly mingles Italian and north European elements in an eclectic mix.
The Sydney Town Hall, started in 1868, is a comparable mixture and its main elevation is broadly similar. So is that of the Philadelphia City Hall, started in 1871, although that is far larger, more exuberant and apparently French, and was ultimately completed to a very different plan. While probably aware of these other near contemporaries it is clear Lawson arrived at his own composition whose combination of grandeur and restraint seems characteristic.
The side elevations were dressed to be seen, like the Octagon frontage, sharing its tiers of pedimented and then arched windows, Corinthian pilasters, cornice and balustrade. The rear elevation was left clearly unfinished with bricked-in apertures intended to give access to the auditorium when it was built. A clock was ordered from Gillett & Bland of London, with its own peal of chimes, and was started on 2 December 1880. There was a fifty-year pause before a rearward extension was completed to a plan different from that which Lawson had envisaged." -
Wikipedia
The Municipal Chambers are listed as a Category I building on the New Zealand Heritage Register