NEW SHIPPING BUILDING

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 80, 28 December 1917, Page 5

NEW SHIPPING BUILDING

'About eighteen months ago the Commonwealth and Dominion Line of steamers was amalgamated with the , Cunard Line, and the now title of tho • company is the Cunard Australasian Service," Commonwealth and Dominion' Line. It is thirty years "Jgo sinco tho Commonwealth and Dominion Line had its beginning. Tho .oamo then was tho Tyser Line, which at iir'st consisted of two small steamer's) The in- ; teiests of tlio little cpmpany in those flay? were in Hawke's Bay, and tho head office of tho company was established there. It was in tho tiid found not to be convenient to direct a big shipping company from a minor port of the country, and the head office was later moved down to Wellington, into quarters in Featherston Street. Tho company at once purchased a site for new offices at the corner of "Waterloo Quay and Ballanco Street. . - The fleet of.steamers of the company has in the thirty years increased from two small steamers to nineteen up-to-date cargo-carriers. Five ships pi the fle..t have been lost sinco the beginning of the war, and seven new vess;ls, are building. Much interesting in%ina- - t;:in could he given about the newer vessels of the line, but tho censorship imposed by tho War Regulations on 'the publication of news about overseas !ships is most-rigid. .. . • The site of the ■ new building is admirably chosen for the purposes of the company/ It faces "Waterloo Quay an'.l Ballance Streets, and is,.of course, very handy to the waterfront. - In tho scheme submitted for tho Miilding thn principles of planning that nave teen found to be most successful in 'America and in Europe have been Adopted. The planning has been made to meet the highest possible development of the site, and to suit the requirements of the company in the most complete manner. , Withal, tho planners have had in view the matters of cost and maintenance, and the planning "has been uone to ensure a minimum cost m constructor,' and a minimum cost in mamtam--1 Among the most important of the avails that have 1 received caretnl consiceration aro {he-following:-- - CI) Ease.of access to all parts or tne building. ■ . (2) Good natural lighting.

. (3; Efficient services—elevators, iava- ■ tciies, artificial lighting. • ' (.J) The maximum of rentable area consistent with true economy. Tho fact that the building will bo a monument to the enterprise of the two companies has also been realised by the planners. It was -'originally intended that the building should be ii ; steel ' frame structure, but owing to the difficulty of getting steel girders a change to reinforced concrete was made. ■ ■ Provision has been made for the addition of two more stories to the building, and this is a very healthy aign—a sign that thero is every possibility of the business of the company increasing considerably in the near future. Tho roof of the building will bo flat, so that tho future upward extension will not interfere with tho occupants during -~ building operations. Until tho extensions arc -undertaken the flat roof will form a pleasant promenade for the office workers during the luncheon hour! A feature :of this building which marks a contrast with (and an improvement, on) the buildings of a few years ago is the good elevator system, which makes stairs almost unnecessary excopfc for emergency use. \ The windows are very wido, and at the head are kept tight up under'the ceiling beams, as it is realised that by tins means the maximum of reflection 'from the coiling is obtained, and ' tho lighting thus improved. Arched openings havo been as by shutting off so much oF the light they are opposed to tho best principle. Space is to be'provided for two electric elevators, though for tho" present only, one will be used. This ono will run to tho roof level. An endeavour lias been made to obtain a maximum of floor area for business, purposes, and as referred to earlier the method of construction assists to this end. : Tho mothod d heating the building has been adopted only after careful consideration. The idea is that electricity should be used for various good reasons. Ventilation is another, matter that has been attended to with due care to a point of such importance: [n . addition to tho windows, which will open high up, there will bo large ven- ' tilators filled with exhaust fans electrically operated, which will efficiently free the place of vitiated air. As* all the "floors are of reinforced concrete, safes or strong-rooms can bo built-to suit the requirements of tho tenants. Tho offines for the New Zealand Shipping Company are described by tho architects as follow :— ' It has been realised that thn effective natural lighting of this building is of first importance In the plan adopted the lighting would not only be good, but would lend itself to the best architectural treatment, as the.coiling space under thn light area would bo treated ns an clliptioal!y--Shaped glass vault. On enferinc; by the swing doors ono stands in the public spaco'of 600 square feet. To the front is the counter, 48 feot in length, and behjnd the general office of 2336 square feet to the left,

FOR CUNARD AUSTRALASIAN OFFICES KAIRURU MARBLE TO BE USED

I and fronting on to the street are the waiting rcom (which will bo fitted with a writing tablo and upholstered lounges) and tho manager's office, iiiid the secretary's office". Tlic description given of tho offices for tho Commonwealth and Dominion Shipping Company is :— Iu the offices of the Commonwealth and Dominion Steam Shipping Company we find a similar arrangement, but with the and the manager's and secretary's offices on tho left-hand sida. On entering by tho swing doors one stands in the polio space of 294 square feet. To the front is the counter. 24 feet in length, and behind:the general officc,_ 852 square feet; to the right, and facing on to the street, aro the ivaiting-r,ooms (with writing tablo and upholstered lounge), the manager's office, and the secretary's office. ' Behind the general office aro rooms for the marine superintendent, captains, and typistes. _ • The whole of the building.is to I-β faced with New Zealand Kairuru marble, finely dressed. The upper stones are to be hammered, ashtar te* lieved with dressed architraves. _ The panels will be in bronze. The main entrance is all to be finished in polished marble. This ,treatment' lias not been attempted in New Zealand previously, but it has been carried out in America very successfully. When completed the building will cost about £54.000.1 Kairuru Marble. Something should bp said of tho Kairuru marble which is to bemused m the facings of the building.. It is a New Zealand marble, and k one of the finest'of the stones of its kind. Many attempts have heen made to place N T ew Zealand marble on the market as a building material, but ten years or effort and many thousands of pounds sterling have heen expended in attaining success. There are great quantities of Kairuru marble in the Sandy Bay district, but to get the marble out a £5000 tramway lias had to he constructed to the head of a deep ravine 1130 feet above sea level. ~ It is Kairuru marble wliich is being used in Lhe new Parliament Buildings. The marble is white, with grey streaks, and the general effect is grey. History of its Development. 'A description-and" a'history of the Kairuru quarries follow :—■,

Ten years ago Mr. John Campbell, Government Architect, endeavoured to bring Now Zealand marble into prominence by inducing the Government to order a block for an exhibition in London. A stonemason undertook the work, and although cost was Dot a very important consideration he failed to produce the block of marble. He undertook to open a face and quarry out a . stone, which would be partly polished, but ho never attempted il'.o task, probably quailing before tho tremendous difficulties involved in getting a heavy weight transported over country' which comprises a constant series of steep valleys' or ravines, most of them 500 feefc d?e P' The next step taken officially was in 1911, when Mr. Campbell visited the district and . obtained various samples of the'' marble. Again there was nobody forthcoming to face the difficulties of working the splendid material. Mr. Campbell was; then shown the Knimru deposits, which ultimately proved to be the most perfect, though most, remote from the sea. A company was formed to take quarrying in hand on a substantial scale, and with that assured' Mr. Campbell had no hesitation about including New Zealand marble in the materials specified for Parliament Buildings.

A committee of experts was pet up by the Government. to deal v-ith the important question of the stone to be used in the national building, and they came to the conclusion that marblo was preferable. Samples of marblo from Kairuru wero tested, r<-r tho committee's information, at Canterbury College, bys Professor Ecbert Scott, with the following rasult:— Cinshing strength—76o to 830 tens per cubic foot; weight, 191 pounds per cubic foot. By way of comparison between marblo <ind other building materials it is worth noting that Oamaru stone has a crushing strength of 40 to f)0 tons per cubic foot, and Mount , Somcrs limestone 180 tons por_ cubic foot. New Zealand marblo is as strong as most granites. These tests of resistance under Brushing strain aro regarded f.s most important . in building materials, where tho strain is mostly that cf dead weight. It is estimated by the designer of Parliament Buildings Ilwt the heaviest crushing strain will bo in tho twelve lonic pillars on the front eievation Thero the strain will range from 15 to 20 tons per cubic foot, so that Kairuru marble; with its crushing resistance of 760 to 830 tons, pro- , vidcij an enormous margin <.-f safety beyond the usual one required by architects, that of ten" times the actual strain. . .' Kairuru mnrblo is coarse-grained, 1-iahly crystalline, and boars a strong Tfsemblan'cc to the marble obtained by the Greeks from the famous quarries of Ka'sos and Paros Islands, in the Aegean Sea From this material the glorious buildings of ancient Greece were constructed. Coarse grain is a f/uality of value. The finer the grain the more dead the polished surface. Kairurn luaible, with its coarse crystals, gives

« l'.C'iUiUl'nl. lustrous polish of n cronmy (M-'pth. Tho stone works well. CiirvI'l'.s liiive -iilrnuly cut the. cups ot tiiu columns of P;u'li»mei>t Buildings out of I'onr-tp block's, and they rj\c tho niiii'blu high professional praise. A. , , to tiic, weathering quality <.f Iho luarbio, thu a'spccl, of the stono pr»viflos reassuring evidence, ft is well known that certain qualities oi' Italian marble have, stood well in a sulphurlailciii atmosphere—in fact the beautiful national memorial to Queen Victoria, orcctod in London, contains 1000 tons of Italian marbli. , . Jt was. however, selected with the greatest care, only 2o per cent, of the. c|U;i,ntity cut being used in thu memorial.

'■ Anyone who climbs the endless spurs back of Sandy Hay would gain an inipi'i'.ssion m boundless supplies of marble only waiting to be quarried. But tin , history of Sandy Bay marble has proved that it is difficult to find a patch of the valuable material sufficiently free from shattering to warrant its use in building. Under ordinary conditions, one expects to find solid rock beneath an overlay of faults, but the Sandy Bay venture disproved the theory, and those who are interested in developing New Zealand's marble resources will tell you with a sad shake of tho head thai sound rock is not to be got by merely digging doer> for it. This is why the tramline from the sea penetrates six miles of rugged country before a satisfactory marble deposit is reached. A Geological Problem. There is more than one geological theory'to account for the presence of an isolated occurrence of marble in a ■well-defined line, bodrered on either side by granite , rock. One line of explanation is that the marble overlaid the granite, and that a subsidence involved most of it in the folds of tho granite, shattering it to pieces. One aees remnants of the ancient marble bed scattered in fragments on tho hilltops. Fortunately, there was one mass, extremely narrow, which was not apparently so much involved in the movement. It escaped a great deal of the shattering and crushing to which tho remainder of the deposit was subjected. This lays on the western side of the line of a great ravino running from Kairuru almost to the sea. .On the eastern side of tiiis ravine, along which runs a tramline to the marble deposits, the protective granite wall is plainly visible. Cuttings made by the tramway builders are of fascinating interest to the geologist. There ono may come across cliffs of granite, hut the rock has decomposed, so that it could be removed by the shovelful like sand. Resting against it one finds the marble, subjected to the same decomposing elements, hut hard as steel though shattered by great strains of earth movements. The tramline, runniiv alongside one side of the deposit, might be'regarded as an _ extensive prospecting cut iu the hillside, but m

spite of the fact that marble cuttings are numerous, not one of practical commercial value was reached until the tramway came into Messrs. Hugonin and Henderson's property. Tho owners had long known of a fine outcrop'of marble 9 within their bounbut never hoped to develop it when there were miles of marble outcrop between Kairuru arid tho sea. But the failure of tho Sandj\ Bay venturo gave them tlicir opportunity; they brought the Kairuru deposit oiicc moreunder the Government's notice, and as it was already favourably known to tho Government Architect, tho Minister of Public Worlcs agreed to help a languishing venture of tremendous potential value by building the trawjino to Kairuru. The cosf'will eventually bo repaid by tho company now working tho Kairuru deposits. '

There is no real quarry face at the head of tlio tramway., but tho great mass of splendid marble blocks awaiting trucking sliows that at least tho uncertainties of supplies aro over. 11l a pile of stono already quarried aro blocks of sound marble, passed by the Government Inspector, totalling 12,000 cubic feet. These havo been taken practically from the surface. The real quarry face to bo opened up is a few scoro yards up a narrow. gully, where giaiit marble, rocks stand up like rugged castles, defying Time itself. They measure out at '200 tons of sound visible marble, and liow far they'go beneath the surface quarrying operations must be awaited to prove.

A block measuring 30 feet in length, 30 feet in width and 7 feet in, thickness I was taken out of the'faco at tho tramway head. It weighed , 520 tons. So enormous a mass was, of course, impossible to move from tho quarry. It was cut into fifteen stones averaging 5 feet by 5 feet by 2 feet G inches thick, without a fault. Rarely does a quarrying enterprise start with such remarkable ease. There is usually a great overlay oE shattered rock and soil to remove, but in this ease tlie great problem was not how to got sound stono but how to transport it. And that difficulty has now been overcome At the stago of quarrying when rubbish has to bo cleared, the quarrymeu have put out fino square blocks suitable for tho cans of tho front-columns of Parliament Buildings. Here are the sizes and approximate weights of somo of the stones: — ■ 6,feet fay 6 feet by 3 feet: weight over 9 tons. , G foot by 5 feet by 2 feet: weight 5 tons. 6 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet: weight 3 tons. 5 feet by 5 feet by 3 feet: weight 6 tons. 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet: weight 10 tons. 15 feet by 2 feet 6 inches by 2 feet G inches: weight 7 tons. At tho proposed quarry face, sound stones 15 feet in thickness aro Bhow-

ing over a area. One rock lias been measured up to a length of '15 feet, jiticl another is 45 feet long. Tho stones lie in strntas, a joint occurring at about 5 feet intervals, so that all the quarrynien have to do is to drive a series of hole , :; along the lop of a rock, and split it vertically by means of steel wedges. Explosives will be rarely needed at the Kairuru quarry. The operation of plugging is at present clone with long iron bars— jumpers—but a compressed air drilling plant, to bo driven by steam, is awaiting erection. The Kniruru Marble Company lias also under consideration various types of power crane, with a view to installing'one caparjle of dealing with the heavy lifts required. Ten tons is the present limit of weight which can be transported oyer s the tramline, but the quarry- furnishes sound stone greatly exceeding this uoigJit. When transit facilities improve, larger blocks of marble can be delivered, if they aro required. The splendid surface rocks available have given the quarry a great start, more stone being ready for trucking than can bo taken over the tramline for many months to coiiie. Tho quarry foreman, Mr. Thomas Cooper, has had lengthy quarrying experience at Mount Somers and Tiinaru,.and more recently as foreman at the greenstone quarry on the West Coast.

The present limit, of visible stone goes 200 feet above the face of tho new quarry, and it evidently runs into the. hill a considerable distance. * Tho marble can bo traced down tho valley to a point 300 feet below the face, the intervening distance being covered,with debris. However, it is assumed that with such large masses of sonud stoue at both ends it will only be necessary to remove the debris to expose further extensive deposits. This will be a task for future generations, because there is more than sufficient for the present uncovered. The sound rock exposed on tho west side of the gully is sufficient to provide all tho marble needed for Parliament BuildIt is difficult to define the full range of colour in the Kairuru inarble. What has been opened up ranges from darkblue grey to pure white! A few stones show beautiful tintingsof pink and occasionally there aro small blocks obtained of such dark blue colour thaithey could be well used with the win to stone for tiling contrasts, when the effect would be black and white. The Government overseer- at tr-e quarry, Mr. Angus Ross., subjects ■every stone to close and critical inspection, exceeding in severity that imposed in the case of material for ordinary buildings. So far ho has rejected stones only on account of surface faults due "to heavy bush fires. Mr. Ross had practical experience in the lona- marble quarries in Scotland, and when he was asked how the >ew Zealand marble compares with the

Scottish stone replied: "It is far superior, both for quality and colour. The Transport Difficulty. What has made ■ Kairurit marble of practical value is the tramline, six.m<l a half miles long, which enables heavy blocks of stone' to he shipped- at Sandy Bay. Tho quarry is 1130 feet above sea level, in extremely broken country, and it was found difficult to devise an easily-worked line. The scheme finally adopted involves a gigantic ssig-ang down one spur ending in an incline <77 feet long with a- grade of one in two. Startin" from the marble deposit, tno line, which is 3ft. Gin. gauge skirts the left or eastern side ut the deep valK and runs on a slightly rising crade for the first mile. The descent then begins, t«e S riuI ° lilulb beln S ° ne in ten. .; For Parliament Buildings. To cope with tho demands of_ the Parliament Buildings masons, a daily output of MO cubic feet is required. 'Kiis can easily be maintained even under the present primitive conditions. When the line consolidates, and tho slipping facilities arc improved, Ivai-rui-u marble can bo placed on the market at a very reasonable price. Hie quarry is being managed on ...-ehaif of Ilia Kairurn Marble Company by iviesxrs. .Hansford and Mills, of Wol-li'i-'lon contractors for Parliament , Buildings. They possess the rcost up-to-date stone-working plant i:i tlio nonunion, their machinery including a diamond saw, which does rcmsirKaWo cutting wbrk, greatly exceeding tho speed of tlio gang-saw method. lhe rough blocks arc cut into i. abs by bas- and shot machines, and then squared with the diamond saws. , _ Tht first privately-owned building in which Kairimt marble is being litod is the fine nine-storied head ofliee ol tno Nov.- Zealand Insurance Co., m Queen Street, Auckland, on the site of tho oil Sto»k Exchange. Messrs. llogev.nl I'rouso, and -Glimmer, who aro t'l'c architect.'), have planned "a. particular!? well-lighted block, and the front elevation shows somo attractive featvres. Marble from the Kairuru qi'iairv, with a rubbed face, is being utilised for the whole front t-leva'tion. TV main entrance is carried vp two stories, the principal feature being tlio polished marble central columns, capped with bronze. Polished marble is Icing used extensively for the interior. IT.' 1 Messrs.-Hoggard and Prouse and Gumnier, the architects for these new shinpin" offices, have recently let contracts for the following buildings :- Bulk store and factory m Lukes Lane for Messrs. lilundell Bros. (Mr. P C. Watt, contractor); motor garage iiid offices in Jervois Quay for Messrs. in"lis Bros. (Messrs. Hansford and Mills contractors); largo warchouso in jervois Quay for Messrs. John James and Son (Messrs: Mitchell and Kin", contractors). The Kairimt marble enterprise, managed by Messrs. Hansford and mills, is certainly the beginning of a g:eat industry.