UNDER DEMOLITION

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 151, 22 March 1939, Page 10

UNDER DEMOLITION

Former Railway Shipping Store SITE OF NEW GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE A building which for many years marked the north end of the Wellington waterfront reclamation, the old 5 Railways Department shipping store in Waterloo Quay, at the rear of the former Railways Head Office, is under demolition. The site is to be cleared for the erection of the new Government Printing Office. Built in ISB9 by Barry and McDowell as an engineering workshop for the firm of William Cable and Company, the structure was regarded as most up to date, and the workshop a leader among the foundries in New Zealand. It housed the first overhead crane to be used in the country, and was one of the first buildings in Wellington to be lit by electricity, this being generated by the company’s own plant. Though cast-iron columns are frowned upon in modern building practice, the columns in the building are of that material, supporting a steel gantry. They must have borne efficiently some big strains, including the crane load of up to lo tons, though at some time a large piece was broken off a flange on one of the columns. A 21-year lease was held by Cable and Company, who transferred to the new building from a two-story wood and galvanized-iron structure where Levin and Company’s building now stands. At the end of 1909 the Railways Department took over the building, which has been used for various purposes besides a shipping store. At one time the north end was converted into a school where cadets iu the department received their instruction in telegraphy. The Marine Department also had the use of the building as a shipping office. Details of the proposed new Government Printing Office were announced by the Minister in Charge of the Printing and Stationery Department, Mr. Webb, last August. The area of the site is about an acre and the floor space of the building, a sevenstory one, will be about 260,000 feet, more than double the floor space of the existing office. The estimated cost is £550,000.