HOSPITAL NEEDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 128, 1 June 1937, Page 16

HOSPITAL NEEDS

AUCKLAND AND WELLINGTON

ARRIVAL OF ARCHITECT

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, May 31

If the Auckland Hospital Board adopts the alternative proposal before it for extensions estimated to cost £400,000, instead of favouring the first plan for new buildings costing £500,000, the city will not have a modern hospital suitable for its requirements, said Mr. A; G. Stephenson, the Sydney architect, who is going to Wellington to complete, the plans for the reconstruction of the Wellington Hospital, when he arrived at Auckland by theMariposa today.

Mr. Stephenson's firm, Stephenson, Meldrurn, and Turner, drew plans some time ago for the reconstruction of the Auckland Hospital. In a report to the Auckland Hospital Board, Mr. Stephenson's firm recommended the demolition of the main block. The alternative proposal before the board provided, he said, for a new ward block between the existing main building and the Costley building. If this was done there was no possible chance of securing a sound plan for either initial or ultimate development of the hospital.

Mr. W. E. Bassett, consulting engineer, who. co-operates with Mr. Stephenson's firm in its work with hospital buildings, is accompanying Mr. Stephenson, who said he hoped the reconstruction of the Wellington Hospital would begin shortly before Christmas.