FORMER U.S. QUARTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1944, Page 7

FORMER U.S. QUARTERS

CONVERSION TO HOSTEL

Tenders for the conversion of the former U.S. navy barracks at the boat harbour, Oriental Bay, into a hostel for cadets and young men are to close on September 11, and it Is expected that the work will occupy about three months. All the essentials for a good emergency hostel are there, but a good deal of detail work will have to be done to divide the navy sleeping! quarters—long dormitory style with! double-tiered bunks—into bedrooms, some single, but mostly double. Wardrobe, cupboard, and similar fittings are in good shape. The kitchen is excellently equipped, but a new floor is to be laid, in bitumen, in the dining-room. In thei kitchen block there will be accommodation for the staff, and upstairs there is *a large recreation room, which could be used for dancing, concerts, pictures, and so on, with- a supper canteen ad^ joining. There are lounge and reading and writing rooms. . There are to: be about 40 bedrooms in the main sleeping block, most of them double, and in a third section 15 more bedrooms, giving accommodation for, 130 lodgers. Bath, "shower, and laundry arrangements are adequate. It is not the building which would I be erected as a hostel if a new start was being made, but it is capable of being transformed into a most useful addition to Wellington's much too' short boarding accommodation, with moderate charges for the,boarders. In summer the outlook and the sunshine across the harbour will make it a very pleasant place. The Americans found Wellington's winter months cool to very cold, and had installed a dual heating system, part steam and part electric. To what extent this system will be used may depend upon hostel economics, for the heating of three blocks, built as they are of temporary materials, will run into quite big money, by the week or by the winter!