REPORT.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 362, 20 January 1849, Page 4

REPORT.

'The Sub- Committee appointed to take into consideration the practicability of obtaining a building for the Institute, and the best mode of proceeding with the same, have to repoit, that Mr. Oidland has, at the request of the other members of the Sub-jGommittee, prepared the design of a bunding for file' lnstitute, adapted to the sile which has been set apart by the Government for it. ~ The site is a piece' of land on • Lambton Quay, next to the Scotch Church, having . a frontage of 67 feet towards Lambton Quay, with a depth of about 85 feet." Of this depths from the hilly nature of the ground, only 55 feet are available for building purposes. The design is for a Hall, or Lecture Room, 40Teet long by 22 feet in width, and 13 feet high in the walls, with an- open roof rising 11 feet in centre/ to be lighted by a" ,large window at cacti ' end, and to have a platform raised 3 feet from the floor, and extending from the east wall about' B feet into the room. This room is, calculated', to accommodate 150 persons seated,'* and' 20 persons on the platform. The 'dekign includes two other rooms, one on each' side %he Hall, to" be appropriated as a Library and Museum, and a Committee and Class Room, eacb 15 feet square. ' Provfsion'has been made for extending the accommodation' when the circumstances 6f the Institute shaU'require it. The recent earthquakes " having demonstrated that brick buildings; erected' according to the. metßoife;' hitherto uled W : th'is settlement,

cannot be considered safe, it became desirable to unite precautions against the effects of earthquakes, with some degree of security from destruction by fire. Mr. Cridland has suggested that, instead of weatherboarding for the exterior of the walls, Roman cement, laid on double laths, should be used ; and in the estimate be has given three sums — one, being the estimated cost of the building as designed, lathed and plastered inside, and covered with cement upon laths outside, amounts to £620 ; the second, being the estimated cost of the building weatherboarded only, amounts to £480 ; and the third, being the estimated cost of building the Lecture Room only in weatherboarding, amounts to £300. From the expenses which have been incurred by many of the settlers in repairing their houses, the Sub-Committee anticipate considerable difficulty in raising either of the larger sums. But they hope that there will be found a general desire to assist in ,the erection of "a building which would be an ornament to the town and a permanent benefit to the community. The time seems to have arrived when an effort should be made to give greater stability to our local institutions, and your Sub-Committee do not know of any other which presents so strong a claim to liberal support. Wellington, January 16th, 1849.