NEARING COMPLETION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 883, 29 January 1930, Page 10

NEARING COMPLETION

MASSEY COLLEGE BUILDING I TAKING SHAPE SCIENCE BLOCK GROWING From Our Own Correspondent PALMERSTON N„ Today. The refrectory block at Massey Agricultural College, Fitzherbert, is beginning to take form within its cocoon of scaffolding, and in another two months it is anticipated the last workman will have left the scene, and the first of the main college buildings will have been erected. Apart from the dairy factory and necessary farm buildings, a small brick building fitted up with laboratories is the only building so far erected by the Government on the property. The new building is to form the centre piece of the college’s future domestic buildings, which will be grouped round it to form a quadrangle. A handsome reinforced concrete two-storey structure finished in buff-coloured cement, the building consists of a main refrectory hall with two wings attached, the one on the right containing a games room and common room, while that on the right is the service wing, containing a staff dining-room, bedrooms and a modern tiled kitchen which would delight the heart of any housewife. • The building has the appearance of sitting solidly on the ground, and reflects refinement in proportion, and it is hoped when it is completed, will do the same in detail also. It has been designed inside and out on an economic basis, and the result is a building that is simple but good. Two portions only are elaborate, the great hall and the facade of the entrance. Artistic work in pressed tinted cement adorns the latter, on each side of which is a great glass lamp fitted to a massive copper wall bracket, four feet high. Inside through a -apaeious vestibule wi-tb low coffered ceilings one walks to the refrectory hall, which with its high vaulted ceiling forms a distinct contrast. PROVISION FOR SPEAKERS Surrounding the hail at first floor level is to be a balcony on which provision! is being made for speakers to address the students. Great semicircular headed windows eight feet wide pierce the walls—three on each side and one at the end. A dado nine feet high surrounds the nail, with smaller windows placed under the larger. Opposite these windows will be placed the dining benches. The design is somewhat unusual, and although based more or less on the old English style of refrectory, is comfortably modern. The whole hall will be finished in tinted plaster. The ornamentation is based on Maori a,rt. Another attractive piece of work is a magnificent fireplace in the common room. The chimney breast of this fireplace is seven feet in width and reaches to the roof. It is built of red brick and the lintel and panel on which is to be set the college panel will be finished in coloured pressed cement. The architect is Mr. R. A. Lippincott, of Auckland, and Mr. Richard 0.. Gross, of the same city, is the sculptor who assisted with the ornamental work. OTHER WORKS A much larger job is the threestorey science block, the foundationstone of which was laid by his Excellency the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, last year. The foundations have been laid and the basement practically completed, but it will be nine months before the building is completed.

High on the hill overlooking the college, the gaunt, framework of a water tower is rearing its head 72 feet above the ground. A 50,000 gallon tank on this tower, to which water will be pumped from an artesian well, will provide water far the whole of the college buildings and farm. It it believed that no other institution in New Zealand has a water tower so large.