£600,000 BUILDING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 190, 9 February 1912, Page 6

£600,000 BUILDING.

N LONDON HEADQUARTERS OF AUSTRALIA. The £600,000 scheme for erecting' the palatial offices of the Commonwealth of Australia in the Strand-Aldwych site will be procedeed with without delay. The building will be begun about the middle of next year, it is officially announced, and in two years it is expected to be. completed. •The style of the building will be in conformity with that portion already erected and belonging to the State of Victoria. Besides the Commonwealth, the five States other than Victoria will also find accommodation in the building so that under one roof will be grouped the administrative offices of the Commonwealth and the State offices of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. To make its Antipodean character complete New Zealand! will be offered hospitality, should that Dominion desire it.

The eight-storied building which it is intended to create will serve other and equally useful purposes to those of administration. Those periodical exhibitions of Australian produce, which are of inestimable value in advertising the resources of the Australasian continent, will be specially provided for in a large nail, whose area of 12,000 square feet wiU be topped by two massive domes. The building will be of Portland stone with handsome arched windows on the ground floor, above which will rise fofr three stories huge columns, and on top will be a mansard roof. An imposing feature will be a high dome at the Aldwych-Strand corner.