Chateau Tongariro
The Chateau Tongariro is a monument registered New Zealand Hotel . It is located in the Ruapehu District of the Manawatu-Wanganui region in the Tongariro National Park in the foothills of Mount Ruapehu and within sight of the other two volcanic peaks, Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe . Nearby is the Whakapapa ski field .
history
Since 1923 the administration of the Tongariro National Park was looking for a location for a 100-bed guest house to promote tourism in the newly established national park. In 1925, the New Zealand government offered to lease land to any private company and give up to £ 40,000 in loans to build and operate a hotel on the site.
Rodolph Lysaght Wigley (1881–1946) accepted the challenge as managing director of the Mount Cook Tourist Company . He founded the Tongariro Park Tourist Company with the intention of building a hotel and surrounding ski lodges. He floated the company but only raised £ 30,000 in subscriptions. The company signed a lease agreement with the government on November 9, 1928. Thereafter, the building had to be completed by March 31, 1930 (only 17 months later) and it could not cost less than £ 40,000 and no more than £ 60,000. Since only £ 30,000 in shares could be sold so far, Wigley signed a contract with the construction company Fletcher Construction in late 1928 . This included the company acquiring £ 15,000 of shares in Tongariro Park Tourist Company .
The chateau was designed by the Timaru- based architect Herbert Hall (1880-1939), who based the design on the Canadian hotel Château Lake Louise and designed a Georgian building with four floors and a ground floor.
The foundation stone was laid on January 10, 1929. The Fletchers company employed more than 80 workers. They were offered free accommodation and a free suite for those who stayed until the end of the project. Most of the workers were in prison transformed by Waikune, which was near the construction site.
The structure consists of a reinforced concrete skeleton that is faced with brick. The top floor is made of wood.
The building was opened to guests on August 1, 1929, still unfurnished. The official inauguration took place on November 13, 1929. At this point, Fletcher Construction was still £ 28,000 outstanding.
The total construction cost was £ 88,000 (well over the £ 60,000 ceiling). Of that, the hotel itself accounted for £ 78,000. At the request of the Tourist Company , an additional £ 10,000 has been invested in wooden outbuildings, a garage and a golf course in front of the hotel. The golf course was designed by an architect in prison and laid out by prison inmates. Wigley had led Fletchers to believe that the Mount Cook Tourist Company would reimburse the overspending. But because of the economic crisis that followed , they refused to pay. James Fletcher , the owner of the construction company, asked Prime Minister Joseph Ward to increase the government loan to £ 60,000. Ward agreed, and Fletcher received a promise from Wigley that most of this cash injection would go to Fletchers to pay the outstanding debts. The Tongariro Park Tourist Company was in serious economic trouble at the time, which was not improved when substantial investments were made in the hotel's equipment. Wigley only passed £ 10,000 of the money on to the construction company. The beginning economic crisis dashed hopes of an incipient tourist boom.
To collect their outstanding debts, Fletchers placed the Tongariro Park Tourist Company in bankruptcy in February 1931, took control of the hotel and operated it for 3 months before going out of business with a loss of £ 19,000, including a loss of £ 1000 during of 3 months as the owner of the hotel.
The hotel was taken over by the National Park Board and thus nationalized.
The chateau was used as an emergency shelter by the government when an earthquake destroyed a hospital in Wellington , it served as a recreation and rehabilitation center for members of the Air Force who had served in World War II .
In 1948 the chateau reopened after a renovation to accommodate visitors to Mount Ruapehu and the Tongariro National Park.
In 1957 control passed to the Tourist Hotel Corporation (THC), which also developed the Whakapapa Ski Field .
In 1990, the hotel was sold to Kah New Zealand Limited, a subsidiary of the Malaysian investor Oriental Holdings Berhad (OHB), as part of a privatization process . The new owner invested NZ $ 3 million in the renovation. The ski area was sold to another company.
In 2005 a new five-story wing with 40 rooms was opened for NZ $ 6 million. Outwardly, this copies the appearance of the original structure. In order to avoid disturbing the guests, a Scandinavian system of modular construction was used. The rooms built in Auckland were delivered by truck and assembled with a crane. A " presidential suite " was set up on the top floor .
power supply
Originally, the complex was supplied with heating and hot water through a coal heating system. There was also a 100 kW hydroelectric power plant on the Whakapapanui Stream for power supply.
In the early 1950s, the energy supply became inadequate. In June 1952, the demanded Ministry of Works from the King Country Electric Power Board, to lay a power supply for 500 to 600 kW to the Chateau. An 8.5 mile long overhead line with 11 kV voltage was put into operation in 1955. In addition to the chateau, this supplies the Whakapapa Ski Field and several mountain huts on Mount Ruapehu.
In the early 1960s a second, parallel route was built to increase security of supply and put into operation in 1964.
monument
The structure was registered as Historic Place Category 1 on September 6, 1996 by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust under number 7318 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Paul Goldsmith: Fletchers - A Centennial History of Fletcher Building. Davia Ling Publishing, Auckland 2009. ISBN 978-1-877378-35-5 .
- ↑ a b page of the NZHPT on Chateau Tongariro
- ↑ a b Jack Smith: No Job Too Big - A History of Fletcher Construction Volume I: 1909-1940. Steele Roberts, Wellington 2009 ISBN 978-1-877448-69-0 .
- ↑ http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/hotels-and-motels/5?setlang=mi . Retrieved February 14, 2011.
- ↑ 100 Years Pure Progress 1901-2001 . (PDF 2.0 MB) Tourism New Zealand , archived from the original ; accessed on February 22, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).
- ↑ a b c Helen Reilly: Switching on the King Country. Steele Roberts, Wellington ISBN 978-1-877448-99-7 .
Coordinates: 39 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ S , 175 ° 32 ′ 21.1 ″ E