Government House (Wellington)
The Government House in Wellington is the residence of the Governor-General of New Zealand . The building was completed in 1910 and is the third Government House in Wellington. The two previous buildings no longer exist.
history
First Government House
The first Government House in Wellington was built in 1840 by William Hayward Wakefield , a New Zealand Company representative and founder of the City of Wellington . The building was a simple one-story wooden house with a porch . It was located on government property where the steps to the entrance to the parliament building are today . From there you had a good view of Wellington Harbor .
After Wakefield died in 1848 and Wellington was also affected by the Marlborough earthquake two months later , the Wakefield house was used as a hospital. But just a year later the house was used again for representative purposes.
In 1865, Governor George Edward Gray moved into the house and made it his official residence until the end of his tenure in 1868. After that it was no longer used as an official residence and was demolished in 1871.
Second Government House
With the handover from Governor Gray to his successor George Ferguson Bowen , the latter moved into a newly built Government House in 1868 , which stood on the site where the Beehive is today. The house, a two-story villa with a four-story tower above the main entrance, was laid out extremely generously. It served ten governors as the official residence until 1907. When the nearby General Assembly building was destroyed by fire in 1907 , the Government House was temporarily needed for parliamentary assemblies.
William Plunket , the last resident of the Government House , moved in 1908 to the estate of the British businessman John Henderson Pollok Strang in Palmerston North . Until the completion of a new Government House in 1910, Strang left his house to the government. After that, the building was used as a restaurant for parliamentarians until it was demolished in 1969. The building had togive wayto the new Beehive next to the parliament building.
Third Government House
Construction of the third Government House began in 1908 and was completed in 1910. The house is a large two-storey representative building, symmetrically laid out and with a tower in the middle, directly above the main entrance. In the building, which was largely made of wood, there are numerous large and small rooms, long corridors, a ball room, a spacious staircase and numerous attic chambers under the roof. The property was designed by the government architect, John Campbell , and his assistant, Claude Paton .
The first governor to move into the house was John Poynder Dickson . In 2008 the house underwent a thorough renovation and made it earthquake-proof. The work dragged on until 2011. On March 24, 2011, the Government House was returned to its intended use.
See also
Web links
- Government House . The Governor-General,accessed April 14, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Other Government Houses . The Governor-General , accessed April 14, 2015 .
- ^ Gavin McLean : Governors and governors general - Government House, Wellington . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand , November 12, 2014, accessed April 14, 2015 .
- ^ House and Grounds . The Governor-General , accessed April 14, 2015 .
Coordinates: 41 ° 18 ′ 23 ″ S , 174 ° 46 ′ 52 ″ E