Dilworth Building Grant Aided Repairs

Posted Wednesday, May 19 2010.

Repairs are well underway to the Dilworth Building at the lower end of Queen Street, central Auckland. This important heritage building was erected in 1925-27 as a high-quality concrete structure with distinctive Portland stone facings, steel casement windows and decorative bronze spandrel panels. It is a significant feature of the Auckland streetscape and is contemporaneous with other landmark developments of the same period; Gummer and Ford’s, Auckland Railway Station (opened 1930) and Grierson Aimer and Draffin’s Auckland War Memorial Museum (opened 1929). In addition to having a Category 1 listing with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, it is also listed with Auckland City as a Category A “Building, Heritage Property or Place of Special Value”.

Because of this status, the building has secured a generous grant from the Historic Places Trust to assist with the essential repair of the building.

The first stage is the comprehensive re-roofing, and one of the distinctive features of the building is the corner turret that made it one of the most prominent buildings in the city. This turret is being re-slated with green natural slates and the copper spouting repaired.

The upper flat roofs are having their asphalt membranes replaced. Steel sheeting is being replaced and access for safe maintenance is being installed and service installations on the fifth elevation of the building are being rationalised.

Future phases of the work to the facades will follow on from the first contract and is expected to extend over a period of years and will include repairs to corroded steel windows, conservation of deteriorating and cracking rendered surfaces and repair of Portland stone, cleaning of bronzework and repairs to the copper roofing and cast iron stays to the street verandah.

A number of specialist trades are being employed on the contract and an experienced management contractor is orchestrating the works on this extremely congested and difficult site to work on.