Central chambers built by early Methodist settlers

I’m not sure if anyone would read, or write for that matter, a Long-term Plan (LTP) if it wasn’t a requirement of the Local Government Act. Despite their names, LTPS have to be prepared every three years and if you have an interest in any aspect of your local community they are necessary reading. Community input will be invited next year, following this week’s consideration by the Hamilton City Council of its LTP for 2024-34.

Unsurprisingly I always scan LTPS for any mention of heritage matters. Using the search function on my computer I have usually completed that task in under 30 seconds, given that heritage is so rarely mentioned. In Hamilton’s proposed LTP there are a scattering of references to natural heritage or documentary heritage held by the libraries or museum.

Nowhere does built heritage get a mention, thanks in part perhaps to the suspension of the city’s Heritage Fund since July 2022.

Before the Heritage Fund was suspended, the owners of Wesley Chambers successfully applied five times for council grants that contributed to the conservation of the building’s extensive fenestration and to its repainting. The first grant went towards the preparation of a conservation plan, which is the best practice starting point for all careful and considered heritage work.

Erected in two stages (1904 and 1924-25) at the corner of Victoria and Collingwood Sts, Wesley Chambers embodies the historic association of the site with Hamilton’s early Methodist settlers. While it might be assumed that church groups only build churches, Wesley Chambers is just one of many examples throughout the country of church property trustees undertaking commercial development in order to provide funding for their activities.

In addition to its importance to the history of the Methodist church in Hamilton, Wesley Chambers is also significant as one of the major building projects that signalled the boom in central business district construction between the world wars. It was the first building in the town, as it was then, to possess an electric elevator. This notable feature was the subject of a news report titled ‘Imprisoned in a Lift’ that was published in the Waikato

Times on September 24, 1925.

As a, comparatively speaking, highrise building, Wesley Chambers quickly attracted sightseers to take in the panoramic view offered by the rooftop terrace. In the spring of 1925 three young office workers thought they would travel up in the lift to admire the view from the roof. When the power was turned off at the end of the working day they found themselves stranded near the top of the shaft. Lucky for them another employee had arrived at the building to find his colleagues were not there. Eventually the lift engineer was located and, upon turning the power back on, the lift was able to return to the ground floor, with its passengers shaken but unharmed. Thank goodness the story made it into the newspaper so that almost one hundred years later we can marvel at what that novel experience must have felt like for the “young man and two girls [sic]” concerned.

Built upon the pre-existing ground floor retail building, Wesley Chambers had been designed by local architect Fred Daniell. Plans that he drew up on behalf of the church are held in the Waikato Museum collection, including a blueprint for the interior layout of offices for Hamilton Borough Council dated 1926. Also in that collection are a floor plan for a dental surgery for Messrs Stevenson and Ingram of Auckland. Daniell’s partnership with Thomas Lusk was dissolved in late July 1925, at which time Daniell had rooms in Wesley Chambers. It was reported in March 1927 that Daniell was the South Auckland district secretary for the Methodist Church, hence his design work for the church to which he belonged.