Cast In Stone: Otago Harbour Board

Introduction

Imagine a time when life was so certain that when you built a building for your business you were confident enough in the future that you put the name of the business into the very fabric of the building.

This is not a time of mergers and takeovers of globalisation and restructure, this is when life was more local and certain.

There are a number of such buildings around and so this blog is an attempt to record some of them and more importantly a bit of the history of the business which by and large are no longer with us.

If you know something about any of these business please add a comment. You can do this without having to sign up for anything and can be anonomous if you prefer.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Otago Harbour Board

This is 57 Fryatt Street, Dunedin

Not much to look at now but once the offices of the Otago Harbour Board.

The functions the Board carried out are as far as I can tell split between Port Otago and its subsidiary Chalmers Properties and probably the Regional Council has picked up some as well.

The name is just above the door in case you can't spot it in this photo (double click to enlarge)

The building appears to be currently storage at best. It would probably scrub up ok with a bit of TLC although I have no idea what the state of it is on the inside.

With the Port Otago offices now at Port Chalmers beside the container warf and with this building sited at the end of the harbour opposite bulk store sheds, it tells you something about how the shipping business in particular has changed.