page_title: Dunedin Town Hall
section_title: Second phase
hierarchical_section_title: Dunedin Town Hall / Construction history / Second phase
caption_attribution_description: Dunedin town hall on graduation day
context_page_description: The Dunedin Town Hall is a municipal building in the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. It is located in the heart of the city extending from The Octagon, the central plaza, to Moray Place through a whole city block. It is the seat of the Dunedin City Council, providing its formal meeting chamber, as well as a large auditorium and a conference centre. The oldest part of the building has been called the only substantial Victorian town hall still in existence in New Zealand.
context_section_description: In 1913 the city council held a competition for the design of the Town Hall, which was won by Harry Mandeno (1879–1973) in 1914. The winning design projected two auditoria each in its own compartment: one smaller, running transversely across the site immediately behind the Municipal Chambers; the other, larger, extending from there to Moray Place, oriented on the same north/south axis as the whole site from the Octagon. The smaller auditorium, then called the Concert Hall, was to seat 600 people. The larger was to seat 3,000. Although Mandeno's name was on the winning design, it is likely it was the work of Roy Fraser (1895–1972), then too young to enter the competition independently.
  The First World War delayed progress, and in the early 1920s ratepayers voted against raising a loan to pay for the building. The city council's profits from its trading departments during the 1925-1926 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition enabled it to undertake the project and pay for it with cash. The plans were now modified explicitly by Mandeno's new partner Roy Fraser. Among other changes, the floor of the Concert Hall was lowered below that of the main auditorium and also below the first floor of the Municipal Chambers, thus placing a barrier between them. This impeded Lawson's intended entry from the Octagon to the spaces behind the Municipal Chambers, and generally made movement through the whole extended complex difficult. The foundation stone was laid on 3 March 1928 and the building was opened on 15 February 1930. The main auditorium was then, and remains, the largest in New Zealand.
  The building was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete with Oamaru limestone cladding and was intended to harmonise with the Municipal Chambers which it physically adjoins. The initial design employed a revived Baroque style. The later re-working simplified this, making it more austere and more purely classical. The main auditorium has a pillared and pedimented facade to Moray Place accommodating its principal entrance. Corner stairwells on the Moray Place front and comparable "towers" at the southward end give the main auditorium's building compartment a basilica-like form. The Concert Hall's entrance facade is more detailed, and more closely matches Lawson's Municipal Chambers whose west elevation it joins, making a successful transition to the plainer side of the main auditorium. The narrow Harrop Street flanks that western boundary of the whole complex while the eastern one, originally designed to be chiefly unseen, is bounded by the pedestrian walkway of Municipal Lane.
  The main auditorium has two galleries above the ground floor, the first arranged as a long-sided U, and an organ, installed at the back of the stage. Its ground floor foyer has an impressive barrel-vaulted, coffered ceiling. The Concert Hall, long called the Concert Chamber, had a proscenium and a single gallery. Neither auditorium had a fly tower or an orchestra pit because they were designed primarily for musical performances. The project cost £86,000, exclusive of the organ.
caption: A graduation ceremony in the main auditorium
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