page_title: Amber House
section_title: Earthquake resilience
hierarchical_section_title: Amber House / Earthquake resilience
caption_attribution_description: English: Brick making around the turn of the century
context_page_description: Amber House is one of the older two-storey villas in New Zealand's third founded city of Nelson in the top of the South Island at 46 Weka Street.
  It is a traditional colonial-style construction using native Rimu and Matai timbers with an external brick chimney that originally served four large fireplaces.
  The original, highly decorated, cast iron sewage vent pipes are still intact and visible on the exterior of the building.
context_section_description: Of particular interest is the tall brick chimney on the west side of Amber House that has survived major earthquakes in 1929 (Arthur's Pass and Murchison), 1968 (Īnangahua) and 1994 without a single crack blemishing its surface.
  There has been speculation that, because deep below Amber House are separate beds of shale and sand, these strata have acted like a naturally occurring analogue of the earthquake resistant of the Parliament House in Wellington to reduce the incidence of short periodicity lateral waves at Amber House during earthquakes.
  The evident resilience of this old chimney means that it is even possible that it pre-dates the 1893 magnitude 6.9 Nelson earthquake that moved the spire of Christ Church Cathedral in Nelson nearly a metre out of the vertical plane.
caption: Victorian brick making
exif: {}