A hundred years ago, every
big city had a ‘bank corner’ where major banks built landmark premises. The
Wellington branch of the BNZ, had a pride position on its site shaped like a
ship’s prow negotiating the intersection of Lambton and Customhouse Quays.
The
building went up in 1900 – a confidence-inspiring confection of cement
ornamentation on the outside with a huge banking chamber inside rich with
woodwork and polychrome tiles. Thousands of people transacted business inside
this chamber each day, so it was worth putting on a show. Yet such finery hadn’t
always distinguished this piece of real estate. In the 1840s it was little more
than a finger of gravel jutting into the harbour: the settlers called it Clay
Point.
Then the hull of a
wrecked ship – the Inconstant which had been on its way to Peru – was towed
into the harbour and set onto this gravel. Stabilized with beams of wood, the
hull became the basis for an eccentric emporium known as Noah’s Ark, full of
imported necessities like china, glassware, clothes and ironmongery.
Then came huge land
reclamations in the 1860s which pushed the harbour’s edge blocks away from
Lambton Quay. Noah’s Ark was levelled to make a building site for the
newly-established Bank of New Zealand. The bank’s first building here was
wooden, but thirty years on the bank built its landmark which we know today as
the Old Bank Arcade.
Old Bank Arcade is
home to boutiques and eateries, all accessible from promenades and flights of
stairs fitting into the original volumes of the banking chamber. It is a walk
through quality, surprise and engagement.
