Parliament and the Beehive

Why it matters

Everything here dates from one night in 1907, when fire destroyed the parliamentary buildings. One building survived: Thomas Turnbull's General Assembly Library, saved by its iron fire-door. Staff got the books out while it held — one newspaper reported eight thousand volumes carried to safety in forty-five minutes.

The library had already had an unhappy life. Its foundation stone went down on 13 April 1898 and it was finished between 1899 and 1901, but the government cut the third storey to save money and Turnbull demanded his name be taken off the commemorative stone. The man who redesigned it to work at the reduced height was the Government Architect, John Campbell — who then designed the building next door.

Parliament House is Campbell's, with his assistant Claude Paton, and it has never been finished. Lord Islington laid the foundation stone on 23 March 1912. Members moved into the incomplete building in 1918. Work stopped in 1922 with the southern wall unfinished, with some further work trailing on to 1925 — and the second stage was simply never built. What was meant to exist and does not: a second wing mirroring the first, a grand dome over the entrance lobby, and smaller domes over the end pavilions. The building you see is half of a design.

The Beehive came sixty years later and by a different route. Sir Basil Spence was engaged in 1963, reportedly after meeting Prime Minister Keith Holyoake and sketching a round building on a napkin. Construction began in 1969, once the old Government House had been demolished, and it was not formally completed until 1981. It is 72 metres high, with ten floors above ground and four below, and it was criticised on completion for the impracticality of its internal arrangements — a complaint the building has never entirely shaken off.

And all of it now floats. Between 1992 and 1997 the buildings were cut from their original foundations, new basements were carved out beneath them, and 417 base isolators of rubber, steel and lead were installed. More than four hundred people were on the site at the busiest point. It is the same idea that sits under Te Papa, at nearly three times the scale.

What it's like

The forecourt is the thing. Standing on it you have, from one side to the other, a Victorian Gothic library from 1899, a neoclassical parliament from 1912, and a modernist cone from 1969 — pointed arches, crocketed gables and steeply pitched corrugated-iron roofs at one end, and seventy-two metres of concrete drum at the other. Nothing about the row agrees with itself, and none of it was ever meant to.

The library is much the best-looking of the three and the most overlooked. It is late-Victorian Gothic Revival with Venetian influences, it is the oldest structure in the precinct, and it is still doing its job — it remains the working library of the New Zealand government, providing research to members and staff, and holds the country's most complete collection of twentieth-century New Zealand publications.

Parliament House beside it is grey stone and deliberate symmetry that stops abruptly at the southern end. The Beehive beyond it is either the ugliest or the most likeable building in Wellington depending entirely on who you ask, and the argument has been running for forty-five years.

The grounds are open and pleasant and are the other half of a visit — lawns, mature trees, and a view down Lambton Quay. This is also where the country brings its protests, which means that on any given weekday you may find the forecourt doing its actual constitutional job while you are standing on it.

How to visit

The tour is called Introduction to Parliament, it lasts about sixty minutes, and it costs nothing — the booking system lists it at NZD $0.00, which is not a placeholder. Several run through the day.

You must book, and you must be early. Parliament's own booking page is explicit: arrive at least fifteen minutes before the start time to allow for security screening, and late arrivals risk losing their place. A single booking cannot cover more than ten people. Anything larger is arranged directly with Parliament as a private tour.

Getting there is a walk. Parliament sits at the top of Lambton Quay on Molesworth Street, about ten minutes on foot from the railway station and fifteen from most of the central city. There is no reason to take a bus.

Making the most of it

Give the library ten minutes from the outside before you go in anywhere. It is the only building on the site that predates the 1907 fire, it survived because of a door, and the fact that its architect refused to have his name on it because the government took a floor off is the most human thing in the precinct.

Then walk the southern end. See the pause note above — the point at which the stonework stops is the most interesting five square metres on Molesworth Street, and it is entirely unmarked.

Ask your guide about the base isolators. There are 417 of them under these buildings, put in between 1992 and 1997 by cutting the buildings off their own foundations and digging new basements underneath. It is the single most Wellington fact about the place, and it is invisible.

Do the grounds afterwards rather than before. They are open, they are free, they hold the country's protest ground and a good view down the Quay, and they read differently once you have been inside.

Combine it with the Cable Car rather than with anything on the waterfront. Molesworth Street is at the top of Lambton Quay, the cable car's lower station is on the same street a few minutes' walk south, and Parliament plus the hill makes a coherent morning in a way that Parliament plus Te Papa does not — those are at opposite ends of the centre.

Nearby

The obvious pairing is the Cable Car and the Botanic Garden, whose lower station is a short walk down Lambton Quay — Parliament in the morning, the hill after lunch, and back down through the garden.

Te Papa is at the other end of the city centre on the waterfront and deserves its own half-day rather than being squeezed in after this. Zealandia and Matiu / Somes Island both need most of a day of their own.

Everything else is on the Wellington page.