Wellington Railway Station

Wellington Railway Station opened in June nineteen thirty-seven, and when it did, it was the largest building in New Zealand. It covers over half a hectare, with a combined floor area of two hectares. But the really remarkable thing about this building is what's inside it — or rather, what it's designed to survive.

This was one of New Zealand's first seismically-proofed structures. The architect, W. Gray Young, designed it in a stripped Classical style with reinforced concrete specifically engineered to flex during an earthquake rather than crack. In a city that sits on multiple fault lines and had been devastated by the eighteen fifty-five quake, this was not an academic exercise. This building was designed to stay standing when the ground moved.

The station sits on sixty-eight acres of reclaimed land — the Thorndon reclamation that began in nineteen twenty-three. It replaced two earlier termini, Lambton and Thorndon, which had served the city since the eighteen-seventies. Look at the facade. The clean lines and symmetrical arches are classic inter-war architecture — grand enough to announce that you've arrived somewhere important, but restrained enough to feel distinctly New Zealand rather than borrowed from London or Washington.

The station has been a backdrop to some of Wellington's most significant moments. It was part of the funeral cortege route for Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage. During World War Two, it served as a coordination point for home-front defence. And during the Wahine disaster of nineteen sixty-eight — when the inter-island ferry sank in the harbour during a catastrophic storm, killing fifty-three people — the station was used as a casualty treatment centre. Tens of thousands of commuters pass through here every day without thinking about any of this.