Northern Steamship Company Building

**The shipping line for ‘the roadless North’ **

Two things gave Auckland’s port special character: scows and the Northern Steamship Company. Dunedin’s mighty Union Steam Ship Company may have monopolised the coast but this northern minnow managed to keep its independence. With a few notable exceptions such as the paddle steamer Wakatere, or the later Ngapuhi, its ships were small and elderly, but they called anywhere, taking passengers and cargo to and from the ‘roadless North’. In 1898 Northern’s dynamic managing director Charles Ranson hired Arthur Wilson to complete his ideas for the design of this prestigious office, 122-124 Quay Street, which opened in May 1899. The building grew with the company, gaining the third storey and its distinctive triangular pediment about 1920. Northern made an ambitious entry into the long-distance coastal trade during the 1950s, but ran out of steam 20 years later and sold its fleet in 1974–75. Today, displays at the maritime museum honour the old company’s memory, but its brick neoclassical building still looks across the Quay Street traffic to the old Northern Company Wharf (now Marsden Wharf), where the company’s coasters with their distinctive white funnels once used to ride the tides. Related place This part of Quay Street was the company’s patch. In the early 1900s the Northern and Union companies pooled their Auckland resources to form the United Repairing Company Ltd. Wade & Goldsbro’ are believed to have designed the near new building at 116–118 Quay Street (until recently the Union Fish Restaurant) that it took over in 1912. The pediment details have been rather rudely scalped from the façade, but even without them, this solid brick building is another link to Auckland’s maritime past.

© 2002 Original text – Gavin McLean.

Further reading: Cliff Furniss, Servants of the North, AH & AW Reed, Wellington, 1977.