Wellington Woolen Manufacturing Company Building

The Wellington Woollen Company Building, 1919, looks light and open, with its generous windows and stripped Classical detailing. Designed by William Gummer, it is Christchurch's most important precursor of Modernism. It is also a reminder of the importance of the factories and warehouses along Lichfield Street in the economic life of Christchurch in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. None of the original manufacturing and trading enterprises remain in the buildings or indeed in business, but many of the buildings themselves survived until the earthquakes, and this one beyond. The survivors are now being put to innovative new uses.