William Mason (mayor)
Encyclopedia
William Mason was a New Zealand architect
born in Ipswich
, England
, the son of an architect/builder George Mason and Susan, née Forty. Trained by his father he went to London where he seems to have worked for Thomas Telford
(1757–1834). He studied under Peter Nicholson
(1765–1844) before eventually working for Edward Blore
(1787–1879). In 1831 he married Sarah Nichols, a Berkshire woman apparently fifteen years older than he was. A son was born in the first year of their marriage. In 1836 he returned to Ipswich to practise. Having worked at Lambeth Palace he had attracted the interest of the Bishop of London who now employed him independently designing churches and parsonages. These included three commissions for churches in Essex: St Lawrence, East Donyland; St Botolph, Colchester; and St James, Brightlingsea. The most remarkable of these is St Botolph's (1838) in white brick and Norman style. Apparently Georgian in plan and in its interior it strikes a Medieval note outside. St James (1836), also white brick and in the lancet style and resembling some of Blore's work, is very like St Paul's Church Auckland which Mason built a few years later. Perhaps because of economic hardship, perhaps because of ambition in 1838 the Masons emigrated to New South Wales
.
In Sydney Mason worked for the Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis
. He had a success in winning first and second prizes for a new Mechanics' Institute, submitting Gothic and Classical designs, a sign of the rising competition between these styles. He built wheat silos on Cockatoo Island, a task requiring engineering ingenuity. It seems that here he acquired his acquaintance with verandas. A new Government House was then under construction which had been designed by Edward Blore while Mason had still been on his staff in 1835. He may have worked on the drawings.
, Lieutenant Governor designate of New Zealand, which he accepted, sailing to join Hobson at the Bay of Islands where he arrived on the 17th of March 1840. He thus became the first professionally trained architect in New Zealand. His title was officially "Superintendent of Public Works" but he maintained he had been appointed "Colonial Architect". He adopted that title which was used by government officers in addressing him. He went to assist with establishing the new capital, Auckland, in September 1840. There he oversaw the erection of the prefabricated first Government House before resigning in 1842 and going into partnership with Thomas Paton. Formerly the government postmaster Paton had also resigned and the two men set up as auctioneers and architects. Mason designed the church of St Paul which was started in 1841. He had bought land and now built on it without making a fortune, put up premises for the New Zealand Banking Company and designed houses. He became involved in other commercial affairs but in 1841 his nine year old son was drowned in a well. The boy may have been murdered and his parents were deeply distressed.
By 1844 there was plenty of business but little architecture. Mason dissolved his partnership with Paton and took up farming in Epsom. He designed a windmill there and may have had some hand in the building of St John's College
at Epsom, but these were architecturally unproductive years. He continued farming in various places around Auckland and entered public life. In 1851 he was elected to the Common Council of Auckland, but eventually a substantial commission turned up. Mason was living at Howick late in 1854 when he was appointed architect of the 10,000 pound project to build a new Government House
. The result was a large, two story, neo–classical building, whose manner may not have been entirely of Mason's choosing. It is made of timber treated to look like stone. Its principal facade has a central breakfront with round–headed windows in the upper floor. It has been the subject of rather mixed reviews since its completion in 1856 but it is a substantial house for New Zealand at the time and of its nature a significant building.
Mason was now Architect to the Auckland Provincial Council. In April 1856 he became President of the newly formed Board of Works. Amidst disputes about the new Government House he returned to his Howick Farm in February 1857. Early in 1860 he stepped back from this again moving into Howick village. As tension rose with Maori he became a Captain in the Auckland militia.
In October 1861 he let his name go forward for election for the Pensioner Settlements
, an Auckland seat, which he represented in parliament from 1861 to 1866, when he retired from parliament. At that time, the colonial parliament still met in Auckland. There he sat alongside Thomas Russell
who soon established the Bank of New Zealand
, with the benefit of a parliamentary Act. The bank had early information about the discovery of gold in Otago
, which was then transforming the colony's prospects and was soon to change its demography. Mason was commissioned to design the bank's premises in Dunedin
and Wellington
which profoundly affected his later life. It seems that early in September he visited the southern settlement and made the decision to relocate there. At the same time an advertisement saw him selling his house and chattels in Auckland. The transfer document shows him as a "Gentleman", "late of Auckland but now of Dunedin".
Mason also designed a number of houses at this time but his Bank of New Zealand, also on Princes Street, attracted particular attention. Described as of a "general Grecian Style" it was a stone built two story structure on the site of William Armson
's later, magnificent replacement. Again there were parallels with the second Government House but the bank, like the warehouse, and like the bank's counterpart in Wellington, also designed by Mason at this time, has been characterised as exhibiting an admirable "brawny simplicity" reminiscent of Robert Adam
. Adjacent to the bank was a three story office for T.B. Gillies which now saw Mason flourishing forth with a contrastingly exuberant and delicate Venetian design. It had paired, arcaded windows on the upper floors and sculpted heads over the columns. Sadly this building doesn't survive. Another substantial commission for the Bank of Australasia in High Street was a further contrast, a more obviously Victorian building whose elaborate ironwork reflected the connection between Dunedin and Melbourne at the time. It has been said it has been largely demolished but while remodelled still mostly survives, or did until its demolition in 2009 . Mason had a number of staff at this busy time, including his clerk of works, N.Y.A. Wales. By the end of 1863 he had bought land in London Street and there built a house for himself. Two–storey and Italianate it was another timber building treated to resemble stone, like the second Government House, but a tall structure, with some good interior plaster work. It too survives at 104 London Street and is best known for the adjoining Globe Theatre, Dunedin
. In early 1864 Mason entered into a partnership with William Clayton
(1823–77).
He now received more substantial commissions, two of them the greatest undertakings attempted in New Zealand up till then: the building for the New Zealand Exhibition and a new Post Office for the Otago provincial government. The first was completed in 1865 the second in 1868. The exhibition building had been conceived with additional pavilions, evident in a water colour by the artist George O'Brien
. O'Brien also depicted the new Post Office, a structure so grand that before its completion it was decided it needed a higher purpose.
The exhibition building was a twin–towered palazzo in stuccoed brick, with corner turrets and the bold quoining already exhibited in the Dunedin Public Warehouse. It had a central, covered courtyard and was a descendant of Charles Fowler
's design for the Covent Garden
market building in London. It was situated on Great King Street and afterward became the city's hospital, serving the purpose until its demolition in 1933.
The Post Office, better known as the Stock Exchange (Dunedin Stock Exchange building), was Mason's greatest achievement. It was described at the time as the finest building in the colony and was a notable aesthetic success. A two story stone building it was tendered at 22,960 pounds, occupied most of a city block and was another palazzo, arcaded and with a 120 foot high clock tower above the central entrance. It was symmetrical in plan and overall design and was described as "Palladian with Italian and Grecian features". There was a central hall with a highly decorated interior. Its street elevations appeared effortlessly noble. Recessed columns in the arcades, elaborate stone carving in the spandrels and the rhythmic alternation of deep arches and heavily rusticated pilasters contributed to the effect, as did the recession of the first floor from the ground floor's arcade. As a consequence the first floor was set like a temple atop a mighty, balustraded plinth to which the first floor's lofty pediments added a crowning, glorious note. The cosmopolitan assurance of the design was almost startling in the context. But the building's outstanding success seems to have contributed to its demise. Transferred to the university, for which purpose it wasn't suited, it became the premises of the Colonial Bank, and then the Stock Exchange suffering unfortunate modifications along the way. It was a mess of ill–considered additions when it was demolished in 1969.
At this time Mason and Clayton had also completed the large bond store later known as Edinburgh House and the Otago Provincial Council building on blocks immediately adjacent to the Post Office. Those too are now gone but All Saints church in North Dunedin survives. There has been some ambivalence about the relative responsibility of Mason and Clayton for this commission, but most commentators treat it as a joint production. Certainly Mason eventually completed it alone. An unusual building in polychromatic brick it reflects the innovations of William Butterfield
in England. With its departure from a scholarly adherence to the Early Pointed manner of the Gothic style it also marks the onset of High Victorianism in New Zealand. This first portion of the building was finished in 1865.
At this time Mason was still a member of the house of representatives and in this year became the first Mayor of the newly incorporated City of Dunedin. He retired from parliament in 1866 and from the mayoralty in 1867. He was a cognisant, though not outspoken, member of the house. In the civic chair he presided over improvements to the city's drains and the levelling of streets. His Bank of New South Wales in Princes Street was completed in 1866, a refined, three storey masonry building. Recessed from the street and ornamented with gas lamps and pillars, it won high praise and a careful description from the Otago Daily Times. Its felicitous street front was removed in the 1970s.
in Stafford Street, was started in 1873. The large stone house, high on the ridge behind the city, is somewhere between the perpendicular and Tudor forms of Gothic. It was later extended and survives as the core of Columba College
, a Presbyterian girls school.
St Matthews, in Caversham bluestone with unusual Port Chalmers stone dressings, is a large church, of strong design, very English in feeling, with aisles and octagonal piers. It is a contrast to All Saints and reflects a return to convention in English church design.
Before it was completed Mason's wife Sarah died, on the 22nd of September 1873. On the 20th of December that year he married Catherine Fenn, a widow thirty years his junior. Mason was still designing, completing the Otepopo Presbyterian church and the Standard Insurance Company's office in Princes Street, the Clarion building, in 1874, both of which survive. He then dissolved his partnership with Wales, may have visited England and anyway moved with his new wife to Queenstown in 1876.
He became active in public affairs there, later moved further into the high country to Paradise at the head of Lake Wakatipu before eventually returning to Dunedin at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. He had sold his city house and was staying at the Grand Hotel, now the Southern Cross, when he died.
(1847–1918), both acknowledged eminences among New Zealand's Victorian architects. Mason's active career did overlap Lawson's, though scarcely Petre's, but the comparison is somewhat skewed because these practitioners represented significantly different moments of architectural thought. In terms of the volume of his output, and that of his successive partnerships, Mason made a significant impact. As a professional he was highly regarded, a senior figure people turned to for advice on difficult matters. But in the Post Office, or Stock Exchange, he designed the first building in New Zealand of more than local distinction. Were it not for its neglect and demise he would now be recalled as the country's first significant architect.
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
born in Ipswich
Ipswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the son of an architect/builder George Mason and Susan, née Forty. Trained by his father he went to London where he seems to have worked for Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder.-Early career:...
(1757–1834). He studied under Peter Nicholson
Peter Nicholson (architect)
Peter Nicholson was a Scottish architect, mathematician and engineer. Largely self-taught, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker but soon abandoned his trade in favour of teaching and writing...
(1765–1844) before eventually working for Edward Blore
Edward Blore
Edward Blore was a 19th century British landscape and architectural artist, architect and antiquary. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland ....
(1787–1879). In 1831 he married Sarah Nichols, a Berkshire woman apparently fifteen years older than he was. A son was born in the first year of their marriage. In 1836 he returned to Ipswich to practise. Having worked at Lambeth Palace he had attracted the interest of the Bishop of London who now employed him independently designing churches and parsonages. These included three commissions for churches in Essex: St Lawrence, East Donyland; St Botolph, Colchester; and St James, Brightlingsea. The most remarkable of these is St Botolph's (1838) in white brick and Norman style. Apparently Georgian in plan and in its interior it strikes a Medieval note outside. St James (1836), also white brick and in the lancet style and resembling some of Blore's work, is very like St Paul's Church Auckland which Mason built a few years later. Perhaps because of economic hardship, perhaps because of ambition in 1838 the Masons emigrated to New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
.
In Sydney Mason worked for the Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis
Mortimer Lewis
Mortimer William Lewis , was an English architect and surveyor who migrated to Australia and became Colonial Architect in the state of New South Wales from 1835 to 1849. Lewis was responsible for designing and overseeing many government buildings in Sydney and rural New South Wales, many of which...
. He had a success in winning first and second prizes for a new Mechanics' Institute, submitting Gothic and Classical designs, a sign of the rising competition between these styles. He built wheat silos on Cockatoo Island, a task requiring engineering ingenuity. It seems that here he acquired his acquaintance with verandas. A new Government House was then under construction which had been designed by Edward Blore while Mason had still been on his staff in 1835. He may have worked on the drawings.
To New Zealand
Perhaps ambition called again. He was offered an appointment as "Superintendent of Works" to the nascent government of William HobsonWilliam Hobson
Captain William Hobson RN was the first Governor of New Zealand and co-author of the Treaty of Waitangi.-Early life:...
, Lieutenant Governor designate of New Zealand, which he accepted, sailing to join Hobson at the Bay of Islands where he arrived on the 17th of March 1840. He thus became the first professionally trained architect in New Zealand. His title was officially "Superintendent of Public Works" but he maintained he had been appointed "Colonial Architect". He adopted that title which was used by government officers in addressing him. He went to assist with establishing the new capital, Auckland, in September 1840. There he oversaw the erection of the prefabricated first Government House before resigning in 1842 and going into partnership with Thomas Paton. Formerly the government postmaster Paton had also resigned and the two men set up as auctioneers and architects. Mason designed the church of St Paul which was started in 1841. He had bought land and now built on it without making a fortune, put up premises for the New Zealand Banking Company and designed houses. He became involved in other commercial affairs but in 1841 his nine year old son was drowned in a well. The boy may have been murdered and his parents were deeply distressed.
By 1844 there was plenty of business but little architecture. Mason dissolved his partnership with Paton and took up farming in Epsom. He designed a windmill there and may have had some hand in the building of St John's College
St John's College, Auckland
The College of St John the Evangelist, located in Meadowbank, Auckland, New Zealand, is the theological college of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia...
at Epsom, but these were architecturally unproductive years. He continued farming in various places around Auckland and entered public life. In 1851 he was elected to the Common Council of Auckland, but eventually a substantial commission turned up. Mason was living at Howick late in 1854 when he was appointed architect of the 10,000 pound project to build a new Government House
Old Government House, Auckland
Old Government House is the former residence of the Governor of New Zealand in Auckland, New Zealand. The present Government House in Auckland was previously a private residence....
. The result was a large, two story, neo–classical building, whose manner may not have been entirely of Mason's choosing. It is made of timber treated to look like stone. Its principal facade has a central breakfront with round–headed windows in the upper floor. It has been the subject of rather mixed reviews since its completion in 1856 but it is a substantial house for New Zealand at the time and of its nature a significant building.
Mason was now Architect to the Auckland Provincial Council. In April 1856 he became President of the newly formed Board of Works. Amidst disputes about the new Government House he returned to his Howick Farm in February 1857. Early in 1860 he stepped back from this again moving into Howick village. As tension rose with Maori he became a Captain in the Auckland militia.
In October 1861 he let his name go forward for election for the Pensioner Settlements
Pensioner Settlements (New Zealand electorate)
Pensioner Settlements was a 19th century parliamentary multimember electorate in the Auckland region of New Zealand, from 1853 to 1870.-Geographic distribution:...
, an Auckland seat, which he represented in parliament from 1861 to 1866, when he retired from parliament. At that time, the colonial parliament still met in Auckland. There he sat alongside Thomas Russell
Thomas Russell (New Zealand)
Thomas Russell was a lawyer, politician, businessman and entrepreneur in 19th-century New Zealand. Russell was one of the first two New Zealand-trained lawyers admitted to the bar. He was the founder of a number of major New Zealand-based companies including the Bank of New Zealand and the New...
who soon established the Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New Zealand is one of New Zealand’s largest banks and has been operating continuously in the country since the first office was opened in Auckland in October 1861 followed shortly after by the first branch in Dunedin in December 1861...
, with the benefit of a parliamentary Act. The bank had early information about the discovery of gold in Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
, which was then transforming the colony's prospects and was soon to change its demography. Mason was commissioned to design the bank's premises in Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...
and Wellington
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...
which profoundly affected his later life. It seems that early in September he visited the southern settlement and made the decision to relocate there. At the same time an advertisement saw him selling his house and chattels in Auckland. The transfer document shows him as a "Gentleman", "late of Auckland but now of Dunedin".
Early career in Dunedin
In the south the capital of the Presbyterian special settlement was mushrooming into a frontier city. Mason formed a partnership with David Ross (1827–1908) a Scottish–born Fellow of the Institute of British Architects who was already resident. There now followed numerous projects and a series of changing partnerships. The one with Ross was dissolved early in 1863. Of numerous small commissions the Dunedin Public Warehouse, for William Dalrymple, now 386 Princes Street, is a more substantial example. A three story building in brick it has a vigorously modelled street front with emphatic quoining used to define the edges and apertures of the facade. Those around the windows rise to form round–topped columns. There are echoes here of the fenestration of the second Government House but the relative simplicity and strength of the Dunedin building shows the designer his own master again and possessed of a corresponding new confidence.Mason also designed a number of houses at this time but his Bank of New Zealand, also on Princes Street, attracted particular attention. Described as of a "general Grecian Style" it was a stone built two story structure on the site of William Armson
William Armson
William Barnett Armson was an architect, surveyor, engineer in colonial New Zealand. A co-founder of the Canterbury Association of Architects, and an architect to the provincial government, he established the architectural firm of Armson, Collins and Harman in 1870, which remained active until 1993...
's later, magnificent replacement. Again there were parallels with the second Government House but the bank, like the warehouse, and like the bank's counterpart in Wellington, also designed by Mason at this time, has been characterised as exhibiting an admirable "brawny simplicity" reminiscent of Robert Adam
Robert Adam
Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...
. Adjacent to the bank was a three story office for T.B. Gillies which now saw Mason flourishing forth with a contrastingly exuberant and delicate Venetian design. It had paired, arcaded windows on the upper floors and sculpted heads over the columns. Sadly this building doesn't survive. Another substantial commission for the Bank of Australasia in High Street was a further contrast, a more obviously Victorian building whose elaborate ironwork reflected the connection between Dunedin and Melbourne at the time. It has been said it has been largely demolished but while remodelled still mostly survives, or did until its demolition in 2009 . Mason had a number of staff at this busy time, including his clerk of works, N.Y.A. Wales. By the end of 1863 he had bought land in London Street and there built a house for himself. Two–storey and Italianate it was another timber building treated to resemble stone, like the second Government House, but a tall structure, with some good interior plaster work. It too survives at 104 London Street and is best known for the adjoining Globe Theatre, Dunedin
Globe Theatre, Dunedin
The Globe Theatre is the name of a theatre located in Dunedin, New Zealand, and the amateur theatre company that runs it. The theatre was built in 1961 by Patric and Rosalie Carey as an extension of their house, at a time when professional theatre was virtually non-existent in New Zealand.The...
. In early 1864 Mason entered into a partnership with William Clayton
William Clayton (architect)
William Henry Clayton was a New Zealand colonial architect.-Early life:Born in Norfolk Plains, Australia, Clayton trained as an architect in England, and designed more than three hundred buildings in Tasmania before emigrating to New Zealand in 1863.-New Zealand career:He established the practice...
(1823–77).
He now received more substantial commissions, two of them the greatest undertakings attempted in New Zealand up till then: the building for the New Zealand Exhibition and a new Post Office for the Otago provincial government. The first was completed in 1865 the second in 1868. The exhibition building had been conceived with additional pavilions, evident in a water colour by the artist George O'Brien
George O'Brien (painter)
George O'Brien was an engineer of aristocratic background who turned to art in 19th century Australasia, dying in poverty but leaving a body of remarkable work.-Biography:...
. O'Brien also depicted the new Post Office, a structure so grand that before its completion it was decided it needed a higher purpose.
The exhibition building was a twin–towered palazzo in stuccoed brick, with corner turrets and the bold quoining already exhibited in the Dunedin Public Warehouse. It had a central, covered courtyard and was a descendant of Charles Fowler
Charles Fowler
Charles Fowler , English architect, was born at Cullompton, Devon.After serving an apprenticeship of seven years with John Powning of Exeter, he went to London in 1814, and entered the office of David Laing, where he remained until he commenced practice for himself...
's design for the Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
market building in London. It was situated on Great King Street and afterward became the city's hospital, serving the purpose until its demolition in 1933.
The Post Office, better known as the Stock Exchange (Dunedin Stock Exchange building), was Mason's greatest achievement. It was described at the time as the finest building in the colony and was a notable aesthetic success. A two story stone building it was tendered at 22,960 pounds, occupied most of a city block and was another palazzo, arcaded and with a 120 foot high clock tower above the central entrance. It was symmetrical in plan and overall design and was described as "Palladian with Italian and Grecian features". There was a central hall with a highly decorated interior. Its street elevations appeared effortlessly noble. Recessed columns in the arcades, elaborate stone carving in the spandrels and the rhythmic alternation of deep arches and heavily rusticated pilasters contributed to the effect, as did the recession of the first floor from the ground floor's arcade. As a consequence the first floor was set like a temple atop a mighty, balustraded plinth to which the first floor's lofty pediments added a crowning, glorious note. The cosmopolitan assurance of the design was almost startling in the context. But the building's outstanding success seems to have contributed to its demise. Transferred to the university, for which purpose it wasn't suited, it became the premises of the Colonial Bank, and then the Stock Exchange suffering unfortunate modifications along the way. It was a mess of ill–considered additions when it was demolished in 1969.
At this time Mason and Clayton had also completed the large bond store later known as Edinburgh House and the Otago Provincial Council building on blocks immediately adjacent to the Post Office. Those too are now gone but All Saints church in North Dunedin survives. There has been some ambivalence about the relative responsibility of Mason and Clayton for this commission, but most commentators treat it as a joint production. Certainly Mason eventually completed it alone. An unusual building in polychromatic brick it reflects the innovations of William Butterfield
William Butterfield
William Butterfield was a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement . He is noted for his use of polychromy-Biography:...
in England. With its departure from a scholarly adherence to the Early Pointed manner of the Gothic style it also marks the onset of High Victorianism in New Zealand. This first portion of the building was finished in 1865.
At this time Mason was still a member of the house of representatives and in this year became the first Mayor of the newly incorporated City of Dunedin. He retired from parliament in 1866 and from the mayoralty in 1867. He was a cognisant, though not outspoken, member of the house. In the civic chair he presided over improvements to the city's drains and the levelling of streets. His Bank of New South Wales in Princes Street was completed in 1866, a refined, three storey masonry building. Recessed from the street and ornamented with gas lamps and pillars, it won high praise and a careful description from the Otago Daily Times. Its felicitous street front was removed in the 1970s.
Later career in Dunedin and later life
Mason retired from architectural practice when he became Mayor and subsequently devoted himself to an estate in north Otago, the Punchbowl at Maheno. But the partnership with Clayton ended in 1868 and in 1871 Mason formed a new one with his old clerk of works, N.Y.A. Wales (1832–1903). Now in his seventh decade he remained a vigorous designer. He completed Bishopscourt in Highgate for the Anglican bishop S.T. Nevill in 1872 and St Matthew's Anglican churchSt. Matthew's Church, Dunedin
St. Matthew's Church is an inner-city Anglican parish church, located on the City Rise in Dunedin, New Zealand. Designed by William Mason the foundation stone was laid on 11 July 1873 and the building was consecrated on 3 December 1874. It cost 4,874 pounds to construct which wasn't paid off until...
in Stafford Street, was started in 1873. The large stone house, high on the ridge behind the city, is somewhere between the perpendicular and Tudor forms of Gothic. It was later extended and survives as the core of Columba College
Columba College
Columba College is an integrated presbyterian school in Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand. The roll is made up of pupils of all ages...
, a Presbyterian girls school.
St Matthews, in Caversham bluestone with unusual Port Chalmers stone dressings, is a large church, of strong design, very English in feeling, with aisles and octagonal piers. It is a contrast to All Saints and reflects a return to convention in English church design.
Before it was completed Mason's wife Sarah died, on the 22nd of September 1873. On the 20th of December that year he married Catherine Fenn, a widow thirty years his junior. Mason was still designing, completing the Otepopo Presbyterian church and the Standard Insurance Company's office in Princes Street, the Clarion building, in 1874, both of which survive. He then dissolved his partnership with Wales, may have visited England and anyway moved with his new wife to Queenstown in 1876.
He became active in public affairs there, later moved further into the high country to Paradise at the head of Lake Wakatipu before eventually returning to Dunedin at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. He had sold his city house and was staying at the Grand Hotel, now the Southern Cross, when he died.
Assessment
John Stacpoole, Mason's biographer, made a careful comparison of his architecture against his peers', and found him superior to most of his contemporaries. This seems reasonable, although of his strict contemporaries there were relatively few in New Zealand and fewer still when Mason made his greatest contribution after his move to Dunedin. There it is natural to measure him against younger men such as R.A. Lawson (1833–1902) and Francis PetreFrancis Petre
Francis William "Frank" Petre was a prominent New Zealand-born architect based in Dunedin. He was an able exponent of the Gothic revival style, one of its best practitioners in New Zealand. He followed the Roman Church's initiative to build Catholic places of worship in Anglo-Saxon countries in...
(1847–1918), both acknowledged eminences among New Zealand's Victorian architects. Mason's active career did overlap Lawson's, though scarcely Petre's, but the comparison is somewhat skewed because these practitioners represented significantly different moments of architectural thought. In terms of the volume of his output, and that of his successive partnerships, Mason made a significant impact. As a professional he was highly regarded, a senior figure people turned to for advice on difficult matters. But in the Post Office, or Stock Exchange, he designed the first building in New Zealand of more than local distinction. Were it not for its neglect and demise he would now be recalled as the country's first significant architect.