The Building

Stout Street Chambers is located on the first floor of one of Wellington's best known, and best loved, historic buildings, The Old Public Trust Building.

Its exuberant, ostentatious design is generally known as Edwardian Baroque. It features Tonga Bay granite exterior walls and pressed brick panels, along with a well-known copper-domed turret on the Stout Street/Lambton Quay corner. Its lively exterior conceals steel framing, a novelty for New Zealand at the time of its construction in 1907-1909. This was due in no small part to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and engineers from that city were responsible for that aspect of its design.

The building's design was by the Government Architect of the day, John Campbell, who also designed Parliament Buildings and Government House. The builders were J & A Wilson Limited.

The Old Public Trust Building was opened to the public in June 1909 by the then-Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward. The centenary of that event was marked in June 2009 by a ceremony addressed by the Hon Justice Wilson, Justice of the New Zealand Supreme Court and grandson of builder Archibald Wilson, and by the launch of a website dedicated to the history of the building.