Former Harbors Board 1884 building's facade moved 34 metres in Adelaide city, to save its elegance for heritage
The former South Australian Harbors Board building in Victoria Square, Adelaide city, moved 34 metres to make way in 1979 for the office building at left. Inset: A plaque on the building describing the feat of shifting the 1,000-tonne front of the building.
The Victorian elegance of the former South Australian Harbors Board building from 1884 in Adelaide city was partly saved with a special engineering feat in 1979.
The façade and one room’s depth of the building was moved 34 metres to the north of its original site to make way for the SGIC (State Government Insurance Corporation) building on the corner of Grote and King William Streets in Victoria Square.
The four-storey building was originally constructed for the National Mutual Life Assurance of Australia in 1884, reflecting financial optimism – just before South Australia plunged into a depression. The National Mutual Life Assurance company first opened in Melbourne in 1869, starting operations in Adelaide in 1878. The architects were Cumming and Davies and the builder James Shaw.
The Italian classical design had a French roof, unique to Adelaide, with a large square dome in the centre, covered with lead cut to fish-scale pattern, and surmounted by handsome cast-iron cresting and finials surrounding a lookout. A high standard of work was reflected in the building’s imported from New South Wales, either freestone from Mossman's quarries in Sydney or Hawkesbury sandstone.
The interior had wide handsome archways and a hanging spiral staircase of Kapunda marble. Before the building façade was moved in 1979 this was dismantled by the state government public buildings department (now housing and construction department) and placed in storage.
The building became the headquarters of the South Australian Harbors Board (later the marine and harbors department) in 1914, soon after the Harbors Board was established under the Harbors Act 1913. This act heralded a significant expansion in state government functions, allowing it to acquire wharves, water frontages and other waterfront property and gave control of all harbors to the board.
Three-storey extensions to the Victoria Square were made in 1914 to the rear of the building, with more extensions in 1945. The marine and harbors department moved to new headquarters at Port Adelaide in 1979.