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Steve Lawrence Photograph 35

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The damaged cathedral is supported with steel bracing and cordoned off with fencing and barriers. Taken on a day when a walkway was opened up between Re:Start Mall and Cathedral Square to allow temporary public access.

BeckerFraserPhotos April 2011 photograph 432

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The cross at the top of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, knocked off kilter by the earthquake.

BeckerFraserPhotos September 2011 photograph 590

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Demolition site of Regent Theatre, Cathedral Square with Clarendon Towers behind".

BeckerFraserPhotos September 2011 photograph 199

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Choir boys dressed in choir gowns and high viz jackets preparing for the memorial service in Cathedral Square. Art Gallery, Montreal Street".

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament photograph 40

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Earthquake damage to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Shipping containers support the front of the building to prevent further damage, and workers are suspended from a crane above the remains of the dome.

New Zealand Defence Force photograph 592

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Aerial image of Cathedral Square taken by the Royal New Zealand Air Force for the Earthquake Commission. The damaged Press Building can be seen.

Steve Lawrence Photograph 30

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The damaged cathedral is supported with steel bracing and cordoned off with fencing and barriers. Taken on a day when a walkway was opened up between Re:Start Mall and Cathedral Square to allow temporary public access.

Steve Lawrence Photograph 31

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The damaged cathedral is supported with steel bracing and cordoned off with fencing and barriers. Taken on a day when a walkway was opened up between Re:Start Mall and Cathedral Square to allow temporary public access.

Steve Lawrence Photograph 28

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The damaged cathedral is supported with steel bracing and cordoned off with fencing and barriers. Taken on a day when a walkway was opened up between Re:Start Mall and Cathedral Square to allow temporary public access.

Steve Lawrence Photograph 29

Images, UC QuakeStudies

The damaged cathedral is supported with steel bracing and cordoned off with fencing and barriers. Taken on a day when a walkway was opened up between Re:Start Mall and Cathedral Square to allow temporary public access.

BeckerFraserPhotos April 2011 photograph 611

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Grant Thornton building in Cathedral Square. The owners and insurers are still trying to decide what is happening to it".

The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament

Images, eqnz.chch.2010

Note the innovative use of hay bales on the left side of the image.

Christchurch: A Board Game Photograph 4

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of bricks forming a playing square of Christchurch: A Board Game. The bricks show a picture of ChristChurch Cathedral, and read, "ChristChurch Cathedral. Skip church, move to Ferry Rd".

The once and future cathedral

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

This is an ethnographic case study, tracking the course of arguments about the future of a city’s central iconic building, damaged following a major earthquake sequence. The thesis plots this as a social drama and examines the central discourses of the controversy. The focus of the drama is the Anglican neo-Gothic Christ Church Cathedral, which stands in the central square of Christchurch, New Zealand. A series of major earthquakes in 2010/2011 devastated much of the inner city, destroying many heritage-listed buildings. The Cathedral was severely damaged and was declared by Government officials in 2011 to be a dangerous building, which needed to be demolished. The owners are the Church Property Trustees, chaired by Bishop Victoria Matthews, a Canadian appointed in 2008. In March 2012 Matthews announced that the Cathedral, because of safety and economic factors, would be deconstructed. Important artefacts were to be salvaged and a new Cathedral built, incorporating the old and new. This decision provoked a major controversy, led by those who claimed that the building could and should be restored. Discourses of history and heritage, memory, place and identity, ownership, economics and power are all identified, along with the various actors, because of their significance. However, the thesis is primarily concerned with the differing meanings given to the Cathedral. The major argument centres on the symbolic interaction between material objects and human subjects and the various ways these are interpreted. At the end of the research period, December 2015, the Christ Church Cathedral stands as a deteriorating wreck, inhabited by pigeons and rats and shielded by protective, colourfully decorated wooden fences. The decision about its future remains unresolved at the time of writing.

Dalgety’s Building, Cathedral Square 1928

Articles, Lost Christchurch

The streets are quiet – a parked car sits outside Dalgety’s, a lone tram rumbles towards the tram sheds and a tired delivery horse stands with his head bowed, eating chaff from his feed…

The Savoy Theatre, Cathedral Square

Articles, Lost Christchurch

After World War One, there was a growing appetite for the glitzy glamour of the ‘Jazz Age’ and Hollywood. Christchurch residents were hungry to embrace American culture and its new comm…