The collapse of the stone council chamber of the Canterbury Provincial Buildings was for many, the greatest single heritage loss of the February 22 Christchurch earthquake.
Designed by New Zealand's pre- eminent Victorian architect, Benjamin Mountfort, it was recognised internationally as an outstanding example of colonial Gothic Revival architecture, illustrated in standard texts on the subject such as Chris Brooks' The Gothic Revival (Phaidon, 1999).
For Canterbury it was much more; the buildings as a whole, and the stone council chamber in particular, were a powerful symbol of the province's belief that it had an outstanding future.
It exhibited a sense of confidence and self-belief as well as the prosperity of the 1860s.
When the system of provincial government came to an end in 1876, Canterbury was the only province that paid money into the Treasury in Wellington; all the others brought their debts with them.
From a national perspective the Canterbury buildings are the only surviving example of a complete, provincial government complex, a unique survivor of an important phase in our constitutional development.
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