Otago

The Empire Hotel (also known as the Empire Tavern) is a historic building at 396 Princes Street, Dunedin, New Zealand, located some 700 metres southwest of the city centre. Currently empty, it served as a public house from the 1850s until the 1990s. It has a New Zealand Historic Places Trust category 1 listing.

Princes Street (often misspelt as "Princess Street") is a major street in Dunedin, the second largest city in the South Island of New Zealand. It runs south-southwest for two kilometres from The Octagon in the city centre to the Oval sports ground, close to the city's Southern Cemetery. North of The Octagon, George Street continues the line of Princes Street north-northeast for two and a half kilometres. Princes Street is straight but undulating, skirting the edge of the City Rise to its northwest. The part of the street immediately below The Octagon is the steepest section, as the road traverses an old cutting through Bell Hill. Princes Street was developed during Dunedin's 1860s boom from the Central Otago gold rush, and consequently is one of New Zealand's most historic streets, with about 70 buildings in close proximity listed on the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Register. Originally the site of the city's wharf, a substantial area of land to the east of the street was formerly part of Otago Harbour, much of it reclaimed via rock removed during the lowering of Bell Hill which separated Princes Street from northern Dunedin in the early years of settlement. In the years following the gold rush, Princes Street was the heart of Dunedin's central business district, but much of the city's main retail area has now shifted north to George Street.

St. Matthew's Church is an inner-city Anglican parish church, located on the City Rise in Dunedin, New Zealand. Designed by William Mason (1810-1897) 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 1901. It comfortably seated 750 people.A Gothic Revival building, somewhere between the Norman and the Early English style, it is built of bluestone with Port Chalmers breccia for the quoins and facings which is unusual. Very English in its feeling it represents a return to the plain manner of the architect's early career. It is cruciform in plan, with an apsidal chancel where there are five lancet stained glass windows. There are aisles divided from the nave by massive, octagonal piers, a tower and a spire at the south west corner above the principal entrance. There is another entrance at the north west angle. Some in the Diocese wanted the building to become the Cathedral Church but the congregation was unwilling. St. Paul's in the Octagon was designated instead. The church has been fairly closely built around since its construction but retains an attractive appearance. Its internal layout was reversed in the late 20th century but has since been returned to its original orientation. The original pews have been lost but the interior is otherwise little modified. In 1942 the artist Colin McCahon married Anne Hamblett in St Matthew's, the ceremony being performed by her father, the Reverend Hamblett, then the incumbent clergyman. The church has a Category I listing with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church was a prominent church in Dunedin, New Zealand. Designed by pre-eminent Dunedin Robert Lawson it was constructed in 1870 to serve a rapidly developing area of the city which became notorious for its slum housing, poverty and crime which led to it being referred to as the “Devil’s Half-Acre” from 1873 onwards. The church is best known for its long time crusading minister the Reverend Rutherford Waddell. Waddell’s ‘Sin of Cheapness’ sermon which was a landmark in New Zealand’s social and labour history was delivered from its pulpit. It eventually closed as a place of Presbyterian worship in 1978 and after briefly serving as a place of worship for the Word of Life Pentecostal Church it was purchased by the Coptic Orthodox Church in 2000, who renamed it the Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church. The building is listed by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 1 structure.

The Wains Hotel Building (frequently spelt grammatically but incorrectly as Wain's Hotel and currently operating as Fable Dunedin) is a historic hotel building in Dunedin, New Zealand. Job Wain started his first hotel in downtown Dunedin in the 1860s, at the height of the Central Otago gold rush. Business flourished, and when the Commercial Bank next door closed Wain expanded his business into that building. He continued to buy nearby properties, and in 1878 contracted to have a major new structure — costing £14,000 — built in Princes Street, designed by Mason, Wales, & Stevenson. At that time, the Exchange area where the hotel was constructed was the heart of Dunedin's central business district, so it was very well positioned for major trade.

The Kensington Oval, formerly known as the South Dunedin Recreation Ground, is a park and sports ground in Kensington, Dunedin, New Zealand. It is also known as just The Oval, although this name has become less common in recent years due to the potential confusion with the University Oval in the north of the city.The Kensington Oval is officially regarded as the southern end of the city's Town Belt. The park, which is actually roughly triangular in shape, covers 9.25 hectares (22.9 acres). It is bounded by Princes Street, the northern end of Anderson's Bay Road, and the Dunedin Southern Motorway. Its name dates from 22 March 1864, when it was decided to enclose the main cricket pitch within a formal oval. From that time the former name rapidly fell out of use, and has been rarely used since the beginning of the twentieth century. The first recorded first-class match cricket match was held on the ground in February 1864 when Otago played Canterbury in what was the first ever first-class match to be held in New Zealand. Otago played eight further first-class matches there, the last of which saw them play Canterbury in February 1878. The condition of the playing surface was generally unsatisfactory, with old tree roots protruding from the ground and the pitch unpredictable and at times dangerous to batsmen. In 1879 the Otago Cricket Association requested that the Dunedin City Council make improvements to the ground. When the Council decided not to make improvements, and refused to restrict access to the ground to cricket only, the Association decided to find another venue to play at. The enclosing bounds of the oval were removed in about 1899. Although representative matches are no longer played at the Kensington Oval, it is widely used for club, grade, and social cricket, and has two grass and three artificial wickets, as well as a pavilion. It is also used for softball in summer, and for football and rugby union in winter. The city's Boer War memorial, which stands at the northern corner of the Oval, was designed by Carlo Bergamini and erected in November 1906.

The Warehouse Precinct is an urban area of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. Sited on reclaimed land at the northernmost tip of the Southern Endowment, it lies between 1 and 2 kilometres south of The Octagon, the city's centre.

The Exchange is an area of central Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand. The area was the original heart of Dunedin's CBD, although that has now moved north to an area around the city's central plaza (The Octagon) and George Street, which leads north from it. The Exchange tales its name from the former Dunedin Stock Exchange building, which stood at the heart of the area until it was demolished in the 1960s.

The Grand Casino opened in 1999 in the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. It is located in The Exchange, 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) south of the city centre, in the Southern Cross Hotel building. Originally named the Grand Hotel was built in 1883 by Italian architect Louis Boldini. The interior finishing showcases the Victorian taste in classical architecture. The Dunedin Casinos Charitable Trust has granted a total of $62,900 to 45 recipients in the November 2019. Major recipients include the Cancer Society and Otago Community Hospice.

Consultancy House is a historic building in The Exchange, in downtown Dunedin, New Zealand. It has a New Zealand Historic Places Trust grade I classification. Originally known as The New Zealand Express Company Building and also previously known as The MFL Mutual Fund Building, the building is located at the approximate boundary between of the city's Warehouse Precinct and The Exchange in Bond Street, on reclaimed land close to the original city docks. It lies close to Queen's Gardens and to John Wickliffe Plaza, the former site of the Dunedin Exchange Building and now home to Dunedin's largest office block, John Wickliffe House. The building was constructed in 1908–10 by American-influenced New Zealand architects Sidney and Alfred Luttrell and is an amalgam of Chicago skyscraper design and Edwardian architecture. The façade shows strong Romanesque influence, with prominent columns topped with semicircular arches forming a major architectural feature. The original plans for the building were for five floors topped by a Mansard roof, but during construction a further two storeys were added to the plans. It is widely regarded as New Zealand's first skyscraper, and is certainly the first to follow Chicago school design practices. It is a larger brother to the Luttrell's 1905 Manchester Courts building in Christchurch, which was extensively damaged in the 2010 Canterbury earthquake. Confusingly, the Manchester Courts building is also often referred to as the New Zealand Express Company Building, as both buildings were constructed as regional headquarters for the same company. Whereas the Christchurch building made use of a ferroconcrete base and steel-framed upper construction, Consultancy House used ferroconcrete throughout. It was the first building in New Zealand to make use of pre-cast concrete slabs constructed off-site. The ferroconcrete base was used to form a floating raft foundation on the reclaimed site. It appears to have been modelled at least in part on Louis Sullivan's 1887 Chicago Auditorium Building, albeit with far more Victorian and Edwardian colonial architectural embellishments. These embellishments leave the building more in keeping with its neighbours. The seven-storey building was at the time, excluding church spires, Dunedin's tallest building - and according to some sources was the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere up to that time. It is considered by many (Manchester Courts notwithstanding) to be the country's first true skyscraper. In its time, it has housed numerous notable tenants, including the Dunedin branch of the New Zealand Stock Exchange and publisher and writer A.H. Reed. The interior of the building has been extensively remodelled since its construction and is largely lacking in architectural interest, the only notable remaining original feature being the central staircase. Current occupants of the building include a fitness centre on the ground floor and various professional service companies such as accountants on the upper floors. The main (Bond Street) entrance to the building displays two plaques - one placed by the Dunedin City Council and the other by IPENZ (The Institute of Professional Engineers of New Zealand) recognising the significance of the building's construction.

The Cargill Monument is a notable public monument in central Dunedin, New Zealand. It is dedicated to the city's founding father, Captain William Cargill, and is approximately 7.5 metres (25 ft) in height. The monument was designed by Charles Robert Swyer and built in 1863–64, using Tasmanian sandstone, on a base of locally sourced phonolite. The design, in Gothic Revival style, was likely partly inspired by Edinburgh's Scott Monument, and features delicate carved lacework and grotesques. Its design was compared by contemporary architect Nathaniel Wales to that of England's Eleanor crosses. The design also originally featured drinking fountains, but they have been unused for many years. The monument was originally located in the city's centre, The Octagon, and was surrounded with railings, but it was moved to its current site (sans railings) in The Exchange in 1872. It now stands at the corner of Princes Street and Rattray Street on John Wickliffe Plaza.A plaque at the foot of the monument marks the location of the first Salvation Army meeting in New Zealand, held at the site in April 1883.The Cargill Monument is Category I listed in the register of Heritage New Zealand.

The Stuart Memorial is a statue of clergyman Donald McNaughton Stuart located in central Dunedin, New Zealand, adjacent to Queens Gardens. It sits close to another prominent Dunedin statue, that of Queen Victoria. The memorial features a bronze statue of Stuart seated in a solemn pose, atop a large concrete, granite, and andesite plinth. Stuart was a locally renowned minister, educationalist, and community leader, and shortly after his death in 1894 a memorial committee was established. After several months of community fundraising, the committee contracted Wellington-based artist William Leslie Morison to model the statue, the first major civic commission given to a New Zealand artist. With a plaster model by Morison used as the base, the statue was cast at the W. Moore foundry in London. Unveiled in June 1898, the memorial was soon subject to various proposals for relocation, either to the Early Settlers' Hall or Knox Church, due to the highly trafficked location and obstruction by surrounding lamp posts. It was ultimately placed atop a taller plinth in 1922, following a temporary removal during the installation of electric tram lines. A proposal circulated in the late 2010s to move the statue to the grounds of the University of Otago, where Stuart served as chancellor. The statue was again kept at its Queens Gardens location, and underwent cleaning and restoration work in 2020.