Masonic Hotel owner Gerry Westenberg shows features of the Masonic Hotel which suggests its design is Beaux Art and not Edwardian commercial classicism. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Masonic Hotel will be no more.
But what it will be called once it becomes Cambridge’s new boutique hotel is something its owner Gerry Westenberg is not prepared to reveal yet.
Westenberg was one of two guest speakers at Destination Cambridge’s annual meeting last week. The other was new Velodrome general manager Dion Merson.
Cambridge lawyer Lucy Young was elected the tourism organisation’s new chair.
There has been a Masonic Hotel on the Duke Street site since 1866, Westenberg told the meeting.
He spoke passionately about the role Archibald Clements played in developing the hotel and Cambridge itself. Clements was mayor and a member of the road and Waikato Hospital boards before retiring to Auckland, where he died in 1927 aged 91.
The hotel was built of timber for him and rebuilt and enlarged with shops and a billiard saloon in 1878.
A balcony was added in 1882.
Fire destroyed the hotel in 1911 and neither the owner Victor Cornaga, who purchased the freehold in 1900, nor the proprietor had much in the way of insurance.
View of the Masonic Hotel at Cambridge, Circa 1915-1925. Credit: Price Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library.
Staff and boarders lost everything in the blaze.
Despite this Cornaga, who had emigrated to New Zealand from Malta in 1857, announced a week later he would rebuild the hotel of brick and commissioned noted architect John Currie to design it. Currie designed several buildings around New Zealand including in Auckland, the Kiwi Tavern in Britomart Place and the Altrans Building in Quay Street.
His Masonic Hotel design was influenced by Beaux Arts, a form of architecture taught in France from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century, although others say it is Edwardian commercial classicism.
It opened to the public in October 1912, seven months after work started.
Westenberg, who bought the hotel 10 years ago, said developers could only dream of such turnarounds today.
The hotel is an historic Category 2 building which will become a high-end five star boutique hotel with 29 guest rooms including 12 attic rooms.
There will be a restaurant, café, terraced gardens, a basement speakeasy bar and conference and function rooms.
Its refurbishment is supported by Heritage New Zealand, said Westenberg.
Construction has gone well despite heavy rain and the hotel now has a new roof with iron going on last week.
Seismic strengthening is complete and inside rooms framed. New windows have yet to arrive.
Completion is estimated for February next year and the hotel would not be opened in stages.
“We’ll be opening the whole hotel at the same time,” he told the meeting.
Westenberg noted the challenges he faced which included complex seismic costs, things take longer on a heritage building, interest rates and of course Covid.
He showed architect’s impressions of the hotel before dropping the big surprise – Masonic Hotel no more.
The name no longer matched what the hotel was about to become.
See: Millions for Masonic
See: Tales of court cases and a blaze
See: Our heritage sites
Masonic Hotel 2023
