William Mason (24 February 1810 – 22 June 1897) was a New Zealand architect born in Ipswich, England, the son of an architect/builder George Mason and Susan, née Forty. Trained by his father he went to London where he seems to have worked for Thomas Telford (1757–1834). He studied under Peter Nicholson (1765–1844) before eventually working for Edward Blore (1787–1879).Stacpoole, 1971, pp.14–15. Early life In 1831 he married Sarah Nichols, a Berkshire woman apparently fifteen years older than he was. A son was born in the first year of their marriage. In 1836 he returned to Ipswich to practise.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 16 & 20 Having worked at Lambeth Palace he had attracted the interest of the bishop of London, who now employed him independently designing churches and parsonages. These included three commissions for churches in Essex: St Lawrence, East Donyland; St Botolph, Colchester; and St James, Brightlingsea.Stacpoole, 1971, p.16. The most remarkable of these is St Botolph's (1838) in white brick and Norman style. Apparently Georgian in plan and in its interior it strikes a medieval note outside. St James (1836), also white brick and in the lancet style and resembling some of Blore's work, is very like St Paul's Church, Auckland which Mason built a few years later.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 19 & 144; pls 30 & 39. Perhaps because of economic hardship, perhaps because of ambition in 1838 the Masons emigrated to New South Wales.Stacpoole, 1971, p.19
In Sydney Mason worked for the Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis. He had a success in winning first and second prizes for a new Mechanics' Institute, submitting Gothic and Classical designs, a sign of the rising competition between these styles. He built wheat silos on Cockatoo Island, a task requiring engineering ingenuity. It seems that here he acquired his acquaintance with verandas. A new Government House was then under construction which had been designed by Edward Blore while Mason had still been on his staff in 1835. He may have worked on the drawings.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 22 & 23
To New Zealand Perhaps ambition called again. He was offered an appointment as "Superintendent of Works" to the nascent government of William Hobson, Lieutenant Governor designate of New Zealand, which he accepted, sailing to join Hobson at the Bay of Islands where he arrived on 17 March 1840.Stacpoole, 1971, p.23 He thus became the first professionally trained architect in New Zealand. His title was officially "Superintendent of Public Works" but he maintained he had been appointed "Colonial Architect". He adopted that title which was used by government officers in addressing him.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 26–7. He went to assist with establishing the new capital, Auckland, in September 1840.Stacpoole, 1971 p.28. There he oversaw the erection of the prefabricated first Government House before resigning in 1841 due to complaints about the limited funding and materials for the construction of the new courthouse.{ After resigning he went into partnership with Thomas Paton. Formerly the government postmaster Paton had also resigned and the two men set up as auctioneers and architects.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 32 & 35 Mason designed the church of St Paul which was started in 1841. He had bought land and now built on it without making a fortune, put up premises for the New Zealand Banking Company and designed houses. He became involved in other commercial affairs but in 1841 his nine-year-old son was drowned in a well. The boy may have been murdered and his parents were deeply distressed.Stacpoole, 1971 pp. 38–40.
By 1844 there was plenty of business but little architecture. Mason dissolved his partnership with Paton and took up farming in Epsom. He designed a windmill there and may have had some hand in the building of St John's College at Epsom, but these were architecturally unproductive years.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 44–50. He continued farming in various places around Auckland and entered public life. In 1851 he was elected to the Common Council of Auckland, but eventually a substantial commission turned up.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 53 & 55. Mason was living at Howick late in 1854 when he was appointed architect of the 10,000 pound project to build a new Government House.Stacpoole, 1971, p.57. The result was a large, two-story, neo-classical building, whose manner may not have been entirely of Mason's choosing. It is made of timber treated to look like stone. Its principal facade has a central breakfront with round-headed windows in the upper floor. It has been the subject of rather mixed reviews since its completion in 1856 but it is a substantial house for New Zealand at the time and of its nature a significant building.
Mason was now Architect to the Auckland Provincial Council. In April 1856 he became President of the newly formed Board of Works. Amidst disputes about the new Government House he returned to his Howick Farm in February 1857. Early in 1860 he stepped back from this again moving into Howick village. As tension rose with Maori he became a captain in the Auckland militia.
In October 1861 he let his name go forward for election for the Pensioner Settlements, an Auckland seat, which he represented in parliament from 1861 to 1866, when he retired from parliament. At that time, the colonial parliament still met in Auckland.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 67 & 69. There he sat alongside Thomas Russell who soon established the Bank of New Zealand, with the benefit of a parliamentary Act. The bank had early information about the discovery of gold in Otago, which was then transforming the colony's prospects and was soon to change its demography. Mason was commissioned to design the bank's premises in Dunedin and Wellington which profoundly affected his later life. It seems that early in September he visited the southern settlement and made the decision to relocate there. At the same time an advertisement saw him selling his house and chattels in Auckland. The transfer document shows him as a "Gentleman", "late of Auckland but now of Dunedin".Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 70–71
Early career in Dunedin In the south the capital of the Presbyterian special settlement was mushrooming into a frontier city. Mason formed a partnership with David Ross (1827–1908) a Scottish-born Fellow of the Institute of British Architects who was already resident.Otago Daily Times 26 September 1862. There now followed numerous projects and a series of changing partnerships. The one with Ross was dissolved early in 1863.Otago Daily Times 5 February 1863. Of numerous small commissions the Dunedin Public Warehouse, for William Dalrymple, now 386 Princes Street, is a more substantial example.Otago Daily Times 8 August 1863 p.6 & 29 December 2008 p.13. A three-story building in brick it has a vigorously modelled street front with emphatic quoining used to define the edges and apertures of the facade. Those around the windows rise to form round-topped columns. There are echoes here of the fenestration of the second Government House but the relative simplicity and strength of the Dunedin building shows the designer his own master again and possessed of a corresponding new confidence.
Mason also designed a number of houses at this time but his Bank of New Zealand, also on Princes Street, attracted particular attention. Described as of a "general Grecian Style" it was a stone built two-story structure on the site of William Armson's later, magnificent replacement. Again there were parallels with the second Government House but the bank, like the warehouse, and like the bank's counterpart in Wellington, also designed by Mason at this time, has been characterised as exhibiting an admirable "brawny simplicity" reminiscent of Robert Adam.Daily Telegraph 12 March 1863; Stacpoole, 1971, p.76. Adjacent to the bank was a three-story office for T.B. Gillies which now saw Mason flourishing forth with a contrastingly exuberant and delicate Venetian design. It had paired, arcaded windows on the upper floors and sculpted heads over the columns. Sadly this building doesn't survive.Stacpoole, 1971, p.77 & Pl. 51. Another substantial commission for the Bank of Australasia in High Street was a further contrast, a more obviously Victorian building whose elaborate ironwork reflected the connection between Dunedin and Melbourne at the time. It has been said it has been largely demolished but while remodelled still mostly survives, or did until its demolition in 2009. Mason had a number of staff at this busy time, including his clerk of works, Nathaniel Wales.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 77 & 79. By the end of 1863 he had bought land in London Street and there built a house for himself. Two-storey and Italianate it was another timber building treated to resemble stone, like the second Government House, but a tall structure, with some good interior plaster work. It too survives at 104 London Street and is best known for the adjoining Globe Theatre, Dunedin.Stacpoole, 1971, p.80. In early 1864 Mason entered into a partnership with William Clayton (1823–77).Stacpoole, 1971, p.81.
He now received more substantial commissions, two of them the greatest undertakings attempted in New Zealand up till then: the building for the New Zealand Exhibition and a new post office for the Otago provincial government. The first was completed in 1865 the second in 1868. The exhibition building had been conceived with additional pavilions, evident in a water colour by the artist George O'Brien. O'Brien also depicted the new post office, a structure so grand that before its completion it was decided it needed a higher purpose.Stacpoole, 1971, pp. 82 & 85; Roger Collins, Peter Entwisle, "Pavilioned in Splendour George O'Brien's Vision of Colonial New Zealand", Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, 1986, , reproduces the watercolour of the developed version of the exhibition buildings.
The exhibition building was a twin-towered palazzo in stuccoed brick, with corner turrets and the bold quoining already exhibited in the Dunedin Public Warehouse. It had a central, covered courtyard and was a descendant of Charles Fowler's design for the Covent Garden market building in London. It was situated on Great King Street and afterward became the city's hospital, serving the purpose until its demolition in 1933.Hardwicke Knight, Niel Wales, "Buildings of Dunedin", John McIndoe Limited, Dunedin, 1988, , pp. 172–173. Knight & Wales give evidence the building was designed by Mason, not jointly with his new partner Clayton.