Our building
New Zealand's first skyscraper, with a clinic inside it
Consultancy House Clinic is on Level 5 of Consultancy House, 7 Bond Street — a building that has been holding Dunedin up since 1910. It is a fitting home for work that is all about structure, support, and standing strong.
- Built
- 1908–1910
- Storeys
- Seven
- Architects
- Sidney & Alfred Luttrell
- Heritage listing
- Category 1
The New Zealand Express Company Building — now Consultancy House — from Bond Street.
1908–1910
Built for a city in a hurry
Consultancy House began life as the New Zealand Express Company Building, designed by architects Sidney and Alfred Luttrell and built between 1908 and 1910. At seven storeys it was the tallest commercial building in the country — New Zealand's first skyscraper.
The Luttrells borrowed boldly from the Chicago School, the movement that invented the skyscraper, and dressed it in Edwardian Romanesque detail. The result is the facade you can still read from Bond Street today: strong columns rising into semicircular arches, oriel windows, and carved capitals.
Engineering
Concrete pioneering on reclaimed harbour land
The site is reclaimed land, so the building stands on a floating raft foundation — seven storeys of ferroconcrete balanced over what was once Otago Harbour. It was the first building in New Zealand to use pre cast concrete slabs, a construction method decades ahead of its time.
That pioneering structure is why the building carries a Category 1 listing on the New Zealand Heritage List — the highest recognition a place of historic significance can hold.
Inside
The staircase that survived
Behind the facade, one original interior feature survives: the central staircase. It has carried more than a century of Dunedin up and down these floors — express company clerks, then generations of office workers, and now people on their way to feeling better.
Take it if you can. It is the most honest piece of the building's history you can put your hand on. (There is a lift, too.)
Finding us
Level 5, two entrances, easy parking
The clinic is on Level 5. You can enter from 7 Bond Street, directly behind Plaza House, or from Crawford Street — the one way street heading north.
There is car parking on Bond Street and Cumberland Street, and the multi storey car park is around the corner. We are a short walk from the Octagon or Queens Gardens.
Read the facade
Columns that rise into arches
Look up from Bond Street and you can read the building's Chicago School lineage: engaged columns climbing the upper storeys into semicircular Romanesque arches, oriel windows catching the harbour light, and carved capitals at every springing point. That arch is the visual grammar of this website — you have been looking at the building all along.
Visit us
Level 5 — take the staircase if you can
Enter from 7 Bond Street (directly behind Plaza House) or from Crawford Street. Car parking on Bond Street, Cumberland Street, and the multi storey car park around the corner. A short walk from the Octagon or Queens Gardens.