A historic central Auckland building that has continuously served as a law office for well over a century will soon be looking for new tenants.
The current lawyers at the Blackstone Chambers building on Wyndham St in central Auckland have announced they are moving one block away to Queen St offices next month and will be brandishing a new name in the process.
The group, also called Blackstone Chambers in reference to the building and its history, will soon instead be known as Augusta Chambers - a tribute to Dame Augusta Wallace, the first woman to serve as a judge in New Zealand.
“We’ve outgrown the beautiful little building,” explained lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, who founded the group alongside colleagues Emma Priest and Susan Gray in 2015.
Because of the building’s history, it was an obvious choice to call themselves Blackstone Chambers at the time, she said. But with the name no longer relevant to their soon-to-be new home, they wanted to find a different moniker reflecting the group’s strong female component.
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Heritage New Zealand previously registered the Blackstone Chambers building as Category 2, meaning it is a place of historical or cultural significance.
The Victorian building is believed to have been built in the early 1870s, “possibly making it one of the oldest buildings in the Central Business District”, according to Auckland City Council archives. In an early incarnation, it was home to the Evening Star, Auckland’s first newspaper.
“The two-level brick character building at 14 Wyndham Street is an historical gem as one of the oldest surviving buildings in Central Auckland,” Ray White Commercial’s then-managing director Bruce Whillans said in 2013, when the property last went on the market.
The building, previously described as “the sole remainder of the Wyndham Street legal precinct”, was bought by solicitor William Thorne in 1901 and was named Blackstone Chambers after Oxford University legal academic William Blackstone. Although tenants came and went, it has been used by lawyers ever since.
“Without any doubt, the building has continuously been occupied by lawyers longer than any other building in New Zealand,” the Blackstone Chambers group says on its current website.
The building was purchased by a new owner, also a barrister, in 2013 and underwent extensive refurbishment over the next two years.
Kincade, Priest and Gray will be joined in the move by fellow criminal defence lawyers and chamber-mates Nick Chisnall, KC, Nicola Manning, Scott Brickell, Shane Elliott, Devon Kemp, Oliver Troon, Susan Giles, Harry Redwood, Aieyah Shendi and Lila Tui’i.
The group’s new namesake became New Zealand’s first female judge in 1975, after having established a law career at a time when only 2 per cent of lawyers were women.
“Dame Augusta was the ultimate feminist, but her approach to being described as a trailblazer was to entirely reject it,” the group noted in a statement to the Herald. “This resonated.”
Priest recalled meeting Wallace when she was a law student, after receiving an award for contributing to the community. The judge explained to Priest that she would be remembered because she had the same name as her dog, Priest recalled, describing the judge as down-to-earth and funny.
Kincade described the judge as a strong woman who others aspire to emulate.
Wallace died in 2008. The group went to her family to seek their blessing before settling on the new name.
The name change and new location will take effect on July 1.