Daily Photo – The Otago Museum Atrium

If there’s one place in Dunedin that still makes me feel like a wide-eyed kid let loose in a treasure chest, it’s the Otago Museum. Every time I step through those bright, echoing atriums, I’m reminded that curiosity is a muscle that never really stops working. From the upper levels you can look down across the glass walkways and clean lines of the building, watching people drift in and out of exhibitions like they’re moving through different eras of history.

On my latest visit, the place felt alive in that familiar, quietly energetic way. Kids buzzed around the edges, adults wandered with that purposeful museum stride, and somewhere below, the gift shop chimed softly every time someone decided they absolutely needed a puzzle or a picture of a bird. I paused at the railing for a moment, taking in the reflections, the lights, and the polished floors that seem to stretch out like a map, one that leads to every corner of the Pacific, every tale of Southern people, every strange sea creature lurking in the “Sea Monsters” exhibition.

What I love most is that the Otago Museum doesn’t just display things. It invites you in, sits you down, and says, “Here’s the world, let’s explore it together.”

Daily Photo – Dunedin House & Otago

Recently, while wandering through central Dunedin I experienced a momentary bout of amnesia. The kind where you forget where you’re going, why you’re going there, where your car is parked, if I turned the oven off, that kind of thing! During one of these lapses in brain function, I caught myself gazing up at the buildings on the corner of Princes Street and Moray Place, wondering what once stood there. It seems, in this case, the answer begins with one of the most dramatic nights in the city’s early history when a fire swept through central Dunedin. It was so catastrophic that flames leapt across the streets and for a fast growing city in the middle of a  gold rush built mostly of timber, it was nothing more than a nightmare.

The alarm was raised on a Monday night in April, 1867 when flames were seen coming from the shop of ironmonger George Willson – whose premises sat on the westerly side of Princes Street. Not far from where Dunedin House now stands. Within hours the entire block had disappeared under a pile of ash. The Criterion Hotel, perched right on the corner of Princes Street and Moray Place, vanished into smoke, the Theatre Royal and the Octagon Hotel were completely destroyed and by Tuesday morning, the heart of Dunedin looked as if it had never existed.

Yet, like many Dunedin stories, the aftermath was not just about loss rather more about rebuilding. The fire showed that wood possibly wasn’t the best building material to construct a commercial city from and that brick and stone might be a better solution. Within six months new structures were rising from the rubble ushering in a Victorian and Edwardian building era of grandeur and magnificence.

The corner where Dunedin House now stands would have been taken up by one of these masonry buildings. The old Criterion Hotel site was rebuilt to suit the wealth still flowing into the city. Herbert, Haynes and Company rebuilt their large drapery store, a business that later became the DIC and is now part of the Public Art Gallery block. For decades the whole area was filled with ornate nineteenth century commercial buildings.

These stood for roughly a century until they were removed to make way for the modern commercial block known as Dunedin House. It is not the grandest building in town, but it occupies a site that has seen disaster, recovery, architectural ambition and a complete cycle of change.