Sun Fire Office, Fort Street
1904 (Henry Winkelmann) – 2025

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1904 image: Henry Winkelmann | Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1-W1118

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The decidedly modest premises of The Sun Fire Office (H Rees George, agent) and the Thames Mersey Marine Insurance Company in Fort Street. This building, which seems to have been on this site since at least the 1870s, would be replaced around 1914 by Hobson Buildings. (The grander building glimpsed at left was the Auckland Star building.)

Below: A detail from Winkelmann's plate. In addition to insurers and shipping agents the building housed the Vice Consulate of Portugal—a very far cry from the palaces of Lisbon.