David McGill: Landmarks - Notable Historic Buildings of New Zealand

This history of our architectural taonga is an updated and altered version of a much larger book first published in 1997.

When they began work on the revised edition of Landmarks, Wellington-based writer David McGill and photographer Grant Sheehan wanted to appeal to a broader and younger audience.

"There's a whole new audience for historical buildings, so I wanted to do something more here-and-now," Sheehan said. "I wanted to make it more populist."

Sheehan was disappointed the 1997 edition disappeared and felt more recent architectural publications did not serve the subject matter as well as the original tribute.

The first Landmarks was published by Godwit Press and was a much loftier hardback, coffee-table work. Sheehan tells how copies of that book, with his photographs and McGill's text, are now unobtainable.

But under Sheehan's own publishing business, 4500 copies of a fresh, much smaller, more accessible softback book have been produced. Layout is cleaner and clearer and content has been changed. The text has been cut by around half but none of the crucial information has been lost.

The pair initially aimed for a 200-page book but the work ballooned to 260 pages and still has no index at the back, but it has a geographic guide to contents at the front.

A slightly different collection of buildings has been presented than in the 1997 work. Some are gone, others added.

Sheehan gives examples of additions as the original 1844 classroom Bishop's School in Nelson and the Mangungu Mission at Horeke in the Hokianga.

"I was keen to have funky things too," he says, citing the inclusion of the much-photographed Greek orthodox church in the Wairarapa and a "carpenter gothic" house at Kotuku designed by a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

Precincts or groups of buildings are another addition, particularly Parliament Buildings and Oamaru's historical area.

Sheehan also wanted to show the natural settings of many important buildings and structures. "So I pulled the camera back a bit," he says, referring to his Kawau Island works showing the coastline in front of the Mansion House. "No one seemed to take note of the coastline there, yet it's amazing."

The tripod-set camera was also some way back above Kaikoura's Fyffe House when Sheehan opened his shutter, just in time to catch a perfect form-ation of landward seagulls.

Use of a slow film and a steady hand produced the stunning night shots of Dunedin's First Presbyterian Church, achieved by opening the lens for more than a minute.

Appropriately, the book was launched in September, during Auckland Heritage Week and has a foreword by Historic Places Trust chairwoman Dame Anne Salmond.

The book's foreword notes "the beauty and diversity of our built landscape which reminds us why so much of it has been — and remains — worth saving".

Quite.

* Anne Gibson is the Herald property editor.
* Phantom House Books, $49.95