Hokitika Museum facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Hokitika Museum

Hokitika Museum in the Carnegie Building
Former name	West Coast Historical Museum
Established	1869 (1869)
Location	17 Hamilton Street, Hokitika, New Zealand
Architect	Arthur Griffin
Heritage New Zealand – Category II
Designated:	11 December 2003
Reference #:	1702

The Hokitika Museum is a cool place to visit in Hokitika, New Zealand. It's on the West Coast of the South Island. This museum is the biggest one on the West Coast. It keeps lots of old things and important papers.

The museum is inside a special old building called the Carnegie Library. Inside, you can learn about the exciting gold rush days. You can also discover more about pounamu, which is a unique greenstone from the West Coast. This stone was, and still is, very important to the Māori culture. The museum also has a huge collection of old photos.

The museum closed in September 2019 because the building needed to be made stronger against earthquakes. As of December 2021, it had not yet fully reopened.

Museum Beginnings

The museum building in 1973

In the 1860s, many people moved to Hokitika because of the West Coast Gold Rush. The town grew very fast. Because of this, people thought Hokitika should have its own museum.

The museum first started in 1869. It had two "Museum Rooms" inside the Hokitika Town Hall. A group called the Westland Institute helped run it from 1877. Later, in 1900, a doctor named Herbert Macandrew became the museum's unpaid helper.

In 1946, the Hokitika Borough Council took back the Museum Room. So, in 1952, a new group was formed to find a proper home for the museum. This group was led by Bob Drummond. In 1960, the "Hokitika Pioneer Museum" opened. It was just one room in the Hokitika Carnegie Library building.

People were so excited to donate items to the new museum. Soon, there were too many things for just one room! So, plans changed from adding a small extension to building a whole new museum. In 1964, people started raising money for a new building. It would be built behind the Carnegie Library. They raised a lot of money, which would be about $450,000 today! This money came from people, clubs, and a grant from the government.

The new museum, called the West Coast Historical Museum, opened on December 20, 1973. This was the same date Hokitika was founded in 1864. The director of the Canterbury Museum, Roger Duff, gave a speech. The new building had an entrance on Tancred Street. It had two display areas with a small garden in between. It was open every day and cost 30 cents to get in. In 1977, a man named William Heinz left a gift of books. This helped start a research area at the museum.

The Carnegie Building

When the new museum building was finished in 1973, the old Carnegie Library building was in bad shape. It was empty for 20 years. But in the 1990s, a group worked hard to fix it up. The repairs cost $600,000. They made the building stronger inside and replaced parts of the roof for earthquake safety.

In 1998, the museum moved back into the newly fixed Carnegie Building. One of the old display areas from 1973 became a storage space for the museum's collections. The main entrance moved to Hamilton Street. The Carnegie Building also had a public art gallery and an information center for visitors. In 2010, the museum went back to its original name: Hokitika Museum.

A plaque from 1998

In September 2016, experts checked the Carnegie Building for earthquake safety. They found it was not strong enough for new building rules. Even though it was fixed in the 1990s, the rules changed after the 2010–2011 Christchurch earthquakes. The building was declared unsafe in an earthquake and had to close. Museum staff moved to a storage area and a research facility on Revell Street.

The local council decided to spend $500,000 to make the building stronger. The museum used to get about 17,000 visitors a year before it closed. In October 2020, the government gave the council $794,830 to help upgrade the Carnegie Building. The goal was to make it 100% safe for earthquakes. The building still had some small displays and community events. Work to strengthen it began in February 2021. By June, the $2 million project was underway. They added new concrete foundations and steel supports. In September, workers found more damage to the roof. They also realized that the outside decorations needed to be replaced.

Important Building Status

On December 11, 2003, the Carnegie Building was officially recognized as an important historic place. It was given a Category II status by Heritage New Zealand. This means it's a building of special historical value.

It was given this status for several reasons:

• It was a gift from Andrew Carnegie, a famous businessman.
• Its design is grand and shows how important Hokitika was back then.
• The community worked hard to save and restore it.
• It's a large building that stands out in the town. People say it's the "most-photographed building in Hokitika."

Museum Staff

When the new museum building opened in 1973, it had its first full-time paid director. This director worked for a committee that included people from the local councils. In 1989, these councils joined to become the Westland District Council. In the early 1990s, Claudia Landis was the museum manager. Until mid-1994, the museum was open almost every day. After that, it started closing on weekends during the winter.

In 2016, the museum had 10 staff members, but only four worked full-time. Julia Bradshaw was the director. She left in March 2017 to work at the Canterbury Museum. In July 2018, a tourism company took over managing the museum. In November 2018, they hired Máire Hearty and Judith Taylor for part-time leadership roles. But less than a year later, in June 2019, these jobs were removed.

In September 2020, the Westland District Council decided to manage the museum again. The council also decided to buy a nearby building. They plan to combine the museum with the Westland District Library. This new place will be called the Westland Discovery Centre / Pakiwaitara.

Museum Collections

The museum has many historical objects from the Westland District. It also has a very large collection of old photographs. The whole collection is worth about $2 million. As of June 2019, only about 5% of the items had been fully listed and organized.

Some cool things you can find in the collection include:

• A detailed model of a gold dredge. This model is 1:24 scale and was built by a local man named Blake Huffam. He worked on a real gold dredge in the 1950s. He spent 3000 hours building the model, finishing it in 1956. The Mayor of Hokitika asked the museum to display it in 1972. It was later given to the museum just before Huffam passed away in 2011.
• New Zealand's oldest working television. It was built from a kit in 1958.
• Costumes, props, and parts of the set from The Luminaries. This was a TV show made by the BBC and TVNZ.