The Station Building.

The passenger station will be a five-storey building looking southward over a plaza or open space. This plaza includes the area that is now Bunny Street between Featherston Street and Waterloo Quay. With its front on the plaza, the flanks of the station will be, on one side, Featherston Street and Thorndon Quay; on the other side, Waterloo Quay. Waterloo Quay will be the luggage and parcels side, and on the side of Featherston Street, essentially a passenger thoroughfare, will be developed passenger facilities and amenities.

A glance at the photograph of the front of the five-storey station building, with its pillared centrepiece, will show that this pile will dominate its neighbourhood. Even if it were not the all-important railway station, it would be a most important northward extension of the city's architecture.

The station, like the wharves, will give continuity to the stream of traffic up and down New Zealand, and between New Zealand and oversea. For through traffic it will be a conduit of maximum efficiency. Great quantities of produce and merchandise will run up and down this conduit without the confusion and awkwardness of the two-stations method that has obtained hitherto.

For passengers to whom Wellington is destination or who are to stop here, the railway transportation system has had to be woven into the city transportation system, and detailed plans have been made for the two to interlock.

The position of the station was influenced by the necessity for keeping all passenger platforms and the trackwork serving them, to the south of Davis Street. This brought the building into the position now planned. Fortunately this position fitted in with some other important considerations. There was room here, between Featherston Street and Waterloo Quay, to develop an adequate layout fronting towards Bunny Street and at such a distance from that street as to provide a broad plaza for the circulation of city traffic making contact with the station—trams, buses, motors, and pedestrians. The station building will present a perfectly symmetrical front to plaza, with a central doorway giving entrance to the main booking hall.

The central feature of the station layout is the large concourse which provides an internal circulating area, and which has direct access to Featherston Street…. The arrival platforms will be served by a wide carriage road from Waterloo Quay. Passengers will be able to step direct from train to tram or motor car, and so reach the city with the briefest delay.

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