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Opened on 14 December 1911 by Lord Islington, then the Governor of New Zealand, the building is one of the most prominent heritage structures on Queen Street. Costing £126,000 to construct, it was designed by Melbourne architects, JJ & EJ Clarke, their Italian Renaissance Revival building selected from amongst 46 proposals. The five-storey building was specially designed to fit the wedge-shaped piece of land that had been acquired for it at the meeting of Queen Street and Grey Street in the 1870s. It bears a striking resemblance to the new Lambeth Town Hall at Brixton, London built around the same time. The town hall formed Auckland`s first permanent seat of both administration and entertainment in the city`s history, with its Great Hall seating 1,673 people modelled on the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and being considered as having among the finest acoustics in the world.