BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 168

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view from the corner of Manchester Street and Hereford Street to an excavator demolishing the historic Manchester Courts.

BeckerFraserPhotos May 2011 photograph 0176

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Site of Manchester Courts in the foreground on left. Then Tree house, Sullivans, Boogie Nights and Shooters Bars".

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 166

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view across Hereford Street to an excavator demolishing the historic Manchester Courts.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2011 photograph 167

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A view across Hereford Street to an excavator demolishing the historic Manchester Courts.

North and west frontages of Manchester Courts

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A black and white historic photograph looking along Manchester Street, showing the building of the NZ Express Company, customs, shipping and forwarding agents (ca. 1910-1929).

BeckerFraserPhotos November 2011 photograph 132

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Fleet House is between the demolition sites of Kenton Chambers and Manchester Courts. It is being set up for demolition now - with material being stripped out of it and fill laid upon the footpath".

QuakeStory Photo 319

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph submitted by Raymond Morris to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "The New Zealand Express Co. Ltd. building (Manchester Courts) built in 1906 on the corner of Manchester and Hereford Sts. In its time it was Christchurch’s tallest office building. This painting is from the Raymond Morris Collection of earthquake demolished buildings.".

Performance-based seismic assessment of an historic high-rise masonry buil…

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

The Manchester Courts building was a heritage building located in central Christchurch (New Zealand) that was damaged in the Mw 7.1 Darfield earthquake on 4 September 2010 and subsequently demolished as a risk reduction exercise. Because the building was heritage listed, the decision to demolish the building resulted in strong objections from heritage supporters who were of the opinion that the building had sufficient residual strength to survive possible aftershock earthquakes. On 22 February 2011 Christchurch was struck by a severe aftershock, leading to the question of whether building demolition had proven to be the correct risk reduction strategy. Finite element analysis was used to undertake a performance-based assessment, validating the accuracy of the model using the damage observed in the building before its collapse. In addition, soil-structure interaction was introduced into the research due to the comparatively low shear wave velocity of the soil. The demolition of a landmark heritage building was a tragedy that Christchurch will never recover from, but the decision was made considering safety, societal, economic and psychological aspects in order to protect the city and its citizens. The analytical results suggest that the Manchester Courts building would have collapsed during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and that the collapse of the building would have resulted in significant fatalities.