George Frederic Allen belongs to the record of architecture as a figure whose buildings outlasted the taste that commissioned them.
The record lists George Frederic Allen as Architect, surveyor, teacher, tourist guide, artist (1837-1929).
George Frederic Allen was born at London in 1837. His recorded nationality is New Zealand.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
He is recorded as architect, surveyor and artist.
Architecture is the art that cannot be avoided: people live inside the argument.
That the work was built in New Zealand shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
George Frederic Allen died in 1929, aged 92. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
