The land occupied by Hamilton Chambers was reclaimed from Wellington Harbour in 1866-67 by the Wellington Provincial Council and became the property of the Wellington City Council, as it still is. The first lessee of the land was builder James Lockie. He is the only listed lessee of the section until the Hamilton Chambers development, although two buildings were erected on the section (40 and 42 Lambton Quay) after 1873.
By the 1920s, occupancy of these buildings had dwindled. In 1927 the Wellington City Council negotiated a lease for section 63a with Thomson and East Ltd., auctioneers and land and real estate agents. The terms of the lease required the removal of all existing buildings on the site and their replacement with a building at least three storeys high and of £24,000 value.
Thomson and East joined forces with Andrew Fletcher, a director of Fletcher Construction, which had become very active in the Wellington construction industry, to form a small property development company - Mercer Buildings Ltd.
Hamilton Chambers was designed for Mercer Buildings Ltd by F.D. Stewart, Fletcher Construction’s house architect. Construction work was officially completed on 4 April 1930. The building was built with eight storeys comprising two shops on the ground floor, six floors of offices, and an 8th floor with lift machinery and toilets. A light well was situated on the south side. The structure was reinforced concrete frame - probably on pad foundations. Architect Stewart took great care with the placement of the reinforcing in the Hamilton Chambers design, altering the original plans at least once. One floor received unusual treatment. The partitions and interior walls of the 7th (top) floor were almost completely lined with brick, a showroom for the Amalgamated Brick and Tile Co; a part Fletcher subsidiary. In the 1930s their offices were used for the meetings of the Association of Brick and Concrete Manufacturers.
Mercer Buildings Ltd was voluntarily wound up in 1967, and in 1969 the lease of Hamilton Chambers and section 63a, (now Lot 2 of DP 10808), was transferred to next-door neighbours, the Australasian Temperance and General Mutual Life Assurance Society. The building was subsequently let to a number of different tenants - most notably the Department of Industry and Commerce from 1931-1954 and the Wellington Women’s Club, founded in 1924.
In 2002 Hamilton Chambers was substantially demolished, and now only the façade remains. The façade has since been incorporated into the podium of the much larger HSBC tower complex. The redevelopment and façade retention scheme have somewhat diminished the building’s heritage value.
