The former Public Library, built in 1917-1918 in Bulls’ High Street, has historic and social significance as a valued civic amenity and meeting place, associated with town founder James Bull. It illustrates an important aspect of New Zealand history: the provision of public library services. The First World War Roll of Honour added to the front entranceway in 1921 demonstrates the place’s significance as part of New Zealand’s largest commemorative landscape. The building has architectural and technological value as an example of an innovative building technology, camerated ferro-concrete. The Rangitikei River is culturally significant to Māori as a source of spiritual sustenance as well as a traditional corridor of access to settlement and food gathering/cultivation sites. Te Ara Taumaihi (Bulls) was a kainga for Ngāti Apa hapū who descend from the ancestor Tuariki. Ngāti Apa iwi had migrated south over successive generations to settle in the district; those hapū who lived north of the Rangitikei River integrated with the Ngā Wairiki people while the southern groups formed associations with Rangitāne and Muaūpoko. Alliances were made with Ngāti Raukawa in the 1820s after an invasion of northern tribes disrupted the local balance of power. The arrival of Pākehā colonists brought lasting and devastating change for Māori, including the 1849 sale of the Rangitikei-Turakina Block. Bulls township developed from 1858 around a sawmill and store founded by carpenter James Bull. Bull led the establishment of the town’s first public library in the late 1870s, and eventually gifted the land and reading room premises to the Bulls Town Board in 1910. The Bulls Town Board assumed management of the service in June 1917, planning a refurbishment. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the library later that same week. The Town Board moved quickly to rebuild. The Patriotic Society were initially approached for funds in conjunction with a proposal to dedicate the new building as a Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Library. The First World War had hit the district hard, with over 150 leaving to serve and at least six locals having lost their lives in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign. However, with the war not yet ended, it was decided that ‘this was not the time for erecting memorials’. By December plans for a £458 building by Feilding architect Robin Hood were obtained and construction, by Marton builders McIlwaine Bros., had begun. Hood’s design utilised the relatively short-lived construction method of camerated ferro-concrete, which was developed by Australian Henry Goddard in 1905 and fell out of use in New Zealand after 1920. The technology used patented collapsible formwork to pour concrete in an outer and inner wall segmented by reinforced hollow chambers, similar to the form of concrete blocks. The method, although costing twenty percent more than timber framing, was chosen for its claims of improved ventilation and thermal performance. The finished single storey building, opened with fanfare on 3 April 1918, had two large wainscoted rooms lit by sash windows, flanking a hallway accessed through a central front door inset into an arched surround. The two chimneys on the corrugated iron roof supported an arch proudly emblazoned ‘Public Library 1918’, finished to match the rough-cast exterior. The building’s meeting room was well used by the Bulls Town Board, among others. By 1919, Bulls, like all communities in New Zealand, turned to commemoration of the sacrifice of their fallen; around 28 percent of the district’s servicemen had been killed by the Great War’s end. In 1921, marble tablets forming a Roll of Honour listing all those who left the district to serve were attached around the library’s front archway, complementing the obelisk monument erected nearby, which focused on those who had lost their lives. The memorials became a feature of Anzac Day ceremonies. Changing structural requirements saw the building assessed as earthquake prone in 2013. A few years later, with the construction of the town’s new Civic Centre, which incorporated new public library facilities, the original building’s future was called into doubt. In 2021 a proposal to strengthen and retain the library as a dedicated war memorial gained support, spearheaded by the Bulls and District Historical Society.