The stone house at 47 Hallenstein Street was built in about 1874 for auctioneer and sometime Mayor of Queenstown, Frederick Daniel. It has historical significance in its connection with Daniel, whose very public fall from grace in the 1880s forms part of a wider historical theme exhibited by the buildings left behind by the perpetrators and enablers of corruption and mismanagement in public office, in both Queenstown in particular, and the country in general.

Tradition holds that Whakatipu Waimāori / Lake Wakatipu was dug by the Waitaha exploring ancestor, Rākaihautū, with his kō (Polynesian digging stick) named Tūwhakaroria. The lake supported various nohoanga (seasonally occupied sites) and villages, allowing whānau and hapū to exercise ahi kā (continuous occupation of the land) and to access mahinga kai, as well as to travel to the area of pounamu beyond the head of the lake. The flat land where Queenstown now sits was known as Tāhuna, which was descriptive of its shallow sandy shore. Te Kirikiri Pā was located where Queenstown Gardens now stand.

Queenstown was settled by William Gilbert Rees (1827-1898) as part of his run holding operation which started in 1860. The discovery of gold in the district led to an explosion in settlement beside his homestead at Queenstown Bay; this led to Rees’ departure from the area when, despite his protests, the town was formally laid out by survey and sales of sections began in 1863. The area of town on which the Hallenstein Street house sits was surveyed off in 1871 and granted to George Oswald Clayton shortly afterwards; in 1873 it passed to John Jones (a stonemason) who, on the same day sold to Frederick Henry Daniel. Photographs taken of Queenstown prior to about 1874 indicate that no building appeared on site until about that year.

The building Daniel constructed in c. 1874 comprises the north-western portion of the stone building that fronts Hallenstein Street. He had taken out a mortgage on the property in December 1874 which, it has been suggested, was to finance construction. The building was constructed in breccia with chimneys at either end of the hipped roof. Originally, the doorway fronting the street was flanked by two windows, later this doorway was converted into another window - a feature clearly shown in the stonework used to block the lower portion of this opening.

Daniel, was elected to the Queenstown Mayoralty in 1879; during this period and into the early 1880s he was also Chairman and Treasurer of the Lake County Council, thereby playing a prominent role in public affairs. In 1887 he took out another mortgage which may have been used to fund an extension to the Hallenstein Street house; this extension, built in local schist, rather than breccia, and running at right angles to the original building, was constructed at its south-eastern end. Unfortunately for Daniel, his fall from grace precipitated at about this time, when it was revealed that the Lake County’s County Clerk, Philip B. Boult, had been ‘conducting business in an inappropriate manner’ with the situation becoming a scandal after ‘an audit revealed that £1,000 had been misappropriated by Boult, rates books burnt to conceal theft, and other serious shortcomings’. Although he was not found criminally liable, as Boult’s overseer Daniel’s reputation was severely tainted and this, among other reasons, may have led to the Hallenstein Street property being acquired by the bank as mortgagee in 1890. Following Daniel’s ownership the property passed through various owners and had various uses, including as a maternity hospital. It was converted to a Bed and Breakfast operation in 1980. Since then various additions, extensions and restorations have occurred.