The concrete nine-storey Milne and Choyce (former) building, in Queen Street, built at the beginning of the 1920s, once housed one of the largest and most modern department stores in New Zealand: ‘a town in itself’. Like many such stores, it grew from a small drapery store started by women in the second half of the nineteenth century. The store was significant as a leader in the New Zealand retail practice, was a major employer, and for 50 years was an important social space. Its design, by engineer Eric Rhodes and architect Llewellyn Piper, is significant as an early example of then-new earthquake-resistant design. It also has a long connection with the Milne and Choyce families, who were involved for several generations, and with Fletcher Construction.

In 1866 two sisters, Mary Jane and Charlotte Milne, established a millinery and drapery in Auckland. Charlotte later married Henry Choyce who entered into a partnership with Mary Jane, and the store flourished. In 1909, the store took over a substantial 1870s building on Queen Street, originally built for New Zealand Loan and Mercantile. It operated in this building until it replaced it with a new 9-storey store on the same site, constructed in 1921-4. James Fletcher of Fletcher Construction had seen early plans for the new building, and boldly offered to come up with improved plans. Fletchers’ soon had a contract for an enormous new store, designed by their new structural engineer Eric Rhodes and architect Llewellyn Piper, who went on to have a notable career designing many Auckland modern buildings. In contrast to the reinforced concrete beam and column construction commonly used in multi-storey buildings at the time, the building employed flat-slab construction with mushroom-headed columns, recently developed in the United States to be earthquake resistant. This allowed unobstructed ceilings and floor spaces, ‘lending to the monolithic strength of the work an attractive appearance of lightness’. The building was built in five sections, allowing the store to continue business during construction. The eighth floor was topped with a mansard roof containing the Tudor Tearooms, the ‘most up-to-date tearooms in Auckland’, seating 600 and opening into an open-air roof garden, with a distinctive pergola. This roof garden was glassed in by 1927.

The store was highly successful, leading the way in many modern retail techniques, providing additional services such as barbershops, hosting community events, and becoming an important part of the social sphere and a major employer. Its tearoom alone hosted a quarter of a million people in one year. To accommodate their large clothing factory and to create yet more retail space, a new seven-storey building, known as the Annex, was erected at the rear, facing Mills Lane, in 1929-30, containing a highly decorated Art Deco Reception Hall, and with its lower floors connected to the existing shop, and a mezzanine floor added. During the Second World War (1939-45), the building had air raid shelters installed, removed two years later. In 1955, a home appliance department and food court was added to the lower ground floor.

From the 1960s, the company attempted to diversify into suburbs and towns, but like many department stores it struggled to adjust to changing retail climates. Looking to anchor their new Downtown mall development, Fletchers acquired control of the company, and moved the store there, and sold this building. Since then, the building has had numerous internal alterations for many retail and commercial clients. The annex was demolished to make way for a neighbouring tower block in the 1980s. Today the building contains a mix of retail, on the lower floors, and commercial tenants above, and remains an important part of the Queen Street streetscape.