Constructed in 1912, Hawera County Council Offices (Former) is a single storey masonry building, which contributes to central Hāwera’s group of characteristic Edwardian office and commercial buildings. It was designed and built by well-known local practitioners: architect Joseph Edward Roe and contractor Ernest Arthur Pacey. Hawera County Council Offices (Former) has historic and social value because it was an important site of local government between 1912 and 1978, and then of central government administration and policy implementation when used by the Department of Corrections, between 1984 and 2017.

As the Hāwera area’s population grew in the late nineteenth century, so did the need and desire for localised government. Hāwera had an existing Town Board under the Patea County Council (PCC), but residents began to feel that was not ideal and the Hawera County Council (HCC) was established in 1881. The HCC focused on the rural area, while the Borough Council (established 1882) managed the urban area. Most of the HCC’s revenue came from rates and a main focus was on building and maintaining road networks. However, they also advocated to central government for the advancement of public works, and were in charge of administering various types of licensing and regulations, such as collecting a dog tax.

Roe called for tenders to build the HCC’s offices in early 1912. He designed a number of notable southern Taranaki buildings in the early twentieth century, including the Waverley Town Hall (1908) and several dairy factory buildings. Pacey had constructed the HCC’s building by early July. Pacey took over his father’s contracting business in 1898 and by 1908 was described as having ‘erected a large number of buildings in the Hawera district’.

Roe designed the HCC building with many elements popularly used in commercial and public buildings from the Edwardian era, including: front façade arched windows and door fanlight, with keystones; fluted pilasters; and a combination of dentils, pronounced cornice and parapet above. Initially, the parapet was also surmounted by three decorative urns. The rear gabled section of the building appears to be a 1930s or 1940s addition. Some original or early interior features included a tiled entranceway and walls with glazed upper sections.

In 1940 the HCC’s work since inception was applauded for creating ‘the present high state of perfection…with the roads and other public amenities’. The late twentieth century saw a re-shaping of local government in New Zealand. This meant that in 1978 the HCC merged with the Borough Council to form the Hawera District Council and they no longer needed the HCC building.

The building was acquired by the Crown in 1984, for use as a Corrections periodic detention centre. In 2004 the building, by this time a probation office, was altered through the creation of a new boundary wall with addition behind it, as well as introducing or altering some internal partitions. Corrections used the building until they opened a new facility in January 2017. The previous year local Corrections staff worked with ‘286 offenders on 339 community-based sentences’.