This is a bird's-eye view of Benjamin Mountfort's 1855 design for the Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings. The mainly wooden building was centred on a quadrangle and, in the Gothic revival manner, featured steeply pitched roofs and soaring towers. Not all of the plan was realised. The quadrangle was not fully enclosed and the octagonal turret on the left was not built. Mountfort's impressive stone council chambers were built in 1864–65, and was regarded as New Zealand's best example of high Victorian Gothic architecture. Its collapse in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake was seen as a great cultural loss, and the city authorities were hopeful that it could eventually be rebuilt.