Last days

of a Samoa empire

After 63 years of operations, one of Apia’s landmarks, the Casino Hotel, has all but disappeared. About 75 per cent of the building has been demolished to make room for a new hotel on the same site.

The remainder has been retained for the time being as a temporary regional office of the United Nations Development Fund which has had its HQ in the building for a number of years.

There has been some controversy m parliament as to whether the old Casino should be retained or done away with but few eyebrows were raised when the contractors, Fletcher ( NZ) Ltd, started to pull it down.

It had deteriorated so badly that even extensive repairs would not have made it worth keeping.

The Casino was built in 1910 as ri 1 ding nouse for employees of c ueuische Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Sudsee Inselm zu Hamburg —the D H. & P.G. that part of the Godeffroy empire that survived the post Franco-Prussian War crash of 1879.

The D.H. & P.G. continued to trade successfully from its Apia head quarters along the street from the Casino until the outbreak of World War I when a New Zealand con tingent landed in Apia and took over from the German Government.

This headquarters building, succes sively the home of NZ Reparation Estates that took over from the D.H. & P.G. and now serving the same purpose for Trust Estates Corpora tion, is of much more historic account

than the old Casino. It is still in a good state of preservation after 116 years of life and it is to be hoped that the Samoans’ new enthusiasm for rebuilding won’t sweep this building away.

In 1913, on the 100th anniversary of J. Cesar Godeffroy’s birth, a cairn was erected on the lawns outside the Casino boarding house to commemorate the fact that “here he founded the Samoan branch of his firm”.

No one knows why the cairn and the plaques were erected there instead of at the headquarters building but this mistake was rectified a few years back by the last New Zealand general manager of the Corporation, Mr P.

W. H. Kelly. During an earlier period when the Casino was threatened with demolition, he rescued the plaques ed had them erected on the stairway * he building. The old cairn, bj dd ® n by a huge bush, remained on theCasmo lawn.

The new hotel to replace the Casino will be called the Tusitala Hotel. It is being built in a joint ett vt • Samoan Government and Naviti Investments of Fiji. It is expected that the majority of shares wdl eventually be sold to the Samoan public but that Naviti will go on I*; , The Tusitala will have 100 rooms, will cost several million dollars and is expected to be completed this year, Construction is already well ahead.

Two other tourist hotels, Return to Paradise and the Lake Lanutoo, are also on the way and when all are completed it is expected that there will be a boom m the visitor industry,

• The Casino Hotel in its hey day. The bush in the centre of the lawn hides the cairn, a memorial to J.

Cesar Godeffroy, founder of the trading empire.